Dr. Rhythm

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Why is that music so...scary? 10.31.08 "Halloween Edition"

   In many of my general music classes I often find that students, of all kinds young and old, associate music that is "challenging" to listen to with cinematic gestures. "It sounds like music from a horror film." -- "The music reminds me of a chase scene from a movie." -- "It sounds sort a like movie music."
   Why are our minds wired to associate challenging music with film? Because we are visual beings, and film has used music to guide the emotional material on the screen since the first "talking picture." We love film, it loves us. This week I, Dr. Rhythm, decided to discuss some of the "scarier" music that has found its way into the film in the spirit of Halloween.
   When I say "challenging" I am mostly referring to structurally complex and dissonant music. For the most part this is orchestral music, but there are also small ensembles, electronic instruments, even modern rock ensembles that fit this category. Music of this attitude has existed throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Composers like Igor Stravinsky, Bela Bartok, and Arnold Schoenberg began a new language of music at the turn of the 20th century. This language abandoned the Romanticism in music of the previous century. Richard Strauss had developed an intense ability to portray stories, called Tone Poems, through musical narrative. He used conventions that cultivated the natural associations of sound and psychology. Pitch goes up, we think up...rhythm gets faster, we think faster. Strauss would also use instrumentation, and orchestration to imply narrative associations. In his "Till Eulenspiegels lustige Steich" (Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks) an E-flat clarinet (the highest of the clarinet family) is essentially Eulenspiegel, which reinforces the "merriness" and prank-ness of the character. We immediate envisage Eulenspiegel as a small, child-like creature/person, perhaps a little mischievous, but definitely merry!
   Film composers of the 20th century borrowed many of the conventions of Strauss and other composers like Wagner, Puccini and Verdi. When we watch a film, we are listening to music drawn from this tradition. John Williams, Howard Shore, James Newton Howard, George Fenton, Danny Elfman, etc...have been brilliant in poising music to film. However, horror and sci-fi films changed our perception and expectations for film music.
   In 1977 John Williams composed the score for "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" a sci-fi, fantasy, mild-horror film about aliens visiting our planet. The film is famous for its five-note melody used to communicate with the aliens (which was suitably mocked by South Park in season 12.) However, Williams chose a particular style of music that is consistently associated with the aliens just until the very end when we discover the aliens are not here to "get us."
   Williams' music is partially inspired by Krzysztof Penderecki's "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima." The music I am referring to is dense, dissonant and moves slowly. It is largely strings playing in dense clusters of pitches that rise and fall slowly. In the film, Williams' music is vexing, and admittedly quite scary. You get the sensation that the aliens are dangerous and evil.
  However, Penderecki's music is far from this association. A threnody is a lament, a song or a hymn to the dead. It is meant to be a memorial. Though taken out of this context and put into film, it is extremely scary. Why? -- because our vision prevails over hearing. If we see a child being abducted by aliens while hearing dissonant music, our brains create an association. Later, if we hear similar music, or perhaps stumble upon "Threnody..." our brains will react in a likewise manner, in horror.
  This is why when I play serious 20th century music young students cringe and hold their ears screaming, "Why? Why? Why are you playing this devil music!" But in reality, the music has done nothing wrong.
   Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch are some other directors that have used music brilliantly in their films. Kubrik also associated "aliens," or at least the gesture of aliens in his film "2001: A Space Odyssey," with the music of György Ligeti. Ligeti's works, "Atmospheres," "Lux Aeterna" and "Aventures" are presented in this film in association with the black monolith and at the end when Dave Bowman is in the bizarre timeless, self-reflective room.
   In "The Shining" Ligeti, Penderecki and Bartok are also represented quite profusely. Kubrik uses Ligeti's "Lontano," Penderecki's "The Awakening of Jacob" among others, and Bartok's "Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta." Now these pieces are inevitably associated with Cory Feldman crying "Red Rum," twin girls appearing suddenly down the hall, and Jack Nicholson screaming "Heeeeeere's Johnny."
   David Lynch directed films like "Mulholland Drive," "Blue Velvet," "Lost Highway" and the television series "Twin Peaks." Lynch preferred original music versus Kubrick's "as is" concept. In "Mulholland Drive" which is not really a horror film, but perhaps a film-noir-esque, thriller, there is a scene in a theater called Club Silencio where a Spanish version of Rebekah del Rio's song "Crying" appears (in Spanish it is called "Llorando.") The scene is at the very least chilling if not a completely surreal experience.
  "Lost Highway" incorporates avant-garde jazz (the main character is a jazz saxophonist) in efforts to engage tension, confusion, perhaps even anxiety. "Blue Velvet" uses the song of the same name popularized by 1950s-60s sweet boy-wonder Bobby Vinton. The song when sung by Vinton is a boy/girl-love-at-first-sight tune, but in the film it is perplexing at the very least. It appears sinful, dirty and a bit dangerous.
  In the 1950s and 60s the burgeoning arena of electronic instruments was prime fodder for the sci-fi/horror film industry. Films like "The Day the Earth Stood Still" use instruments like the Theremin (a radio influenced instrument which produces an electronically generated sound using two antennae which the user puts their hands near without touching the instrument.) This was one of the first uses of the Theremin (invented in 1928) in film. It was used in connection with the giant alien robot, Gort. It ultimately made Gort the scariest robot to be seen on film and inspired many film composers to use the instrument in their own scores, mostly horror and sci-fi films.
  The film "Forbidden Planet" was the first film score composed entirely of electronic-music-like sounds by New York composers Bebe and Louis Barron. Their style was much different in that they created their own electronic circuits that produced particular sounds, and often would only work once. The film score is arguably music, by many popular opinions, but definitely reinforces the association of outer space, aliens, and scary beings with the strange and unusual sounds of electronic instruments.
   It is no wonder we as voyeurs of cinema find this "challenging" music scary. Dissonance is scary. Static motion is scary. Unusual sounds are scary. To celebrate Halloween, I challenge you to either watch one of these films or listen to one of the pieces mentioned as an exercise in disassociation. Can you disassociate the horror from the music? Or is it so ingrained into our psyche that we cannot erase these connections between film and music? Have a fun and musically "scary" Halloween.

In good musical health,
Dr. Rhythm