{"title":"New Surprises for Haydn’s Surprise Symphony","authors":"Jeffrey Lyon, Brent Yorgason","doi":"10.1558/jfm.23880","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jfm.23880","url":null,"abstract":"In his score to the 1939 film We Are Not Alone, Max Steiner uses the melody from the second movement of Joseph Haydn’s Surprise Symphony forty-one times to represent different situations, places, emotions, and character development for Dr. David Newcome, played by Paul Muni. In each variation, Steiner adds an extra “surprise” to the theme. These variations include the use of dark textures, mode changes, reharmonization, chromaticism, meter changes, melodic variation, and the orchestration of diegetic music.","PeriodicalId":201559,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Film Music","volume":"60 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114193055","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dodge City","authors":"Mariana Whitmer","doi":"10.5040/9781838710590.0022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5040/9781838710590.0022","url":null,"abstract":"Michael Curtiz’s 1939 Dodge City ushered in a new era for the Western genre. Successfully modeled on the popular swashbuckler, this film was at the forefront of a renaissance in the production of feature-length Westerns that would continue almost unabated until the 1970s. Dodge City was closely modeled on previous Warner Bros. swashbucklers, retaining the same director (Curtiz) and several actors. Yet the decision to have Max Steiner create the musical accompaniment, instead of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, offered a fresh approach. Steiner’s prior experience with Westerns made him appropriately suited for this project as reflected in his composition and treatment of themes, as well as in his carefully crafted action music. Steiner’s music reflects the epic qualities of Dodge City, including the scenic surroundings, the tense action scenes, and the developing romance, yet with the added characteristics evocative of trains, wagons, and horses. Utilizing his original sketches for Dodge City, this essay examines how Steiner created a Western sound that was inspired by previous romantic swashbucklers, but altered to accommodate the frontier setting. To understand how Steiner tempered the dramatic intensity of the costume drama to complement the Western aesthetic, I focus specifically on the culminating action scene, examining how Steiner developed thematic material to underscore action scenes and reused key passages to create contexts for understanding the characters.","PeriodicalId":201559,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Film Music","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129473940","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tugging at Heartstrings","authors":"T. Schneller, Táhirih Motazedian","doi":"10.1558/jfm.20810","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jfm.20810","url":null,"abstract":"The love theme is one of the central musicodramatic topics of classic Hollywood music but, thus far, little scholarly attention has been paid to the specific musical devices used by film composers to depict love. To the extent that musical analysis has entered the picture at all, it has tended to focus on the motivic level, despite the fact that much of the emotional alchemy of film music resides in its harmonic structure. This is particularly true for classic Hollywood love themes, which often draw on subtle chromatic inflections to weave their affective spells. In this article, we will address two particular harmonic schemas associated with romance during the studio era: (1) the Heartstring schema, which involves the inflection of a major tonic by a chromatic chord usually centered on b6^, and (2) the downstep modulation, a variant of the circle-of-fifths sequence. Both schemas rely on the bittersweet frisson between major and minor modes, a tension that contributes significantly to the emotional punch still packed by the great love themes of Hollywood’s Golden Age.","PeriodicalId":201559,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Film Music","volume":"71 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125945616","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Loving Out Loud","authors":"Eric McKee","doi":"10.1558/jfm.24719","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jfm.24719","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the critical reception of love scenes in early Hollywood sound films (1928–1933). Why were love scenes so unsuccessful, and what did Hollywood do to fix the problem? Hollywood quickly responded and developed a new approach. In the second part, I consider the role of music in one common type of love scene—the ballroom love scene, in the films Coquette (1929) and The Naughty Flirt (1931). These films feature two innovative techniques—drifts and jumps—which provide musical pathways from diegetic to nondiegetic spaces (and sometimes back again). In a survey of 220 films, in almost every case these innovative techniques were reserved for love scenes. I argue that drifts and jumps deepened the audience’s engagement, thereby making filmic lovemaking more palatable and less susceptible to mockery and laughter.","PeriodicalId":201559,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Film Music","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134440593","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Monothematicism and Fate in Dust Be My Destiny (1939)","authors":"Brent Yorgason, Jeffrey Lyon","doi":"10.1558/jfm.24721","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jfm.24721","url":null,"abstract":"In the classic Hollywood style, monothematic film scores are rare. Perhaps the most well known of these is David Raksin’s score for Laura (1944). Max Steiner’s score for the 1939 Warner Bros. film Dust Be My Destiny similarly uses a single focal theme. However, in this case, it is not obsession that drives this compositional choice but fate. Steiner portrays this fight against fate through the recurrence and ongoing transformation of the material from the main theme, which he transforms throughout to portray various and dramatic situations. In all, Steiner presents seventy-one different variants of the theme in the film. As Joe begins to realize that he can shape his own destiny, the theme develops alongside him, up to the final transformation in the closing credits.","PeriodicalId":201559,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Film Music","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115503568","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Making Space for Music","authors":"Nathan Platte","doi":"10.1558/jfm.24723","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jfm.24723","url":null,"abstract":"Max Steiner met Robert Wise, future director of West Side Story (1961) and The Sound of Music (1965), at RKO in the early 1930s. While Steiner served as composer and music director for films like Of Human Bondage (1934), The Gay Divorcee (1934), The Informer (1935), and Top Hat (1935), Wise helped manage the soundtrack as an assistant sound and music editor. After Steiner left RKO in early 1936, Wise stayed on at the studio to advance through the ranks of film editor and director before reuniting with Steiner at Warner Bros. for the melodrama So Big (1953) and sword-and-sandals epic Helen of Troy (1956).\u0000Drawing on original archival research, this article reconstructs a partnership that briefly flourished at different stages of their careers. At RKO, Wise learned the trade while observing Steiner’s ground-breaking efforts as a composer. By the 1950s Wise was rapidly growing in renown as a director, as signaled by his assignment to the generously budgeted Helen of Troy. In contrast, Steiner faced pay cuts and the termination of his contract at Warner Bros. Steiner’s two productions with Wise boosted Steiner’s lagging career while also illuminating the ways in which shifting aesthetics and production practices in Hollywood had left Steiner at a disadvantage. Whereas So Big represented a throwback to films like Cimarron, which Steiner had scored at RKO in 1931 (both based on Edna Ferber novels), Helen of Troy marked a new emphasis on visual and aural spectacle, with an epic narrative told through CinemaScope, stereophonic sound, and a cast of thousands. Writings on director-composer partnerships tend to emphasize the formation of a distinctive sonic style, in the manner of Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann. Steiner and Wise, in contrast, were consummate studio employees, eager to serve productions that ranged widely in topic, genre, and budget. Studying their brief partnership in the 1950s reveals how two individuals well versed in the workings of the Hollywood studio system managed to help each other navigate its dismantling in the 1950s.","PeriodicalId":201559,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Film Music","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123657527","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mayhem, Madness and Distorted Mirrors in Herrmann’s Music for Hitchcock’s Psycho","authors":"Daniel Moreira","doi":"10.1558/jfm.20006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jfm.20006","url":null,"abstract":"Bernard Herrmann’s music for Hitchcock’s Psycho plays a crucial role in implementing the relentless move towards mayhem and madness which is characteristic of this film, as well as in creating distorted reflections between sanity and madness. In this article, I claim that the former aspect is expressed by a gradual move from tonal towards “mistuned” and then atonal harmonic objects, while the distorted mirror relationship is suggested by a number of subtle correspondences (both similarities and differences) between cues associated with Marionand cues associated with Norman. My analysis rests on both intratextual and intertextual factors. While I reveal the former through a close analysis of the film score in relation to the narrative, I discuss the latter in terms of Herrmann’s general approach to film music, the conventions of horror film scoring, and the special linkage between modernist music and madness in concert music, opera and cinema.","PeriodicalId":201559,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Film Music","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123626724","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Magdalena Grzebalkowska, Komeda","authors":"David Melbye","doi":"10.1558/jfm.22870","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jfm.22870","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":201559,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Film Music","volume":"62 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125948691","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Max Steiner","authors":"Roger Hickman","doi":"10.1558/jfm.20238","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jfm.20238","url":null,"abstract":"Max Steiner provided music for over 300 films during a distinguished career that extended over three decades. He is justifiably celebrated for his scores in multiple film genres, including historical epics, romances, horror movies, and dramas. Less well known are Steiner’s contributions to film noir. Yet he is a leading composer for this dark trend in Hollywood filmmaking. Three factors go into this assessment: the number of noir films that he scored, the prestige of those films, and the overall quality of his music. The span of Steiner’s noir composition is nearly identical to that of the era itself, which is generally defined as 1940–1959. Depending on which films are viewed as film noirs, Steiner is the third or fourth most prolific composer for the genre. Among these are classics such as Mildred Pierce, The Big Sleep, Key Largo, and White Heat, a roster of noir heavies unmatched by any other composer. For the most part, his music for these films consistently reflects traits that we associate with Steiner’s other film scores. This overview focus on two qualities in these films: the use of pre-composed music and thematic material as characterization. Included in this survey are Steiner’s scores for Mildred Pierce, The Woman in White, The Beast with Five Fingers, City for Conquest, and The Death of a Scoundrel.","PeriodicalId":201559,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Film Music","volume":"9 4","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133203919","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Composing Himself","authors":"Nathan Platte","doi":"10.1558/jfm.21421","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jfm.21421","url":null,"abstract":"The beginning of Steiner’s Hollywood career is typically overlooked in studies of the composer, in part because scrutiny of his work hinges on film scores attached to celebrated films. This article argues that Steiner’s initial years are vital in understanding how a former Broadway music director exploited musical opportunities in Hollywood to develop a new career profile grounded in composition. Through his eclectic labors at RKO Radio Pictures and his connections with commentators in the trade press, Steiner formed a new and necessary position that extended beyond the arranging of numbers for musicals to the composition of incidental music for films of various genres.","PeriodicalId":201559,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Film Music","volume":"57 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129465093","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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