dc.description | When setting out to write this thesis it was with the purpose to
understand modern film scoring. The question I was asking myself
was in the lines of: ''What is going on with modern film music? This
does not sound like it used to! There is a subtle difference - what is
it?'' What I was trying to formulate back then was that I had noticed a
change of focus in film music of today, i.e. how composers now choose
to ''talk'' to the audience. My theory was that film music was moving
away from the strong concept of melody given to us with John Williams
and Star Wars, to make room for texture: Enormous walls of sound
featuring huge orchestras with lots and lots of synths and sound effects.
This made me think that perhaps the new leitmotif was texture. My
wanderings aside however, the scope of a single thesis is not enough
to cover such an extensive topic. But, one must start some place and I
landed on figuring out how film music has evolved. To further narrow
it down I chose to study science fiction, specifically the music of Star
Trek. Star Trek is a special case in movie history. It has been running
since 1969 in one form or another. The first movie came out in 1979 and
the last one in 2013. It is ideal to use as a case tracking its evolution
over time. The most available material to conduct research on is the
Star Trek motion pictures. All of the scores has been released as special
edition CD's containing most cues from the motion pictures, making it
easy to focus on the music. I will discuss Star Trek in depth in chapter
2.
But even so, there are no official scores to procure. I was able to get
in touch with people able to help me get a look at the actual scores
used during the different recording sessions, but that meant traveling
to Hollywood and Paramount studios. By the time I had gotten this
information any window to apply for funding was past. Therefore I
chose to transcribe the music myself. One challenge of transcribing
music this detailed is the amount of time required transcribing the
examples. With twelve movies to chose from the question regarding
what I was going to focus on arose. Star Trek is divided into four epochs.
I thought it best to choose two movies from each epoch. One composer
in the Star Trek universe stands out: Jerry Goldsmith. He has scored
five of the twelve movies during a timespan of 23 year making him
part of the quintessential sound of Star Trek. The choice fell on the two first films, ''The Motion Picture'', by Goldsmith and ''The Wrath of
Kahn'', by James Horner. Both critically acclaimed for their music. The
next obvious candidates was the newest films from the reboot series:
''Star Trek'' and ''Into Darkness'' featuring composer Michael Giacchino.
What to chose from ''The Next Generation'' era was harder. I wanted
to study how the music has evolved over time therefore looking for
some sort of continuity. The choice fell on Goldsmiths scores for ''First
Contact'' and ''Nemesis''. I present my analysis in chapter 5 through
10. That being said, the other scores are well worth the attention and
should be included in a later research. A table containing the complete
list of Star Trek movies can be found on page 27 and the complete list
of all composers associated with the Star Trek universe can be found
on page 29.
Now my quest was crystalizing, I wanted to study the musical conventions
of Star Trek. How to go about it? My formal training is for the
most part traditional so the analytical tools I already knew was not ideal
to handle the diverse tonality of movie scores. I knew ''Hollywoodian''
movie scores since Erich Wolfgang Korngold and John Williams had their
roots in nineteen century classical music, also know as the romantic
period of classical music. Romantic music is mostly tonal, meaning it
uses major and minor chords and scales to build the tonality, but it is
not necessarily functional. By that I mean progressions build upon the
circle of fifths and the famous I - IV - V7 - I. This brings us to the
idea of a tonic, a tonal ''home'' where we feel at peace after pursuing the
chord furthest away from the tonic, the dominant. It would be wrong to
say that romantic music does not utilize the idea of a tonic, but it was
not a concept expanded upon as they did in the classical era. Instead
they had what I call tonal centers. These are focal point for any given
progression and stands as the root of origin. This differentiation is
necessary because harmonic progressions can be made with a different
logic than that of the circle of fifths. There are plenty of analytic tools
to chose from when working with functional music and atonal music but I was having a hard time finding the right tool for non-unified tonal
music.
After some research I came upon Frank Lehman's dissertation on
''Reading Tonality Through Film: Transformational Hermeneutics and the
Music of Hollywood'' (2012). His research was focusing on neo-Riemannian
Theory, a theory made to address the analytical challenges nineteen
century music presented, applied to film music. I will discuss the application
and execution of this theory in chapter 4. To further explain
how my analysis is constructed, I will discuss music analysis in general
in chapter 3.
To aid the reader in analytic process I have chosen to include the
transcriptions immediately following the corresponding analysis. The
analytic legend will be discussed on page 31 and finally I will present
my conclusions in chapter 11.
As a final note I want to talk about what I am not covering in this
thesis. First of all, I have chosen to use musical terms and notation
to explain my findings. This means the reader will have to have a
fairly advanced understanding of musical theory to fully appreciate
the content of this thesis. I will not talk about film music history in
general: How the film music traditions has evolved from live music
to Korngold to Steiner to Williams and even Zimmer is extremely
interesting, but it is covered to such an extent elsewhere there simply is
no point including it and secondly, I do not believe being reminded of
this knowledge will have an impact on the understanding of the main
topic of this thesis. My goal is that the content of this thesis provides
ample understanding of the main analysis and that the reader will
come to appreciate the inner workings of the music in question and
how it has evolved. | nb_NO |