Ludwig

1:07-1:54

The mystery has been solved! Thanks to a very intelligent friend for the solution. First of all, Sharky, you're right that it's THE LAST CRUSADE he's talking about, they just edit in Toht's entrance from RAIDERS when he mentions the idea, but that's not an example of what he's talking about. The place you cite in TLC, however, moves the bass just at the moment that the (dominant) seventh chord on G comes in, turning what would have been a "seventh-on-the-bottom" chord into a plain old root-position chord. A good example (again, I assume no credit for this) is in the cue, "Discussing the Book", in which the Nazis barge in on Henry and Indy, demanding they hand over Henry's diary. After the initial Raiders-like parallel minor chords for the Nazis' entrance, the harmony progresses through several dominant seventh chords in third inversion, or "4/2 chords" for short. Here's what's in that scene starting from the very end of the brassy minor chords (using jazz notation): F7/Eb - Ab7/Gb - G7/F - E7/D - D7/C - G7/F - Bb7/Ab - Db7/Cb - D7/C Seventh on the bottom indeed!

I've never been able to understand where exactly Williams is referring to with this "seventh in the bass" idea. I just looked up the moment in Raiders when the Nazis enter Marion's tavern, and what's written there are some quartal chords then some parallel minor chords, but nothing where the seventh of a chord is in the bass. This has bugged me for some time, as I've never been able to find a passage to which Williams refers in Raiders, though I haven't combed through every note of the score. Anyone have some specifics on this, or was Williams perhaps getting confused with some other score or technique, especially given that he's talking about the score many years after having written it? (Come on, he's not infallible, you know.)

Definitely! Interesting that those scores now seem to have become a sort of reference point for "pirate" music in film. I just saw The LEGO Movie and there was a pirate sequence that sounded suspiciously like these scores. And it wasn't parody of these films, but simply a pirate sequence.

It's a bit of a misnomer because they're not an interval but a series of intervals played one after the other. It is just the first three notes (which could alternatively be played in the reverse order as well).

Horn fifths are what he has in the first three notes of the excerpt. They have their own name because they're an acceptable instance of "hidden fifths", in which a perfect fifth is approached by similar motion. It's the inevitable result of having unvalved brass play in harmony together and you'll find it absolutely everywhere in Baroque and Classical music.

So I decided to vote after all. The way I interpret it, the question is asking about both how these two groups of scores work in the films and how they stand on their own. Both work well in the films (even though LotR are, needless to say, superior films) but away from the films, I find the prequels more satisfying as a listening experience. Yes, LotR is more thematically rich and more ingenious for the way the themes seem to express perfectly their association in the films. (What did Williams have to work with anyway, empty shells like Qui-Gon and Padme?). But Williams is always more unpredictable and, for me, forms a more enthralling dramatic arc. As music, that is. For those reasons, my vote goes to the prequels. Williams wins! (for now)

The notes he gives for the first hexachord don't seem to be correct. I get Bb-D#-A-G-D#-C#. Even so, I'd understand both of these as extended uses of tonal materials. To my mind, the first hexachord is best understood as a version of the horn call that appears over the main theme's famous two-note ostinato. There, we had Eb-G-Bb-C#, basically an Eb7 chord. Here, we have that (written enharmonically) plus an extra A, which can be taken as passing between Bb and G, so the original Eb7 still remains strongly intact. And the Stravinskian polytonal feeling is still here too (as it was stated in the main theme) with the chord rubbing dissonantly against the bass note E. The second hexachord is an ostinato from the main theme that wavers between two triads: Eb major and A major. The tritone distance between these two creates a disturbingly unsettled feeling, as though the triads suggest there should be a tonic but obliterate any stability through their tritone relationship. In other words, either Eb or A could be taken as tonic, and as the music wavers between the two, so does our sense of tonic, making us feel as though there is no ground beneath our feet - an apt metaphor for being in the water as helpless prey.

That too. I think you've spotted the main influence - Copland. Specifically the Fanfare for the Common Man. The Spidey cue is Mixolydian, though. Kind of unusual for a superhero, isn't it? Do you think it's just an "American" type of sound with the Copland influence, or perhaps something more specific in terms of a film association? Some kind of half-hearted cowboy progression? I'm clutching at straws here...

I think you have it plotted out. Maybe there's a C# in the Dsus2? It sounds crunchier than just a sus2. Or were you asking for associations with other music?

Maybe. It's not his Tonal Harmony. Thar's even less useful than Schoenberg. The post-tonal one is one of the few that gives any space to polytonality, parallelism, timbral music, electronic music, and chance music. Even jazz and pop influences make it in there. An appriopriately varied mix for 20th-century music.

bVII mixolydian is used very often too... I'd say this and the bII phrygian are the most often. It's that I rarely find a such kind of chapter in harmony books.. I found it only in Schoenberg and in some dissertations.. It seems many theorists don't want to explain these chords that way.. as borrowed from modes.. Have a look at some modern textbooks. Kostka's Materials and Techniques of Post-Tonal Music has all the modes and a number of other scales. And it's still being taught everywhere, so widely accepted.

I'm talking about the chapter filmmusic is citing.Schoenberg says that the Lydian mode can include Bb and Mixolydian can include F# as "diatonic" notes, the latter because F# is often used as the raised leading tone, and the former, well, he doesn't say why but no doubt it's because Bb is often used to correct the tritone. Then he allows these notes to be imported into C major for whatever reason... ??? As I say, it's a big waste of time to wrap one's head around this because it's not accepted theory, in fact it's just the opposite. Even his explanation of harmony is outdated. There are much better ideas in modern-day textbooks.

It's not worth any explanation. It's obsolete and useless theory.

The chapter I cited is like this, only comprehensive. In other words, he mentions every possible two-chord progression between major and minor triads. I don't have this, but here is the abstract for chapter 6: Seems like music-historical commentary on the Superman score, rather than something more music theory oriented, though I can't be sure. Here's the one for chapter 10: Though this seems more music-theoretical, my guess is that's not its main focus. The author (Jamie Webster) wrote a dissertation five years ago on the Harry Potter films that seems to be more about perception of the changing narrative through the music. There probably isn't the kind of detail you're looking for. Chapter 8, now that's a different story. Murphy's work is on music theory.

All these themes make use of minor chords as their basic premise, so it's probably best to look at ways of understanding themes like these as composed of strings of chords rather than deriving from any particular scale. An article just appeared this year in the Oxford Handbook of Film Music Studies on transformational theory and film music analysis by Scott Murphy. I highly recommend it. It lays out a way of describing transformations of one chord into another rather than referring to a scale. And the theory there would fit these themes like a glove. Check it out!

Thanks for sharing. I think he's spot on about the lack of chemistry in OHMSS. It's an excellent Bond film, one of my favorites, but something does bother me about it, partly that, I think. Telly Savalas too. Seemed too different from the coldly stoic Blofeld in YOLT. Also interesting that even if he had had the time to score Goldeneye, he felt he was done with Bond by that time and that the franchise had moved into different territory. I still think he could've done a bang-up job. But didn't Barry know that F major isn't the best key, but E-flat major is? Geez, come on.

I understand it as a chord that prolongs the tonic, with a Dorian coloring in typical Morricone style. Usually it would go back to i, like say in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly main theme, but here that chord is replaced with VI.

Just vote goddammit! But there is no option to vote "goddammit".

For me, it's a question of the craft of the prequels' scores vs. the imagination of the LOTR's scores. The LOTR scores hug the details of Tolkien's world tightly, and we're constantly treated to combinations of sounds, particularly in the choice of instrumentation, that are perfectly suited to the films. On the other hand, as Sharky points out, Shore restricts himself to a fairly conservative harmonic palette. Combine that with the frequent repetitions of material and I find it leaves me wanting more when I hear the music on its own even though I could not imagine anything better for the films. Now take the prequels. Even in the face of poorly done films, Williams' range of techniques goes well beyond LOTR, and he continually reshapes material into a fluid structure that takes us on a narrative of its own. For that reason I find them a more interesting listen on their own. But with the films, it's hard to call them great because, as GreyPilgrim rightly says, the film affects the score. I've tried to fight that by not having watched the prequels in a long, long time, but the memory of them lingers on. So I'm left with the feeling that both have their merits, but I wouldn't say they're equally good. I seriously need a "splunge" option.

I think it's probably the kind of fluidity between minor and relative major (or vice versa) that appears in pop music. So you could analyze the harmony as: in B minor (as you have it): i - IV | VI - VII | III - IV | V (that's a sus that resolves) i - IV | VI - VII | III - V/VII | VII Or you could add passing modulations through D major: B-: i - IV | VI IV | V D+: IV - V | I - V/V B- i - IV | VI D+: IV - V | I - V/V | V Or perhaps even add A+ as a third key at the end (2nd phrase): B- i - IV | VI D+: IV - V | I A+: IV - V | I This might be a little more black-and-white than it really is, though. Do we really lose the sense of B minor in the first phrase? Somewhat? This makes it look like it simply goes into D major and comes back, B minor being obliterated. Same with the second phrase. Does B minor disappear there? Sure, it doesn't come back to that key, but might we expect a return to it after the phrase is done? Maybe, not sure. We need some kind of analysis that can address the strength of these keys. It reminds me quite a lot of the discussions we've had on this board about the Island Fanfare from Jurassic Park, which similarly refuses to settle on one key entirely and has three keys suggested at different strengths at different times.

My review of Peter Wegele's Max Steiner: Composing, Casablanca, and the Golden Age of Film Music. A great book for all - easy to read, informative, and fascinating all in one. And an added bonus for those who read music (but certainly not a requirement). Enjoy! http://www.filmmusicnotes.com/book-review-max-steiner-composing-casablanca-and-the-golden-age-of-film-music-by-peter-wegele/

For me as well. And I'd add cues like The Asteroid Field to the list.

Yes, I think we're getting down to it. Recognizability in music is a highly personal thing because we all listen for and to different aspects of the music. My compositional background gives me a bias towards harmony, but for others, orchestration is a bigger factor. Both Morricone and Elfman are distinct in that respect, even Barry in his earlier scores, so I think where we differ is in our emphases in listening. And if stylistic recognizability is highly personal, no one can really be wrong, can they? "For whom" indeed!

It's all notated 16th notes, lots of double tonguing, and in a very fast tempo. The four trumpets are playing a canon in four/a four voice canon (canons are a big part of Davis's MATRIX soundworld). Meanwhile the eight horns are ripping up to a diatonic cluster (sounds like G-Ab-Bb-C). The atonal Tuben rip at 0:52 in Surprise from the first score: There's a small bit at 0:53 in Ontological Shock that's very similar to the trumpet work in Burly Brawl: The only differences are: 1) This canon is using an octatonic scale (Eb diminished) - whereas Burly Brawl is in Fm. 2) The original MATRIX has three trumpets and six horns and MATRIX RELOADED is beefed up with four trumpets and eight horns, so this is a a canon in three. 3) These canonic figures in Ontological Shock are doubled by woodwinds and strings. Another similar canonic passage at 0:07 in Shake, Borrow, Switch. In moments like these you can really hear Davis's background as a trumpet player, and his relish in writing for brass instruments in general. Very cool.