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1 Original Place of Publication: Murphy, Scott. (2014) “Scoring Loss in Some Recent Popular Film and Television.” Music Theo Original place of publication: Murphy, Scott. (2014) “Scoring Loss in Some Recent Popular Film and Television.” Music Theory Spectrum, 36(2), 295-314. Original date of publication: 7 Oct 2014 URL: http://mts.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/09/24/mts.mtu014 ABSTRACT A certain tonally- and temporally-oriented progression of two triads, dwelt upon usually through undulation, accompanies scenes depicting the contemplation of a considerable sorrowful loss in many popular films and throughout one television program produced between 1985 and 2012. In lieu of any strong stylistic precedent for this musico-dramatic association, certain structural relationships between the two triads relative to other triadic pairings may account for possible motivations of the association. Keywords: film music, television music, tonality, triadic harmony, triadic transformation, mediant triad, loss, sorrow, homology, James Horner, Cocoon The narrative of Ron Howard’s 1985 movie Cocoon brings two parties into conflict: a peaceable and immortal alien race suffering from the regrettable but necessary abandonment of twenty of their kind on Earth thousands of years ago, and a group of present-day retirement-home residents in Florida suffering from degradation of health and vitality.*To counter these adversities, both parties use a lifeforce generated in a neglected swimming pool by a team of four aliens, led by Walter (Brian Dennehy), sent back to Earth to retrieve their stranded and cocooned comrades. The pool restores the abandoned aliens to full health, a requirement for their interstellar journey home, but it also acts as a “fountain of youth” for a trio of elderly men—Art (Don Ameche), Ben (Wilford Brimley), and Joe (Hume Cronyn)—who surreptitiously swim there; for example, the alien lifeforce miraculously throws Joe’s leukemia into 1 remission. When the alien team discovers the trio’s abuse of the pool, however, Walter bans the trio from the pool, which brings Joe’s cancer back. Composer James Horner, in his first of eight collaborations with director Howard, provides the music transcribed in Example 1 to accompany the following sequence that implies the relapse of Joe’s illness.1 The music of the first four measures occurs during a brief interior scene depicting the recurrence of Joe’s lethargy. The change to A major in m. 16 coincides with a dissolve to the next exterior scene, which shows the trio sitting together at the end of a pier, looking out wistfully onto a sunset-drenched ocean. By their motions and facial expressions—Ben has his hand on Joe’s arm, Joe sinks his head in despair and labors in his breathing—not to mention Ben’s scene- concluding objection “I’m gonna go talk to [Walter]; goddamnit, it’s ridiculous,” it can easily be inferred that they are ponderingScoring Loss Joe’sin Some Recentdisease Popular and Film his and impendingTelevision death. Examples and Tables [dissolve to interior scene of Joe waking up on couch, then falling back asleep] Vln. Gtr. Hrp. Vla. [dissolve to exterior scene of Art, Ben, and Joe on pier] W.W. Hrp. (arp.) D.B. +Brs. Ob. Example 1. James Horner, music from Cocoon (transcribed by the author), 49:20, quarter ≈ 96 (then quarter ≈ 86 at m. 16) Example 1. James Horner, music from Cocoon (transcribed by the author), 49:20, quarter ≈ 96 (then quarter ≈ 86 at m. 16) 2 Twenty minutes later in the film, Walter reluctantly allows the trio back in the pool; however, the other retirement-home residents learn about the pool and ransack it, draining it of lifeforce. Joe, Art, and Ben try to get their fellow residents out of the water, but Walter discovers them and drives the aged trespassers away. As Walter and one of the other aliens work to open one of the cocoons, the music of Example 2 begins; m. 9 coincides with the cut to the first shot inside the cocoon of an emaciated and languid alien, quite dissimilar from the radiant forms underneath the skin-deep disguises of the alien rescue team. Head sagging and eyes closing, the alien loses consciousness in Walter’s arms with the return of the oboe in m. 33, and the louder, fuller sequential passage in mm. 35–38 accompanies Walter’s discovery of tears on his own face. During the concluding nine measures, Walter explains that “the lifeforce is completely drained from the water. I’m not going to be able to bring them back [to their home planet].” These two sequences in the film produce a neat narrative symmetry: during the first sequence, the aliens rob the mortal humans of the lifeforce, returning to the humans the likely and agonizing prospect of a death of one of their own; during the second sequence, the humans rob the sojourning aliens of the lifeforce, returning to the aliens the likely and agonizing prospect of a separation from some of their own. Horner’s music parallels this symmetry by reusing certain melodic-motivic ideas: for example, mm. 2–9 in Example 1 and its reiterating G –A –B motive is # # extremely similar to mm. 1–8 in Example 2. Central to the present study, however, is another, slightly broader, musical parallel: both musical cues contain a deliberate and quiet alternation between the tonic triad and the diatonic mediant triad while in a major mode. This alternation, annotated by solid triangles, occurs in Example 1 in mm. 16– 25 and in Example 2 in both mm. 9–16 and mm. 45–53. Horner seems to match these harmonic alternations particularly with the moments in these scenes in which characters are grappling with a significant loss—of life, closeness, or energy—that has either taken place or will soon take place. In the first sequence, accompanied by Example 1, the tonic and mediant alternation occurs during the moment of greatest contemplation of Joe’s terminal disease in the sequence: the alternation is after the scene in 3 [alien crew opens cocoon] Hn., Hp. [cut to drained alien inside cocoon, Walter props up the alien with his arm, cuts to others who are sad and remorseful] Ob. Fl. + Hn. Hp. Bs. pizz. Hn. E. Hn. Sts. + Hn. [Walter discovers [weakened alien close eyes, goes limp] Ob. Vln. Tutti tears on his cheeks] [Walter: “All this time to energize the pool…” Hn. Hp. Brs. “Now the lifeforce is completely [Walter: “I’m not going to be able drained from the water.”] to bring them back.”] Vln., Hp. Ob. Sts. Tbn. ( ) ExampleExample 2. 2 .Horner, Horner, Cocoon Cocoon, 1:12:56,, 1:12:56, quarter ≈ 82 quarter (then quarter ≈ 82 ≈ 94 (then in m. 9) quarter ≈ 94 in m. 9) 4 which the loss is communicated to the viewer (mm. 1–15) and before the point in time when Art and Ben, sitting with Joe at the end of the pier, get up in preparation to depart. In the second sequence, accompanied by Example 2, the tonic and mediant alternation first occurs when the aliens—along with the viewer—first painfully behold the effects of the lifeforce drain on the dormant alien whose cocoon has been opened. To be sure, their grief continues after this particular harmonic alternation finishes in m. 17; in fact, an alternation between the major tonic triad and the minor dominant triad takes hold of the music. However, the initiation of a new, resurgent idea in mm. 35–38 aligns with a subtle narrative redirection: Walter’s surprise that he is crying. A longer shot of the pool and its many cocoons shows Walter collecting himself around m. 42; his spoken realization that he cannot take his friends back home coincides with the cue’s concluding tonic-mediant alternation in mm. 45–53. One of my primary aims in the pages to follow is to show that these tonal-harmonic parallels with the narrative continue well beyond Cocoon. Slow, soft undulations between a major tonic triad and its diatonic mediant have been precisely associated with moments of sorrow, particularly as the result of some kind of considerable loss either transpired or looming, in at least twenty-eight recent popular films and in at least one, particularly cinematic, recent popular television series produced in the twenty-six years after Cocoon’s release. This article’s structure and methodology both follows and departs from the blueprints of previous music- theoretic studies that have recognized a significantly consistent association between a certain triadic progression and a certain extra-musical concept within a well-delineated repertoire. Richard Cohn identified in art music from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries numerous coincidences between what he has called the “hexatonic-pole” progression (such as C– to E+) and dramatic or hermeneutic narratives affiliated with Sigmund Freud’s concept of unheimlich.2 I have reported multiple concurrences in recent Hollywood soundtracks between what I called the “major tritone progression” (such as C+ to F +) and visual or narrative references to outer space.3 Matthew # Bribitzer-Stull has found several instances in which the “Tarnhelm progression” of Wagner’s Ring (such as C– to 5 A –) accompanies references to things evil and unnatural in repertoire ranging from early nineteenth-century music b to contemporary film music.4 The second part of the present article resembles all three of these preceding studies most closely, in that it lists instances of the purported association that are hopefully numerous enough to convince the reader of the distinctiveness of the association. The third and fourth parts resemble Cohn’s and my studies in that they offer some hypotheses for a purported motivation of the association: why this musical idea has assumed this particular association in recent popular film and television, and why the association seems to work so well.
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