Musical Borrowing
An Annotated Bibliography

Contributions by Emily Baumgart

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[+] Audissino, Emilio. “Gottfried Huppertz’s Metropolis: The Acme of ‘Cinema Music.’” In Today’s Sounds for Yesterday’s Films: Making Music for Silent Cinema, edited by K. J. Donnelly and Ann-Kristin Wallengren, 45-63. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

There is an inherent difference between music of silent films and sound films; the former, sometimes referred to as cinema music, is music performed in the cinema usually experienced as a filler for silence while the latter, sometimes referred to as film music, is music physically placed on the film and experienced with narrative function in mind. However, some silent film scores act as if they could have been composed for this latter, narrative period, such as Gottfried Huppertz’s score for Metropolis (1927), due to its orchestration, use of leitmotivic techniques, and manipulation of musical material.

Due to cuts upon the film’s American release, Huppertz’s original score was heavily edited and mostly forgotten, to the point where the original score was not used in the 1984 remastering of the film by Giorgio Moroder. However, in 2008, the closest version to the original film was rediscovered in an Argentinian archive, along with Huppertz’s sketches and timings. The reconstruction of this earlier, more complete version reveals that the score contained many of the narrative techniques now associated with later film music, mainly the leitmotiv technique. It also includes references to other works: the melodic and harmonic language is rooted in Wagner, Mahler, and Richard Strauss’s style, while the “Machine Theme” echoes similar music by George Antheil and Arthur Honegger. In addition to these stylistic allusions, Huppertz also uses outright quotation, including the Dies irae chant upon the deaths of the workers in the machine room and La Marseillaise when the False Maria leads the mob to destroy the machines. In the process, despite its earlier time period, Huppertz’s score takes on the qualities and ethos of later Hollywood film music.

Works: Gottfried Huppertz: Score to Metropolis (45-57).

Sources: Camille Saint-Saëns: Danse Macabre (51); Anonymous: Dies irae (53); Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle: La Marseillaise (53).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Film

Contributed by: Emily Baumgart

[+] Bañagale, Ryan Raul. “Selling Success: Visual Media and Rhapsody in Blue.” In Arranging Gershwin: “Rhapsody in Blue” and the Creation of American Icon, 148-73. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue has been used in many visual contexts such as films, television programs, and advertisements, and in the process has gained a sort of inherent meaning associating it with success, the American Dream, New York, and modernity. The visual usage of the music then capitalizes on these new meanings. It was Woody Allen’s film Manhattan in 1979 where the piece, along with other Gershwin songs, was strongly associated with New York City, later reinforced by Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead and Disney’s Fantasia 2000. Tied to the connection with New York, the piece is also an emblem for success. The association with success is then further reaffirmed by the usage of Rhapsody in Blue in United Airlines’s longstanding advertising campaign. At first, the piece was used to evoke class and elegance, but over the course of the ad campaign the piece began to signify the success of an American-based airline as the commercials couched the music in different styles like East Asian and western fiddle two-step. Later advertisements in the early 2000s used Rhapsody to harken back to United’s past during a period of economic downturn and bankruptcy and focus on an uplifting and rebirth of the airline. United also used the music in a physical space in the O’Hare airport terminal to emphasize the “fun” of air travel, though it was far removed from the original work.

Works: Irving Rapper (director): Rhapsody in Blue (149-50); Woody Allen (director): Manhattan (149-53); United Airlines: advertising campaign 1987-present (“Nation’s Business”, “Pacific Song”, “Playing Our Song”, “Mileage Plus”, “Rising”, “It’s Time to Fly”, “Interview”, “Dragon”, “Heart”) (149, 158-73); Eric Goldberg, et al (directors): Fantasia 2000 (149, 153); Martin Scorsese (director): Bringing Out the Dead (153); Mark Kirkland (director): The Simpsons: “Elementary School Musical” (155-56); Brad Falchuk (director): Glee: “New York” (155-56); Baz Luhrmann (director): The Great Gatsby (156-58); Gary Fry: Rhapsody Ambiance (170-72).

Sources: Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue (148-73).

Index Classifications: 1900s, 2000s, Jazz, Film

Contributed by: Emily Baumgart

[+] Bohlman, Philip V., and Andrea F. Bohlman. “(Un)Covering Hanns Eisler’s Hollywood Songbook.” Danish Yearbook of Musicology 35 (2007): 13-29.

Hanns Eisler’s works have been going through a resurgence in a post-socialist, post-modern world. Why does his music, particularly Hollywood Songbook, resonate with later audiences? Part of the reason may be that Eisler’s works have a propensity not only to be covered by others but also to begin as covers themselves; bringing the popular music theories of covering into art music may help answer some of these questions about Eisler. The process of covering, regardless of genre, also raises further problems of authorship and authenticity, muddying who is the true author of the work and what the work means for a given time period. Connecting the concept of covers to the concept of performances and performative genres can help alleviate some of these problems.

Eisler’s Hollywood Songbook takes its influence both from Bertold Brecht’s poetry of the same name, the Hollywood Liederbuch, as well as the intangible “Great American Songbook” that many composers claim to reference. All three of these objects are difficult to classify in terms of genre, and thus invite intertextualization, which helps us understand Eisler’s songbook with its references to both exile and modernity borrowed from Brecht’s work and the Great American Songbook. As Eisler’s work itself is a sort of cover of these themes, other artists create their own covers and performances of the work, from popular singers such as Sting to visual artists like Ana Torf. These performative works invite further intertextual readings of both the performance and Eisler’s songbook.

Works: Hanns Eisler: Hollywood Songbook (19-29), Neue deutsche Volkslieder (19); Sting: The Secret Marriage (26-27); Heiner Goebbels: Eislermaterial (26-27); Ana Torf: Performance Art Installation (26-27).

Sources: Hanns Eisler: Hollywood Songbook (25-29).

Index Classifications: 1900s, 2000s, Film

Contributed by: Emily Baumgart

[+] Busse Berger, Anna Maria. “How Did Oswald von Wolkenstein Make His Contrafacta?” In The Cambridge History of Fifteenth-Century Music, edited by Anna Maria Busse Berger and Jesse Rodin, 164–82. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Analysis of Oswald’s contrafacta reveals the function of memory in the reworking of polyphonic models. Most composers of polyphony in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were musically literate and familiar with mensural notation. Minnesinger Oswald von Wolkenstein (c. 1376-1445) was active among nobles who valued written works, but his training as a knight would not have prioritized literacy. Scholars have not previously focused on compositional process but rather the tradition of polyphonic transmission; examining Oswald’s output can shed light on his unique compositional and memory devices. His borrowed chansons would have been performed from memory rather than notation, and after he had learned a tenor line, Oswald would compose poetry and dictate to his scribe. The transformations between the models and his songs reveal a preference for strophic forms and memorable texts. Generally considered the inventor of the “Tenorlied ,” Oswald recast the tenor voice as the melody, leaving its original contour unaltered. He also consistently eliminated the countertenor and transformed melismatic lines into syllabic ones. Oswald’s compositions were notated either in a simple version of one or two voices, or in fuller polyphonic settings by a musically literate person with access to a copy of the model chanson. This investigation emphasises the great importance of memory and oral compositional practice in Oswald’s works. His process for creating contrafacted tenor lieder can be described as secondary orality, and illustrates how writing changed but did not replace oral tradition during the late Middle Ages.

Works: Oswald von Wolkenstein: O wuniklichter, wolgezierter mai (165), Wol auf, wir wollen slafen (165–67, 175), Stand auf, Maradel (168–69), Frölich, zärtlich, lieplich und klärlich, lustlich, stille, leise (169–77).

Sources: Binchois: Triste Plaisir et douloureuse joye (165); Anonymous: En tes douz flans (164–75).

Index Classifications: 1400s

Contributed by: Emily Baumgart, Chelsey Belt, Maria Fokina

[+] Collins, Karen. “Grand Theft Audio?: Popular Music and Intellectual Property in Video Games.” Music and the Moving Image 1 (Spring 2008): 35-48.

Video games can capitalize on the popularity of source music through the subject or narration of a game, including a popular musician as composer for the game, and licensing popular music for the soundtrack. One of the ways that video game publishers can offset monetary risks is to use well-known intellectual property such as films, music, and musicians and actors. In the case of the audio in video games, this intellectual property could be a well-known voice talent, sound designers, or popular music.

Games with music as the subject or part of the narration, such as PaRappa the Rapper and Guitar Hero have been popular overall with players. These types of games can be divided into three categories: creative games, rhythm-action games (both categories in which music is the primary part of gameplay), and musician-themed games, where musicians or bands appear as characters. Many popular musicians were also involved in the soundtracks for other more general games, as well as recording or rerecording songs for games. Even more popular is to simply license popular music for use in video games. Earlier video games were not as concerned with the music tracks, as they were difficult and time-consuming to program, so many of these games made use of classical music. Once the environment changed and creators needed to address issues of copyright and licensing, there was a stronger tie to the musicians whose music they were borrowing, including cross-media promotions and the sale of game soundtracks. Oftentimes the musicians whose songs are featured gain a boost of popularity from the game.

Works: Milton Bradley (manufacturer): Simon (36); SCEI (manufacturer): PaRappa the Rapper (36); Red Octane and Harmonix (manufacturers): Guitar Hero (36, 38); Atari (manufacturer): Journey’s Escape (37); Midway (manufacturer): Revolution X (37); Sega (manufacturer): Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker (37); Acclaim (manufacturer): Summer Heat Beach Volleyball (37); Vivendi (manufacturer): 50 Cent: Bulletproof (37); Codemasters (manufacturer): Music Generator (38); Harmonix (manufacturer): Frequency (38), Amplitude (38); Nintendo (manufacturer): Donkey Konga (38); Namco (manufacturer): Taiko Drum Master (38); Konami (manufacturer): Dance Dance Revolution (38); Time Warner Interactive (manufacturer): Rise of the Robots (38); id Software (manufacturer): Quake (38-39); SCEE (manufacturer): Wipeout Pure (39); Nintendo (manufacturer): Donkey Kong (40); Atari (manufacturer): Crystal Castles (40); Centuri (manufacturer): Vanguard (40); Sega (manufacturer): Dracula Unleashed (41); DTMC (manufacturer): Adventures of Dr. Franken (41); Blizzard (manufacturer): Rock’N’Roll Racing (41); Psygnosis (manufacturer): Wipeout XL (41); EA Sports (manufacturer): Madden NFL 2003 (41), FIFA 2006 (42); Neversoft (manufacturer): Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland (42); Reflective (manufacturer): Driver: Parallel Lines (42); Sony (manufacturer): SingStar (43).

Sources: Journey: Escape (37), Frontiers (37); Aerosmith: Eat the Rich (37), Sweet Emotion (37), Toys in the Attic (37), Rag Doll (37), Walk this Way (37); Michael Jackson: Thriller (37), Bad (37); Deep Purple: Smoke on the Water (38); Megadeth: Symphony of Destruction (38); Brian May: The Dark (38); Tchaikovsky: 1812 Overture (40), Nutcracker Suite (40); Liszt: Mephisto Waltz (40); Anonymous: Turkey in the Straw (40); Scott Joplin: Maple Leaf Rag (40); Queen: “Vultan’s Theme” from Flash Gordon (40); Deep Purple: Highway Star (41); Beethoven: Piano Sonata in C-sharp Minor, Op. 27, No. 2 (“Moonlight”) (41); Carl Orff: Carmina Burana (41); George Thorogood: Bad to the Bone (41); Steppenwolf: Born to be Wild (41); Black Sabbath: Paranoid (41); Good Charlotte: The Anthem (41); Selasee: Run (42).

Index Classifications: 1900s, 2000s, Film

Contributed by: Emily Baumgart

[+] Curtis, Scott. “The Sound of Early Warner Bros. Cartoons.” In Sound Theory/Sound Practice, edited by Rick Altman, 191-203. New York: Routledge, 1992.

Short animations function differently from the feature length films currently focused on within the field of film music research, but examining how music works in these animated shorts can encourage us to rethink our conceptions of feature film music as well, including vocabulary and techniques. Image/sound hierarchy, the separation of soundtrack into dialogue/music/effects, and the diegetic/non-diegetic separation are all difficult if not impossible to apply to animation. There is also an economic angle to animations—Warner Brothers, anticipating the success of “talkies,” bought up several music publishing houses and strongly encouraged its workers, including those in animation, to use these in-house songs or works within the public domain. Hence, early Looney Tunes cartoons used all available songs to their full potential, leading to the “Merrie Melodies” series of cartoons using both hit music such as 42nd Street and flops like Manhattan Parade. The division of cartoons into a separate music-based series was not specific to Warner Bros.; Disney’s “Silly Symphonies” followed the same pattern, chipping away at the traditional hierarchy that placed image above music. Songs from musicals were often used in singing and dancing routines, where it becomes difficult to distinguish between dialogue and music. Likewise, rather than referring to a diegetic/non-diegetic distinction, it is often more useful to think of animation as isomorphic/iconic.

Works: Warner Bros. (studio): Young and Healthy (193), Shuffle Off to Buffalo (193), Three’s a Crowd (195), You Don’t Know What You’re Doin’! (195, 198), Hamateur Night (196), Rhapsody Rabbit (196), What’s Up, Doc? (196), Sinkin’ in the Bathtub (196), Hold Anything (198, 200), Smile, Darn Ya, Smile (198), Petting in the Park (199), Red-Headed Baby (201), Big Man from the North (201-2); Oskar Fischinger: Motion Painting No. 1 (202).

Sources: Mervyn Leroy: 42nd Street (193, 195); Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 (202).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Film

Contributed by: Emily Baumgart

[+] Donnelly, K. J. Magical Musical Tour: Rock and Pop in Film Soundtracks. New York: Bloomsbury, 2015.

Many different kinds of popular music can create dramatic moments in film, both diegetically and non-diegetically. The temporal aspects of most popular music, its steady beat and generally common time meter, affect the resulting film differently than classical film scoring does. Through creating new popular-style music for films (scoring), editing exiting popular music to fit a film, or editing filmic images to fit existing popular music (tracking), many different techniques and styles are possible. The Beatles, with their pop music films in the 1960s, changed how popular music worked in movies, as well as inherently changing the way film musicals functioned. Although there were earlier films that used popular music, such as King Creole (1958) and Rock Around the Clock (1956), the Beatles’ films were the first where pop music was not mixed with traditional film music techniques; the resulting films were a hybrid of documentary style with the drama of feature films. Different styles of music can accomplish different things; for example, psychedelic music is often used to signify surrealism or drug use, while rap music is used as a dramatic shock tactic and older popular music signifies an earlier time period. Regardless of the type of music or approach, pop music also invites a tension between creativity and commerce that did not previously exist with classical film music techniques.

Works: Joe Massot (director): Wonderwall (5, 19, 39-42, 53, 124); Roger Corman (director): The Trip (5, 34-36, 38, 42-43); Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg (directors): Performance (5, 41-42, 53, 93, 122); Albert and David Maysles (directors): Gimme Shelter (5, 63-64, 66-67, 72); Michael Wadleigh (director): Woodstock (5, 64, 66, 72); George Lucas (director): American Graffiti (5, 106, 138-41); Barry Shear (director): Across 110th Street (16, 79, 83, 86); Richard Lester (director): A Hard Day’s Night (19-25), Help! (19, 25-29); George Dunning (director): Yellow Submarine (19, 38-39); John Boorman (director): Catch Us If You Can (22); Mike Nichols (director): The Graduate (33); Woody Allen (director): What’s Up Tiger Lily (33); Richard Rush (director): Psych Out (35, 43); Dennis Hopper (director): Easy Rider (36-37, 53); Bob Rafelson (director): Head (37); Barbet Schroeder (director): More (45, 49-50, 52-56), La Vallée (45, 53, 56); Michelangelo Antonioni (director): Zabriskie Point (45, 52-53, 55, 58); Alan Parker (director): Pink Floyd - The Wall (45, 57); Peter Sykes (director): The Committee (45, 53-54, 58); Peter Whitehead (director): Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London (53); Roy Battersby (director): The Body (55); David Elfick (director): Crystal Voyager (56); Martin Scorsese (director): The Last Waltz (63, 73, 76); D. A. Pennebaker (director): Don’t Look Back (63-66, 72); Gordon Parks (director): Shaft (79, 81, 84, 86-88, 91); Melvin Van Peebles (director): Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (79, 81, 84, 86-87); Gordon Parks Jr. (director): Super Fly (79, 81, 84, 86, 88-92); Ossie Davis (director): Cotton Comes to Harlem (81-82); Larry Cohen (director): Black Caesar (81, 90-91); Leslie H. Martinson (director): Batman (105, 107-111); Tim Burton (director): Batman Returns (105, 112-14); Joel Schumacher (director): Batman Forever (105, 114-17), Batman and Robin (105, 115, 117-18); Richard Loncraine (director): Brimstone and Treacle (140); Lawrence Kasdan (director): The Big Chill (141); Bruce Robinson (director): Withnail and I (141); David Green (director): Buster (141-42); Tony Scott (director): Top Gun (143); Michael Mann (director): Manhunter (143); Howard Deutch (director): Pretty In Pink (145); Quentin Tarantino (director): Pulp Fiction (146); Oliver Stone (director): Natural Born Killers (146); Robert Zemeckis (director): Forrest Gump (146); Danny Boyle (director): Trainspotting (148); Nicolas Winding Refn (director): Bronson (150); Wes Anderson (director): The Royal Tenenbaums (150); Abel Ferrara (director): Bad Lieutenant (154-61).

Sources: The Beatles: I Should Have Known Better (21, 24), Tell Me Why (24), If I Fell (24), She Loves You (24), She’s A Woman (26-28), Ticket to Ride (26-27), Help! (27), I Need You (27), The Night Before (27); The Seeds: Two Fingers Pointing at You (35); Strawberry Alarm Clock: Rainy Day Mushroom Pillow (35), Pretty Song from Psych-Out (35); Electric Flag: Flash, Bang, Pow (36); The Monkees: The Porpoise Song (37); The Beatles: It’s All Too Much (39); Pink Floyd: Interstellar Overdrive (53), Careful with that Axe, Eugene (54, 58); Curtis Mayfield: Pusherman (88-89), Freddie’s Dead (88-89); James Brown: Big Daddy (90-91), Down and Out In New York City (90-91), Mama’s Dead (91); Prince: Batman (108-11); Siouxsie and the Banshees: Face to Face (112); The Flaming Lips: Bad Days (115-16); The Offspring: Smash It Up (116); The Coasters: Poison Ivy (118); Goo Goo Dolls: Lazy Eye (118); Moloko: Fun for Me (118); Sting: Spread a Little Happiness (140-41); Marvin Gaye: I Heard it Through the Grapevine (141); Rolling Stones: You Can’t Always Get What You Want (141); Procol Harum: A Whiter Shade of Pale (141); Phil Collins: Groovy Kind of Love (142); Phil Collins and Lamont Dozier: Two Hearts (142); Berlin: Take My Breath Away (143); Kenny Loggins: Danger Zone (143); Shriekback: The Big Hush (143); Iron Butterfly: In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida (144); Robert Gordon: The Way I Walk (147); L7: Shitlist (147); Creedence Clearwater Revival: Fortunate Son (147); Beatles: A Hard Day’s Night (148); Iggy Pop: Lust for Life (148); Schoolly D: Signifyin’ Rapper (154-61); Led Zeppelin: Kashmir (156-59).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Popular, Film

Contributed by: Emily Baumgart

[+] Gibbons, William. “Blip, Bloop, Bach?: Some Uses of Classical Music on the Nintendo Entertainment System.” Music and the Moving Image 2 (Spring 2009): 40-52.

Borrowing classical music in Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) games can accomplish several purposes. Although much early video game music was newly composed, such as now classics Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros., it was not the only option available to video game composers. In the case of Captain Comic, the classical music functions mostly as a backdrop. Captain Comic’s entire soundtrack is made of classical music, but ultimately fails as a soundtrack because the classical pieces have little to no connection to the on-screen action. Pirates!, on the other hand, makes use of the cultural codes of Baroque music as a way of setting a historical time period as well as differentiating between different classes of characters. In Pirates!, the player can choose the location and time period; though the Baroque music in the soundtrack (Handel’s Water Music and Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor) are outside of all optional time periods, they still lend the game a historical frame and a certain amount of “seriousness.” These pieces associated with upper-class characters contrast with newly composed nationalistic styles in popular Baroque idioms for the taverns in different cities. Finally, all iterations of Tetris use Russian music, either classical borrowings, folktunes, or newly composed songs to tie the game back to its Russian origins.

Works: Brøderbund (manufacturer): Battle of Olympus (40, 45); Color Dreams (manufacturer): Captain Comic (41-43, 49); Ultra Games (manufacturer): Pirates! (41, 43-45, 49); Nintendo (manufacturer): Tetris (41, 46-49); Tengen (manufacturer): Tetris (46-49).

Sources: Johann Sebastian Bach: Toccata and Fugue in D Minor BWV 565 (40-42, 45); Handel: Suite in D Minor (41); Mozart: Piano Sonata in A Major, K. 331 (41); Rimsky-Korsakov: “Flight of the Bumblebee” from The Tale of Tsar Saltan (41-42); Johann Strauss: The Blue Danube, Op. 314 (41); Schubert: Marche Militaire, Op. 55, No. 1 (41); Wilhelm Friedemann Bach: Allegro non troppo, Fk. 203 (41); Handel: Water Music, Suite No. 1 in F (43-45); Johann Sebastian Bach: Two-Part Invention in G major (44); Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker (46, 49); Ivan Larionov: Kalinka (46); Anonymous: Korobeiniki (46).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Film

Contributed by: Emily Baumgart

[+] Leeper, Jill. “Crossing Musical Borders: The Soundtrack for Touch of Evil.” In Soundtrack Available: Essays on Film and Popular Music, edited by Pamela Robertson Wojcik and Arthur Knight, 226-43. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001.

Henry Mancini’s score for Touch of Evil (1958) is innovative for its new approach to diegetic cues rather than continuous background music, and for its use of jazz and rock idioms. The music does work as a suturing effect (connecting the audience to the setting) but rather destabilizes the perception of time and place and emphasizes contradictions and incongruity within the film through its hybrid nature. Jazz is itself a hybrid genre of West African and European music; Mancini’s genres of choice for this film were also a hybrid of Afro-Cuban and cool jazz, as well as mariachi. These musics were chosen to signal an emphasis on race within the film, particularly with different cultural motifs associated with different characters, regardless of the actual race of the actors. Though some critics, particularly jazz musicians, found Mancini’s score to be “faux jazz,” it was still pioneering for the time, introducing popular music sounds into what was previously pseudo-classical and Romantic era music. Different versions of the film further problematize Mancini’s score. The most recent version from 1998 cuts his theme entirely, removing most of his influence from the movie, in an attempt to follow director Orson Welles’s desire to limit the film to only diegetic music.

Works: Orson Welles (director): Touch of Evil (226-40).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz, Film

Contributed by: Emily Baumgart

[+] Pomerance, Murray. “‘The Future’s Not Ours to See’: Song, Singer, Labyrinth in Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much.” In Soundtrack Available: Essays on Film and Popular Music, edited by Pamela Robertson Wojcik and Arthur Knight, 53-73. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001.

The song Que Sera, Sera plays an important part in the plot for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1956 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much. In order to get Jimmy Stewart to agree to be in the film, his agent bundled in others represented by the same company including Ray Evans and Jay Livingston, who had pre-written some songs. Hitchcock was impressed with Que Sera, Sera and used it for a large part of the film’s plot. Bernard Hermann, the film’s composer, was unimpressed (he supposedly referred to the song as a “piece of junk”), but the song plays a large role in the film as a whole. There are many labyrinthine aspects to both the film’s plot and its mise-en-scène, and the song echoes this complexity despite its outwardly simple appearance. Within the film, the song often plays with space through acousmatic placement and with time through its forward looking lyrics set in the past (“When I was just a little girl / I asked my mother ‘What will I be?’”). The diegetic quality of this one popular song aspect of the otherwise classical score is emphasized in that Que Sera, Sera is included in its entirety in the film, an unusual decision for a popular song that both normalizes and emphasizes the performance.

Works: Alfred Hitchcock (director): The Man Who Knew Too Much (53-70).

Sources: Ray Evans and Jay Livingston: Que Sera, Sera (53-70).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Film

Contributed by: Emily Baumgart

[+] Provost, Sarah. “The Dance Hall, Nazi Germany, and Hell: Accruing Meaning through Filmic Uses of Benny Goodman’s ‘Sing Sing Sing.’” Music and the Moving Image 10, no. 2 (Summer 2017): 33-45.

Popular songs can accrue meaning through their place in films. Although the concept of filmic leitmotivs is generally reserved for classical music, it can also apply to uses of popular music. In the case of Benny Goodman’s Sing Sing Sing, the filmic and cross-filmic leitmotivs associate the song not only with the Swing Era in general but also with a feeling of danger and wildness. Neither of these associations comes from the song alone; despite its popularity, the song came at the end of the Swing Era and was not a part of that period’s heyday, and there was no original connotation of danger for the song. The inclusion of Sing Sing Sing began in films with diegetic music, such as its use in dance and concert settings in Hollywood Hotel (1937) and The Benny Goodman Story (1956). These instances help to set up the aural connotation of the music with the essence of the Swing Era. Later uses did not need to be diegetic to evoke these images of the Swing Era, since associations with the music had already entered audience consciousness, and led to mimicked allusions to the song in other films. Later usages with Nazis in Swing Kids (1993) and Hell in Deconstructing Harry (1997) further cement the music’s “dangerous” connotation.

Works: Busby Berkeley (director): Hollywood Hotel (35); Valentine Davies (director): The Benny Goodman Story (36-38); Shinobu Yaguchi (director): Swing Girls (38-39); Thomas Carter (director): Swing Kids (40-41); Michel Hazanavicius (director): The Artist (41); Charles Russell (director): The Mask (41); Anthony Hickox (director): Waxwork (41); Patrice Leconte (director): La Fille sur le Pont (41); Woody Allen (director): New York Stories (41-42), Manhattan Murder Mystery (41-42), Deconstructing Harry (41-43).

Sources: Benny Goodman: Sing Sing Sing (33-43).

Index Classifications: 1900s, 2000s, Jazz, Film

Contributed by: Emily Baumgart

[+] Reynolds, Christopher Alan. “Allusive Traditions and Audiences.” In Motives for Allusion: Context and Content in Nineteenth-Century Music, 140-61. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.

Although composers in the Romantic era did not discuss the concept of allusions and borrowings in their works, there is evidence of borrowing in the writings of music critics and the music composers wrote. It is unknown why composers so infrequently discussed where the allusions came from, but it may be connected to differing levels of audience knowledge: from the amateur “Liebhaber,” the reminiscence-hunting “Kenner,” and an exclusive group close to the composer. These allusive traditions, however, are evidenced in the very fact that fellow composers recognized them. One of the most extensive allusive traditions is that of the “Es ist vollbracht” motive from J. S. Bach’s St. John Passion. It is unclear whether Beethoven knew the St. John Passion, since it was not published in Berlin until 1830, though it is possible that C. P. E. Bach, in quoting his father, might have been the bridge between the two composers’ similar motives. Even if Beethoven did not know the work, later composers such as Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann did, engaging with both the Passion and Beethoven’s similar motives in their own works. There is a particularly strong case with Mendelssohn’s Elijah due to the formal parallels and similarities between Jesus and Elijah. There may have also been an extramusical aspect of this motive as a topic for death and suffering. Connecting Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto to this extramusical tradition means that Beethoven was engaging with this theme for about two decades, putting his first use of the theme in the period of The Heiligenstadt Testament. Regardless of whether Beethoven did actually know the source of the motive, the end result is an allusive tradition not only of Bach but of Beethoven as well.

Works: Beethoven: An die ferne Geliebte, Op. 98 (143-44); Robert Schumann: Lieder und Gesänge aus Goethes Wilhelm Meister (143-44), Symphony No. 2 in C Major, Op. 61 (143-44); Brahms: Piano Sonata No. 2 in F-sharp Minor, Op. 2 (144-45); Luigi Cherubini: Pater noster (145-46); Louis Spohr: Vater unser (145); Felix Mendelssohn: Die erste Walpurgisnacht (146); Brahms: Balladen (147); Felix Mendelssohn: Violin Sonata No. 2 in F Minor, Op. 4 (147); Ferdinand Hiller: Die Zerströrung Jerusalems (147); Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 31 in A-flat Major, Op. 110 (147-48); Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel: Das Jahr (149), Beharre (149); Robert Schumann: Piano Quintet in E-flat Major, Op. 44 (149, 153-54); Felix Mendelssohn: Capriccio for Cello and Piano (150), Elijah (151-53), String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 13 (153); Robert Schumann: Symphony in G Minor (unfinished) (153-54); C.P.E. Bach: Dank-Hymne der Freundschaft (155-56), Passions-Cantate (155-56), Cello Concerto in A Minor (155-56); Beethoven: Sonata for Cello and Piano, Op. 69 (156), Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 37 (156-58); Mozart: Concerto for Horn No. 4 in E-flat Major, K.495 (156-58); Prince Louis Ferdinand: Grosses Trio (157-58).

Sources: Beethoven: An die ferne Geliebte, Op. 98 (143); Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel: Lieder für das Pianoforte, Op. 2, No. 2 (144-45); Anonymous: Vater unser (146), Ach Vater unser, der du bist im Himmelreich (146); Johann Sebastian Bach: St. John Passion, BWV 245 (147-53, 155); Beethoven: Cello Sonata No. 3 in A Major, Op. 69 (149, 153), String Quartet No. 11 in F Minor, Op. 95 (153), String Quartet No. 13 in B-flat Major, Op. 130 (153), String Quartet No. 14 in C# Minor, Op. 131 (153), String Quartet No. 15 in A Minor, Op. 132 (153), String Quartet No. 16 in F Major, Op. 135 (153).

Index Classifications: 1700s, 1800s

Contributed by: Emily Baumgart

[+] Rona, Jeff. “Making Soundtracks, Part 1: Those Pesky Songs that Show Up in Between Your Cues - Who Puts ’em There, Anyway?” and “Making Soundtracks, Part 2: More On the Differences between the Score and the Soundtrack.” In The Routledge Film Music Sourcebook, ed. James Wierzbicki, Nathan Platte, and Colin Roust, 259-64. New York: Routledge, 2012.

Composers of film scores are not usually involved in the choice of any pre-existing songs that appear within the film, but these works are often very important to both the narrative of the film and to the soundtrack itself. Instead, these choices are made by the music supervisor, who decides what songs should be included in the film, usually with specific feedback from the director. There are completely different budgets for the music supervisor to license films and the film composer to create a new score. The two must coordinate in order to create a score and soundtrack that work together. Sometimes the supervisor has chosen the songs for the film long before the composer is brought onto the project, which can make this collaboration difficult. In other cases, the composer is chosen at the start of the film, which can change the dynamic. The use of the temp score can be a stumbling block to both the composer and music supervisor, who are often asked to emulate the temp track, and directors and writers often request songs from the music supervisor with no thought to how much the licensing fees for those songs cost.

Works: Jay Roach (director): Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (262); Giorgio Moroder: Score to Metropolis (263); Sam Mendes (director): American Beauty (263-64).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Film

Contributed by: Emily Baumgart

[+] Schroeder, Dan. “Shadow of a Waltz.” In Hitchcock’s Ear: Music and the Director’s Art, 101-27. New York: Continuum, 2012.

Alfred Hitchcock’s scripts were often driven by a vision of what the audio and visual effects would be, and this starting premise is very perceivable in Shadow of a Doubt. From the very beginning, the plot of the film is linked to visual images of dancing and audio elements of the Waltz from Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow, although the two do not synchronize and the phrasing becomes distorted. The waltz appears in many guises throughout the film: both as diegetic and nondiegetic music, as well as the textual connection to Uncle Charlie named as the “Merry Widow Murderer.” However, Lehár’s music in the nondiegetic space has been distorted to the point where one could no longer dance to it, resulting in an effect similar to and probably inspired by Ravel’s La Valse that influences the film’s form and structure. The two-part form of Ravel’s piece, in which discordant passages gradually overtake the waltz tune, impacts the film’s form, where everyday, innocent life in a typical American town is gradually darkened and disrupted by a murderer’s presence. Both the diegetic and nondiegetic instances of Merry Widow waltz emphasize this distortion and appear at key points in the narrative, such as young Charlie discovering the identity of her uncle and his death at the end of the film.

Works: Alfred Hitchcock (director): Shadow of a Doubt (101-127), Suspicion (105, 107).

Sources: Franz Lehár: Waltz from The Merry Widow (103-27); Johann Strauss II: Wiener Blut (105); Ravel: La Valse (106-111, 113, 118-19).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Film

Contributed by: Emily Baumgart



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