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Composing for the Screen: Max Steiner’s Infuence on Non-Diegetic Musical Underscoring TARA SURI Tara Suri is a fourth year student pursuing a Specialist in Cinema Studies, a Major in Anthropology, and a Minor in Human Geography. Tara’s passions for law, music, and flm collaborate in her research on legal documentary, Old Hollywood, and musical underscoring in flm. 36 “Really good music is playing a more important part in audience screen enjoyment with each new picture.”1 Leo Forbstein offered this happy assessment in 1942, a little over a decade after the challenges posed by the transition from silent to sound had been resolved. There were several fundamental obstacles in adaptating music to the needs of the changing film medium; primarily, a reluctance to set non-diegetic music to the soundtrack, stemming from the conventions of the silent era where music had been a visible component of theatrical presentations. Not until some composers were tasked with writing music for soundtracks did non- diegetic underscoring take on importance. These composers established a musical tradition that demanded new techniques and technologies which would govern music’s placement in the classical Hollywood cinema. Max Steiner, in particular, developed a method of underscoring so effectively that both audiences and filmmakers became almost immediately reliant on it. An examination of this period of transition, including sample analyses of Steiner’s scoring during the early classical period demonstrate how this composer influenced the development of musical soundtracks. The concept of non-diegetic music in sound film presented problems because audiences had been accustomed to live music accompanying films. The performances made film viewing an exciting and immersive experience.2 Given these ingrained conventions, if music were to be added to the soundtrack, it might confuse the audience’s perceptions of the diegetic world. Did the music emenate from the diegesis like dialogue did? Or was it a non-diegetic supplement as live music had been? While these questions were unresolved, in the period 1926-1932, feature films adhered to either “pure” silent film practices (silent film with external musical accompaniment), or moved towards a “100% talking” model without musical accompaniment of any kind—or, a hybrid of these two approaches known as the “synchronized” film.3 The Vitaphone played a vital role in this “hybrid” approach to sound in film.4 It would eventually suggest a structure in which non-diegetic soundtrack music could replace the live external musical accompaniment in the form of dialogue underscoring.5 Hollywood then began to hire composers in an experimental stage of dialogue underscoring. Technological developments created more opportunity to set existing pieces of music to small portions of a film; most often these were love scenes. The first generation of composers brought to 1. Leo Forbstein, “Music: Screen’s Own Music Gains Stature.” In Variety 145(5). Los Angeles, California: Penske Business Media, 07 January 1942. 2. James Buhler and David Neumeyer. “Music and the Ontology of the Sound Film: The Classical Hol- lywood System.” In The Oxford Handbook of Film Music Studies. Austin, Texas: Oxford University Press, November 2013. 3. Buhler and Neumeyer, “Music and the Ontology of the Sound Film.” 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 37 Composing for the Screen Hollywood had established careers composing for world-class symphonies. They wanted to write their own music and to collaborate in setting their scores to the film image.6 In working to gain this leverage, the composers were forced to demonstrate the benefits of their work independent from the studio system. Those whose work was revolutionary enough to negate the problem of a visual connection to the source of the music might be allowed further agency within the filmmaking process. Until then, Rudolf Arnheim’s question remained, “Since recorded music not synchronized to the image was neither of the theatre nor of the world screened, where precisely is its place in the film?”7 In 1931, Max Steiner expressed deep skepticism about music that came from “some mysterious source.”8 In his his role as music director at RKO, he committed the studio to producing music which had “logical” motivation from the filmic image.9 Steiner declared that this music “would be secondary to the plot action and would assist in providing the movement of the story itself…It would be largely incidental, and often atmospheric. It [would] not come into a picture from some mysterious source but by some logical means.”10 Steiner was determined to prove that non-diegetic music serving a narrative purpose belonged in cinema and should be accepted as such. Steiner further eliminated the narrative absurdity of motivating music by having musicians wandering around scenes. His conceptualization included the necessity for a new score unique to each film, and for composers to write according to a film’s narrative design and moods rather than the previous practice of attaching excerpts from stock symphonies.11 The consensus on Steiner’s concept was precarious in the early 1930’s. Nevertheless, Steiner rose to the challenge by developing techniques which would persuade both audiences and filmmakers. In order to function with the purpose that Steiner had in mind, music had to be transcendent.12 In executing this concept, Steiner developed a hierarchy of synchronization. He outlined three very separate techniques of tight synchronization (“mickey-mousing”, naming), general “overall” synchronization (mood, harmony), and “unsynchronized” musical numbers.13 Steiner developed his own mode of synchronization by combining all three, mainly tight and general synchronization, to form “close synchronization.”14 In this 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. Myrl A. Schreibman, “Memories of Max: An Archival Interview with Max Steiner.” In Film Score Monthly 10(1). Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts: Vineyard Haven LLC, January 2005. 11. Buhler and Neumeyer, “Music and the Ontology of the Sound Film.” 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid. 38 Tara Suri musical practice, music moves fluidly between tight and general functions based on diegetic cues, and is carefully scattered to associate sonic signals with the visual action, whether physical, emotional, or dramatic. Close synchronization is the technique which enabled dialogue-specific underscoring. In developing this practice, Steiner looked to Wagner’s work on theatrical models for melodramas. In these compositions, “structural spotting” is used to determine entry, exit, and temporal durations along the strict timing required for recorded soundtracks.15 Steiner also insisted on covering a large portion of the films with music, in a manner that “evoked the deluxe theatre orchestral performances of the 1920’s” (where almost the entire film is accompanied by music).16 The films for which Steiner composed were said to have read like concerts with images accompanying them. Competing films of the time contained scores ranging from twenty to forty minutes in length; Steiner’s first film of the 1930’s included a seventy-four minute musical score. Films such as King Kong,17 set music to every aspect of the narrative. These pieces were comprised of “ominous themes, weird chords, dissonant ascents and descents, creakings and heavings—the kind of music no one had ever heard before—or since.”18 RKO claimed that Steiner’s score was responsible for at least twenty-five percent of the film’s unprecedented success. Another tactic which Steiner regularly employed is that of diegetic withdrawal. An example of this concept is when the score begins with diegetically ambiguous music. Before the audience has visually identified the narrative world, the initial music is the first indicator of the reality within the opening scene to be set.19 Steiner often accomplished diegetic withdrawal by indicating through sonic techniques a shift from the music within the undisclosed diegesis to the non-diegesis once the establishing shot appeared. Other occurrences of drifting from diegetic to non-diegetic terrain within the musical track had previously been discouraged because it was assumed this would cause audience confusion. Steiner was the first composer to enable the music to “emerge organically from the diegesis and blend into a non-diegetic narrational force.”20 Steiner’s score would pick up on a tune that a character might be whistling or humming within the film and gradually adapt the location of the music into the non-diegesis. For example, Casablanca’s21 soundtrack brings diegetic music and non-diegetic 15. Buhler and Neumeyer, “Music and the Ontology of the Sound Film.” 16. Ibid. 17. Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack, King Kong (1933: Radio Pictures). 18. Paul F. Boller, “Music by Max Steiner.” In Southwest Review 51(3). Southern Methodist University, 1966. 19. Michael James Slowik, Hollywood Film Music in the Early Sound Era, 1926-1934. University of Iowa, May 2012. 20. Slowik, Hollywood Film Music. 21. Michael Curtiz, Casablanca (1942: Warner Bros. Pictures). 39 Composing for the Screen music together throughout the film, giving the score a feel similar to that of musical theatre. Steiner simply transforms these songs into a musical soundtrack by coordinating them with a recurring leitmotif structure once they have transitioned to the non-diegetic track.22 Steiner often employed this technique to serve as a delivery device for popular tunes to be blended into the wider soundtrack to contribute to forming repeated musical themes known as leitmotifs.23 By the 1940’s, Hollywood entered the third phase in the development of musical underscoring. Producers began to admit musical underscoring into non-musical pictures following the unexpected successes of films such as King Kong. Steiner would often be called in at the last minute to add musical commentary to an already compiled soundtrack, with very little time to do so.24 Once again, Steiner made unprecedented demands in the name of improving the product.

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