Chapter 2 T H E S U B T L E T I E S, I N T R I C a C I E S a N D

How Film & TV Music Communicate – Vol.2 Text © Brian Morrell 2013 Chapter 2 T H E S U B T L E T I E S, I N T R I C A C I E S A N D E X Q U I S I T E T E N S I O N S O F T V M U S I C In this chapter we will examine the music for some notable television dramas and documentaries, all of which have, to varying degrees, subtlety, introspection and /or elements of minimalism as hallmarks of their identity. This needn’t always mean ‘quiet and closed-off’ but that the composers in each case have scored the films using a degree of restraint and sensitivity. In all cases the music has been pivotal in defining the projects commercially and creatively. The television dramas and documentaries analysed are: Lost (Michael Giacchano) The Waking Dead (Bear McCreary) Midnight Man (Ben Bartlett) Twin Peaks (Angelo Badalmenti) Silent Witness (John Harle) Inspector Morse (Barrington Pheloung) Deep Water (Harry Escott) Inspector Lynley Mysteries (Andy Price) Ten Days to War (Daniel Pemberton) Red Riding (Adrian Johnston) Dexter (Rolf Kent and Daniel Licht) Lost Michael Giacchano Lost is an iconic and successful television series which aired between 2004 and 2010. It follows the lives of survivors of a plane crash on a mysterious tropical island somewhere in the South Pacific. Episodes typically feature a storyline on the island as well as a secondary storyline from another point in a character’s life. The enormously evocative and expressive music for Lost is striking both in terms of its style and its narrative function. “I wanted something that was not typical for what you would get on a show about characters stranded on an island”, says composer Giacchano. The orchestra consisted of a string orchestra, 4 trombones, harp, piano and a large and varied percussion ensemble. Giacchano approached the show differently to the others he had worked on, including Alias, for JJ Abrahams, who was also the producer of Lost . Rather than watch the show, get the feel for the episode and write accordingly, he decided to literally write for the scenes he thought needed music, as they came. This meant that the music was allowed to develop eclectically and without the usual presumption of an overall ‘musical arc’, approach or structure. This is an important point because it shows that when traditional methods of scoring are altered it can encourage a different approach from composers. Some of the most effective music for film has been written when traditional approaches were replaced with methods which allowed more freedom of interpretation from composers; James Newton Howard’s music for M.Night Shayamalan early films have been often vivid and imaginative and yet much of the music is written not to the film but as an emotional commentary on the narrative of the film, based on conversations with the director, supported by occasional storyboards. Equally but differently, Danny Elfman’s early scores which so defined his writing style, were written without reference to a temp track. Originality needs the freedom to express itself. Inevitably if composers aren’t writing to picture but are instead creating an emotional response to the story, their music is perhaps sometimes more able to express subtlety and introspection.In the examples this chapter analyses there are sections where music literally defines the film; in Lost whilst the music might not be as obviously up-front as perhaps music from other shows, it fuses with the pictures in such a natural way that without it, Lost would be quite literally lost. Certainly in terms of music Lost is probably one of the more notable television dramas in many years. Numerous themes play throughout Lost and some cues accompany several scenes, characters or situations which need a common musical dimension. Transcribed below are several of the particularly emotional themes, which are analysed in terms of how they communicate specific sentiment, emotion and drama. All the pieces below function as emotional ‘lighting conductors’ and are pivotal in articulating feelings of sadness, love, grief and sorrow. The important aspect of Giacchano’s music is that, for the most part, the music doesn’t always play the science fiction; instead it italicizes the humanity and the intrigue – something which sometimes only music can do. Although Lost may qualify as science fiction on a surface level the subtext is clearly about humanity, the human spirit and perhaps ultimately about belief. 1 How Film & TV Music Communicate – Vol.2 Text © Brian Morrell 2013 There are times in filmed drama when words and moving pictures are too obvious, too certain, lacking the vagaries and subtleties that music offers. To most people although music is something which provokes an emotional response within them, equally it is something which remains impenetrable in terms of understanding how it is conceived and constructed and why it affects them. For most people harmony lacks a visual dimension and therefore a concrete method of interpreting how it creates emotion within us. It suggests but does not state . But its lack of certainty is also its great strength. The lack of absolute irrefutable concrete meaning allows listeners the luxury of subtle personal interpretation and then enables them to interact with the moving pictures on a different and perhaps deeper level. Fig.1 Audio - ‘Oceanic 815’ – from Lost Strings 1 Strings Strings If we examine what aspects of fig.1 (‘Oceanic 815’) subtly create emotion, we are left once again examining the harmonic interactions. The piece contains restrained tensions and nuances which subtly distort the ‘normal’ flow of harmony. Put simply, all the circled chords in fig.1 have intervals not normally found together in the same chord; normally when the 4 th is present it is a ‘sus4’, meaning that it replaces the 3 rd . In the examples below (which come from bars four, five and twelve of fig.1) we have an add4 , which means the 4 th is added in addition to the maj3 rd , which creates the specific tension . Fig.2 Chord contains the Chord Chord maj3 rd (B) and contains the th th contains 4 (C) 9 (B) and rd th the maj3 together 10 (C) side th Compound and 11 nd by side min 2 together interval 2 How Film & TV Music Communicate – Vol.2 Text © Brian Morrell 2013 The beauty of these harmonies is that they are not extreme; they communicate a sense of subtle disturbance and insecurity but are not wholly dissonant. They exist inside the cracks of what music offers, between absolute dissonance and absolute consonance. There are similar subtle harmonic ambiguities at work in the piece in fig.3 (‘Credit where credit’s due’). Fig.3 Audio - ‘Credit where credit’s due’– from Lost (#4) (#4) (#4) In the first highlighted chord in bar five we have the low and densely voiced strings with 1st , 2 nd and 3 rd voiced adjacent to each other. This produces an effect which, whilst not being dissonant, creates harmonic and sonic tension. Fig.4 ‘Gluttony’ from ‘Seven’ – Howard Shore Fig.4 (left) features one of the defining chords from Howard Shore’s score to the film Seven . It works partly due to the low dense ‘crunchy’ sonic qualities of close harmonies – particularly the 3 rd , 4 th and 5 th together – and partly because of the instrumentation (trombones) on which the chord is articulated. This is a similar Trombones approach to the Michael Giacchano example in bar five of fig.3. 3 How Film & TV Music Communicate – Vol.2 Text © Brian Morrell 2013 The second highlighted chord in fig.3 (bar six) features a chord of Bb (no 3 rd ) with a sharpened 4 th (E) in the top strings. The #4 is italicised because of the lack of what we call the ‘defining interval’ (3 rd ); also the distance between the low F and the E above is itself a maj7, which, when featured out of context, contains some mild tension. The third highlighted chord (bar eight, fig.3) creates distinctive harmonic colour through a combination of, again, the low and lumpy Bb and C (add2), the lack of a 3 rd and, notably the addition of a maj7 th (A). This is a microcosm of what Giacchano succeeds in doing throughout Lost ; the placing of extensions without their normal traditional harmonic companions. The maj7 th would normally appear in a chord which possesses the major 3 rd ; it is the maj3 rd which makes the maj7 th what it is: Taking the 3 rd out changes the dynamic. The highlighted chord in bar fifteen creates tension by virtue of the lumpy harmony in the bottom register voicing and the interval of a 9 th which separates the major 3 rd (D) from the #11 (E). Audio - ‘Locked out again’ – from Lost This piece contains some interesting harmonic characteristics, delivered with the deft touch of simple orchestration. Elsewhere in the book we discuss the issue of a transition between one chord and the next having three separate contexts (the initial chord, the destination chord and the relationship between them; the almost sonority between two chords). With this in mind look at the piano line in bars three and five; the last note of Bb is left in mid-air and the memory of it bleeds into the next bar thanks to the heavy pedal use in the recording. The Bb changes from being a 5 th of the Eb to a min3 rd of the Gm chord; this transition seems unusually acute, probably because of the excessive sonority created by the pedal, because the destination interval is a 3 rd and because it’s not the note we hear but the memory of it.

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