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Eli Messaros

Professor Hughes

English Composition II

21 March 2019

Music in Film

Movie music has a much more profound effect than people realize. When viewers have

an emotional response, they might think they are reacting to the story and don't consider that it

could be caused by the music. People think that good movie music is catchy, but they don't think

that it is anything other than something that they can hum when the show is over. This paper

intends to demonstrate that a good film score is crucial in order for the movie to incite a deep

emotional response in the viewers. In Score, Siu-Lan Tan, professor of psychology at Kalamazoo

College indicated that, even though people don’t actively listen to film music it deeply affects the

audience.

People don’t go to the movies for the music, but they know the kind of music that they

like. That’s how I define status quo. This status quo will determine the style of music because the

composers will write music that is attractive to the audience. Since cultural norms always change

this gives composers opportunities to write in groundbreaking new styles. Even though the

cultural norms change, the popular music from movies stays effective indefinitely. For example,

Star Wars, Jaws, and The Godfather still sound as impressive as they did when they were new.

Rather than becoming dated, they are iconic.

Movies have not always had soundtracks, but they have always had music. The first films

were known as “silent films.” They did not have any recorded audio or music. What they did

have a pianist or an organist to play along with the film. The projectors in those days were
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extremely loud, so the piano or organ would play along to drown out the projector’s noise.

Sometimes accompanists didn’t have printed music to play along with during the film, so they

would improvise. The first film to have recorded sound and music was The Jazz Singer. It came

out in 1927.

King Kong was the first movie that used a full symphony orchestra. In 1933, no one had

heard of using a full symphony orchestra and the idea seemed absurd. In the documentary Score,

David Newman talks about how Max Steiner was able to use a full orchestra for his film score of

King Kong. He said this horror movie was going to be a flop because it looked silly and wasn’t at

all scary. The stop-motion animation of King Kong makes the scene look really fake. Plus, you

can practically see the wires holding the planes in the air as they attack him at the Empire State

Building.

When King Kong came out it was extremely popular. This score saved the movie and

proves how powerful music can be. Since the original came out, there have been many remakes.

The fabulous success of this movie gave filmmakers a glimpse into the wonderful possibilities of

film scores.

In 1947, A Streetcar Named Desire was released. It was the first movie to incorporate

jazz into its score. Robert Townson in Score claimed that Alex North’s score for A Street Car

Named Desire was “the most revolutionary score of all time.” After that, there have been many

others to use jazz for the soundtrack, some being Pink Panther and James Bond. In the 1960’s

and 1970’s composers did a lot of experimentation with different types of musical styles. For the

film The Graduate, Simon and Garfunkel wrote the song “Mrs. Robinson.”

The use of rock in a movie was groundbreaking for the time. In the 60’ and 70’s

orchestral scores fell out of favor and new types of music came into vogue. During that time new
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archetypes were created. All spy movies hearken back to the sound of early James Bond

soundtracks. Similarly, The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly became synonymous with the spaghetti

western genre. This decade tried most everything, going from rock bands to western style music

to jazz.

Soon after, John Williams brought back orchestral music to film with his soundtrack from

Jaws and claimed his place as the preeminent film score composer of his time. Since the mid-

70’s, Williams has been composing music for blockbuster films at an impressive rate. His music

is powerful, getting his point across with big, loud fanfares and soft, soulful melodies. He has

written some of the most recognizable film scores ever. In the Deseret News Erica Palmer talks

about the successes of John Williams:

He has composed scores for at least 80 films and won five Academy Awards, 17

Grammys, three Golden Globes and two Emmys, according to his biography on

johnwilliams.org. According to his IMDb profile page, he holds the record for most

Oscar nominations for a composer, with over 40.

As time goes on, one can see if he will continue composing great works of music. Even

today, the symphony orchestra is still being used in film scores. John Williams is still the most

well-known film score composer, although there are other great composers working in the field

today. Some of these being Hans Zimmer, Steve Jablonsky, and Alan Silvestri.

During the late 70’s, the use of synthesizers was introduced for film soundtracks. Even

though some of the experimental scores were successful none of the synthesizer scores of the late

70’s and 80’s were particularly memorable. AFI did not choose any of these for the top 25

scores. All of these movies have a dated sound. Weird Science and Witness are examples of this
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style. However, orchestral music continued to be used extensively. The 80’s were not completely

overlooked by AFI because three movies from that decade with orchestral scores that were

chosen for the top 25. The symphony orchestra in modern times continues to be used in new and

innovative ways.

Film composers use musical techniques to match what is happening in a scene. In the

movie Vertigo, Bernard Herrmann used arpeggios to create a spinning, unsteady feeling. This

was mentioned in Score by Richard Kraft while he talked about the movie. He said that the score

for vertigo used notes and small phrases to create a “circular madness” and how it worked really

well in the film. This sound is paired with the scene where the shape of a spinning cyclone is in

the background.

In Score Marco Beltrami talked about the shower scene from Psycho and played it once

with the music and once without. When they did this, they showed that the music made the scene

significantly more terrifying. Marco Beltrami from Score talks about how without the music you

notice more of what is happening and realize that they don’t show much of the brutality in the

scene. When you watch it without the music you can see the lady screaming and the knife going

up and back down but it never touches her. You can also see the shower head spraying water and

the silhouette of the hand holding the knife. The music makes the scene seem much more

gruesome than it actually is. You would have to watch the shower scene with and without the

music to fully understand how much of a difference it makes.

At the end of E.T., the mood was determined by the music. While E.T. said goodbye to

the kids the music was sad to match the scene. Siu-Lan Tan explained that at the very last

moment the music changes. The music could have been sad while the spaceship left earth for the

mood to match a sad goodbye, but John Williams and Steven Spielberg had the music at the end
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sound triumphant because they wanted it to be happy that they got E.T. home. Very abruptly, the

mournful tone changes just as the spaceship leaves earth and the viewer is left with a victorious

fanfare.

In film, when the music and movie have matching moods they are known as congruent.

An example of congruence would be if sad music is played during a sad scene of a movie or if

scary music is played with a horror film. For example, in Jaws the shark’s theme starts out with

those two menacing notes. As the shark gets closer the music begins to speed up and get louder.

The shark is a simple and relentless entity. As Robert Kraft said in Score, “It was an engine…

like a train moving forward, this is an eating machine.” Most movies use this technique of

congruence.

When you look at this picture what do you hear? Composer John Williams only needed two notes to announce the
presence of one of the most terrifying villains in movie history. This is the poster for the movie Jaws.
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Sometimes in film, the mood of the music will be different than that of the scene it is

played with. This is known as an incongruent soundtrack. In Marilyn Boltz’s article, she

discusses this in great length. She mentions some examples of incongruency in film such as

Bonnie and Clyde and A Clockwork Orange. These films contain brutal scenes with incongruent

music. (1194) Sometimes, film composers do this to create a comedic effect. A good example of

this would be from the movie Kick-Ass when Hit Girl, an 11 year-old girl wearing a glittery

purple wig, has a fight scene and kills everyone in the room. Despite the violence, she is

obviously having a good time. During the scene, there is very happy and joyful music playing. In

contrast, In The Lord of the Rings, when Faramir and the men of Gondor attack the Orcs who

took Minas Tirith, Pippin stays behind and sings to Lord Denethor. The song he sings is quiet,

slow, and sad while it is played over top of a battle scene where all the humans are killed. A loud

scene that could have caused aggressive feelings or excitement, is made quiet and sad through

the use of incongruent music.

Artistically, music is used to match the mood of the movie to cause an emotional

response. Scientifically, the music causes responses in the brain that can be studied. Siu-Lan Tan

explained in Score:

When we are looking at emotion and other kinds of responses to music there are many

structures in the brain that are involved. Music is so multifaceted and multidimensional.

Different aspects of music are processed by different systems in the brain. So, when you

are looking at something like melody and pitch, that’s processed by one system of the

brain. When you’re looking at time-based aspects like tempo and rhythm, that’s
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processed by another system of the brain We are having some sort of physiological

response that the body is showing. The Goosebump is actually a sign of what’s

happening inside of your body. So, it’s interesting, because the same kinds of pleasurable

feelings we get from chocolate, dopamine release, we can see some of the same kinds of

activations in the brain to music.

Pleasurable sensations can be derived from music. It can also cause a sense of fear and

anxiety. When the shark’s theme in Jaws plays the first time, the viewer immediately gets a

sense of foreboding. A young woman is skinny-dipping at night. The theme plays, but she is

unaware of any danger. As the music progresses, it represents how close the shark is or what it is

doing. The unseen shark attacks, throwing the victim through the water. After the first time the

audience hears the shark’s theme, every time they hear it, they begin to expect the worst, and this

builds tension. Film composers will do this type of maneuver to make the audience feel a certain

way and increase the effectiveness of the film. In “The Sound of Movie Music,” Thomas

Maremaa explains how music can manipulate a scene:

In one scene, where Richard Dreyfuss, as Hooper, is under water inspecting a sunken

boat just before a head rolls out of it, you expect the shark to and attack Dreyfull. The

music tricks you into that because the shark motif is played very softly, but then

suddenly—this head pops out and you jump out of your seat. “The trick is,” says

Williams, “one thing is advertised, another thing delivered.”

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This shows that music composers can make the audience expect one thing and then the

film gives them something else. One thing about John Williams’ music is that it feels real to an

audience. Viewers would not consider it, but the characters in the film would not hear the music.

The music isn’t part of the environment the characters are running through. It is purely there for

the audience.

Diegesis is a term that relates to the fictional story of the movie, such as the words and

the actions. The artificial parts of the movie, such as the lighting and the music, are known as

non-diegesis. In her chapter, Annabel J. Cohen talks about a scene from the film Blazing

Saddles:

A sheriff rides out on the desert-with seemingly appropriate music in the background-and

meets face to face with the Count Basie performing the now inappropriate music Paris in

the Spring. The fictional (diegetic) and the non-fictional (non-diegetic) realities collide

and add to the humor of the scene.

In this case, the characters do hear the music, because the band that plays it is part of the

environment, they’re in. The juxtaposition of diegetic and non-diegetic realities causes intense

emotion in the movie Witness, rather than humor. Again, Annabel J. Cohen describes the scene.

An Amish boy is the only witness to a murder. The murder took place in the bathroom of a

Philadelphia train station. The lead detective on the case takes the boy to the police station to

look at mug shots. People are talking, typing reports, and a man who has been detained rattles his

handcuffs in an attempt to frighten the boy. In all the noise, and without supervision, he wanders

off and looks at a picture of a police officer who had received a commendation. This is the
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murderer. All the sound in the office ends, along with most of the actions. The boy is frozen and

the music intrudes on the scene. The detective sees the boy and knows something has happened.

The audience, realizing the boy figured out who the murderer is, isn’t noticing that the only

sound is the music.

Film score composers use these diegetic and non-diegetic scores to assist the audience in

understanding what is happening or for comedic purposes. As previously stated, congruency and

incongruency are tools commonly used. These devises are also able to make a movie more

memorable.

There have been many tests conducted about how music affects the memorability of a

film. Marilyn G. Boltz’s article, “The cognitive processing of film and musical soundtracks,”

details a couple of these experiments. In the first experiment, the participants were shown

different film clips with music. Some of the music was congruent to the music and some was

incongruent. Afterwards they were asked if they could recall the film, the music, or both. The

goal of the experiment as described by Marilyn G. Boltz, was to see what kind of music makes

the film more memorable:

The primary finding from this first experiment was that the encoding and remembering of

music/film information is influenced by mood congruency…The manipulation of

selective attending further revealed that mood-congruent and -incongruent relationships

led to different encoding strategies.

The experiment showed that people who had music with their clip were able to remember

more of what they saw and heard. Congruent music made it easier than incongruent music for the
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viewer to remember the events of the film and the music because their brains could associate the

similar moods. It was harder for the viewer to associate the clip and the music when they have

incongruent moods. Boltz says, “Mood-congruent relationships, on the other hand, reflect both a

joint encoding and a unified memory representation of music and film information.”

There is a lot more going into the writing of film music than meets the eye. Composers

have to make decisions about melody, harmony and rhythm, as well as when to use diegesis/non-

diegesis and congruence/incongruence to get the effect they want. They have to know what

techniques to use to get the effect they want. Do they want to trick the audience? They can

establish a known sound and then have something else happen. Do they want to subvert

expectations? Do they want to redirect the mindset from one emotion to another in order to

cement one interpretation? Do they want the audience to laugh or cry? The film composer has

tremendous power.

I compared a list of the most iconic films against a list of the most iconic film scores to

see how much overlap there was. AMC’s FilmSite cites FilmFour’s list of their top 100 films. I

compared this list to AFI’s top 25 film scores, plus Entertainment Weekly’s America’s Best

Movie Soundtracks. FilmFour is an English TV station and AFI and Entertainment Weekly are

both American. These two sites are independent, so their preferences for film will not be biased

toward each other. Both of these lists have Star Wars at number one. After that they both have

The Godfather in the top five. They both have Jaws in their top fifteen and E.T. in their top

twenty-five. FilmFour mentions Vertigo, Lawrence of Arabia, Gone with Wind, and Chinatown

in the top 50, where AFI listed those films in the top 25. These lists have many similarities,

proving that there is a direct relationship between a fabulous score and an iconic movie.
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In its list of the top 100 films, FilmSite chooses several films that have forgettable

soundtracks. Of the top 25 films chosen by FilmFour, all but 9 were either nominated or were

chosen by Entertainment Weekly and AFI as having the best soundtracks. This shows that movies

can be considered great without an excellent soundtrack. Visual effects, cinematography, script,

great acting, as well as many other factors all contribute as well.

Music is really important for the effectiveness of a movie. It can affect how people feel,

like joy, sadness, fear, anxiety, humor, tension. It can be used to help people understand pivotal

moments in a storyline. It can determine the mood and meaning of a scene as John Williams did

in the ending of E.T., as well as set the emotion of the film as a whole as Bernard Herrmann did

in Vertigo. It makes stories more memorable.

Without music, movies wouldn’t be worth watching. Hans Zimmer puts it best in Score.

“I love, I love, I love what I do. Even when I sit there driven by paranoia, fear, neurosis, you

know, pulling my hair out. I still wouldn’t trade it for anything else. Very few people can be

inspired every day to write something brilliant. Whether or not you’re aware of it, music plays

such an important role in how you respond to a film. All your other work on a film can come to

nothing if you don’t get the music right.”

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Bibliography

AFI, and Entertainment Weekly. “Best Film Scores and Movie Soundtracks.” Most Influential,
Significant and Important Films in American Cinema - The 1960s, 2005,
www.filmsite.org/100soundtracks.html.

Boltz, Marilyn G. “The Cognitive Processing of Film and Musical Soundtracks.” Springer, 2004,
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.3758%2FBF03196892.pdf.

Cohen, Annabel J. “Music As A Source Of Emotion In Film.” Virtual Lab, 2001,

https://rhythmcoglab.coursepress.yale.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2014/10/Music-as-
a-Source-of-Emotion-In-Film.pdf.

Epicleff. “SCORE: A FILM MUSIC DOCUMENTARY.” SCORE: A FILM MUSIC

DOCUMENTARY, SCORE: A FILM MUSIC DOCUMENTARY, 16 June 2017,
www.score-movie.com/.

FilmFour. “100 Greatest Films of All Time.” 100 Greatest Films of All Time,
www.filmsite.org/filmfour.html.

Goddard, Louis. “'Jaws' Available on Blu-Ray August 14th, with Remastered Audio and
Restored Visuals.” The Verge, The Verge, 12 Aug. 2012,
www.theverge.com/2012/8/12/3235642/jaws-blu-ray-restored-remastered.

Maremaa, Thomas. “The Sound of Movie Music.” The New York Times, The New York Times,
28 Mar. 1976, www.nytimes.com/1976/03/28/archives/the-sound-of-movie-music-
audiences-have-changedthey-want-the-music.html.

Palmer, Erica. “How John Williams Changed the Relationship between Movies, Music.”
DeseretNews.com, Deseret News, 10 July 2014,
www.deseretnews.com/article/865606674/How-John-Williams-changed-the-relationship-
between-movies-music.html.