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Is Musical Form Relevant?

By   /   November 5, 2010  /   7 Comments

What to do when your organizable musical structure relies on a moving visual target.

Jai Meghan’s recent Open Forum Friday article on “getting organized” got me thinking about a different way of organizing: How composers organize their ideas within a piece of music. According to Wikipedia the word “composer” comes from the Latin compônere, meaning “one who puts together”. In a sense, composing a piece of music is really about organizing—organizing notes into themes and melodies, melodies into phrases, phrases into coherent sections, and so on.

The Classical forms like Rondo, Sonata, Compound Ternary, etc. all serve as extremely useful road-maps for developing musical material. The Rondo form, for example (ie. ABACA), gives us a blueprint for balancing a main theme with contrasting sections. After the main theme we have a contrasting section, and after every contrasting section we return to the main theme. Thus, the perfect sense of coherence and unity by repetitions of the main theme, balanced by variety and interest from the contrasting sections.

All of this is great to know when you’re sitting down to write a new composition to be performed in a concert hall. But how does this information stay relevant when scoring to picture? What do you do when your entire musical structure depends on the visual?

Picture is king. Even if you are struck with inspiration and would love nothing more than to have your main theme run off into a fugue, you’re not entirely in charge. If it doesn’t support the picture, it doesn’t make the score.

As you have probably already experienced either in your own scores or while watching other films, sometimes it doesn’t take much for the music to be dramatically effective. Even just a slowly thumping bass drum can be enough to support the picture in a compelling way. Where are the balanced sections in that cue? The audience isn’t particularly interested in how you transitioned from the B section back to the main theme, they’re interested in what’s happening on screen.

It would seem that perhaps the classical forms are backwards thinking, while a film cue is forward thinking. The structured forms are about developing the material that you’ve already heard; the contrasting B section isn’t a contrast if you haven’t yet heard A. But film music seems to be more about the present and future moments, building tension and preparing (or in some cases defying) expectations.

If there is still a place for form in film music, perhaps it’s only in those places where the audience is actually paying attention to the music. In the main titles, for example, or a montage that is mostly score driven.

So what do you think? Is musical form relevant when writing to picture? Are the traditional methods of organizing musical material still useful in the world of film scoring?

The comments are open below.

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About the author

As an 8 year old growing up in South Australia, Ryan Leach started studying guitar so that he could play Beatles songs, which marked the beginning of a lifelong passion for music. Now an award winning composer for film and TV, his music has been heard on every major network and clients include MTV and Disney. Before branching out as a freelance composer, Ryan earned a degree in Film Scoring from Berklee College of Music and worked as assistant to veteran composer Michael Levine at Remote Control Productions. He has scored a dozen feature films including Pastor Shepherd starring Danny Trejo (Robert Rodriguez’s Machete), Serbian film Skinning co-starring Bojana Novakovic (M. Night Shyamalan’s Devil), and Anacapa by writer/director Nicholas Tolkien.  In 2010 Ryan won Best Original Score from the Maverick Movie Awards for his score to Devils Racecourse. For more information on Ryan's work, visit him at his official website and at IMDb.com.

  • Stuart Balcomb

    Since picture is king, and the music serves the picture, any theme that gets up and running always runs the chance of being interrupted at any point along the way, so any semblance of “form” is thrown out the door. When an unexpected visual happens, it would be counterproductive to score the action by musically leading up to the unexpected, thereby ruining the surprise. Yes, music must have the capacity to “turn on its ear” at any moment, shift gears, and beeline off in a brand-new direction — or simply become completely silent, an interrupted thought. Now, here’s another thought: by not scoring a scene — or by “scoring” it with silence — does one run the risk of infringing on John Cage’s copyrighted “4:33″?

  • http://www.duncankirkbohannon.com/ Duncan K. Bohannon

    This seems like an obvious part of the equation, but given the correct circumstance — let’s use Ryan’s example of a main title, or a montage — the relevancy of using classical form in film music certainly depends greatly on the composer and his or her compositional tastes and tendencies. Many of John Williams’ popular main titles, for instance, tend to reveal the use of form. Leonard Rosenman broke into a fugue in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. These are very “trained” composers who care much for the classical roots in film music — this isn’t to say that informally trained composers don’t care. But using myself as an example, I grew up with an obsession with listening to film music (not classical or popular music), and as a result, the idea of utilizing classical form has never once entered my mind when writing, least of all being tempted to run off into a fugue. On the other hand, this non-tendency can be somewhat of a hinderance, since I often find it much more difficult to write a full-fledged theme.

  • http://Bondelev.Blogspot.com/ Bondelev

    I saw an interview with John WIlliams where he said that the form of film music is the movie. It’s a lot like opera or ballet, the form is (at least partly) dictated by external factors. That said, there is still room for traditional form, particularly in title sequences and montages. Williams himself used a fugue in a montage in JAWS. Herrmann explained that in the famous Breakfast Table sequence in CITIZEN KANE, the form was dictated by the form of the montage : theme and variations. Almost of all Korngold’s main titles use an abbreviated sonata allegro form.

    Adrian – whenever I explain sonata allegro form to film students they immediately point out the parallel to screenplay structure. It’s interesting conceptually, but in practice that doesn’t really work. Most film scores are based on multiple themes that develop throughout all three acts.

    • http://www.adrianelliscomposer.com/AdriansBlog Adrian Ellis

      Absolutely – I agree. It’s purely conceptual, not practical, which is why I led off my post with the idea that imposing musical form on screen would be superfluous. The other factor is that many narratives are also based on external factors – ie: human experiences. Instead of ‘pure’ form, where we say this is almost like a mathematical equation, you have the messiness of human life encroaching on the film, and the music is responding to that.

  • http://www.nuancemusic.com Brian Satterwhite

    To me form is everything and understanding the formal structure of music is as equally important as understanding harmony, melody, or orchestration. It’s not in the direct application of classical forms like sonata, rondo, or others to film but rather knowing the reasons why these forms exist. How did sonata form evolve and why? The answers to those questions are as every bit as important in film music today as they were to classical composers back then.

  • http://www.adrianelliscomposer.com/AdriansBlog Adrian Ellis

    I feel like trying to impose musical form would be like trying to lay in the design concept for a bicycle when you are trying to build a car. For me, the form is not the visual, but the narrative – the story. Instead of (say) a movements you might have acts. Instead of A and B sections, you might have exposition vs first conflict/inciting incident (or call to action), and so on. We are film makers after all!

    In films where composers are actually still writing an opening titles overture, the story of the film is told – so you might have an introduction, exposition, first conflict, building tension, climax, and denouement/epilogue. In a way, (and this is a very superficial and simplified examination) you can kind of line up the sonata form with the 3 act structure: Introduction (Act I – setup), Exposition (ditto), Development (Act II – conflict), Recapitulation & Coda (Act III – resolution). If you wanted to get more specific, I’m sure you could outline a score to a film using the Hero’s Journey or Monomyth, which seems to be the template for most Western narrative films.

    • http://www.michaelvwilson.com Michael Wilson

      “For me, the form is not the visual, but the narrative”

      But I think there are some very real considerations that come from the visuals. For example, from on orchestration point of view, IMHO the size of the ensemble should match the size of the room in the picture. I know that’s not musical form per-say, but I defiantly think the visuals have to be a consideration as you write.

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