We might not even notice the music accompanying a movie or television show, but that soundtrack has power. The music gives us information, for example, when the music turns ominous in a police drama such as "Law & Order," we know someone is about to give up the ghost. The music can establish a place or time, too. Without taking the time to consciously identify a clarinet and accordion with an 'Oompah' bass, we instinctively know that we're in some part of Germany. The other night during the Grammy Awards on TV, I was instantly transported back to the 1970s when the band Chicago began to perform. The people and places I knew then were conjured to the front of my imagination, just from hearing those familiar songs. Close your eyes and listen if you don't know what I mean (this will only work if you were, in fact, a thinking person in the 1970s).
I'm convinced that the theme music from the extraordinarily popular PBS series "Downton Abbey" has something to do with its success. First of all, it sets the scene for the viewer; we know just from the music that this is going to be a drama, and that the characters (or at least some of them) are going to be aristocratic. Then, it's so darn lush and intriguing that we're drawn in to the program even if we are not familiar with the story. I know this is true for me: I react like one of Pavlov's dogs whenever I hear it!
Have you ever heard of circular breathing? Very few musicians can pull this off, and those that do practice for years before finding success. Very simply, the musician plays by blowing out through his or her instrument, and at the same time breathes in through their nose! This is an effective way of creating tension in music because the listener expects to hear slight pauses where a musician breathes. Just like with language, music has phrases and sentences, and these are set apart by small pauses (commas and periods). I've enlisted everyone's favorite curly-haired soprano saxophonist to demonstrate this to you:
Musicians in bands and orchestras can work around having to learn this technique if more than one person is playing a given part. They will work out ahead of time which player will breathe where, and the other will continue to play. The result should be a seamless line of music without pauses which creates tension. Music is all about tension and release, after all.
Richard Wagner, King of the Leitmotif
The idea of using music to communicate information is not new. Richard Wagner was a revolutionary opera composer who assigned leimotifs or themes to characters, places, and even things, and then wove them together to support his opera story. So there's a character named Siegfried who has a theme, and he has a sword which has a name (Nothung) and a leitmotif. When Siegfried thinks about his sword, we'll probably hear Nothung'sleimotif. Even if we don't consciously notice the sword's theme, our brain processes it. Wagner uses this technique of weaving together his many leitmotifs in all of his operas, but most prominently in his masterpiece four-opera Ring Cycle. The leimotifs are used to identify concepts and telegraph information to us before the characters on the stage even know what's going on. Here's the brass section of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra explaining and demonstrating the leitmotifs from Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle:
From now on, when you watch a movie (or opera) listen for these techniques and let me know what you find!
I have a vivid memory of sitting in my Music History class
as a college junior. Dr. Parker had just played a recording of Brahms’s Intermezzo Op. 118, No. 2, and was asking what we thought of it. I had just
studied the very same piece in Music Theory class and could have told her all
sorts of things about the form, the harmonic structure, and about Brahms’s use
of the number three. I knew that wasn’t what Dr. Parker wanted, and when she called on
me (no one else offered anything because we were scared to speak in that
class), I blurted out that the piece was “beautiful.” That was a mistake, of
course, and I got scolded for not using musical terms. What I really meant was
that the composer created that lush soundscape to evoke such a reaction from
the listener, sophisticated or not. Words failed me that day and I probably
just uttered a remorseful “okay.”
Composers attempt to evoke emotions, don’t you agree? The Brahms Intermezzo is
obvious. He wants the listener to have such an emotional reaction.
Beethoven specifically composed his Symphony No. 6, the “Pastoral,” to create a
country scene and deliberately included a babbling brook and bird calls in the second movement and a storm in the fourth featuring
thunderous tympani to set the scene for the listener. It feels like a relaxing day in the country, and the score reveals instructions for the conductor and musicians to make it so.
Berlioz told a whole
semi-autobiographical story with his Symphonie
Fantastique. He was obsessed with an actress named Harriet Smithson, and
concocted a story about an Artist who experiences not only unrequited love from
an Actress character, but scorn and ridicule, too. The fifth movement of this work, “Dreams of a Witches Sabbath,” is intended to represent the Artist’s
funeral. The beautiful motif that had been associated with the actress in
earlier movements is now heard in a grotesque variation representing the
Actress’s scorn. We know this because Berlioz told us so. This is called
programmatic music.
Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 (Bernstein)
What about more subtle messages in musical works when we don’t
have descriptions and labels from the composer? I was thinking about Beethoven’s
Symphony No. 9; you know, the one with the gigantic choral ending featuring
Schiller’s “Ode to Joy.” I have always reflected on each movement individually,
but it wasn’t until I listened to it on a hundred-mile car trip that I realized
Beethoven and I had been on a journey together. I wrote about that revelation in my other blog. That’s the thing about really good music: you hear something
different each time you listen, whether it is the third or the 350th time.
This week, while preparing a lecture that includes Richard
Wagner operas, I remembered an instance back in fourth or fifth grade when Mrs.
Harney played a recording and told the class to draw what we thought the
composer was thinking. Just about every kid, me included, drew something
flying. The music was (did you guess?) the overture to The Flying Dutchman. That experience made a big impression on me.
How did Wagner draw such a convincing picture with just music? I probably won’t have my students draw pictures this
week, but I will play the overture and tell them the story!
