# Hollywood Cadences: Music and the Structure of Cinematic Expectation



## Steve Martin (Jun 18, 2016)

Hi everyone,

I'm just in the process of reading this article I've found, and even though I haven't finished reading, I thought I would post this link for those who may be interested in this.

"Hollywood Cadences: Music and the Structure of Cinematic Expectation" by 
Frank Lehman

http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.13.19.4/mto.13.19.4.lehman.html

Steve


----------



## synergy543 (Jun 18, 2016)

Thanks for posting Steve!


----------



## Steve Martin (Jun 18, 2016)

no problem Synergy


----------



## artmuz (Jun 19, 2016)

Great!
Although I do not agree on the Vertigo ex. about the bVI6 it's a m7b5 in the second degree (even if they are interchangeables)


----------



## patrick76 (Jun 20, 2016)

Thanks a lot for the link. It looks quite interesting.


----------



## rgames (Jun 20, 2016)

Maybe OT but I gotta say - I read a lot of academic literature outside the music world but the academic musicians have a writing style that immediately conjures images of a grey-bearded sixty-something, probably in a tweed jacket, who is clearly very pleased with himself.

But back on topic, interesting read!


----------



## Paul T McGraw (Jun 25, 2016)

Great article. Thanks for posting the link.


----------



## JohnG (Jun 25, 2016)

from the article:

_"Textbook “Hollywood Cadence” or not, the density of meaning packed into Newman’s succinct fanfare [20th Century Fox Fanfare] is typical of the art of film composition. Movie scoring relies on efficient, audience-intelligible, and often heavily conventionalized procedures."_

This is so bloody typical. This twit takes what is essentially a mnemonic, an advertising piece that is deliberately (even for the time) archaic and by definition "conventionalized" and then extrapolates that into "movie scoring" generally (and, presumably, video games and other media music).

The _definition_ of movie scoring is to keep some level of freshness and entertainment for the audience that goes to movies; if to them you make the movie seem old fashioned / boring / seen-it-before you failed. Directors who actually have money and imagination and some creative drive aren't, unlike their mediocre brethren, looking to ape some preexisting sound -- _they want a new sound_. 

Movie scoring resembles a magpie's method -- a little from here, a little from there. Is it allowed to use a kick drum with an orchestra? Yes. Can you pump out a classic analogue synth with strings? Yes. Can you write a three minute cue that only has percussion effects? Of course. Can you suddenly add a distorted electric guitar if you feel like it -- duh. Can you actually use a regular old orchestra? Yes to that, too.

It's always changing and moving. Right now we are hearing the most amazingly eclectic styles in some areas, very old-fashioned in others, and as we all know some scores comprise predominantly sonic effects, rather than traditional music. A lot of it stinks, some of it is painfully derivative of some temp score, and lots of it is, admittedly, "conventionalized."

But if you want to hear music that is intensely shackled by rigid rules and expectations, step into academic music or, in some cases, jazz. You get flayed alive if you write a melody or a rhythm the non-expert portion of the audience can embrace and enjoy the first time, _without an instruction manual _to tell them why they are supposed to like it.

I go to concerts regularly of new music and every once in a while there's something good, really good. But so often it's a re-hash of aleatoric ideas, or quarter-tone ideas, or prepared piano / strings / marimba / whatever -- ideas that have been around for 80 years at least. "How about 10 minutes of strings starting in unison and then going slightly out of tune with each other?" Wow! Neato! How creative and intellectually satisfying at the same time! And what fun too!

I liken media / movie music to what opera became, a medium on which vast resources could be spent because people were willing to pay to see it. Are all opera plots "great art?" Is the music all "sublime?" "elevated?" Like -- no. Much, maybe even most of it is total twaddle that Gilbert and Sullivan skewered 125 years ago as already hackneyed _even then_. And yet academe has the nerve to dismiss movie music as pedestrian and basically moronic.

How many $%#^ performances of "La Boheme" and "Turandot" are we required to see when we see so few of "Wozzeck" or "The Miraculous Mandarin"? The latter two are actually pretty provocative both because of story and music. They are nearly 100 years old (or actually -- not sure) but they are still the real thing, unlike the dusty museum pieces that stuff every programme of every season.

I like Puccini and his crew fine, don't get me wrong. Wish I knew half what they knew. But sheesh. Academia.

Oh well. Cranky!!


----------



## BigImpactSound (Jul 25, 2016)

Thanks!


----------



## NoamL (Jul 25, 2016)

Yeah @JohnG this is pretty typical of academic work on film music: it's extremely dated, too technical, and has some errors.

I know we should be grateful that They are studying Us at all...

Mostly the datedness bothers me. If you want to study how film music has become conventionalized the obvious thing to study would be something like:



Not just because it's Marvel; Tyler is consciously assembling many of the cliches of modern blockbuster music.

What you said about avante garde music rings true as well. The avante garde should be more properly termed _*academic music*_. It rests on _academia's understanding_ of music. The academy is pumping out "avante garde" composers who not only have never studied a film score, they often have only the most cursory understanding of tonality's developments in jazz and beyond. They're not avante garde at all; they're horribly behind the times.


----------



## ed buller (Jul 25, 2016)

whilst it does rely somewhat heavily on music that is at least twenty years old there are some very salient observations. And Frank is very far removed from the cliched academic some here think he is !.

The Cowboy cadence is a well known device ...he has just expanded the idea. And yes some of his interpretations are perhaps misleading , but the central premise that music is a language and has syntax and that well used devices can support drama is without doubt true. Weather these are now overused is another matter. But he does do a very good job of highlighting the extraordinary dexterity and control of people like John Williams in their use of harmony to propel drama. The cue "Cadillac in the sky" is a textbook example of this type of scoring and anybody who is interested in this style of film score can learn a lot from it's study . 




When the music enters @1:07 it deals with the excitement of the boy's reactions to the planes....but the music takes on so much more as the cue progresses

To be honest I think articles like Lehmanns are an enormous help to studying film music. A lot of what he is driving at ( voice leading and chord choices basically ) is also dealt with in fabulous depth in Brian Morrells books.

http://www.brianmorrell.co.uk/filmbooks.html

I am a little surprised at the negativity here


e


----------



## JohnG (Jul 25, 2016)

@ed buller I guess you can call it "negativity," but to me it's a measure of frustration. I find most film music analysis as frustrating as most reviews of any music, from Mozart to the Beatles. Critics proffer a thousand indisputably accurate observations about, say, a Haydn symphony -- even something as tame as his early works -- and still fail to put a finger on (or anywhere near) the heart of why it succeeds or why anybody cares.

Why _do_ we care? How does it capture us? What are some of the essentials that will keep people listening to this or that work 100 years, 200 years after its composition?

These of course are pretty tough questions, so I guess I'm setting too high a standard in a way.

*Critics Blah*

That said, my own anecdotal reading of "analysis" of music in general and film music in particular leads me to conclude that 99% of if is lazy and totally misses the point of what is actually cool about music. Film music suffers especially; because most academic critics inhabit an environment in which film music is automatically and reflexively deemed hack-work, I think I hear in Lehman and in the writing of most others an assumption of artistic mediocrity (or absence of artistic qualities altogether) that grates on my nerves.

Of course a lot of it is hack work, just as most novels, stories, songs, poetry, painting and operas (in former times) are or were mediocre. But not all of it.

Much of the laziness of this criticism, whether of film or concert music, seems to take as a base line for praise how popular and admired the composer is and especially whether he's deemed (in academic circles particularly) to be "ground-breaking" and "original."

*Originality? nein danke*

Originality, in my view is vastly over-rated. I could look all day at a single Rembrandt or Caravaggio portrait and yet I doubt that's mostly because of the innovative-ness of the paintings. It's the "whole thing." I can't separate any one thing from any other thing without destroying the miracle -- the brush-work, the eyes, the mystery of the background, the lighting, the feeling that a hundred years or more is instantaneously bridged between the painter and the viewer.

I think the same of some of the best film composers -- few are ground-breaking or even innovative. A tiny few marry a mastery of craft to that magical something that grabs us, that makes us care, that makes an audience want to hear it again not just as an echo of a film they liked but also for itself.

I don't want to dismiss the argument that the score has to be secondary to its function as part of the movie, which some argue. I reject the sufficiency (though not the necessity) of that sentiment, though it is a rare composer who can serve the film and still do more. I think the best film music propels the movie and _also_ possesses something of its own, which is what makes it special to begin with and what elevates the film that much further, beyond the ordinary.


----------



## Ashermusic (Jul 25, 2016)

Nowadays, it seems like it is more of a case of the rare director or producer who will _let_ the composer do more.


----------



## ed buller (Jul 25, 2016)

JohnG said:


> I think I hear in Lehman and in the writing of most others an assumption of artistic mediocrity (or absence of artistic qualities altogether) that grates on my nerves.



Huh ?...nonsense . He heaps praise over all the examples. I suggest you read it again.



JohnG said:


> though it is a rare composer who can serve the film and still do more. I think the best film music propels the movie and _also_ possesses something of its own, which is what makes it special to begin with and what elevates the film that much further, beyond the ordinary.



again..... dutifully acknowledged in the examples he sights. I humbly suggest your knee jerk response is based on assumptions that aren't met. 

respectfully

ed


----------



## JohnG (Jul 25, 2016)

Maybe I'm being unfair, Ed, but that fanfare commentary. Sheesh.


----------



## higgs (Jul 25, 2016)

JohnG said:


> It's the "whole thing." I can't separate any one thing from any other thing without destroying the miracle -- the brush-work, the eyes, the mystery of the background, the lighting, the feeling that a hundred years or more is instantaneously bridged between the painter and the viewer.



Exactly, John. This really resonates with me.

You know, it's unfortunate that the word "gestalt," has not leaked -or been forcibly reassigned for that matter- into the creative vernacular - it's still under house-arrest by the psychology community but let's liberate it:

*gestalt
— *_*noun, *plural _*ge·stalts, ge·stal·ten [g*_*uh*_*-*shtahl*-tn, -shtawl-, -stahl-, -stawl-]* ( _sometimes initial capital letter _) _Psychology _.

a configuration, pattern, or organized field having specific properties that cannot be derived from the summation of its component parts; a unified whole.
_(dictionary.com)_

Most, if not all of my favorite films would disintegrate if any one single element were changed or removed, i.e. There Will be Blood if Johnny Greenwood's score didn't fascinate over Krzysztof Penderecki, No Country for Old Men if it had a score, even something as small as Spinal Tap without Mick Shrimpton. None of these are life-changing films, but they're in a class each of their own - gestalt. I almost don't consider them movies, but things with those titles, if that makes sense.


----------



## Mundano (Jul 25, 2016)

I recommend the reading of this book: "Die Semantisierung der Musik im filmischen Werk Stanley Kubricks"
Very interesting reading, no hater, analysing, describing how the music acts and tells the story through different layers of signification. (in german) -nice academic  -

https://books.google.com.co/books?id=XLBmRyO9NeYC&pg=PA273&lpg=PA273&dq=die+semantik+der+filmmusik&source=bl&ots=XBuzyL80_h&sig=WLLMMJJUBLWbFWHUFTJdKaX3Xdw&hl=es-419&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiAr9Hnn4_OAhVFGx4KHYWlBZ8Q6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q=die semantik der filmmusik&f=false


----------



## JohnG (Jul 25, 2016)

@Mundano but this is funny to me, given Mr. Kubrick's penchant for using existing music in his brilliant films. Funny, because it actually gives the lie to the entire idea of "film music." Which for me is equally painful and amusing.


----------



## Mundano (Jul 25, 2016)

JohnG said:


> @Mundano but this is funny to me, given Mr. Kubrick's penchant for using existing music in his brilliant films. Funny, because it actually gives the lie to the entire idea of "film music." Which for me is equally painful and amusing.



Yes, you are right, but it wasn't always that way. The book analyses both cases in a very objective way (not passionate) and give us an almost balanced view between pre-existing music to film, and film music. It analyses functions, semantic layers, etc., and doesn't judge why he has decided some times to use pre-existent music, but only inform how was this process, when it happened. Very interesting.


----------



## Mundano (Jul 25, 2016)

and btw, when Kubrick used pre-existent music to film, he was very aware of the "cadences" in the music and made wide use of them...


----------



## JohnG (Jul 25, 2016)

ha-ha!


----------



## Mundano (Jul 25, 2016)

Mundano said:


> and btw, when Kubrick used pre-existent music to film, he was very aware of the "cadences" in the music and made wide use of them...



...Barry Lyndon being a perfect example of that, amusing and painful like you say @JohnG ....


----------



## JohnG (Jul 25, 2016)

OMG -- how many times did that piece repeat???????


----------



## Mundano (Jul 25, 2016)

JohnG said:


> OMG -- how many times did that piece repeat???????


LOL


----------



## passsacaglia (Jul 26, 2016)

ed buller said:


> whilst it does rely somewhat heavily on music that is at least twenty years old there are some very salient observations. And Frank is very far removed from the cliched academic some here think he is !.
> 
> The Cowboy cadence is a well known device ...he has just expanded the idea. And yes some of his interpretations are perhaps misleading , but the central premise that music is a language and has syntax and that well used devices can support drama is without doubt true. Weather these are now overused is another matter. But he does do a very good job of highlighting the extraordinary dexterity and control of people like John Williams in their use of harmony to propel drama. The cue "Cadillac in the sky" is a textbook example of this type of scoring and anybody who is interested in this style of film score can learn a lot from it's study .
> 
> ...




What a scene...love that movie til death. And the music. Daymn...thanks for posting. Watching clips from EotS monthly just to fill my days with more beauty and wonderful music. Learning the songs from the film atm when there is time...totally love it.

ps just started another thread, maybe the Hollywood cadences link in the beginning explains some of it?


----------



## reddognoyz (Jul 26, 2016)

I have to admit I glazed over trying to read that, but listening to the examples and seeing the breakdown of the chord motion was interesting, especially the last two measure of the BH piece, (he did that with LASS right??) 

I am guilty guilty guilty when it comes to continuing education, (but I am a busy beaver), and on the rare occasions when I step out of my well trod path I am delighted and educated in ways that I can apply to my work. I remember having to figure out the love theme to romeo and Juliette for some show where the guy falls for a frog, and it was about 2 a.m. and I finally got it and I was like "resolves where??!!!???!!! how the hell did he do that??? ahhh not enough time in the world to learn all these amazing things.....


----------

