Film Music Ex Narratio

By Thor J. Haga

3. CASE-IN-POINT: ALIEN

Ridley Scott's stylish science fiction epic from 1979 illustrates particularly well how effective a consistent exploitation of the above, extra-narrative pleasures can be. The film in itself is a unique conglomerate of powerful artistic forces: Scott's trademark visual style, H.R. Giger's biomechanical design, the ensemble performances of the actors and Jerry Goldsmith's atonal film music. The story's essence is, when it comes down to it, very thin and unoriginal: 'humans flee from monster in dark and claustrophobic corridors'. But it is the execution of the story; the emphasis on feelings, atmosphere and symbolism that makes it to one of the greatest classics in movie history -- even outside the science fiction genre. Paradoxically for a Hollywood product, form is considered content in this case. As Scott himself puts it: "To a large extent, Alien's environment was a statement. And, I think, a great piece of art work" (Scott in Sammon 1999: 61). Alien is in many ways half melodrama in the word's original sense and half rock video in Larsen's sense -- a condensed chain of prominent moments with "foregrounded affect" and audiovisual symbolism. The irony is that Goldsmith's music under no circumstance dominates the ex/impression and is instead weaved organically into the total sound experience. Consequently, it works both narratively and as an enhancer of autonomous affect and semiotic production. As Kassabian puts it: "the signification 'danger' is understood consciously -- the commentary function -- while the unconscious increase in tension (leading to terror) is experienced -- the mood function" (Kassabian 2001: 59)

There are at least two aspects of horror film music that is worth pointing out in this case. One of them is music's strong connection to the irrational: "This association of music and the irrational predominates throughout the genres of horror, science fiction and fantasy, as a catalyst in the textual process of slipping in and out of the discourse of realism" (Gorbman 1987: 79).

The other is the fact that horror movies, and particularly this one, often utilize dissonant music. Already here is a manipulation of the spectator's sense of security. Caryl Flinn feels it is possible that "audiences object to the dissonance in [music], not because it is unpleasant, but because they believe that it is the product of calculation (i.e. a mechanistic intelligence) rather than an aesthethic affective contemplation (i.e. emotional human intelligence)" (Flinn 1992: 31). The music is in other words as cold and strange as the alien in the spaceship, and the audience is never allowed a sense of "commonality"; a tonal center.

Bernard Herrmann, who -- like Adorno and Eisler -- pioneered the use of atonal music in film, claimed that small musical fragments, socalled "clusters," offered a higher degree of flexibility in the depiction of the irrational. They were easier to follow for an audience, were easier to manipulate as building blocks and offered an (un)pleasant contrast to melody, the most rational element in music. Jerry Goldsmith's music to Alien is heavily inspired by this attitude. As Russell Lack writes: "Goldsmith's most recognizable trait is a thin, angular, unsentimental sound with clear counterpoints in which changes in instrumentation alter the whole fabric of a passage" (Lack 1997: 333). Let's see how the music in Alien creates extra-narrative pleasures.

Title sequences, extra-narrative and extra-diegetic by nature, offer musical form priority in a prominent moment. Alien opens with a slow pan in space -- a pale, colorless space in yellow-grey nuances. At the very top of the screen, the film's title gradually takes shape (line by line). Goldsmith immediately establishes and presents most of the elements he is going to use later on in the film. First some soft, atonal string harmonies on a cautious layer of spooky, tremolo strings in the upper register. The low register performs sporadical pizzicato effects, with extra echo effect to connote the "vastness" of space. The soundscape is further characterized by some distant, descending "howling" noises (the monster's voice?), electronically manufactured. These howling noises reach a powerful crescendo as the film's title is completed (although we have long since realized that it says "Alien"). As the colossal cargo vessel Nostromo glides graciously past the screen, two descending minor chords are heard -- as if to signal the spaceship's inevitable misfortune. Dark, orchestral rumble finishes the space sequence as the camera continues its pan inside the the darkened ship corridors. The rumble is eventually devoured by and becomes one with the pulsating, distant sound of the ship's engine. Then Goldsmith takes over again, with the recurring two-note flute motif with echo effect. This motif alternates with a deep brass chord throughout the entire sequence. The symbolical effect is 'sleep' -- the music hypnotizes with its "breathing," minimalistic structure. Suddenly a computer "awakens" and disrupts the hypnosis. As the pan continues and the lights are turned on, however, Goldsmith's two-note motif returns -- first pianissimo with a slow frequency, then with increasing frequency as the camera drives into the sleeping chamber. The frequency turns into a unison crescendo as the hypersleep chambers open and reveal the Nostromo crew. One of the members, Kane (who ironically becomes the first victim) , rises while we hear the first version of the "crew" theme, a simple leitmotif based on two major chords in counterpoint with a solemn string melody. The music fades out as the crew gather for breakfast in the next scene.

What this entire sequence proves, is Goldsmith's unique ability to both create narrative continuity (through initialization of the spectator's "induction stream") and underline autonomous atmosphere and symbolism. Despite the fact that the spectator knows nothing of the action (except what he/she might have read in advance), one finds a machosistic, atmospheric pleasure in this downbeat, dionysian and claustrophobic landscape where the surroundings seem half way known (humanly constructed corridors), but where the smell of "something alien" (musical dissonance, advanced equipment) sneaks its way into the sensory apparatus. One is also satisfied by the organical, audiovisual symbolism -- colored, as is the entire film, by Freudian metaphors (the ship's artificial intelligence is even reffered to as "mother"):
 

This heavy symbolism -- life, mother, darkness, the unidentified -- is underscored wonderfully by Goldsmith's subdued orchestration. The music -- winds echoing a solemn two-note motif -- is hard to separate from some of the sound effects; you're never sure if the sounds emanate from the ship or from the music score" (Haga 2001: online).

The following breakfast scene also demonstrates the importance of diegetic musical silence. Silence that creates autonomous atmosphere; that, as Gorman's quote above underlines, returns the spectator to a credible/realistic universe without non-diegetic music, but that at the same time defines the characters more directly and ambivalently --  through the dynamics of the clashing persona. The camera consequently works as a sort of anthropological paparazzo. It registers everyday humans about to be faced with a superhuman challenge. Goldsmith is himself very much aware of the importance of "spotting" the film properly (decide where and when music comes in):
 

Ömy preference is that music be used as sparingly as possible. I feel that if there is a constant use of music, or too much music, it will eventually vitiate the needed moments. The music becomes like white sound. It's a little like living in an area that has a high degree of density of traffic noises.Your ear eventually tunes out those frequencies. (Goldsmith in Prendergast 1977: 158)

The frequent use of this type of silence in Alien only makes the moments with "foregrounded affect" all the more effective. When the crew travels to the alien planet in order to explore the source of the S.O.S.-signal that has awakened them from hypersleep, the sustained establishing shot of the landing ship and the planet is accompanied by a 9-note, hopeful and ascending theme with solo trumpet on a steady cello-pulse. The music brings a sensation of mystery and expectation for what they'll find down there, but the use of solo trumpet also connotes loneliness in space and gives the scene a gracious, walse-like quality à la the "spaceship dance" in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Goldsmith modulates this "expectation" theme for various foregrounded affects throughout the movie. When the crew finally leaves the alien planet, it returns fortissimo with a somewhat bitter undertone: The expectation that everything is going to be fine is there, but not necessarily justified. When Kane is buried and jettisoned into space, the theme returns in almost adagio-form and underlines that the expectations will now have to modified. Towards the end of the film, the theme returns in a horrible, fragmented version -- only the three first notes of the theme are played sforzando in an atonal cacaphony as the last two members of the crew -- except the protagonist Ripley -- are killed by the monster. All hope is gone. All harmony is broken. All expectations must be abandoned. These are of course narrative moves that are dependent upon the spectator's induction streams, but they also work as autonomous moments with active, emotional investment that are not, or at least are less dependent upon, intellectual knowledge of the theme.

Another violent moment of affection is the first attack of the adult monster. The mechanic Brett is searching for his cat in the darkened storage halls of the space vessel ("here, kitty, kittyÖ."). The soundscape is characterized by distant, metallic sound effects and loud heartbeats -- the spectator's diegetic pulse. As he finds it, we notice the tail of a creature descending behind him, followed by the blurred contours of the creature itself. Rather than hit us over the head with a classical "stinger"-sforzando, Goldsmith accompanies the "descent" with a few weak tremolo-strings and a gooseskin-inducing glissando-effect, possibly attained by stroking directly on the piano strings. The absence of the conventional tutti-exclamation makes the scene all the more frightening, and it is only when Brett sees eye to eye with the monster; with death itself, that Goldsmith serves a percussion and brass attack as katharsis-effect. The scene and music have no narrative function other than to scare and introduce the almost invinsible predatorial instincts of the monster. But the fear becomes a quality in and of itself.

We return for a moment to Alien's unambigious sexual and Freudian symbolism:
 

Alien's sexual symbolism percolates throughout the metaphoric level /Ö/The intial Facehugger creature "fertilizes" its host through an aggressive oral rape while the larger adult dispatches its prey by thrusting a long, rigid, tooth-encrusted, obviously phallic tongue into its victims' brainpans, literally killing them by an act of penetration (Sammon 1999: 55)

The Freudian dreamscape is also physically present through Giger's production design. As Kane, Dallas and Lambert approach the crashed, alien spaceship on the planet, all of Goldsmith's components from the title sequence return. The soft string-atonality, the "pizzicato echo," the howling. For the establishing shot of the alien ship, there's only a sustained and deep string chord. As we see them outside the ship's "doors," however -- formed as 10 meter tall vaginas -- we notice that the two-note motif has been added to the deep chord. The musical associations go to the opening sequence and the sleeping/pre-oedipal human spaceship. Here, on the other hand, the déjà vû-pleasure is further enhanced as they "penetrate" the ship and make their way into the biomechanical, "womb"-like corridors. It is as if Giger and Goldsmith communicate with each other in these scenes. The three astronauts stumble upon the body of a huge alien -- often referred to as the "space jockey," fossilized into what might look like a navigational chair. After having served us a few obligatory stingers in the shape of some sharp pizzicato-echoes (on piano strings again?), Goldsmith serves us a four-note, minor-moded flute melody when we notice that the alien has been fertilized and killed by a "bad" alien -- it gets its own little requiem. Although neither the characters nor the audience know it yet, these are of course narrative means that point towards the life cycle of the aliens. They fertilize their hosts through a "facehugger" and breaks out throught its chest. But the allusions "birth" and "fertilization," accompanied by Goldsmith's introvert, subdued music-equivalent to Flinn's "lost maternal objects," maintain a purified symbolic dimension as well.

It has to be admitted that Ridley Scott took considerable liberties with Goldsmith's music, and reorganized and threw out large parts of it. Consequently, the finished product has a completely different structure than what Goldsmith had initially planned. Among other things, he threw out the famous composer's "end titles" in favor of Howard Hanson's "Symphony # 2 'Romantic'." The musically conscious Scott constructed a structure that gave more or less meaning, though, as this small analysis confirms.

One can argue if Alien is the exception that proves the rule, but it shows at the very least how it is possible to find extra-narrative pleasures even within the Hollywood paradigm; pleasures that -- carried by the film music -- might be just as legitimate aspects of the film medium's capacity as its ability to tell a story.

4. THE SOUNDTRACK ALBUM: WHAT SURVIVES IN THE MEDIA TRANSACTION?

If it is the case that film music possesses powerful extra-narrative qualities, it should mean that it also possesses certain extra-filmic qualities (beyond the diegesis-dichotomy) that appear as soon as it is released on CD. This is, however, a theoretical dead end -- both within academia and popular culture. To the extent that it is mentioned at all, it is seemingly taken for granted that the soundtrack album's sole purpose (beyond the obvious, commercial "spin off"-effect) is to be a "mnemonic device" for the listener; to make him/her reexperience the movie without having to see it. A weird paradox and difficult prejudice, if anything. Is it namely not so that what one reexperiences, is not the film per se (that is, the story), but the extra-narrative qualities (feelings, atmosphere and symbolism) that the music forwarded, à la Langkjær's "sharply defined emotional intensities"? And if film music was essential in this construction, could one not argue that it also has its own independent and universal value -- as any other music genre -- through its inherent and chamelon-like non-representability? I have previously stated the following:
 

A composer, inspired by the visuals of a film, writes specific music for a scene. Now, please remove the visuals (release the score on CD). The music, reborn in a different, aural medium, has "enveloped" the visuals and is in actuality a dramatic tone poem. It differs from classical music only in its "specificness" or "on-targetness"; in other words that it required a specific visual scene to be born in the first place (no, opera and ballet usually has [had] the music written in advance of the other elements). I would go so far as to say that film music [on CD] should be considered a separate entity on par with any other music genre, and not simply a film appendix or an artistic sub-process of the over-arching film production (Haga 2000: 12)

The deduction insinuates -- somewhat vague, perhaps -- that film music by nature is more "direct" (emotionally, atmospherically, symbolically), if not necessarily less complicated or more digestable than classical music. It has to be that because it exchanges meaning with an external system of expression in Gorbman's "mutual implication." But on CD this means that the listener is able to "catch" the music more effortlessly and form it according to need. Equipped with the four "spiritual" senses that we utilize in the evaluation of any music -- feelings, imagination, memories (from one's own past -- not the film!) and intellect; shaped as a spectrum -- the listener can rapidly construct his own narration and atmosphere; without necessarily having to have a relationship to the music's womb, the film. The extra-narrative space which the music occupied in the film; which injected the "myth" into iconic moments à la Levi-Strauss' music/myth-parallell, exists on CD in pure, abstract form. Without the visuals -- and as film musical "raw material" -- it has lost its original narrative function, but gained a completely new on in the spectator's mind and received even more extra-narrative qualities.

An important aspect of the media transaction, however, is that the music has to go through a certain "distillation process" in order to work optimally as an independent listening experience, since the music as it exists in the film has a film-temporal logic and structure that is poorly suited in a directly transmitted condition. The film musical chronology in the movie need not necessarily correlate to the film musical chronology on CD. A "distilliation process" therefore implies a reorganization of the thematic material so that the "essence" -- the direct, foregrounded, extra-narrative -- survives, while the film-narrative "detours" are weeded away:

 
The focus point is radically changed as the music swaps medium. The core of the matter is no longer to retell the film musically, but to recommunicate the music musically /Ö/ Music cannot compromize itself to visual regulations in an aural format /Ö/ A film score has so many detours relying on onscreen action that [parts of it become] superflous on album (Haga 2000: online)

Most film composers share this view. Thus answered legendary Miklós Rózsa on question from Royal S. Brown (Brown 1994: 279):

 
RSB: How do you regard the recording of film music separately from the film? /Ö/ What do you think a film music recording should be? Should it be all of the cues, should it be rearranged?
MR: It should be rearranged. It should be rearranged for listening. Without seeing something, it's a different experience.
RSB: Do you prefer a concert suite or do you prefer simply arranging the cues as they were written in a different order?
MR: It could be both.

It might perhaps seem like a paradox that one admits to film music a legitimate, independent status on CD while simultaneously having to import a structural means from classical/instrumental music in order to justify its existence as a music genre ("suitification," rechronologization). But if one remembers that what survives in the media transaction not is the story, but a series of extra-narrative fragments with "specific" qualities, there should not be any reason why these could not be rearranged at pleasure (hopefully by a musically conscious composer/producer) without the piece losing musical integrity or without the genre losing its trademark. And perhaps one might consequently also conclude that the film music on CD -- through these fragments of "foregrounded affect"  -- retroactively and partially verifies its extra-narrative potential even within the film that gave birth to it?

5. CONCLUSION / SUMMARY

The premise for this essay might seem somewhat ambitious and controversial. How is it possible to claim that even the Hollywood film can present autonomous, extra-narrative qualities when the story -- according to the manual -- dictates all filmatic means and wishes to unite them in one narrative unit? But if one looks to Andre Bazin's familiar schematic organization of film history, one notices a dotted line from the category "directors who believe in the picture" to "classical story-telling film." In other words, one partially admits a visual/multimedial exploitation of the medium which does not necessarily have anything to do with the story, or at least comes as an addition to this. And it is within this attitude that film music is able to operate. I have tried to argue that music -- by being non-representative, despite "visual bias" and in addition to working narratively -- descends angelically and creates pleasure in iconic moments based on the spectator's own background and identification process.

I highlighted three types of autonomous pleasures that pop up in this process -- emotional investment in dismantled scenes, atmospheric stimulant located in the extra-narrative dynamic between picture and sound, and symbolical challenges based on our previous knowledge and ability to musically induce.

The Alien films (and particularly the first) are archetypical examples on how the narrative hierarchy may be manipulated even within the Hollywood paradigm, and how instrumental (no pun intended) the film music is in this manipulation. Alien has a story, and it is communicated graciously, but it also has numerous moments where the story is submitted to an emotional, atmospheric or symbolic dimension.

Finally, I made some remarks about the soundtrack phenomenon. If it was so that film music survived (in some form or other) on CD, ex narratio in natura, one could perhaps deduce retroactively that it also worked extra-narratively in the film, or at least that there was something extra-narrative about it that made it handle the media transaction, in which the original story necessarily evaporates.

Ultimately, it has to be admitted that in order for our hypothesis to be valid, it is dependent upon one thing: The film maker has to consciously emphasize extra-narrative construction on some level -- at least let it be an important aspect of the expression (such as Alien). If all he/she wants is to tell a story, and the story is as thin as an anaemic steaklet, it is of little help to hide the defect in beautiful pictures and pleasing music. Form is obviously not content at all costs

6. BIBLIOGRAPHY (for all three entries in this series)

* Bordwell, David og Kristin Thompson
 Film History: An Introduction (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1994)

* Bremond, Claude
 "The Logic of Narrative Possibilities" i New Literary History, vol. XI, nr. 3, [1966] 1980, s. 387-411)

* Brown, Royal S.
 Overtones and Undertones: Reading Film Music (University of California Press, 1994)

* Carrol, Noël and Patrick
"Notes on Movie Music" i Studies in the Literary Imagination (vol. 19, Spring 1986, s. 73-81)

* Cohen, Annabel J.
 "Music as a Source of Emotion in Film" i Music and Emotion (Oxford University Press, 2000, s. 249-274)

* Eisler, Hans & Theodor Adorno
Composing for the Films (London & Atlantic Highlands, The Athlone Press, [1947] 1994)

* Flinn, Caryl
Strains of Utopia: Gender, Nostalgia and Hollywood Film Music (Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1992)

* Gorbman, Claudia
Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music (London, BFI Publishing, 1987)

* Haga, Thor J.
 "Wrath of Thor # 4: Lashing Out at Expansion!" (2000), Film Score Monthly [online]
 Tilgjengelig: http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.asp?threadID=1121&forumID=1

* Haga, Thor J.
 "Review the CD, not the film!" i Film Score Monthly (vol. 5, no. 7, 2000, s. 12)

* Haga, Thor J.
 "The Music of the Alien Saga ? Nailing an Atmosphere" (2001), Celluloid Tunes [online]
 Tilgjengelig: http://www.celluloidtunes.com/alien.htm

* Kalinak, Kathryn
Settling the Score: Music and the Classical Hollywood Film (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1992)

* Kassabian, Anahid
Hearing Film: Tracking Identifications in Contemporary Hollywood Film Music (New York and London, Routledge, 2001)

* Lack, Russell
 Twenty Four Frames Under: A Buried History of Film Music (London, Quartet Books, 1997)

* Langkjær, Birger
"Den lyttende tilskuer. Om musik, perception og følelser i audiovisuel fiktion" i Norsk Medietidsskrift (Norsk Medieforskerlag, nr. 1, 1998, s. 40-58)

* Larsen, Peter
 "Filmmusikkens narrativitet" i Norsk Medietidsskrift (Norsk Medieforskerlag, nr. 1, 1998, s. 5-23)

* Larsen, Peter
"Betydningsstrømme ? Musik og moderne billedfiktioner" i Studia Musicologica Norvegica: Norsk årsskrift for musikkforsking (Universitetsforlaget, nr. 14, 1988, s. 19-52)

* Prendergast, Roy M.
 Film Music: A Neglected Art (New York University Press, [1977] 1992)

* Sammon, Paul M.
 Ridley Scott: The Making of his Movies (London, Orion Books, 1999)
 
 

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