The title of this book is adapted from the familiar opening lines
of William Congreves 1697 tragedy, The Mourning Bride:
Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast, to soften rocks,
or bend the knotted oak.1 This quotation-book staple is the de-
finitive idealized expression of musics benevolent powers, and
of course it relates to more than just music. Straightforward dec-
larations like this, and the straightforward use we often make of
them, speak to our deep desire for simplicity and comprehensi-
bility. They evince an ancient and persistent faith that there can
be a parallel relation between a statement and its object, between
a set of conditions and the sentiments, ideas, and applications
that arise therefrom.
From another perspective it might be observed that these reas-
suring, apparently universal parallels have been much questioned
for a very long time now, and not altogether without reason. We
may have had such a direct experience with music, and with
other things besides. Ideas and the experiences that give rise to
them, or that emerge out of them, can surely be congruent. But
congruency does not exhaust every possibility, and ambiguity
lies always in wait. When we investigate Congreves statement
further we find ourselves confronted with a pair of common quo-
tation-book complications. The first of these is that for almost
every position we urge there is sure to be an equally urgeable
counterposition. The other is that this counterposition is often to
be found at the source of the original statement, and that the roots
of received wisdom are generally more tangled than wed like
them to be.
Almeria, Congreves mourning bride, illustrates this idea as
she opens the play with her well-known statement, which she
then immediately contradicts.
2 INTRODUCTION
in the stalls there were many who were able to read against the
intended industrial grain. At the core of the contrary reading was
the idea that commercial, conventional films parallel processes
and straightforward representations may have been simple and
comprehensible, but they were not adequate to the complexity,
richness, or direness of art and experience.
So it was that the musical community, when it condescended
to take notice of film music, consistently decried its subservient
state. Musicians and musical scholars believed and had a stake in
the independence and integrity of music, but they felt that these
things were, and were likely to remain, nonexistent within the
confines of the film industry. Other voices, more sympathetic to
cinematic projects, nevertheless sided with the musicians in their
perpendicular relation to and their general rejection of film musi-
cal parallelism. For film modernists of formalist persuasion the
effects of conventional film music were aesthetically impover-
ished. For the ideologically and politically minded, these effects
were even more serious: the conventional devices of film music,
and of commercial film generally, had a dangerous influence on
both spectators and citizens. These films left audiences domesti-
cated and enervated, with the result that audience members were
circumscribed in the expression, apprehension, and exercise of
freedom, and of freedoms responsibilities.
A good deal of time has passed since these first formulations
were made, and a good deal of more measured theoretical and
practical activity has taken place. The need for this more reason-
able discussion has at least something to do with the totalizing
tendencies that inform the seminal film music statements. We
find in these a seemingly unwavering faith in commerce (Holly-
wood and its apologists), or in communism (the early statements
of the Soviet modernists), or in the ineffability of abstract music
(Romantic elements of the music community). The certainty in
these statements is undeniably appealing, and dangerous as well,
and it is still present in the trenches of media production and
public perception. As it was in the early debates, so it is some-
times today; salesmen and artists and their respective defenders
can all be restricted by platitudinous self-images, which not inci-
dentally distort their notions of the other side. And scholars, my-
self included, are not immune, as these last, slightly monolithic
6 INTRODUCTION
community will reveal much of its values, and much of the social
and historical context in which these values operate, and out of
which they emerge. We will also consider some of the more mea-
sured, less factional scholarly accounts of the subject, some of
which will inform the direction of my own eventual argument.
The second point of film-to-classical music contact is figura-
tive. In chapters three and four we will discuss film music analo-
gies, metaphors that have suggested, as well as a new one that
will suggest, ways in which film and music might actually have
similar aims and effects. The first analogy, the influential and
confounding idea of film-musical counterpoint, emerged out of
the Soviet cinematic avant-garde. With its bold prescriptions and
refusals, this is a faction as surely as the other two just men-
tioned. As such, and as might be expected, its analogy, or at least
the way in which it has most frequently been wielded, is far from
conciliatory. But the counterpoint analogy will lead us to an-
other, largely unmarked figure that encloses and gives place to
both film and classical music cultures, and which presents an
alternative to the largely divisive, pugnacious exchanges that
have tended to prevail on the subject.
This latter film-musical analogy is built upon the institution of
program music, which reminds us that some kind of narrative,
some set of assumptions or expectations generally predates and
informs almost every expression, musical or otherwise. This in-
forming can clarify, or it can be incoherent, but in either case the
results can be both interesting and instructive, and they are at the
least emblematic. Programs lead us finally to the books last sec-
tion and the final way that film and classical music have acted
togetherin actual practice, in the production and the receiving,
which practice has been and continues to be most broad and var-
ied. Films, and music, and the places where both combine, may
return us to the standard positions and analogies, but they will
allow us a refreshed look at and helpful alternatives to the famil-
iar paradigms.
Finally, a word about the parameters of this study. It is not
intended to be an exhaustive list of films in which classical music
appears. Such a list would be useful as a resource for further
study, but it would necessarily leave aside the critical work
needed to provide theoretical context. Instead, as I have sug-
8 INTRODUCTION
Notes