Journal of Film Music 5.1-2 (2012) 165-168 ISSN (print) 1087-7142doi:10.1558/jfm.v5i1-2.165 ISSN (online) 1758-860X

© Copyright the International Film Music Society, published by Equinox Publishing Ltd 2013, Unit S3, Kelham House, 3 Lancaster Street, Sheffield, S3 8AF.

Introduction

John Williams, who celebrated his eightieth birthday in 2012, has written music for practically every genre—from science fiction to comedy—and has created more than one hundred film scores in his long and successful career. And there is still no end in sight. If you listen to all his fantastic scores, the question arises: How does he manage to compose such highly differentiated scores within only a few weeks? Maybe one answer—besides his outstanding talent—lies in his componential system of riffs and motifs which he develops like building blocks, basic patterns that are varied and adapted from film to film depending upon the specific situation at hand. Consider the similarity of the scherzos that accompany the chases in the Indiana Jones episodes,

E.T. (1982), and—to name a recent film—The Adventures of Tintin (2011).

This valid method of using basic patterns for special situations has a long tradition in film history. During the silent-film era, composers such as John Stepan Zamecnik, Giuseppe Becce, Hans Erdmann, and Erno Rapée catalogued pieces of music of different origin in their “Kinotheken” and matched them to individual situations and moods in order to facilitate everyday accompaniment to various films for film musicians—just a few prestigious silent-film productions of that time boast a specially written score. It was only with the introduction of sound film that originally composed film music became common practice and has remained so to this day.

Arising as the main effect of the continuously growing time pressure for film composers, countless

Composing with Types and Flexible Modules: John Williams’ Two-Note Ostinato for Jaws and its Use in Film-Music History

PETER MOORMANNUniversity of ColognePeter.moormann@uni-koeln.de

Abstract: Creator of more than one hundred film scores, John Williams is one of the world’s most successful film composers. In his long career, Williams (b. 1932) has written music for practically every genre from science fiction to comedy. The question arises: how does he create his highly differentiated scores so quickly? One answer lies in his componential system of riffs and motifs he develops like building blocks—basic patterns that are varied and adapted from film to film, depending upon the specific situation at hand. These building blocks can be traced back to musical idioms originally formed in the nineteenth century, subsequently adapted for silent films and then for talkies.

Keywords: Jaws; John Williams; Kinothek; ostinato

ARTICLE

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scores are created from year to year with the help of professional arrangers and orchestrators. And, over and over again, music is written for standardized scenes such as chases, love scenes, or farewells. Despite the diversity of ideas, it seems remarkable that film composers often rely on similar musical patterns, formulas, and models. And not only scores from film history are used as a template, but also orchestral music of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries such as program music, ballet, and opera.

This principle of referential composing is, however, no genuine invention of the cinema industry, but has a long tradition in music practice. To cite themes and motifs from other compositions enjoyed great popularity, particularly in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, where one finds quite similar ways of working. Within a very short space of time, commissioned composers had to write scores for particular purposes. To cope with the heavy workload, parody (in the sense of a modified reliance on existing forms and materials) was common practice. For example, the cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach contain several hundred parodies. Following the nineteenth century, this compositional method was no longer reconcilable with the postulated notion of the genius and increasingly shrank into the background (opera, ballet, and stage music seemed to be exempt from this development). It was only with the advent of film that this principle regained tremendous importance and is still a suitable method to cope with the mass production of film music on a high artistic level.

Historical Remarks on the Semantic Function of the Two-Note Ostinato

One of the most flexible modules film composers can integrate in their scores is the ostinato. Especially in situations of danger and chases, ostinati play an important role. The mini-structure of the module allows composers to create music to exactly fit the fast cutting rhythm in these situations and gives them the ability to adjust the length of their cues perfectly to the frames.

One of the most prominent small-scale compositional structures in film-music history is the two-note ostinato in Steven Spielberg’s famous horror film Jaws (1975). This ostinato with the ascending minor second in the low strings plays a vital role in the overall composition of the film by being directly connected with the presence of the shark. John

Williams himself describes the flexibility and the dramatic variability of the ostinato as follows:

One could alter the speed of this ostinato, it could be: note, note, note, note, any kind of alteration of the speed to very slow, very fast, very soft, very loud. All these things could manipulate the moment to illustrate that the shark was at the highest pitch of frenzy or something lower. And this simple dramatic device seemed to be what we needed.1

The high level of awareness of this pattern can be indicated by the many direct quotations of Williams’ two-note ostinato by other film composers—especially in the sense of parody. Just one year after Jaws, Blake Edwards’ comedy The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976) appeared. At the very end of the film, the action is transformed into a cartoon. Inspector Clouseau is pushed into the water and attacked by the now over-sized pink panther, this being a graphic reference to the Jaws poster. During this sequence, composer Henry Mancini cites the John Williams’ music and uses it as an introduction to his jazzy main theme.2 Another parody can be found in the intro to Airplane (1980), directed by Jim Abrahams with music by Elmer Bernstein. Echoing the first night scene from Jaws, the vertical stabilizer of an airplane cuts through the clouds while the two-note ostinato emphasizes the impression of a shark. Suddenly, the huge plane appears and the music is at the highest pitch of frenzy.3 Fourteen years after Jaws, Miles Goodman cites Williams’ music in Ron Daniels’ comedy K-9. When James Belushi is trying to make love to his fiancée, he feels the eyes of his dog, K9, watching them. And as they try to continue, K9 slips under the bed cover in order to finally stop them. The sequence’s wit depends highly on the citation of the ostinato and its crescendo.4 Jaws was so successful worldwide, including in Germany, that comedian Otto Waalkes referred to the two-note ostinato in his first feature film Otto–Der Film (1985). Composer Herb Geller reverses Williams’ pattern during a scene where Otto, a totally naive man, gets caught in the clutches of a money lender. While Otto is signing the pernicious contract, the mean mafia-don-like man from the company “Shark & Co” puts a chicken wing into a piranha aquarium. However, there are film composers who deal with the two-note ostinato in a more serious

1 Interview with John Williams for the laser disc Jaws. Limited Edition Signature Collection. MCA/Universal 1995.2 See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OesGTIwm1yM3 See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dpnynl7aXcA4 See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdlWdD9KVCY&feature=player_detailpage#t=194s

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way. For example, in Die Hard from 1988, Michael Kamen combines a two-note ostinato in the low strings with the appearance of John McClane (Bruce Willis), shortly before he takes his revenge.

In all the film extracts, the composers play with the semantic field of this ostinato type that includes tension, threats, persecution, risk of death, fear, and helplessness. These attributions of meaning are, in most cases, closely related to the experiences of the audience in the cinema. And Jaws seems to be the fundamental prime for these attributions. Of course, it can be questioned whether this emotional code can be assigned to the motif in general. But within the context of film music, one can find various examples of two-note ostinati that may have served as an inspiration for Williams himself.

Apart from Bernard Herrmann’s groundbreaking score for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) and Sergei Prokoviev’s music for the “Battle on the Ice” scene in Sergei Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky (1938),5 Williams must have been familiar with Max Steiner’s score for Pursued (1947). In this Western by Raoul Walsh, Steiner placed a two-note ostinato in a scene where a group of armed men sneak up to the house of the hero (Robert Mitchum) in order to kill him. By chromatic sequencing of the two-note ostinato, Steiner increases the tension. In this context, the two-note ostinato also seems to be connected with power, threats, and persecution. Not only in American cinema, but also in films from Europe—especially from Italy with its great opera tradition—this ostinato type is used dramatically in much the same way. In two films by Luchino Visconti, one can find two-note ostinati. In Obsession (1943), composer Giuseppe Rosati integrated it into his opening music—presented by strings with martial aggressiveness.6 Here, the composer seems to anticipate the passion of forbidden love and the resulting murder. The sharp accents of strings and drums allude to Igor Stavinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring (1913) and also foreshadow Herrmann’s score for Psycho. In Visconti’s Rocco and his Brothers (1960), Nina Rota uses a two-note ostinato in the low strings immediately before the jealous brother stabs his former girlfriend to death.7 And composer Alessandro Cicognini, too, presents an ostinato in Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (1948), probably to indicate the

5 See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2YYfjpphMU&feature=player_detailpage#t=143s, I would like to thank William H. Rosar for this valuable hint.6 See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcCoK7qnjyo&feature=player_detailpage#t=83s7 See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9M5kh9OpcM&feature=player_detailpage#t=8927s

inner tension of the desperate father before he decides to steal a bike.8

To revert to America, Walt Disney’s animated film Fantasia (1940) is also a source of interest. One of the various pieces of classical music that were visualized in the film is Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. This work was chosen for the scenario of the early days of the earth. A sequence from the “Dance of the Youths” (part one, second section, figure 1, bar 13), which is based on continuously repeated chords and an ostinato, is visually accompanied by the appearance of a terrifying Tyrannosaurus Rex.9 Its rhythmic quality, its motor-like pulsation can almost physically be felt. Again, with Stravinsky, this ostinato-type exists in the context of death. Precursor material can be found in the third movement of the ballet Petrushka (UA: 1911). If one searches for other possible references in classical music, and especially in program music, Modest Mussorgsky’s Night on the Bare Mountain (1886) comes to mind. Right at the beginning, double basses create a demonic ground by using quite a similar structure. Even in Richard Wagner’s opera The Flying Dutchman (premiered 1843) Erik’s saying, “Satan has ensnared you” (second part, duet no. 5, bars 238 to 240) is followed by a quasi-diabolic chord repetition, quite similar to that of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.

Conclusion

The aim of this text is to show that there seems to be a quite stable semantic function of this special two-note ostinato within the history of film music, ballet, and program music. The standards for “scene music” in the late nineteenth century must have had a great influence on the ostinati and “vamping” types used by cinema pianists and organists in the silent era. It should be stressed that one cannot generalize about the semantic quality of the repeated half-tone. For example, the beginning of Beethoven’s For Elise has nothing to do with the sound, the expression and the semantic quality of the low strings in Jaws. This latter type, which is deeply rooted in the cultural memory of the audience, serves as a perfect module for composers and film composers to underscore moments of danger and threat. And if you listen to the low strings at the beginning of Krzysztof Penderecki’s “Resurrection” piano concerto, it is almost impossible not to remember the music of

8 See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyqBRIQhCTY&feature=player_detailpage#t=518s9 See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGdK9jpn19w&feature=player_detailpage#t=416s

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Jaws. So the semantic determination of types that are frequently used in film music has had an enormous influence on how we listen to contemporary classical music.

The two-note ostinato is only one example of many modules that Williams uses in his scores. Some other patterns that are typical for Williams’ film scores should, at least, be mentioned. In situations where the protagonists of the film are preparing for an attack—such as the crew on board of The Orca in Jaws, the army in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the scientists in E.T., or the Nazis in Indiana Jones—Williams uses idioms of military music such as signals and fanfares for their semantic predetermination. And of course, the form of the military march, which is typical of music in the operas of the niuneteenth century, is prominent in Williams’ scores, too. Heroes like

Indiana Jones or Superman and villains such as Darth Vader are characterized by marches. The different parts of the march are convenient to highlight diverse aspects of the various individuals. For example, in Indiana Jones, Williams presents all parts of the march in sequence only after Indiana Jones has overcome all obstacles. One can therefore follow the character’s development on the basis of the march’s structure.

Finally, for a detailed analysis of types and modules used in film music, it could be fruitful to broaden the perspective and focus on video-game music. The scores, especially for role-playing games, are built upon a plethora of flexible modules that are interlinked by specific situations. And many composers of video-game music often refer to film music and use all the genre conventions developed during the last hundred years.

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