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Great work.
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Posted: |
Feb 18, 2015 - 4:23 PM
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By: |
Mike West
(Member)
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Very interesting analysis, thanks for that!
Astute observations and musical descriptions, interesting to read.
If you are interested there is another thread I started titled "in-depth musical discussions: interstellar".
There are some ideas which might interest you, though they are in no way structured like
your analysis. I can't find it with the search engine.
I think there are some interpretations in your point of view which are not nailing it, you overlook some important aspects and concepts of the score
and there are also some slight imprecisions.
The script page Nolan gave Zimmer, your description is misleading. Zimmer wrote in an interview
this was about a child and a father, Zimmer interpreted it as a boy learning later it was a girl. Though the sources for that story about the origin (interviews, cd booklet, article in the making of book etc) are not consistent, they are contradicting in details.
In the earlier script version by Jonathan Nolan for Spielberg it was a boy.
So there was probably no intention to deliberately avoid clichès here.
And the track Day One, noone knows how much is in there from the piece Zimmer wrote
after reading that one page. He also never said it is that piece (though the name suggests it).
When talking about that origin piece about the first page, sometimes the makers said in the sources it was for piano,
sometimes for organ and piano, sometimes with strings, so this is also not really firm ground.
Nolan says the organ conveys a sense of religious feelings, which is true, but I do not agree
that it is used in film music on that purpose. It is used to suggest the visuals have something to do
with the church, not necessarily religiosity. More often even, it is used in horror films, especially low budget films.
your interpretation of Detach is just one which happens to fit in your analysis,
but I think it simplifys it.
Your Wonder theme is not described properly, this is an ultra slow motion melody channeling Strauss who channels Mozart.
I miss the beginning music of Dreaming of the Crash (and the scene when he leaves), which is kind of a proto-theme for Cooper and Murph.
This music sets the C as a tonic firmly, so when Cooper and Murph starts the bass pedal is rather the tonic than the fifth.
I agree that it is coloured like a fifth a bit, so there is an ambiguity, but your description simplifys it. The point is not that it is the fifth, it is that it is ambigious I think.
And I miss the canonic structure in your analysis, which is an integral part of that theme.
What I miss in your analysis is what is the most important thing about the score IMO, to point out
the anti-genre approach and the importance of the conceptualization of it.
The music itself is not really THAT brillant or original, being influenced by Sibelius, Messiaen, Glass,
Strauss and Mahler, and the organ stuff actually just interchangeably noodling around some not-sensational chords.
But the idea to marry that picture and those visuals with that musical vocabular, grammar and style, that is what is absolutely brillant about that score.
I hope this does not sound too harsh, your ideas are good, and I think your descriptions of the themes are interesting,
perhaps not pointing out the essential nuts and bolts in every spot, but still very insightful and generally astute.
Your structural corset for the score is quite interesting, and I believe that it took a lot of time to map it out. But I think it is not nailing it.
Very much appreciate your efforts, there is rarely musical in-depth musical discussion here, and when it is it is a one-way monologue rather than really an exchange, so I hope you don't feel offended when I give my two cents based on my interest in and spent time with the score and my background
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Posted: |
Feb 18, 2015 - 9:08 PM
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By: |
Ludwig van
(Member)
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Thank you, Mike, for such an in-depth response to my post! There's lots to mull over, so I would just like to ask a few questions to clarify some of the points you raise.
First, when you say the Wonder theme is channeling Mozart through Strauss, do you have certain pieces in mind? I might agree with Strauss (assuming you're talking about R. Strauss), but Mozart I'm not seeing. Perhaps you could fill me in.
I did not know there was so much ambiguity about the one-page letter. From the interview I saw, Zimmer seemed to describe it as I wrote, but maybe Zimmer was confused and it was actually a child, not a son? Or was that his interpretation of "child"?
You're right that there's much more one could say about the themes and their orchestration in the score. If the analysis seems like an oversimplification, that's probably the result of my being rather brief, that is, I had to stop somewhere, and these posts are more like analytical samplings than overarching theories of how the score is structured.
About the Murph and Cooper theme, and the question of the function of the bass note, I think you're right that it sounds like a tonic when it first enters. Once the melody announces that B-flat, though, my own feeling is that we hear it as belonging to the key rather than standing outside of it. While C surely sounds like a tonic when it first enters, the harmonic wavering between dominant and tonic of F make it hard for me not to hear F as the tonic once the melody comes in. If these phrases of the theme included a dominant of C, I'd be more likely to hear C as tonic. At most, I think there's some ambiguity as you say, but not enough for me to hear C as tonic, especially since dominant pedals are so common in tonal music, it's an easy sell.
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Posted: |
Feb 19, 2015 - 6:57 AM
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By: |
Mike West
(Member)
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This score would be great and very original if it wasn't a copy of Morricone's "Madalena".
really, Hugh, I noticed your posts and thread about your "discovery" sometime ago and ignored it because I thought it will
just disappear, and I did not want to spend time on it nor to be negative.
but you keep posting it again and again.
As others already pointed out, both scores, Interstellar and the Morricone, happen to have similarities in orchestrations,
and maybe also some aspects in common, which are inherent in western music, and maybe some figures which
are inherent in setting music to keyboard instrument, because humans have two hands with five fingers on
each hand.
But as a professional musician trained and specialized in composition and music theory also, teaching
music at a University etc etc, so not as a fan-boy,
based on that expertise I can assure you you are wrong.
All asian people might look alike for non-asian people, and gorillas have a lot in common with humans in certain aspects and situations, but not seing the differences tells more about the one who looks, not the things looked at.
So please don't put your head out of the window when you have actually no knowledge to see
difference. When you do so and accuse people, that is not saying the "obvious" but trolling.
We are all living under the same heavens but do not have the same horizon,
your horizon here disables you to know what is " obvious".
And this is not about opinions.
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Wasn't the original demo piece in question has been included in the Ill-Humored Solar Profession box set?
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Posted: |
Feb 19, 2015 - 8:30 AM
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By: |
Mike West
(Member)
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First, when you say the Wonder theme is channeling Mozart through Strauss, do you have certain pieces in mind? I might agree with Strauss (assuming you're talking about R. Strauss), but Mozart I'm not seeing. Perhaps you could fill me in.
I thought it's pretty obvious this theme is a slowed down version of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde ...
no, there is a certain section leading to a climax which is only a small part of the Tristan and Isolde theme,
Zimmer references this section in "Detach" using it in slow motion when Cooper detaches, and only there.
Ludwig van: the problems with simplified corsets as yours, by all advantages of giving easily insight in complex architecture, becomes very apparant when speaking of what you named the Wonder theme. You are discussing just the very very beginning of that music.
(The problem starts even earlier I think, because the question is what is a theme? To me the opening bars are a texture, setting the mood for the long lines to follow which are rather the theme. Theme as a term is often used and often used unreflected, in lack of established other terms, but that is another discussion we could start another thread with)
However, Zimmer labeled his track "dust", and from my memory he labeled the very same music later on (and not theme for me really here, because it is acutally the very same music, so why not say music which is more general bit definitely correct) "I 'm going home", but interestingly on the Illuminated boxes second disc, there is a concept suite with that music titled "Murph"!
And the long high violin-lines which follow those opening bars you are analyzing, that is a theme in slow motion.
The sequence of basically step-wise or triadic notes here with all the free leading notes (f- sharp to g, d-sharp to e, g-sharp to a etc), this is right from a Mozart theme, it is actually the very same grammar, but in the viennese classical
era this kind of slow tempo for events was not-existing yet. Enter Strauss: in his time those very slow and extreme tempi of events are common. Add a few signature late-romantic additions to chords, and let the melody flow openly like an endless, eternal melody, you are in the minds and aesthetics of Wagner, Mahler, Strauss and also Bruckner instead of Mozarts.
When listening to "Murph" there is even a taste of Johann Strauss in there, it has the same kind of rocking vibe than the danube waltz in ultra slow motion. This is because of the harmonies used in the same timing relations, but sooooo slow. And there is kind of a periodic structure, but too slow to be heard really in that context.
In Messiaens Turangalila Symphony there is a similar high violin line, and I remember in one of the Sibelius symphonys as well (can't say which one from my memory)
Back to the question if it is the 5th or tonic in the bass pedal.
usually in major-minor-mode music adding a minor seventh to a chord makes this chord to a dominant, that is true,
but often it also just produces an ambiguity, especially in slow tempi and romantic grammar.
Compare the german requiem by brahms, the very beginning: f natural in the basses, than the E-flat.
But it is all in F major, those notes kind of drift more freely through the tonality as usual.
It gives a very subdominantian touch to the music, which is typical for brahms.
In german we have the term of a "dominantisierte Tonika", which could be applied here
In that sense I described, that Cooper and Murph theme (I think also here by narrowing it to that name you are
not nailing it, there is more about that theme than this, I wrote a lot about it in that other thread) has the same
subdominantian and with that a kind of brahmsian harmonic/melodic colouring - interestingly switching from
major to minor subdominantian chords. And switching in the octaves.
So is the c tonic or 5th? The major/minor mode thing has an instability rather applied to a subdominant. And where
is the concluding chord when it is really a fifth?
And there is the strong c-major concluding swelling organ chord, which signals : "tonic"
very strong. So when this is a fifth pedal in the bass, where is the conclusion to the tonic?
That heading to F-major rather illustrates the openness, the striving away from something,
and not towards something. And the minor/major changing thing underlines that
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Posted: |
Feb 19, 2015 - 11:33 AM
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By: |
Ludwig van
(Member)
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Back to the question if it is the 5th or tonic in the bass pedal.
usually in major-minor-mode music adding a minor seventh to a chord makes this chord to a dominant, that is true,
but often it also just produces an ambiguity, especially in slow tempi and romantic grammar.
Compare the german requiem by brahms, the very beginning: f natural in the basses, than the E-flat.
But it is all in F major, those notes kind of drift more freely through the tonality as usual.
It gives a very subdominantian touch to the music, which is typical for brahms.
In german we have the term of a "dominantisierte Tonika", which could be applied here
...
So is the c tonic or 5th? The major/minor mode thing has an instability rather applied to a subdominant. And where
is the concluding chord when it is really a fifth?
And there is the strong c-major concluding swelling organ chord, which signals : "tonic"
very strong. So when this is a fifth pedal in the bass, where is the conclusion to the tonic?
That heading to F-major rather illustrates the openness, the striving away from something,
and not towards something. And the minor/major changing thing underlines that
Great points, Mike. I wonder if we might be differing on the scale on which we hear the dominant or tonic pedal. I wholeheartedly agree that in the context of the cue as a whole, C is the tonic. Could we not hear F take over in the middle of the cue as tonic though, then return to C with the strong organ chord you mention? Not that this erases C as tonic, but rather conflicts with it, suggesting in the short term that the music may be headed towards this new key. Then, once those two-note fragments based on the same melody finally settle onto a single chord, that's when C seems to retrieve its status as true tonic.
Overall, I suppose I'm focusing on the small scale at the expense of larger scale issues like those you raise. As I said, though, my purpose is not to deliberately mislead, but rather to give readers a taste of some of the score's main ingredients. And with a score like this, the strokes are painted with such a mammoth brush that it's difficult to be both concise and give a sense of the large-scale structure. But I'm certainly glad you mention all these points. Very informative indeed.
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