Movie Music Analysis

Jingwei Liu

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Chapter 1

Movie basic information

Section 1 Basic background introduction

Story line

Shortly after the Sec-ond World War, Max, a transplanted Ameri-can, visits an English pawn shop to sell his trumpet. The shop-keeper recognizes the tune Max plays as one on a wax mas-ter of an unreleased recording, discov-ered and restored from shards found in a piano salvaged from a cruise ship turned hospital ship, now slated for demoli-

tion. This chance discovery prompts a story from Max, which he relates both to the shopkeeper and later to the official re-sponsible for the doomed vessel, for Max is a born storyteller. Though now down on his luck and disillusioned by his war-time experiences, the New Orleans-born Max was once an en-thusiastic and gifted young jazz musician, whose longest gig was several years with the house band aboard the Virginian, a posh cruise ship. While gaining his sea legs, he was be-

friended by another young man, the pianist in the same band, whose long unlikely name was Danny Boodman T.D. Lemons 1900, though everyone just called him 1900, the year of his birth. ...

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DirectorGiuseppe Torna-tore (born 27 May 1956) is an Italian film direc-tor and screen-writer.

Born in Baghe-ria near Palermo, Tornatore developed an interest in acting and the theatre from at least the age of 16 and put on works by Luigi Pirandello and Eduardo De Filippo.

He worked initially as a freelance photographer. Then, switching to

Tim Roth: Danny Boodmann T.D. Lemon Nineteen Hun-dred '1900'

Gallery 1.1 Cast info

After we talk about the basic story line and content of the movie, let’s do some survey and questions to know that how do you like the movie and what do you think about the movie

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Review 1.1 A little survey

Check Answer

Have you watched this movie before? And how do you like it?

A. Yes, like it so much

B. Yes, but don’t like it

C. No, but want to watch it in the fu-ture

D. No, and have no interest at all

Movie 1.1 Movie official trailer

Section 2

Interactive learning activities

The film concerns a virtuoso pianist, so the opportunities for stunning musical performances are plentiful; Morricone's score is embellished by pieces from rag-time legends Scott Joplin and Jelly Roll Morton, as well as an original rock bal-lad with lyrics written and sung by Roger Waters and guitar work from Ed-die Van Halen.

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Audio 1.1 Please listen to this audio piece and an-swer the ques-tions.

Review 1.2 About the theme music

Check Answer

The audio is playing the theme music of this movie, listen to the music, what do you think of the emotion of the theme of the movie?

A. Sad

B. Dramatic

C. Release & open

D. Nervous

Review 1.3 Review the basic info of the movie

Check Answer

When did this movie published?

A. 1900

B. 1988

C. 2007

D. 1998

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Chapter 2

About the music in movie

Section 1

Background informationThe music of the film is composed by Ennio Morricone and it is the key fac-tor of this movie. The music helps tell the story, adds to the atmosphere and helps portray the various emotions felt by the characters. There are many scenes throughout the film that carried with emotional weight and lasting im-pact. Not only the music but also the sound track of the movie, makes the movie very impressive.

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1 - Big Fat Ham2 - The Crave3 - Fingerbreaker

Movie 2.1 The classic snatch－Piano duel

Review 2.1 Tricking question

Check Answer

After watching the snatch of piano duel, which choice you think is the best way to explain why 1900 won the duel?

A. 1900 can play piano faster

B. 1900 can repeat the music only by listen one time

C. 1900 can ignite the cigarette with piano not lighter

D. 1900 have his talent comprehend ability and skills of music

Section 2

General music appreciationMovie as an integrated art that com-bined music, images, and many compo-nents, the music of a movie is quite inde-pendent, but also closely stick to the story line. Music have several functions

in the movie.

Firstly, the music can shape the role in the movie. For ex-ample, in the begin-ning of the movie, the worker Danny was laying on the bed, the blues ex-pressed the sad and lonely of Danny. The audi-ence can feel the lonely with both scene and music.

Secondly, the mu-sic can help creat-ing different atmos-phere. The different

musical instruments have different sounds and can give peo-ple different atmosphere. For example, violin is in high tone and can make people feel happy, the double bass is in low tone and can bring people depressed emotion. In this movie, the different musical instruments helped transferred the at-mosphere. For an instant, the piano duel is very intensive, af-

ter the duel finished and people cheered up with 1900, the mu-sical instruments changed to orches-tra to created a de-lightful environment. (We can retrieve this piece from the previ-ous video).

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Audio 2.1 Danny’s blues

Review 2.2

Check Answer

If we want to shape a role which is a little lovely girl is very happy on the way to school. Which musical instru-ment you think would be better match?

A. trumpet with violin

B. bass or viola

C. drum

D. harp and flute

Review 2.3

Check Answer

Music is an independent component of the movie, but it is an essential part that can not appreciate without movie scenes.

A. True

B. False

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Featured snatch

Chapter 3

Snatch 1Playing love

In one scene 1900 is playing a piano and when he looks up through a port-hole he sees a lovely Italian immigrant woman on the other side, though she does not see him. The moment 1900 sees her, he is instantly inspired to play

a beautifully haunt-ing piece, right off the top of his head, that perfectly illiter-ates the beauty he sees in this woman and the new feel-ings she sparks within him. This en-tire scene is done with no dialogue and despite that it communicates the characters’ emo-tions impressively.

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Audio 3.1 Play-ing love

This is the scene that 1900 met the girl and com-posed a full of loved music piece to express his emo-tion without any word.

Movie 3.1 Playing love snatch

Review 3.1

Check Answer

If we try to only listen to the music with-out watching the movie, what do you think of the emotion of the image?

A. Depressed

B. Romantic

C. Desperate

D. Happy

We can tell from the music sheet of this piece, the flow of the notes are very smooth and the pace is stay the same makes the music very soft and quiet.

(You could go to this link to preview these famous music.)

And this music is in D Major, so the whole music is full of openness, bright. This is warmest major, just like the fire in thin winter that can warm the heart. And this music truly match the impression of the girl out the window that like sun-shine throw into the window and ignite 1900’s heart.

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Review 3.2

Check Answer

Listen to the music of the playing love, which music piece you think is more similar with it?

A. Mozart: Eine Kleine Nachtmusik: Allegro

B. Pachelbel: Canon in D

C. Beethoven: Symphony No. 5: I

D. Strauss: Blue Danube

Snatch 2Magic Waltz

This piece is a relief music that can cheer you up when afraid or panic. The pianist is not unknown, her name is Gilda Buttà, an italian pianist who played all the music in the film. And this is the one of some piece that not composed by Mr. Morri-cone. The composer is Amedeo Tommasi.

The scene of this piece is the most romantic snatch in my opinion, that the whole piano and music and Max with 1900 swing with the ship and the music together. All the things and

people go with the same pace and tune. It makes the thunder night much more romantic and beautiful than scared. And also the friendship between Max and 1900 stared at this point.

The magic and beauty of the music and movie is they all match together and make audience feel the same enjoyable parallel track play together. The best way to immerse the mu-sic into the movie is making audience didn’t pay attention to the music but can remember the music flow.

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Movie 3.2 Magic Waltz Review 3.3

Check Answer

In the beginning of the snatch, the woodwind instrument has a small piece to start the story. What function do you think it would be?

A. Teasing Max’s seasickness

B. Contrast and transfer to waltz

C. All of above

D. None of above

References Tornatore, G. (2005). The legend of 1900.

Chen, Y. H., Kuo, J. H., Chu, W. T., & Wu, J. L. (2006, Janu-ary). Movie emotional event detection based on music mood and video tempo. In Consumer Electronics, 2006. ICCE'06. 2006 Digest of Technical Papers. International Conference on (pp. 151-152). IEEE.

Zhuang, L., Jing, F., & Zhu, X. Y. (2006, November). Movie re-view mining and summarization. In Proceedings of the 15th ACM international conference on Information and knowledge management (pp. 43-50). ACM.

Hoeckner, B., Wyatt, E. W., Decety, J., & Nusbaum, H. (2011). Film music influences how viewers relate to movie characters. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 5(2), 146.

Smith, J. (1999). Movie music as moving music: Emotion, cog-nition, and the film score. Passionate views: Film, cognition, and emotion, 146-167.

Video retrieve from: www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA8v9MamhJE

Video retrieve from:www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWlBCoy2wh8

Video retrieve from: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZaJhLc9wj8

Video retrieve from: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lBnr9RyISU

Music retrieve from: https://youtu.be/h4jLY_d2Iyg?list=PL69329B8A15857EEF

Music retrieve from:https://youtu.be/m6x2wT_DCD0?list=PL69329B8A15857EEF

Music retrieve from: https://youtu.be/aSoe7-sAmXI?list=PL69329B8A15857EEF

Picture retrieve from: www.nytimes.com/movies/.../Giuseppe-Tornatore

Pictures retrieve from: www.imdb.com/title/tt0120731/

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Amedeo Tommasi

Jazz Pianist. Born: December 1, 1935 (age 79), Trieste, ItalyAlbums: The Sound, The Legend, Zodiac, Detto tra noi, Forever, More

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Index

Chapter 3 - Magic Waltz

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D Major

Major scales contain 7 notes, and all use the  W-W-H-W-W-W-H  tone / half-tone pat-tern to identify the note positions. D major (or the key of D) is a major scale based on D, consisting of the pitches D, E, F♯, G, A, B, and C♯. Its key signature consists of two sharps. Its relative minor is B minor and its parallel minor is D minor.

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Index

Chapter 3 - Playing love

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Double bass

The double bass is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra. It is a transposing instrument and is typically notated one octave higher than sounding to avoid excessive ledger lines.

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Chapter 2 - General music appreciation

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Eddie Van Halen

"Eddie" Van Halen is a Dutch-born American musician, songwriter and producer. He is best known as the lead guitarist, occasional keyboardist and co-founder of the hard rock band Van Halen.

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Jelly Roll Morton

Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe, known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton, was an Ameri-can ragtime and early jazz pianist, bandleader and composer who started his career in New Orleans, Louisiana.

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Roger Waters

George Roger Waters is an English musician, singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and composer.

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Scott Joplin

Scott Joplin was an African-American composer and pianist. Joplin achieved fame for his ragtime compositions and was dubbed the "King of Ragtime Writers".

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Trumpet

Any of a family of brass wind instruments with a powerful,penetrating tone, consisting of a tube commonly curved once or twice around on itself and having a cup-shaped mouthpiece at one end and a flaring bell at the other.

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Chapter 1 - Basic background instroduction

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