- Department of Music
Granoff Music Center
Tufts University
20 Talbot Ave
Medford, MA 02155
franklehman.com/starwars
Frank Lehman
Tufts University, Music, Department Member
- Music Theory, Analysis of Film Music, Transformation Theory, Musical Form, Neo-Riemannian Analysis, Chromaticism, and 22 moreRichard Wagner, Franz Schubert, Gustav Holst, 19th Century Music, Music, Neo-Riemannian Theory, Film Music Theory, Ambient Music, Minimalism, Space and Music, Schenkerian Analysis, Genre theory (Music), Form (Music Theory), Music and Media, Music Cognition, British Music, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, History of Wonder, John Williams, History of Music Theory, Film music and film music theory, and Mereologyedit
What does it mean for film music – subordinated, contingent, ‘unheard’ – to be plucked from its intended context and placed at the forefront of the listener's attention? The tradition of excerpting and arranging movie scores for the... more
What does it mean for film music – subordinated, contingent, ‘unheard’ – to be plucked from its intended context and placed at the forefront of the listener's attention? The tradition of excerpting and arranging movie scores for the concert hall poses this question sharply. While scholarship on ‘cinematic listening’ has picked up in recent years, the specifically music-theoretical issues raised by this repertoire have been largely unaddressed. In this article, I argue that film-as-concert music presents hearing ‘cinematically’ as a valid alternative to structural modes of listening, a form of hearing that subverts both naive formalism and reflexive anti-formalism. Following a discussion of theoretical and interpretative priorities for analysing film-as-concert music, I begin investigation of a subset of the film-as-concert corpus: stand-alone scherzi originating from action set pieces. More than any other type of underscore, action cues answer to dramatic, editorial and visual imperatives rather than to ‘absolute’ logic. My core data emerges from a detailed study of John Williams's film and concert scherzi, with short analyses of cues/pieces from E.T., the Indiana Jones movies and Star Wars. My approach emphasises the way in which formal alterations bring about drastically different ways of hearing the work tonally and expressively across multiple versions. A larger-scale case study of ‘The Asteroid Field’ from The Empire Strikes Back serves to demonstrate the tonal, sectional and narratival transformations that occur between movie theatre and concert hall. To conclude, I propose that the film-as-concert mindset can be transferred to filmgoing itself, as a new mode of cinematic listening.
Research Interests: Music Theory, Film Music And Sound, Analysis of Film Music, Film music and film music theory, Musical Form, and 14 moreForm (Music Theory), Tonality (Key Perception), Film Music, Film Music Aesthetics, Music Theory and Music Analysis, Theory of Harmony, Film Music Perception and Cognition, Steven Spielberg, Film Sound and Music, John Williams, Screen Music, Film Music Theory, Formenlehre, and Franz Waxman
Throughout his career, John Williams has set the musical tone for the American presidency, most elaborately with his scores for Oliver Stone's controversial films JFK (1991) and Nixon (1995). While invested in capturing the character of... more
Throughout his career, John Williams has set the musical tone for the American presidency, most elaborately with his scores for Oliver Stone's controversial films JFK (1991) and Nixon (1995). While invested in capturing the character of these commanders in chief through musical codes, Williams's soundtracks are equally engaged in the act of the evocation and telling of “history.” Specifically, they construct a tragic myth of 1960s America in which the promise represented by JFK is destroyed from without, and Nixon from within, both by the malevolent forces of the military-industrial complex. In considering the thematic and dramatic means by which Williams paints his orchestral portraits, I reveal the extent to which music supports Stone's paranoiac narratives, especially in cases where the director's collage-like visual aesthetic puts pressure on the otherwise nostalgic traits of Williams's default tonal style.
I offer a music-analytical approach to JFK and Nixon informed by interviews, studies of political mythology and paranoia, and musicological appraisals of Williams's music. Stone's 1960s-as-lapsarian-metanarrative positions Kennedy as a romanticized absence, an image of the fabular fallen King, and Williams renders him as a public recollection rather than a human being with interiority. Nixon, by contrast, is a tragic antihero, consumed by dark forces of history and an abundance of ambivalent thematic material. Particular attention is paid to the dismantling of Kennedy's noble leitmotif during JFK’s prologue and motorcade sequence and to the near-fascistic musical accompaniment of Nixon's speeches. Having demonstrated the active role these scores play, I conclude that Williams's music constitutes an authoring of history in a strong, albeit postmodern, sense, consistent with but independent from Stone's screenplay.
I offer a music-analytical approach to JFK and Nixon informed by interviews, studies of political mythology and paranoia, and musicological appraisals of Williams's music. Stone's 1960s-as-lapsarian-metanarrative positions Kennedy as a romanticized absence, an image of the fabular fallen King, and Williams renders him as a public recollection rather than a human being with interiority. Nixon, by contrast, is a tragic antihero, consumed by dark forces of history and an abundance of ambivalent thematic material. Particular attention is paid to the dismantling of Kennedy's noble leitmotif during JFK’s prologue and motorcade sequence and to the near-fascistic musical accompaniment of Nixon's speeches. Having demonstrated the active role these scores play, I conclude that Williams's music constitutes an authoring of history in a strong, albeit postmodern, sense, consistent with but independent from Stone's screenplay.
Research Interests: Music, Musicology, Presidency (American Politics), Film Music And Sound, Film Analysis, and 17 moreMusic and Politics, Music and Media, Analysis of Film Music, Biopic, Film music and film music theory, Mythopoetics, Mythopoeia, Film Music, Film Music Aesthetics, Richard Nixon, Oliver Stone, American Presidential History, Film Sound and Music, John Williams, Music Scoring for Film, JFK Historiography, and JFK Assassination
SLIDE, the transformation that exchanges triads sharing the same third, is a pervasive feature of Schubert’s mature works. Blending indicators of distance and proximity, complexity and direct intelligibility, SLIDE is the chromatic... more
SLIDE, the transformation that exchanges triads sharing the same third, is a pervasive feature of Schubert’s mature works. Blending indicators of distance and proximity, complexity and direct intelligibility, SLIDE is the chromatic progression par excellence for evoking liminal states. Schubert’s use of the transformation poses a challenge to our ability to reconcile prolongational and transformational modes of tonal hearing. Following an evaluation of historical and group-theoretical conceptions of SLIDE, this article proposes a set of functional paradigms through which the relation may be understood in Romantic harmony. Extrapolating patterns of SLIDE usage from Schubert’s oeuvre illuminates the procedures through which the progression may be integrated into tonal fabrics. Special attention is given to the four-hand piano duets, D. 812, 940, and 947 in particular; in these works, the presence of sonata form forces SLIDE’s incorporation into exposition structures. The D. 812 Grand Duo is used as a concluding case study. To fully appreciate its complex game of semitonal relations, the Duo requires overlapping transformational narratives and a revival of Karg-Elert’s idiosyncratic Terzgleicher function. In studying Schubert’s SLIDing chromaticism, we stand to understand how composers ensconced within the tonal common practice nevertheless found ways to selectively incorporate tonally paradoxical materials into diatonic forms.
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""Cadences are one of the most powerful tools at a film composer’s disposal. The structure and placement of a cadence can shape the emotional arc of a scene, accentuate narratival information, and manipulate generic expectations. Drawing... more
""Cadences are one of the most powerful tools at a film composer’s disposal. The structure and placement of a cadence can shape the emotional arc of a scene, accentuate narratival information, and manipulate generic expectations. Drawing from theories of film genre and cadential definition from Altman (1999) and Caplin (2002), I explore several cinematically significant “cadential genres”—harmonic routines arising through the convergence of several independent musical phenomena that together projecting a punctuative function. Through processes of attribute substitution and subtraction, a cadential genre can adapt to shifting scoring practices and generic expectations.
In this article, I showcase four such cadential genres. The mixed plagal cadence imports transcendent harmonic associations from the Romantic era. Phrasal mickey mousing arises through deft cadential synchronization, as shown in an analysis of Korngold’s Robin Hood. The subtonic half cadence is strongly linked with a specific film genre: the Western. Through analysis of Jerome Moross’s subtonic-saturated scores and subsequent adapted, abstracted, and parodic usages, I show the value of the cadential-generic approach to style-based analysis. Lastly, I inspect the chromatically modulating cadential resolution (CMCR): the strategy of initiating a diatonic cadence in one key only for the dominant to discharge onto the tonic of a chromatically related key. Through a variety of intrinsic and contextual traits describable by linear, transformational, and cognitive models, I explain the strong association of CMCRs with cinematic evocations of wonderment. This is illustrated through the case study of Williams’s Jurassic Park.""
In this article, I showcase four such cadential genres. The mixed plagal cadence imports transcendent harmonic associations from the Romantic era. Phrasal mickey mousing arises through deft cadential synchronization, as shown in an analysis of Korngold’s Robin Hood. The subtonic half cadence is strongly linked with a specific film genre: the Western. Through analysis of Jerome Moross’s subtonic-saturated scores and subsequent adapted, abstracted, and parodic usages, I show the value of the cadential-generic approach to style-based analysis. Lastly, I inspect the chromatically modulating cadential resolution (CMCR): the strategy of initiating a diatonic cadence in one key only for the dominant to discharge onto the tonic of a chromatically related key. Through a variety of intrinsic and contextual traits describable by linear, transformational, and cognitive models, I explain the strong association of CMCRs with cinematic evocations of wonderment. This is illustrated through the case study of Williams’s Jurassic Park.""
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Neo-Riemannian theory offers an auspicious toolkit for probing film music, a repertoire in which dramatic exigency takes precedence over functional tonal logic. Its ability to model harmonic progressions as dynamic and... more
Neo-Riemannian theory offers an auspicious toolkit for probing film music, a repertoire in which dramatic exigency takes precedence over functional tonal logic. Its ability to model harmonic progressions as dynamic and contextually-determined, particularly with associatively-loaded chromatic motions, suits it eminently to Hollywood scoring practice. This transformational approach is tested on James Horner’s score to the film A Beautiful Mind. There, Horner illustrates the mental life of the mathematician John Nash with wildly chromatic but firmly triadic music. A group generated by the operators L, R, and S provides a fount for a “Genius complex” that represents intense intellection. Three cues from A Beautiful Mind are analyzed, with their tonal spaces revealing a distinctly transformational contribution to narrative and characterization. These readings further evince a tension between the logical telos of sequential patterning with the radically contingent, even game-like quality of Horner’s triadic manipulations.
Research Interests: Music, Music Theory, Musicology, Neo-Riemannian Analysis, Film Music And Sound, and 11 moreMusic and Media, Narrative and Music, Transformation Theory, Analysis of Film Music, Film music and film music theory, Music and the Moving Image, Film Music Aesthetics, Musicological Film Studies, Music Scoring for Film, Chromaticism, and Film music analysis
"The encounter of a musical repertoire with a theoretical system benefits the latter even as it serves the former. A robustly applied theoretic apparatus hones our appreciation of a given corpus, especially one such as film music, for... more
"The encounter of a musical repertoire with a theoretical system benefits the latter even as it serves the former. A robustly applied theoretic apparatus hones our appreciation of a given corpus, especially one such as film music, for which comparatively little analytical attention has been devoted. Just as true, if less frequently offered as a motivator for analysis, is the way in which the chosen music theoretical system stands to see its underlying assumptions clarified and its practical resources enhanced by such contact. The innate programmaticism and aesthetic immediacy of film music makes it especially suited to enrich a number of theoretical practices. A habit particularly ripe for this exposure is tonal hermeneutics: the process of interpreting music through its harmonic relationships. Interpreting cinema through harmony not only sharpens our understanding of various film music idioms, but considerably refines the critical machinery behind its analysis. The theoretical approach focused on here is transformation theory, a system devised for analysis of art music (particularly from the nineteenth century) but nevertheless eminently suited for film music. By attending to the perceptually salient changes rather than static objects of musical discourse, transformation theory avoids some of the bugbears of conventional tonal hermeneutics for film (such as the tyranny of the “15 second rule”) while remaining exceptionally well calibrated towards musical structure and detail.
By examining a handful of passages from films with chromatically convoluted scores—Raiders of the Lost Ark, King Kong, and A Beautiful Mind—I reveal some of the conceptual assumptions of transformational theory while simultaneously interpreting the scenes and films that these cues occupy. Ultimately, it is the notion of “transformation” itself—as a theoretical keystone, an analytical stance, and an immanent quality of music—that is most elucidated through this approach.""
By examining a handful of passages from films with chromatically convoluted scores—Raiders of the Lost Ark, King Kong, and A Beautiful Mind—I reveal some of the conceptual assumptions of transformational theory while simultaneously interpreting the scenes and films that these cues occupy. Ultimately, it is the notion of “transformation” itself—as a theoretical keystone, an analytical stance, and an immanent quality of music—that is most elucidated through this approach.""
This essay examines the stylistic and cultural aspects of what I call Hans Zimmer’s “Epic Style.” This powerful and understudied idiom has assumed a default status for a huge amount of musical multimedia in the new millennium. Zimmer’s... more
This essay examines the stylistic and cultural aspects of what I call Hans Zimmer’s “Epic Style.” This powerful and understudied idiom has assumed a default status for a huge amount of musical multimedia in the new millennium. Zimmer’s maximalized minimalisms infuse films ranging from Drop Zone to Inception. Through analyses of these and other scores, I identify a number of structural components of this style and comment on how they reflect broad trends in Hollywood scoring practice. I conclude with a consideration of the role that masculinity, heroism, and military entertainment play in this incredibly influential and pervasive musical style.
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Triadic chromaticism is a feature of much dramatic film scoring, a repertoire that has previously received little in the way of sustained analytic attention from music theorists. Neo-Riemannian techniques, while limited in application in... more
Triadic chromaticism is a feature of much dramatic film scoring, a repertoire that has previously received little in the way of sustained analytic attention from music theorists. Neo-Riemannian techniques, while limited in application in most previous studies to 19th Century Music, are eminently suited to exploring this vast musical landscape. Using passages of characteristically “non-functional” tonal logic from scores by Hollywood’s leading composers, this article demonstrates the relevance of transformational parameters to the investigation of cinematic musical structure and expression. The interpretive usefulness of neo-Riemannian harmonic combinatoriality and its sensitivity to voice-leading is highlighted with intuitive but hermeneutically revealing analyses of music from John Williams, Bernard Herrmann, and Howard Shore. The interaction of diatonic functional and chromatic idioms is broached with examples from Alfred Newman, as is the notion of “tonal agnosticism” that underlies much neo-Riemannian scholarship. Two larger analyses, of Alan Silvestri’s Back to the Future and Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s The Sea Hawk, illustrate the power and limitations of symmetry—too often an uncritically assumed desideratum for transformational approaches—for organizing film time. In light of these analyses, the wider prospects for future research in cinematic transformational analysis are considered.
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The authoritative catalogue of motivic material in the Star Wars film franchise. Includes information on all leitmotifs and incidental themes as well as set-pieces, suites, and source music. Additional sections on thematic... more
The authoritative catalogue of motivic material in the Star Wars film franchise.
Includes information on all leitmotifs and incidental themes as well as set-pieces, suites, and source music. Additional sections on thematic relationships, transformations, and associations, plus continually updated bibliography for primary and secondary sources. Extensive musical notation throughout.
Most recent update: March 23, 2023.
Includes information on all leitmotifs and incidental themes as well as set-pieces, suites, and source music. Additional sections on thematic relationships, transformations, and associations, plus continually updated bibliography for primary and secondary sources. Extensive musical notation throughout.
Most recent update: March 23, 2023.
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Authors: Allison R. Fogel, Jason C. Rosenberg, Frank Lehman, Gina R. Kuperberg, and Aniruddh D. Patel Prediction or expectancy is thought to play an important role in both music and language processing. However, prediction is... more
Authors: Allison R. Fogel, Jason C. Rosenberg, Frank Lehman, Gina R. Kuperberg, and Aniruddh D. Patel
Prediction or expectancy is thought to play an important role in both music and language processing. However, prediction is currently studied independently in the two domains, limiting research on relations between predictive mechanisms in music and language. One limitation is a difference in how expectancy is quantified. In language, expectancy is typically measured using the cloze probability task, in which listeners are asked to complete a sentence fragment with the first word that comes to mind. In contrast, previous production-based studies of melodic expectancy have asked participants to sing continuations following only one to two notes. We have developed a melodic cloze probability task in which listeners are presented with the beginning of a novel tonal melody (5-9 notes) and are asked to sing the note they expect to come next. Half of the melodies had an underlying harmonic structure designed to constrain expectations for the next note, based on an implied authentic cadence within the melody. Each such ‘authentic cadence’ (AC) melody was matched to a ‘non-cadential’ (NC) melody matched in terms of length, rhythm and melodic contour, but differing in implied harmonic structure. Participants showed much greater consistency in the notes sung following AC vs. NC melodies on average. However, significant variation in degree of consistency was observed within both AC and NC melodies. Analysis of individual melodies suggests that pitch prediction in tonal melodies depends on the interplay of local factors just prior to the target note (e.g., local pitch interval patterns) and larger-scale structural relationships (e.g., implied harmonic structure). We illustrate how the melodic cloze method can be used to test a computational model of melodic expectation. Future uses for the method include exploring the interplay of different factors shaping melodic expectation, and designing experiments that compare the cognitive mechanisms of prediction in music and language.
Prediction or expectancy is thought to play an important role in both music and language processing. However, prediction is currently studied independently in the two domains, limiting research on relations between predictive mechanisms in music and language. One limitation is a difference in how expectancy is quantified. In language, expectancy is typically measured using the cloze probability task, in which listeners are asked to complete a sentence fragment with the first word that comes to mind. In contrast, previous production-based studies of melodic expectancy have asked participants to sing continuations following only one to two notes. We have developed a melodic cloze probability task in which listeners are presented with the beginning of a novel tonal melody (5-9 notes) and are asked to sing the note they expect to come next. Half of the melodies had an underlying harmonic structure designed to constrain expectations for the next note, based on an implied authentic cadence within the melody. Each such ‘authentic cadence’ (AC) melody was matched to a ‘non-cadential’ (NC) melody matched in terms of length, rhythm and melodic contour, but differing in implied harmonic structure. Participants showed much greater consistency in the notes sung following AC vs. NC melodies on average. However, significant variation in degree of consistency was observed within both AC and NC melodies. Analysis of individual melodies suggests that pitch prediction in tonal melodies depends on the interplay of local factors just prior to the target note (e.g., local pitch interval patterns) and larger-scale structural relationships (e.g., implied harmonic structure). We illustrate how the melodic cloze method can be used to test a computational model of melodic expectation. Future uses for the method include exploring the interplay of different factors shaping melodic expectation, and designing experiments that compare the cognitive mechanisms of prediction in music and language.
Film musicology is growing at a heartening pace, but the discipline is still bereft of sustained contributions from music theory. The current study seizes the opportunity presented by the under-analyzed repertoire of film music, offering... more
Film musicology is growing at a heartening pace, but the discipline is still bereft of sustained contributions from music theory. The current study seizes the opportunity presented by the under-analyzed repertoire of film music, offering an argument for applying the techniques of transformational analysis, and neo-Riemannian analysis in particular, to the interpretation of music for the moving image. Film musical style and form respond strongly to a transformational approach, which adapts well to both the triadic chromaticism characteristic of Hollywood’s harmonic practice and the dynamic and contingent condition of musical design inherent to the medium. Concurrently, the analytic tools and conceptual structure of neo-Riemannian theory benefit from exposure to a fresh repertoire with different analytic needs than those of art music.
In this dissertation, the author scrutinizes the capacity for tonality to act as a unifying and dramatically potent force in film. With parameters of effective cinematic tonal design established, the adapted transformational methodology responds faithfully to the expressive and temporal qualities of the soundtrack. The author develops a model for harmonic associativity and a general hermeneutics of transformation, extrapolated from analyses of scores from John Williams, James Horner, Jerry Goldsmith, and many others. The power of the transformational approach to capture tonal phenomena through spatial representations is marshaled to perform critical readings of scores for A Beautiful Mind and Star Trek. Not only can the neo-Riemannian stance illuminate the way film music works, but it can train the listener and analyst to perceive and enjoy film with more sensitive ears.""
In this dissertation, the author scrutinizes the capacity for tonality to act as a unifying and dramatically potent force in film. With parameters of effective cinematic tonal design established, the adapted transformational methodology responds faithfully to the expressive and temporal qualities of the soundtrack. The author develops a model for harmonic associativity and a general hermeneutics of transformation, extrapolated from analyses of scores from John Williams, James Horner, Jerry Goldsmith, and many others. The power of the transformational approach to capture tonal phenomena through spatial representations is marshaled to perform critical readings of scores for A Beautiful Mind and Star Trek. Not only can the neo-Riemannian stance illuminate the way film music works, but it can train the listener and analyst to perceive and enjoy film with more sensitive ears.""
While studies of musical modernism in film have generally focused on techniques, case studies, or broad scoring practices, less scholarship has been devoted to experimentalism in specific film genres. The thriller genre frequently adapts... more
While studies of musical modernism in film have generally focused on techniques, case studies, or broad scoring practices, less scholarship has been devoted to experimentalism in specific film genres. The thriller genre frequently adapts and transforms avant-garde devices developed by concert composers. Modernistic sounds became codified within the thriller at the same time that the genre matured in the New Hollywood cinema of the 1970s. To take one example, a standard thriller trope is a rhythmically-isochronous, near-twelve- tone melody for scenes of urgency; such motifs pepper chase cues in David Shire’s Taking of Pelham 123 (1974) and Michael Small’s Marathon Man (1976), and can be heard in present-day film and television scores. Techniques seemingly more at home in horror scores are updated in thrillers via a number of means, including jazzified serialism, tape-manipulation and musique concrète, and polystylism. These methods reflect—and encode—timely cultural anxieties towards surveillance, governmental malfeasance, and urban alienation.
Focusing on Shire’s contribution to the genre, particularly those strategies used to evoke what he calls an “awe of irresolution,” demonstrates the adoption and longevity of these tropes. A confluence of jazz, electronics, and Cagian techniques flows through The Conversation (1974). At climactic moments, sound design, underscore, and diegetic music bleed into each other, creating a sonic morass that reinforces the film’s thematic preoccupation with concealment and mishearing. Examining the use of harmony and orchestration in Zodiac (2007) reveals how Shire’s Ivesian textures (many redolent of “The Unanswered Question”) contribute to the film’s epistemology of radical insolubility.
Focusing on Shire’s contribution to the genre, particularly those strategies used to evoke what he calls an “awe of irresolution,” demonstrates the adoption and longevity of these tropes. A confluence of jazz, electronics, and Cagian techniques flows through The Conversation (1974). At climactic moments, sound design, underscore, and diegetic music bleed into each other, creating a sonic morass that reinforces the film’s thematic preoccupation with concealment and mishearing. Examining the use of harmony and orchestration in Zodiac (2007) reveals how Shire’s Ivesian textures (many redolent of “The Unanswered Question”) contribute to the film’s epistemology of radical insolubility.
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Music Theory Society of New York State, 2014
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Music and the Moving Image Conference
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A blog dedicated to exposing and exploring lesser-known symphonies.
Co-created with Matthew Mugmon.
Co-created with Matthew Mugmon.
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Post on Musicology Now (Blog of the American Musicological Society)
Research Interests: Music Theory, Film Studies, Advertising, Analysis of Film Music, Film Promotion and Marketing (Film Studies), and 13 moreMovie Trailers, Contemporary Hollywood, Film Music, Nostalgia, Star Wars, Hollywood, Theory of Harmony, New Hollywood Cinema, John Williams, Symphonic Music, Tonality, Musical Leitmotives, and Film Trailers
This chapter focuses on the wider cultural and psychological ramifications of chromaticism in film music. It is argued that pantriadicism strives for a specific affect: wonderment, and with it two subsidiary psychological states, frisson... more
This chapter focuses on the wider cultural and psychological ramifications of chromaticism in film music. It is argued that pantriadicism strives for a specific affect: wonderment, and with it two subsidiary psychological states, frisson and awe. Both literary and cognitive/psychological accounts are given for this affect’s connection with harmony, with particular emphasis on the relationship of emotion and musical expectation. Frisson and awe have distinctive temporal profiles, leading to an evaluation of theoretical and empirical work on subjective temporality in connection with chromaticism. The analytical ramifications of this theory of chromatic temporality are examined with respect to a single large-scale case study, Howard Shore’s music for the Lord of the Rings trilogy. In the process, the author finds ways of integrating two traditionally separate analytical approaches: transformational networks and cognitive models of musical expectation.
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Throughout his career, John Williams has set the musical tone for the American presidency, most elaborately with his scores for Oliver Stone's controversial filmsJFK(1991) andNixon(1995). While invested in capturing the character of... more
Throughout his career, John Williams has set the musical tone for the American presidency, most elaborately with his scores for Oliver Stone's controversial filmsJFK(1991) andNixon(1995). While invested in capturing the character of these commanders in chief through musical codes, Williams's soundtracks are equally engaged in the act of the evocation and telling of “history.” Specifically, they construct a tragic myth of 1960s America in which the promise represented by JFK is destroyed from without, and Nixon from within, both by the malevolent forces of the military-industrial complex. In considering the thematic and dramatic means by which Williams paints his orchestral portraits, I reveal the extent to which music supports Stone's paranoiac narratives, especially in cases where the director's collage-like visual aesthetic puts pressure on the otherwise nostalgic traits of Williams's default tonal style.I offer a music-analytical approach toJFKandNixoninformed...
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Throughout his career, John Williams has set the musical tone for the American presidency, most elaborately with his scores for Oliver Stone's controversial films JFK (1991) and Nixon (1995). While invested in capturing the character... more
Throughout his career, John Williams has set the musical tone for the American presidency, most elaborately with his scores for Oliver Stone's controversial films JFK (1991) and Nixon (1995). While invested in capturing the character of these commanders in chief through musical codes, Williams's soundtracks are equally engaged in the act of the evocation and telling of “history.” Specifically, they construct a tragic myth of 1960s America in which the promise represented by JFK is destroyed from without, and Nixon from within, both by the malevolent forces of the military-industrial complex. In considering the thematic and dramatic means by which Williams paints his orchestral portraits, I reveal the extent to which music supports Stone's paranoiac narratives, especially in cases where the director's collage-like visual aesthetic puts pressure on the otherwise nostalgic traits of Williams's default tonal style. I offer a music-analytical approach to JFK and Nixon...