![]() ![]() One such particle that has, as yet, received minimal attention is among music’s most fundamental elements: the cadence.Įxample 1. ![]() (3) From this vantage, film music is seen as a play of particles and routines that accumulate associations and generate expectations through various inter- and intratextual means. (2) At the same time, other, more targeted studies-several from music theorists-have striven to characterize meaning in terms more cellular than holistic. Several attempts have been made to establish broad principles for musical meaning-making across film styles and eras, particularly for “Classical Hollywood” (roughly 1930–1960). One of the fruits of film musicology’s extraordinary growth during the past decade is an increasing appreciation of the exuberant complexity of meaning in musical multimedia. Chromatically Modulating Cadential Resolutions This is illustrated through a case study of Williams’s Jurassic Park.Ĭopyright © 2013 Society for Music Theory 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. 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 analysis of Jerome Moross’s subtonic-saturated scores and subsequent adapted and abstracted usages, I show the value of the generic approach to style-based analysis. The subtonic half cadence is strongly linked with a specific film genre: the Western. Phrasal “mickey mousing” arises through cadential synchronization, as shown in an analysis of Korngold’s Robin Hood. The mixed plagal cadence imports transcendent harmonic associations from the Romantic era. ![]() Through processes of attribute substitution and subtraction, a cadential genre can adapt to shifting scoring practices and 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 independent musical phenomena that together project a punctuative function. The structure and placement of a cadence can shape the emotional arc of a scene, accentuate narratival information, and manipulate generic expectations. KEYWORDS: film music, cadence, phrase, modulation, genre theory, Western, Caplin, Newman, Korngold, Moross, Goldsmith, Howard, Williams, Jurassic ParkĪBSTRACT: Cadences are one of the most powerful tools at a film composer’s disposal. ![]()
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