Film Music (V) – Orchestral effects on movie

The development of technology and movie industry has changed expectations of music on movie. Older versions of soundtracks, there were pure melody which had to intense emotions. Of course still it should be, but movies give new responsibilities to the music. Audience and movie crew expects more than pure melody, because they are used to hear it and they need more than it. In addition, technology has changed the frames, transitions and visual effects. So that music was forced to support these new technological elements with new musical idea which is “Orchestral Effects”. From the 2000’s, movie industry with the support of Hollywood has been developing in technical terms, like lots of visual effects. They have been paying attention to those effects and they want music also pay attention to visual effects.

Composers’ cure to solve this issue is creating big crescendo chords and sharp endings. (Which for mainly written in brass section) In action movies (which are Pirates of the Caribbean, James Bond, The Dark Knight Rises, Sherlock Holmes, Mission Impossible and etc.) this style can be easily shown.

The other way of creating effects with orchestra is glissando chords. This style is generally for stressful scenes. In addition, fast rhythmic motives are tools for creating effects.

Movie composers have to create “new music” for movies, because technology forces to do that. However, movie composer have limits about composing new music. It means, movie audience doesn’t expect musical master pieces from movies and most likely doesn’t have much experience of polyphonic music. If composer goes beyond the limits, all production can be collapsed, because the most important point of success is meeting the expectations and providing balance between movie and music.

The Second Viennese School (V)

This week I read two segments of the chapter “Schoenberg’s Poetics of Music) by Carl Dahlhaus. According to his claim, from late nineteenth century on, music went on a different path it was in before. That means, composers, instead of limiting themselves with the theoretical rules and regulations of their current time which was equal with appreciation of critics and the public, started pushing loosening conventions. Better said they re-read the conventions, but in a different manner which suited their inner expressive demands. This resulted in an impressive process of personalization in music, that emanated smaller groups and even just a few individuals following and defending a specific idea and even forming side-streams, that would grow whether abruptly or gradually and become a mainstream; just like what went on with The Second Viennese School at the beginning and its broadening process of acceptance among the society of musicians and critics as well as the audience. I strongly believe this was the direct result of the Romanticism movement, that went to a sort of extreme in the 20th century and caused great changes in the history of music of all time.

 Schoenberg, in reaction to the ones questioning the quality and credibility of his music, claimed that his music quite similar to Beethoven’s and Brahms’; The only difference is that the way he proposes his musical ideas is different with them. Just as his the developing variation or serialism served his goal of expressiveness in music. I interpret this as the concept of deconstruction, meaning to make the conventions upside down, (a kind of destruction), and bringing something just new out of it.

 I will keep reading about this topic and preparing an analysis of a music by Schoenberg in the next coming weeks.