T music and movies research paper.

The Emotional Role of Music in Film and Television: Exploring the Narrative Function of Music through Classic Film Scores Tong Xia Azusa Pacific University Course Instructor Name Date Introduction Music is an essential component of film and television experience, and it provides visions of character development, folklore, and mood. This paper is focused on discussing the of one of the aspects of the musical parameter used in the narrative, which can be defined as narrative function of music through classic film scores. The potential of music is used within a film to create a specific mood and has a communicative role as a part of the narrative. Orchestral scores also familiarize audiences, giving out signals to create suspense, romance, tragedy or triumph. It is worth noting that today's legendary composers, such as Bernard Herrmann, and John Williams, can produce additional sound backgrounds and sounds that are the heart and soul of movies. In film music, the melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, and instrumental components are at the service of the story's dramatic structure. For example, numerous leitmotifs are musical themes retained for characters or concepts that assist listeners in tracing volatile and thematic changes in a narrative. This paper intends to discuss musical techniques that support the narrative and investigate differences in approach through various musical compositions by different composers. Through analyzing these elements and viewing these elements in scenes, it is discernible how soundtracks affect the emotions within the audience and how fundamental soundtracks are to media. This research will depict film music as a distinct art form and as an essential component of the storytelling potential of cinema and television. Historical Background of Film Scoring Film scoring has advanced to a sophisticated score that helps define the nature of a film and make music an essential part of cinema. The early silent film era relied on live musicians who improvised based on scene changes and audience emotions, setting a foundation for music as an emotional and narrative tool in film. In the early days of cinema, the drama was accompanied by small orchestras or pianists. However, there was an original interest in sheet music scores. Film scoring came into practice in the 1920s and 1930s and significantly changed the uses of music in the movies. It was during this time that such individuals as Max Steiner emerged, who was to lay down the basics of narrative function. In Film Music, Wierzbicki reveals that in working on King Kong, Steiner brought thematic motifs as well as dramatic orchestration that amalgamated to add emotional resonant and directly connected music to the character transformation. These leitmotifs defined the direction of Steiner's composing style and the way music combined to provide the general narrative of the emotions of a movie, which opened the way for other musicians to follow.[Donnelly, K. J. Film Music : Critical Approaches. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001.] [Wierzbicki, James Eugene. Film Music : A History. New York: Routledge, 2009.] By the mid-twentieth century, Hollywood had enthusiastically adopted the enhanced and monumental film scores synonymous with the golden age of production. Composers restored this tradition of the classical symphonic idiom with loud, memorable leitmotivs and grand, sweeping orchestral scores associated with such megahits as Star Wars and Jaws in this cinema world. For his part, Audissino affirms that Williams brought back the classical concept of scoring films while enriching it with Wagnerian leitmotifs endorsed by a quite individualistic orchestration. This way it operated was akin to an opera, with easily recognizable motifs that enriched the auditory experience of the drama, which is the cinema.[Audissino, Emilio. The Film Music of John Williams : Reviving Hollywood’s Classical Style. Second edition. Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2021.] [Wilson, Sean, and Amon Warmann. The Sound of Cinema : Hollywood Film Music from the Silents to the Present. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2022.] [Audissino, Emilio. The Film Music of John Williams : Reviving Hollywood’s Classical Style. Second edition. Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2021.] The fifties and the sixties, though, witnessed a fair amount of innovation, with jazz and modernist influence defining the film music of the period. This change can be seen in Bernard Herrmann's work with Alfred Hitchcock, especially in Psycho (1960). Herrmann used only the strings to create high-pitched staccato that provide suspense, and this psychological dimension was nearly as strong as in Hitchcock's films. Jonathan Rhodes Lee uses Herrmann to demonstrate the expansion of the range of film music for musical textures and rhythms. Jonathan Rhodes Lee further explains that if film music could burgeon into such a rich resource of expression, the heroic and innovative Herrmann would shoulder much of the responsibility. Herrmann's work shows that composers envisioned film scores as psychological developments of film themes. This is because he started using music in films not just to enhance scenes but to elicit auditory passion.[Lee, Jonathan Rhodes. Film Music in the Sound Era : A Research and Information Guide. Volume 2, People, Cultures, and Contexts. New York, NY: Routledge, 2020. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003013570.] In the 1970s and 1980s, electronic instruments and synthesizers became available to most music composers. A concept Donnelly and Hayward covered in Music in Science Fiction Television is how the scores of futuristic movies and television shows, including Blade Runner and Doctor Who, initially used synthesizers and electronic music that supplemented ambient sound that blended with the settings of the shows. These developments brought about a more precise science fiction scoring aesthetic, with the use of electronic sounds representing prosthetic space, effectively expanding the sphere of conception of film music. Moreover, tendencies of employing pop and rock idioms in the eighties changed the function of film music, impacting those with appeal beyond movie theatres.[Donnelly, K. J., and Philip Hayward, eds. Music in Science Fiction Television : Tuned to the Future. New York: Routledge, 2013. http://site.ebrary.com/id/10640448.] During the 90s, the soundscape was revolutionized by Hans Zimmer, who united traditional orchestral sound with digital elements. Shows like The Lion King (1994) and Gladiator (2000) utilized simple, recurring figures, establishing anxiety and growth in both movies. Zimmer's style, as discussed by Sean Wilson and Amon Warmann in The Sound of Cinema, underlined perceptive and comprehensible motives relating to simple scores aligned with the visual and aesthetic narrative of contemporary popular movies (Wilson and Warmann, 2022). When globalization took root, it also played the influential role of dictating the trends in 21st-century music, and its influences reached the compositions of film scores. Paula Musegades's Aaron Copland's Hollywood Film Scores discusses how Copland pioneered a precisely 'American' musical idiom and shaped composers hoping to infuse even ethnic and cultural themes into more generic Hollywood scores. Musegades argues that Copland's folk influence made the works of other composers include non-Western music in their films, enhancing the storyline and adding a cultural dimension to musical scores.[Wilson, Sean, and Amon Warmann. The Sound of Cinema : Hollywood Film Music from the Silents to the Present. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2022.] [Musegades, Paula. Aaron Copland’s Hollywood Film Scores. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2020.] [Musegades, Paula. Aaron Copland’s Hollywood Film Scores. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2020.] Buhler and Lewis have further analyzed the recent integration of film music and visual elements in Voicing the Cinema which support the idea about how today's composers utilize sound design for films' visuals and emotions narrative. Experiencing sound effects and enhancing the main composition, film music has organically developed to improve both dramatic exposition and feeling-reaching components. Peter Rothbart’s “The Synergy of Film and Music” shows the significance of the interrelation between film and music in contemporary cinema emerging the cross-cultural music by composers such as Göransson in Black Panther for expression of identity and heritage is defined.[Buhler, James, and Hannah Lewis, eds. Voicing the Cinema : Film Music and the Integrated Soundtrack. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2020.] [Rothbart, Peter. The Synergy of Film and Music : Sight and Sound in Five Hollywood Films. Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2013. http://site.ebrary.com/id/10640081.] Emotional and Narrative Role of Music in Film and Television Music's place in a movie and structural element cannot be overshadowed by just being an addition. In the years of its existence, film composers have refined methods of setting mood, building character arcs, and advancing narrative as a fundamental part of cinematic art. In this way, and through sonic associations and narrative reconfirmation, music has been made mandatory in framing and intensifying the viewer's experiences. During the formative years of cinema, for the most part, music was used to fill up the spaces of silence in the movies. However, as K.J. Donnelly notes in Film Music: In Critical Approaches, the music soon took on a deeper function: to sway the viewers' feelings and determine context creation. While composers realized a particular potential of thematic motifs, these elements were a valuable mean for establishing a continuity of emotions and consistency in the narrative, which created the foundation for the film score as a narrative element.[Donnelly, K. J., and Philip Hayward, eds. Music in Science Fiction Television : Tuned to the Future. New York: Routledge, 2013. http://site.ebrary.com/id/10640448.] The period of what can be considered the ‘’Golden Age ’brought confidence and firm establishment of music as the element underlining and developing further emotional and plot features. Max Steiner and Bernard Herrmann pioneered using leitmotifs, musical themes associated with particular characters or ideas, as illustrated by James Wierzbicki in Film Music: A History. Wierzbicki demonstrates how Steiner applies the approach of underscores and causing feelings for the characters in Gone with the Wind (1939) and how Herrmann applies the approach of dissonance and repeating notes to create suspense in Psycho (1960) movie. In that way, music not only expressed the feeling of scenes but also governed the pace of narrated news about the coming events and led the audience to identify the characters.[Wierzbicki, James Eugene. Film Music : A History. New York: Routledge, 2009.] Focusing on recent cinema, composers such as John Williams developed the application of these mechanisms and bounded significant musical motives to the characters. Emilio Audissino, in The Film Music of John Williams explains how Williams employed leitmotivs in movies such as Star Wars and Indiana Jones. This enhanced the viewer's affection for the characters and plots in reviving hollywood's classical style. In turn, Williams's scores extrapolated from mere background music; instead, they became signs within the story; they operated as characters' emotions and even as a plot. This straightforward enjoyment signified that the motifs became objects of affection, enabling effective narrative signifying where signifiers meant certain characters and situations could be called into mind simply by triggering a few notes.[Audissino, Emilio. The Film Music of John Williams : Reviving Hollywood’s Classical Style. Second edition. Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2021.] [Audissino, Emilio. The Film Music of John Williams : Reviving Hollywood’s Classical Style. Second edition. Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2021.] Donnelly and Hayward in Music in Science Fiction Television analyze synthesizers and futuristic compositions as defining science film and TV series such as Blade Runner or Doctor Who and argue that they have played significant roles in producing the otherness and speculative temporality. These sonic textures enable audiences to enter into otherworldly stories; the two serve a contextualizing function through music to the auditory imaginative space between the screen and the viewer. Thus, music as a discursive element becomes a narrative tool for defining emotional participation in the constructed, alien reality. With the development of the film, people became more and more sentimental about music and started to incorporate emotions that would sway the audience into various characters and themes.[Donnelly, K. J., and Philip Hayward, eds. Music in Science Fiction Television : Tuned to the Future. New York: Routledge, 2013. http://site.ebrary.com/id/10640448.] With new media technology, a new trend was launched, and composers like Zimmer began integrating conventional music with electronic music to depth. In The Sound of Cinema: Hollywood Film Music from the Silents to the Present, Sean Wilson and Amon Warmann described that Inception and The Dark Knight by Zimmer used sustained tones and multiple layers inserted to create tension and chase the pace or hurry of the plot. Zimmer's strategies –layered sounds, building the rhythm slowly, and using bass tones – generate an emotionally charged atmosphere that reinforces the audience's dedication to the course of action and emotions in a movie, showing how music makes the viewers care even more about the story. There are also studies by composers seeking cultural satisfaction for scores that would enrich films with diverse tones. Paula Musegades in Hollywood Film Scores acquaints the reader with how Aaron Copland melded the American folk idiom into his scores to provide mood, passion, nostalgia, and patriotism to complement the movie's storylines. By creating emotions and cultural context, Copland's approach is followed by contemporary composers who want to increase the thickness of a film by using musical traditions from all over the world.[Wilson, Sean, and Amon Warmann. The Sound of Cinema : Hollywood Film Music from the Silents to the Present. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2022.] [Musegades, Paula. Aaron Copland’s Hollywood Film Scores. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2020.] Composers have also increasingly become aware that when embarking on a project, the issue of having music working in harmony with sound design is vital when depicting various tales. As discussed by James Buhler and Hannah Lewis, today's composers invariably work in conjunction with the sound designers to integrate music with the sound effects and the voice, which, in turn, forms an auditory picture that reflects the trends of the film's feelings and the plot. Thus, it is possible to smoothly transfer the audience to the diegetic world and perform its sounds organically and expressively. Lastly, in The Synergy of Film and Music, Peter Rothbart takes a closer look at what he considers the most sensational ability of film to merge sight and sound when conveying emotions, focusing on the movie Schindler's List. The music selected by John Williams for Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ central theme is melancholic and Sad music that adds a sense of mournfulness to the movie. Rothbart talks about how the film's music merges into the story and heightens the simple beauty of death notice by adding human emotions into the movie.[Buhler, James, and Hannah Lewis, eds. Voicing the Cinema : Film Music and the Integrated Soundt...