scott murphy_scoring loss in some recent popular film and television

Scoring Loss in Some Recent Popular Film and Television

A certain tonally- and temporally oriented progression of two triads, dwelt upon usually throughundulation, accompanies scenes depicting the contemplation of a considerable sorrowful loss inmany popular films and throughout one television program produced between 1985 and 2012. Inlieu of any strong stylistic precedent for this musico-dramatic association, certain structural relation-ships between the two triads relative to other triadic pairings may account for possible motivations ofthe association.

Keywords: film music, television music, tonality, triadic harmony, triadic transformation, medianttriad, loss, sorrow, homology, James Horner, Cocoon.

The narrative of Ron Howard’s 1985 movie Cocoonbrings two parties into conflict: a peaceable andimmortal alien race suffering from the regrettable but

necessary abandonment of twenty of their kind on Earth thou-sands of years ago, and a group of present-day retirement-homeresidents in Florida suffering from degradation of health andvitality. To counter these adversities, both parties use a life forcegenerated in a neglected swimming pool by a team of fouraliens, led by Walter (Brian Dennehy), sent back to Earth toretrieve their stranded and cocooned comrades. The poolrestores the abandoned aliens to full health, a requirement fortheir interstellar journey home, but it also acts as a “fountain ofyouth” for a trio of elderly men—Art (Don Ameche), Ben(Wilford Brimley), and Joe (Hume Cronyn)—who surrepti-tiously swim there; for example, the alien life force miraculouslythrows Joe’s leukemia into remission. When the alien team dis-covers the trio’s abuse of the pool, however, Walter bans thetrio from the pool, which brings Joe’s cancer back.

Composer James Horner, in his first of eight collaborationswith director Howard, provides the music transcribed inExample 1 to accompany the following sequence that impliesthe relapse of Joe’s illness.1 The music of the first four measuresoccurs during a brief interior scene depicting the recurrence ofJoe’s lethargy. The change to A major in m. 16 coincides with adissolve to the next exterior scene, which shows the trio sittingtogether at the end of a pier, looking out wistfully onto asunset-drenched ocean. By their motions and facial expressions—Ben has his hand on Joe’s arm, Joe sinks his head in despairand labors in his breathing—not to mention Ben’s scene-con-cluding objection “I’m gonna go talk to [Walter]; goddamnit,it’s ridiculous,” it can easily be inferred that they are ponderingJoe’s disease and his impending death.

Twenty minutes later in the film, Walter reluctantly allowsthe trio back in the pool; however, the other retirement-homeresidents learn about the pool and ransack it, draining it of lifeforce. Joe, Art, and Ben try to get their fellow residents out ofthe water, but Walter discovers them and drives the aged tres-passers away. As Walter and one of the other aliens work toopen one of the cocoons, the music of Example 2 begins; m. 9coincides with the cut to the first shot inside the cocoon of anemaciated and languid alien, quite dissimilar from the radiantforms underneath the skin-deep disguises of the alien rescueteam. Head sagging and eyes closing, the alien loses conscious-ness in Walter’s arms with the return of the oboe in m. 33, andthe louder, fuller sequential passage in mm. 35–38 accompaniesWalter’s discovery of tears on his own face. During the con-cluding nine measures, Walter explains that “the life force iscompletely drained from the water. I’m not going to be able tobring them back [to their home planet].”

These two sequences in the film produce a neat narrativesymmetry: during the first sequence, the aliens rob the mortalhumans of the life force, returning to the humans the likely andagonizing prospect of a death of one of their own; during thesecond sequence, the humans rob the sojourning aliens of thelife force, returning to the aliens the likely and agonizing pros-pect of a separation from some of their own. Horner’s musicparallels this symmetry by reusing certain melodic-motivicideas: for example, mm. 2–9 in Example 1 and its reiteratingG♯–A♯–Bmotive is extremely similar to mm. 1–8 in Example 2.Central to the present study, however, is another, slightlybroader, musical parallel: both musical cues contain a deliberateand quiet alternation between the tonic triad and the diatonicmediant triad while in a major mode. This alternation, anno-tated by solid triangles, occurs in Example 1 in mm. 16–25 andin Example 2 in both mm. 9–16 and mm. 45–53.

Horner seems to match these harmonic alternations particu-larly with the moments in these scenes in which characters aregrappling with a significant loss—of life, closeness, or energy—that has either taken place or will soon take place. In the first

Arnie Cox and Robert Hatten provided helpful suggestions on earlierdrafts of this article.

Lehman (2013) examines the score and narrative of another Howard/Horner collaboration, A Beautiful Mind.

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sequence, accompanied by Example 1, the tonic and mediantalternation occurs during the moment of greatest contemplationof Joe’s terminal disease in the sequence: the alternation is afterthe scene in which the loss is communicated to the viewer (mm.1–15) and before the point in time when Art and Ben, sittingwith Joe at the end of the pier, get up in preparation to depart.In the second sequence, accompanied by Example 2, the tonicand mediant alternation first occurs when the aliens—alongwith the viewer—first painfully behold the effects of the lifeforce drain on the dormant alien whose cocoon has beenopened. To be sure, their grief continues after this particularharmonic alternation finishes in m. 17; in fact, an alternationbetween the major tonic triad and the minor-dominant triadtakes hold of the music. However, the initiation of a new, resur-gent idea in mm. 35–38 aligns with a subtle narrative redirec-tion: Walter’s surprise that he is crying. A longer shot of thepool and its many cocoons shows Walter collecting himselfaround m. 42; his spoken realization that he cannot take hisfriends back home coincides with the cue’s concluding tonic-mediant alternation in mm. 45–53.

One of my primary aims in the pages to follow is to showthat these tonal-harmonic parallels with the narrative continuewell beyond Cocoon. Slow, soft undulations between a majortonic triad and its diatonic mediant have been precisely associ-ated with moments of sorrow, particularly as the result of somekind of considerable loss either transpired or looming, in at leasttwenty-eight recent popular films and in at least one, particu-larly cinematic, recent popular television series produced in thetwenty-six years after Cocoon’s release.

This article both follows and departs in its structure andmethodology from the blueprints of previous music-theoreticstudies that have recognized a significantly consistent associa-tion between a certain triadic progression and a certain extramu-sical concept within a well-delineated repertoire. Richard Cohnidentified in art music from the sixteenth to the twentieth cen-turies numerous coincidences between what he has called the“hexatonic-pole” progression (such as C– to E+) and dramaticor hermeneutic narratives affiliated with Sigmund Freud’sconcept of unheimlich.2 I have reported multiple concurrencesin recent Hollywood soundtracks between what I called the“major tritone progression” (such as C+ to F♯+) and visual ornarrative references to outer space.3 Matthew Bribitzer-Stullhas found several instances in which the “Tarnhelm progres-sion” of Wagner’s Ring (such as C– to A♭–) accompanies refer-ences to things evil and unnatural in repertoire ranging fromearly nineteenth-century music to contemporary film music.4

The second part of the present article resembles all three ofthese preceding studies most closely, in that it lists instances ofthe purported association that are hopefully numerous enoughto convince the reader of the distinctiveness of the association.The third and fourth parts resemble Cohn’s and my studies in

. James Horner, music from Cocoon (transcribed by the author), 49:20, quarter ≈ 96 (then quarter≈ 86 at m. 16).

Cohn (2004). Progressions such as C– to E+ were first designated as hexa-tonic poles in Cohn (1996), and their associations with the uncanny inWagner’s Parsifal are explored in more detail in Cohn (2006).In the present article, the roots of triads are followed by a + or – sign toindicate major and minor quality, respectively.

Murphy (2006). Bribitzer-Stull (2012).

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that they offer some hypotheses for a purported motivation ofthe association: why this musical idea has assumed this particu-lar association in recent popular film and television, and whythe association seems to work so well. These parts are prefaced

by a first part that offers both a more exact description of thepitch components of the musical half of this association thanwhat current transformational theory provides and a recognitionof the role of nonpitch parameters in securing the association,

. Horner, Cocoon, 1:12:56, quarter≈ 82 (then quarter≈ 94 in m. 9).

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thus deviating the most from all three of these studies, while atthe same time proposing a nomenclature that could serve futurestudies of this sort.

: “ ”

Musical utterances like those of Example 3, a prototype of whatI will call the “loss gesture,” have been associated with the con-templation of a loss-generated sorrow during many moments inpopular film and television from 1985 to 2012. In many ways,the loss gesture is a musical “schema,” a cluster of musical char-acteristics that facilitates categorization and comparison withina certain style. Nonetheless, I venture to use the word “gesture,”in part to distinguish this kind of abstraction from Robert Gjer-dingen’s galant schemata, which are centrally although notexclusively defined by outer-voice designs.5 Moreover, my con-ception of the kind of music that Example 3 represents corre-sponds well with most of the twelve features of a musical gesturethat Robert Hatten enumerates.6 For example, Hatten recog-nizes that “the elements synthesized in a musical gestureinclude specific timbres, articulations, dynamics, tempi, pacing,and their coordination with various syntactic levels (e.g., voiceleading, metric placement, phrase structure).”7 Many differentmusical parameters contribute to the definition of the lossgesture, and the specific configuration of these different param-eters, along with its frequent conjunction with a certain expres-sive context, designates it as a “style type.”8 Although pitchcharacteristics do not alone make a loss gesture, it behooves meto spend some time with them, if only to anticipate and curbpossible over- and under-generalizations.

I describe the loss gesture’s combination of pitch and tonalproperties as “M4m,” where M4m is short for “major-4-minor,” which necessarily and sufficiently exhibits two proper-ties.9 First, M4m puts a major triad with a root x immediatelyadjacent to a minor triad with root y such that the pitch-classdistance from x to y is 4 semitones. In Example 3, E is 4

semitones “above” C in pitch-class space. This property is thereason for the three characters in the M4m label: the “M” and“m” indicate the quality of the two triads, and the “4” indicatesthe ordered pitch-class interval from the root of the first to theroot of the second.10 Second, the major triad is tonicized, or isat least interpreted as “more” of a tonic than the minor triad. InExample 3, the Roman numerals indicate this tonicization, andthe solid triangle, used in notated examples, points toward thetonicized chord. This property of major-triad tonicization is thereason for the order of the “m”s in the M4m label: the “M” isfirst because the major triad is tonicized, not because it occursfirst in time (which it sometimes does not). If instead the minortriad were tonicized in Example 3, the progression would belabeled as m8M, and it would also be designated as the “tonalinverse” of M4m. As there are two modal options each for thetonic and nontonic triads, and twelve options for n, there areforty-eight (2 × 2 × 12) possible “MnM”s, but two of them—

M0M and m0m—are trivial. The tonicization occurs throughposition asserting—the major triad begins after ample silence,begins or ends a new formal section, or the major triad isemphasized more than the minor triad through duration,(hyper)meter, or some other means—or position finding—theprofile of the key of the major triad as tonic scores higher usingcontiguous pitch-class information than the profile of the key ofthe minor triad as tonic—or both.11

At this point, it is worth distinguishing M4m from Leitton-wechsel (L for short), Hugo Riemann’s name for the

. (Continued).

. A prototype of the loss gesture.

Gjerdingen (2007). Hatten (2004, 93–95). Hatten (2004, 94). Hatten (1994, 44ff.). Murphy (2014) further explores both a syntax and semantics of the

“MnM” system as applied to recent popular film music.

This labeling system bears a significant resemblance to that used by Clough(1957). I thank Daniel Goldschmidt for recognizing this connection.

The dichotomy of “position finding” versus “position asserting” comesfrom Harrison (1994), and the role of key profiles in position finding hasbeen recently examined in Temperley (2001, 2007), among other places.

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relationship between two triads as sufficiently described by thefirst of the two properties listed above.12 Because of the inclu-sion of this first property, every M4m can also be understood asexpressing an L relationship. However, the second propertystipulates that not every L relationship expresses a M4m.Charles Smith was perhaps the first to offer this subcategoriza-tion, which distinguishes between “L (major)” (what I callM4m) and “L (minor)” (what I call m8M, M4m’s tonalinverse).13 For example, each progression between adjacenttriads in the final nine measures of Example 2 invites both theL transformational label—tonality aside—and the M4m label,with the recognition that the preceding music is clearly in Emajor and the pitch with the final say is E. If these final ninemeasures were instead placed into a G♯-minor context, the Ltransformational label would remain appropriate, but the M4mlabel would no longer be; rather, these progressions would bedescribed with the m8M label.

In an article on Riemannian analysis of pop-rock music,Guy Capuzzo has suggested that Riemannian labels for triadicrelationships are also particularly suitable for analyzing recentpopular film music.14 On the one hand, this suggestion is wellworth taking, for much of the film music written for recentmainstream Hollywood productions can be just as chromatic,and use major and minor triads even more exclusively, than themusic of late nineteenth-century composers for which Neo-Riemannian theory was originally designed. On the other hand,many entrenched extramusical associations in recent popularvisual media that these triadic progressions take part in appearto be dependent not only upon the Riemannian relationshipbut also upon the quality of the triads—thus downplaying anyinversional, dualistic equivalence of relationships—as well as thetonal orientation of the progression. For example, any m8mrelationship—such as the relationship between a tonicized G♯-minor triad and an E-minor triad—could also be described inthe Riemannian manner as a Terzschritt; more precisely, Terzs-chritt transforms the former into the latter. The fact that aTerzschritt also transforms a major triad into another majortriad whose root is four semitones higher can provide a meansto compare two seemingly dissimilar progressions, as Lewindoes in comparing two themes from Wagner’s Ring.15 Con-trastingly, in recent popular film music, as demonstrated in theexamples used by Bribitzer-Stull, the Terzschritt progressionsthat are most often associated with malevolence, antagonism, oreeriness generally exclude not only those Terzschritte that relatemajor triads (M4M or M8M, as one would expect with malevo-lence and its offshoots) but also those Terzschritte that invertthe tonicization (m4 m, as one might not expect).16 This sug-gests that research aspiring to codify the common associationsbetween triadic progression and cinematic narrative should

refine the Riemannian point of view with other tonal and har-monic information.

The loss gesture requires more than the mere presence of theM4m progression, however. Several other features—what I willrefer to throughout as the “non-M4m” features—are requisite.Perhaps most necessary among these non-M4m features is thatthe M4m progression be drawn out and dwelt upon. This pro-traction can take place in one of two basic ways, and often both.First, a loss gesture sustains the M4m’s major triad and minortriad each for at least 1.5 seconds and often considerably longer,but typically of the same duration as the other, creating a regularharmonic rhythm. The tempo marking of Example 3 stipulatesa length of four seconds for each chord, which approximates themean and median of the harmonic durations in the instancessurveyed below. Second, as expressed by the repeat sign inExample 3, the progression typically undulates back and forthbetween the two chords, often multiple times. The entire timeelapsed by M4m material—either through a slower harmonicrhythm, an oscillatory pattern, or both—is at least five seconds,but among the surveyed instances, the entire time averagesaround eighteen seconds. Moreover, the loss gesture avoidsdetached or staccato articulations of the chords of the M4m;rather, legato connections preponderate. Lastly, loss gestures aregenerally soft and typically involve intimate and delicate timbressuch as strings, piano, guitar, harp, celesta, and/or wordlesschorus.

A proper conclusion of this description of the loss gestureprototype should acknowledge three variances allowed withinloss gestures that Example 3 does not display. First, the progres-sion may be transposed to any of the twelve major keys. Second,the literal voice leading between the two chords is undeter-mined; any voice may ascend, descend, or maintain a commonnote into the second chord. Third, for either the major orminor chord, the bass may use any one of the three availabletriadic notes, although the root is used most often.

:

This second part offers forty-five instances of the loss gesture inthe work of eighteen composers in twenty-nine recent popularfilms and sixteen instances of the loss gesture in the work of onecomposer throughout a recent popular television series.17 Up tonow, these films have been simply described as “popular,”despite the vagueness of this term. For the purposes of thisarticle, this term refers to those mainstream and primarily Hol-lywood studio products of motion picture entertainment thatprimarily employ A-list actors and directors, mostly incorporatetraditional narrative techniques and visual styles that are familiarand appealing to a broad consumer base, and are widely mar-keted and distributed, but are not necessarily box office suc-cesses. On the one hand, theorizing about the music written forthis genre is extremely challenging, given the great number of

Riemann (1880, 22–23). Lewin (1987) abbreviated Leittonwechsel to LT,then Hyer (1995) shortened the label further to the now-standard L.

Smith (2001). Capuzzo (2004, 196). Lewin (1987 and 1992). Bribitzer-Stull (2012). Frank Lehman brought the example fromHook to my attention.

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musical compositions that fall into this category. For example,the number of films that are similar to those surveyed below—mostly English-language films released by major productionstudios between 1985 and 2012—easily reaches the thousands.Although I have studied hundreds of film scores within thesegeneric limits, I cannot profess knowledge of every film scorethat falls within these parameters. On the other hand, given itstargeted audience, popular film music, like popular film, tendstoward a standardization of practice: to paraphrase a book titlefrom film theoretician David Bordwell, this is “the way thatHollywood music tells it.”18 For this reason, I am confidentthat my sample of sixty-one instances reflects a practice ofmusico-dramatic association in recent popular visual media thatis more widespread than my individual exposure to the genre;others familiar with this repertoire will probably know of otherexamples. Granted, this practice is best understood as norma-tive, not regulative. Within this style, there are undoubtedlycountless instances that break this associative rule, either with acinematic portrayal of a sorrowful loss without a coincident lossgesture, or when a loss gesture on the soundtrack has little ornothing to do with a sorrowful loss. Nonetheless, in both mywritten notes on the harmonic language of the scores for overthree hundred recent popular movies and my tacit experienceaccumulated through many years of listening to, composing,analyzing, and teaching this kind of music, I have found in thisgenre no other musical utterance defined as precisely, or moreprecisely, than the loss gesture that is as consistently associatedwith sorrow; nor have I found another narrative state defined asprecisely, or more precisely, than sorrow that is as consistentlyassociated with the loss gesture.

Rather than continuing to provide transcriptions, as I did forCocoon, I have opted to present the data in a tabular format,which has been specifically designed to include an amount ofinformation both sufficient to make my case—necessitating anad hoc shorthand for relevant musical details—but still insuffi-cient as a saleable reproduction of a whole of the artwork.Example 4 organizes the sixty-one instances of this associationinto rows ordered by date of the film’s or television program’sU.S. release, and into columns that relate certain informationabout the instance. Each instance is labeled with the time stamp(minutes:seconds; or hours:minutes:seconds) marking themoment on the film’s most recent DVD release when the firstchord of the given harmonic progression in the given keybegins. With the exception of the instance cited in Hard Ball,all these progressions begin on tonic, which suggests that theI–iii progression is more indicative of the loss gesture’s initia-tion than iii–I, although both naturally participate in an undu-lating loss gesture. The seven progressions in Example 4 that donot undulate between I and iii are singled out at least once with“(NU)” for “non-undulatory”; the fact that all these use I–iiiinstead of the reverse further suggests that this triadic ordering,what I will call a “departure M4m,” is an even more precisefeature of the loss gesture. The “Drtn.” column refers to the

duration in seconds of each of the chords in the harmonic pro-gression. In several cases, the rate of harmonic change is steady(perhaps allowing for slight shifts in tempo, a varianceexpressed with ∼), so only one number is needed. In those caseswhere the harmonic rhythm varies, multiple numbers are givenwhose order corresponds to the order of the chords in the har-monic progression, or numbers in italics that refer to the ordinallocation of the chord in the progression convey the chord’sduration.

Since the definition of the loss gesture does not rely uponmelodic features, only two aspects of each instance’s melodicmaterial are conveyed in Example 4. The “Dir.” column indi-cates the direction of the top, or most prominent, melodicvoice’s movement when the departure M4m takes place: Up,Dn (for down), or Unis (for unison). Additional indicationsafter the first in this column relay the direction of other promi-nent lines coincident with the harmonic change. For example,mm. 9–16 in Example 2 correspond to the second row on thefirst page of Example 4. The indication “Unis, Dn” in its“Direction(s) into iii” column conveys that the top line does notchange (in this case, the oboe reiterates the B5) and an innervoice descends (in this case, the flute drops from E4 to D♯4)when moving into the mediant triad (in mm. 11 and 15 in thiscase). Despite an “idealized voice leading” that would highlightthe descending half-step and the common tones as realized inExample 3, the many “Up”s in this column affirm the absenceof a characteristic melodic direction for the loss gesture.19 The“♯4̂” column registers the presence of the raised fourth scaledegree during certain I or iii chords, as well as approximateplacement as indicated by ordinal position in the harmonic pro-gression. For example, an A♯ (♯4̂ in the key of E) is used abovethe third and fourth chords in the loss gesture starting in m. 13of Example 2. The prevalence and implications of this chro-matic enrichment will be discussed later. The timbre columnprovides instrumentation; again, ordinal information is includedin the cases where instrumentation significantly changes overthe course of the progression. While the volume column isnearly trivial, as none of these instances is relatively loud or evenclose to loud, it verifies the loss gesture’s property of softness.

The next three columns provide documentation of whetherthe key of the M4m’s major triad is tonicized before, during, orafter the M4m component of the harmonic progression. Tonic-izations beforehand can involve a clear, solid establishment ofthe key (Est), the start of a new section as delineated by a signif-icant change of texture, timbre, or tempo (NS), or the entranceof the tonic chord after silence (Sil). For instance, in Example 1,which corresponds to the first row of Example 4, the consider-able change of orchestration, range, and rate of significantmelodic activity at m. 16 helps to convey the A-major triad inthis measure as a tonic triad, even though the preceding music

Bordwell (2006).

“Idealized voice leading” is Richard Cohn’s (2012, 6) reformulation ofDavid Lewin’s “maximally close voice leading” (1998, 17), which is thevoice leading that minimizes voice-leading work when connecting notes ofeach chord one-to-one.

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does not. The opening tonic may be preceded by a dominantthat either actively seeks tonic resolution (VA) or is itself toni-cized (VT), but retrospectively assumes the role of dominantonce the M4m progression commences, especially in conjunc-tion with a NS.20 This latter situation occurs at m. 9 inExample 2. The opening tonic may also be preceded by otherharmonies (given with Roman numerals) or even single scaledegrees (given with Arabic numerals) that lead toward and helpdefine tonic harmony; the indication of “Sil→1̂” or “Sil→I”means that the tonic pitch or tonic chord is first heard aftersilence for an extended duration before the M4m progressionbegins.

During the M4m, especially if the progression undulates, itsharmonic rhythm is extremely slow, or ♯4̂ is present, one mightexperience a loosening of the major triad’s hold on tonic and,perhaps additionally, a sense that the mediant is tonicized tosome degree. Nonetheless, other elements typically lend varyingdegrees of support toward the continued tonicity of the major

triad. The most common support, although it is somewhatweak, comes from hypermeter (HM): when the harmonicrhythm is regular, the tonic triad, typically the first harmonicevent, falls on a strong beat in a duple (hyper)metric organiza-tion, whereas the mediant triad typically falls on a weak beat.Other support for the major triad as tonic can come from a bassinstrument that sounds 5̂ right at the end of the mediant’s span,and 1̂ at the beginning of the tonic harmony (Bs5); Hornerdoes so during all three loss gestures in Examples 1 (mm. 19and 23) and 2 (mm. 12, 48, and 52). The melodic materialabove the harmonic progression can better fit the profile of thekey of the major triad (PF, for position finding), and the tonictriad may be emphasized by virtue of its longer duration(agogic). The listener may also recognize the major triad astonic through veridical information, when the melody above theM4m is, or at least refers to, a theme that has been heard earlierin the film or television program within a tonal context thatclearly selects the major triad as tonic (Theme).

Despite any tonal ambivalence experienced during the M4mthat casts any preceding tonicization in doubt, loss gestures

. Instances that associate the loss gesture with sorrowful loss in recent popular film and television productions(date is U.S. release).

VA and VT are borrowed from Hepokoski and Darcy (2006, 16 and 19).

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never tonicize the minor triad after the M4m progression, atleast not to the degree that the major triad is tonicized. In mostcases, the tonicization of the major triad gains reaffirmation byfollowing the final tonic triad with silence (Sil), by continuingin the same key (Cont., as evidenced in part by the chordsnotated in the harmonic progression), or by cadencing in thesame key (Cad.). The tonic reaffirmation might also take placethrough position finding (PF)—that is, using pitches outsidethe tonic triad that fit, or even determine, the tonicized majorkey signature. This ultimately means that when sufficient tonalcontext of the M4m is taken into account, the loss gesture andits associations with sorrow in this repertoire surprisingly residewithin a major-mode context, contrary to the conventionalanalogy between major/minor and happy/sad in Westernculture.

All these instances coincide with the contemplation of a sig-nificant loss in the filmic narrative, as categorized and summa-rized in the two rightmost columns in Example 4. (Text inbrackets in the final column provides preceding narrativecontext if needed.) The loss may involve death, either one thathas already occurred or one that appears imminent due to asudden injury or a terminal illness. The music appears to relatejust as much, if not more so, to the sorrow that the past deathcreates (or the future death portends) in the other characters, as

to the character’s death itself; funeral scenes and other lessformal bereavements are common. The loss may also be ofsomething else besides life: loss of closeness to a loved one, lossof body parts or their use, loss of innocence or moral values orhope, or loss of employment or opportunity. Again, the lossgesture accompanies less often the actual incident of losing orits immediate ramifications or consequences and more often thesorrowful dwelling upon the loss.

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Why have so many composers associated the loss gesture withloss-invoked sorrow in recent popular movies and television?Charles Sanders Peirce’s most well-known trio of terms arethose names for the grounds upon which a signifier and a signi-fied are joined into a sign: icon (a relationship of “likeness”),index (a relationship of “causality”), and symbol (a relationshipof “conventionality”).21 The first two kinds of relationshipfocus on the relationship’s nonarbitrariness, in contrast to thelast, in which symbols are arbitrary, unmotivated signs.

. (Continued).

Cumming (2000, 86–95) offers a relatively recent and perspicacioussummary of these terms for the musically inclined reader.

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A logical and likely less thorny place to begin answering thequestion above is to inquire about the association’s symboliclineage. After all, recent popular film composers commonlyborrow these kinds of associations that they often employ fromthe vast network of cultural conventions surrounding them, par-ticularly those residing in other contemporaneous or earliermultimedia genres. Such a discovery does not necessarilyobviate an obligation to inquire about possible iconic or indexi-cal premises for this association: “conventions are not arbitrary,in that they have generally been motivated by iconic or indexicalassociations, whether or not those associations still play a role ininterpretation.”22 Indeed, this will be the objective of my fourthand final section. Nonetheless, asking whether or not the lossgesture has been consistently associated with a saddening loss inany musical repertoires before 1985 is an imperative prologue.

Simplifying the pursuit of at least a partial answer to thisquestion is the fact that the major-mode diatonic mediant triadis an extremely uncommon triad in eighteenth-century music.Although this triad is a little more frequent in tonal music of

the next two centuries, its unmediated surface-level alternationwith the major tonic triad—the most common way for anM4m to meet the temporal requirement of the loss gesture—remains an extremely rare event. Charles Smith has made thisclaim for classical tonal music from this time period; theinstances of M4m undulation in this repertoire of which I amaware are listed in Example 5.23 Although my list undoubtedlyfalls short of completeness, I suspect that such a complete listfor any listener considerably familiar with tonal repertoireswould presumably be smaller than any other comparably com-plete I–X–I list where X is another diatonic triad, with perhapsonly the supertonic triad offering any competition. Somethingsimilar may be said of I–iii–I in twentieth-century popularmusic. Whereas Walter Everett recognizes that alternationsbetween I and vi occur “in scores of songs” from rock music’sheyday of 1955–69, he finds no comparable trend using I andiii.24

. (Continued).

Hatten (1994, 259).

Smith (2001). Everett (2009, 220) is the source for the claim regarding I and vi; my per-

sonal communication with Everett on 12 November 2009 is the source forthe claim regarding I and iii.

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Although the excerpts in Example 5 express an undulatingM4m, a relatively quick harmonic pacing, loud dynamic levels,absence of legato, or some combination of these features, keepsome of them from archetypically expressing loss gestures. Ofthose remaining loss gestures (in bold font in Example 5), thereare five with text that serve as a small testing ground for Roman-tic precedents of an association between the loss gesture andsorrow in recent popular films. The lyrics for the Grieg excerptbear no trace of sorrow or remorse that occasionally surfaces inthe earlier songs of Grieg’s Op. 33 set, and the listed momentfrom Gounod’s Walpurgisnacht episode, while unsettling, lacksany overt sorrow. The words for the cited portion by Fauré—“sempiternam requiem”—certainly, even quintessentially,apply to loss, but so does much of the rest of the Requiem text;such an unmarked text-music combination hardly produces anespecial association.

The two Strauss excerpts, however, are more promising. Theoften-performed song “Zueignung,” composed in 1885 and thefirst song in Strauss’s earliest published set of songs, opens witha two-measure piano introduction that switches between asecond-inversion E-minor triad and a root-position C-majortriad. Even though the E-minor triad begins the song, both thedissonant perfect fourth above the bass and the clear establish-ment of C major soon after the vocal entrance retrospectively

substantiates the M4m label for the piano prelude.25 Althoughthe loss gesture effectively concludes as the voice enters, theintroduction nonetheless sets the narrative and emotional stagefor the opening stanza, which, in isolation, could well suit manyof the dramatic situations outlined in Example 4: “Ja, du weisstes teure Seele, Dass ich fern von dir mich quale, Liebe machtdie Herzen krank, habe Dank” (Yes, you know it, dear soul,That I suffer when far from you; Love makes hearts sick; Takemy thanks”). The remaining two stanzas of this mostly strophicsong lighten the mood considerably; coincidently, an M4m isnever heard again in the song. Furthermore, the texts used in alleight songs of Strauss’s Op. 10 generally eschew such grief-stricken preoccupations in favor of exploring the many positivedimensions of youthful love.26 These last two points strengthenthe distinctiveness of a connection between the loss gesturethat opens “Zueignung” and the pondering of loss, howeverephemeral.

Sixty-three years after the composition of “Zueignung,”Strauss published his Vier letzte Lieder in 1948, of which“Abendrot” is the last. Eichendorff’s text for this song, which

. (Continued).

Harrison (1994, 63) and Rings (2011, 128) both hear this opening in Cmajor.

This is consistent with Gorrell (1993, 328).

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chronicles a couple’s thoughts and actions as they near death,functions autobiographically for Strauss and his wife Pauline,who in 1948 had been married for fifty-four years and wereboth approaching death themselves. However, the loss gesturecited in Example 5 appears to have less to do with dying andmore with the recollection of times past. After a lengthy orches-tral introduction, the singer enters with the words “Wir sinddurch Not und Freude gegangen Hand in Hand” (We havegone through sorrow and joy hand in hand). A model lossgesture—with the highest elapsed time of all the excerpts inExample 5—accompanies the words “Wir sind durch Not . . .”before an increase to mf, higher and melismatic vocal notes, anda brighter orchestration buoy the following text “. . . und

Freude.” As Timothy L. Jackson has pointed out,27 Eichen-dorff’s “Not” resists a simple English translation; besides itscognate “need,” English writers have rendered it as “sorrow,”“suffering,” “pain,” “trouble,” or “misery,” given its contrastwith “joy” as two emotional poles between which the two agedand dying lovers of the text have traversed. Never again in thesong is there either a loss gesture or a reference to the expressivenadir carved out by “Not,”making quite distinctive this particu-larly suitable precursor for the associations in Example 4 thatwould begin to become prevalent in movie theaters around ahalf-century later.

. (Continued).

Jackson (1992, 95).

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Moreover, the loss gesture and its association with sorrow in“Abendrot” seem to refer back to the similar association in“Zueignung,” the other song that bookends Strauss’s publishedsong output. The present-tense sufferings of the lovesick narra-tor from the earlier song would work well as a reference for thepast-tense reflections of the aged narrators from the later song,and both loss gestures occur in the proximity of the first vocalentrance. Furthermore, it is conceivable that Strauss consciouslyor subconsciously devised this connection, as “Zueignung” wasrelatively fresh in his mind when he began to sketch “Abendrot”in 1946. He had orchestrated the song with an altered conclu-sion in 1940—the loss gestures in both orchestrated songs enlistrippling eighth-note string arpeggiations—and had also beenplaying the piano accompaniment for vocal recitals in the1940s. And Strauss had no qualms about quoting himself:“Abendrot” concludes with a well-known citation of his ownTod und Verklärung.

It is conceivable that one or more of the film composers fromExample 4 may have found conscious or subconscious inspirationin one of the programmatic loss gestures in Example 5, or else-where in this repertoire. However, this sampling suggests that

there exists no clear and conspicuous convention in European artmusic that could function as the antecedent for the late twenti-eth-century American association between the loss gesture andthe contemplation of a sorrowful loss.

: :

In this case, returning to the other two aforementioned parts ofPeirce’s trichotomy, how does the loss gesture engage meaningby resembling (iconic) or pointing to (indexical) something,either in society or nature, outside of itself? Cohn’s hermeneu-tic study of the hexatonic pole proffers an iconic argument,endeavoring to demonstrate that the progression acquires “itssignifying power not only by convention, but also in part from ahomology between the properties of uncanniness (as a reactionto expectations of how the world works) and those of the har-monic progression (as a reaction to expectations of how triadicmusic goes).”28 His solution shows that the hexatonic poleeffaces a neat distinction between consonance and dissonance:

. Some undulating M4ms in Romantic and post-Romantic music (loss gestures are in bold).

Cohn (2004, 286).

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for example, in C–→E+, the harmonic context provided by theE+ triad suggests that pitch-classes 11 and 8 form a consonantmajor sixth as B and G♯, but in the tonal and voice-leading con-texts of the C– triad, these pitch-classes make a dissonantdiminished seventh as B and A♭. A similar contradiction ariseswhen considering pitch-classes 3 and 0 with the two contextsswapped against the two triads. Cohn likens this musicalduplicity to the uncanny, which can efface a neat distinctionbetween life and death.

Before I propose a corresponding hypothesis for the loss ges-ture’s association, it is crucially important to evaluate theprocess of asserting a homology, although this will necessitate aprolonged excursus. Although several angles call for criticalscrutiny—such as the problem of defining “resemblance” or“likeness,” which is addressed head-on by NaomiCumming29—I will limit myself to a pair of questions—duallyrelated—that should be asked of any proposed homology, ques-tions that I will ask of both Cohn’s and my own.

1. May another kind of homology be proposed for the samemusic-image pairing? This seems, at the least, proper; a hypoth-esized homology is much like a musical analysis, in that its pro-posal should not ipso facto exclude others of its kind on the sameexact subject. Nicholas Cook has recognized that different soci-eties or individual artists or analysts can select different “attri-butes” of an object that form the basis for the meaning thatemerges for that object.30 He exemplifies this point through thejuxtaposition of two expressive readings of m. 301 and the fol-lowing measures in the first movement of Beethoven’s NinthSymphony: while the musical attributes of “arrhythmicaccents,” “thematic absence,” “avoidance of cadence,” and“formal demands” connect with the image of a sexual murdererin Susan McClary’s interpretation, the musical attributes of“timbre/inversion/mode,” “fortissimo,” “basses, timpani,” and“sustained texture” connect with the images of catastrophe orwar in others’ interpretations.31

Yet, even if both members of the associative pair remainfixed, Cook’s notion of different attributes participating indifferent homologies used by different interpreters still ap-pertains and would in fact help to understand the transferof certain conventionalized associations from one person orsociety to the next, as in some of film music’s apparent debtsto the associations from the previous centuries’ musical multi-media. Put another way, even if the iconic resemblance thatcatalyzes a symbolic convention passes into obscurity, a dif-ferent resemblance more appropriate to current socioculturalcircumstances could pick up the mantle of motivation,

buttressing a convention that is still thriving or restarting a con-vention that has become dormant. Even for the same person orthe same society, multiple homologies for one associative pairundoubtedly strengthen the bond and offer a redundancy thatbetter ensures significance.

For example, Cohn has observed that between two undou-bled, complete consonant triads, contrary motion under ideal-ized voice leading “arises only between triads whose roots arerelated by major third,” in particular between a triad and its T4

and T8 transpositions and its hexatonic pole.32 One could pre-serve Cohn’s limitation to idealized voice leading, but turnaround the rest of his observation to serve another homology forthe hexatonic pole’s association with the uncanny. There areexactly two set classes of cardinality 3 or higher (excluding mul-tisets)—3-11[037] and 3-12[048]—whose members containno dissonant interval classes: that is, no minor seconds, majorseconds, or tritones. There are exactly six ways to move threenotes either up or down by semitone such that contrary motionis present. If these three notes constitute either a [037] or a[048], then odds are that at least one dissonant interval willresult from this collective motion: of the twelve possibilities(2 set types × 6 voice-leading designs), only one—the hexa-tonic-pole progression—does not produce a dissonance. Inother words, if a “chord” may be defined as containing three ormore different pitch classes, then a chord without dissonancetypically becomes a chord with dissonance when all three of itsmembers move both semitonally and contrary to at least oneother move. The hexatonic-pole progression, however, uniquelybreaks this rule: what should be dissonant under these condi-tions is still, somehow, consonant. At this point, one can rea-sonably merge this line of reasoning with the rest of theargument behind Cohn’s original homology.

In part, I propose this second homology for the hexatonicpole’s association with the uncanny as a parallel model for myexpectation that someone else may propose another homologybesides mine for the loss gesture’s association with the contem-plation of a sorrowful loss. I invite such proposals; as suggestedearlier, multiple homologies may help one to understand howan association can accommodate variances either in the particu-lar musical or narrative realization, or in the perspective of theindividual interpreter or society, and still achieve some degree ofintersubjective agreement that transcends convention. In theparagraphs below, I attempt to anticipate such multiplicity bysubmitting five different homologies for the loss gesture’s asso-ciation—an overdetermined reading of the association. Yet notall these homologies—or any set of homologies, for that matter—should be equally persuasive, a fact that my second questionpartially addresses.

2. May the same kind of homology be proposed for anothermusic-image pairing, particularly where either the original musicor image is replaced with another? This is not the same thing aswhat film music scholarship calls a “commutation test,” inwhich, for example, the music for a cinematic scene is replaced

Cumming (2000, 87–89). Cook (2001, 178ff.). Among various interpretations of this movement, Cook (2001, 181) cites

Donald Francis Tovey’s “heavens on fire” from the 1930s, Basil Lam’s“flame of incandescent terror” from 1966, and Robert Simpson’s “sky . . .blazing from horizon to horizon” from 1970. He argues that the last twowriters, both British musicians born in the first two decades of the twenti-eth century, could not have conceived of their readings without stirring upmemories of the ravaging Battle of Britain that preceded them. Cohn (2012, 24).

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by other music and the new audiovisual amalgam is analyzed.33

If, paraphrasing Cook, this new music and the old images givemeaning to one another during such a test, it may very well owethis significance to a new homology. Rather, I am probing thesituation in which the old homology works just as well aftersuch a substitution. Consider once again Cohn’s approach fromhis 2004 article, in which the hexatonic-pole progression’svoice-leading content stipulates dissonance for the nine-semi-tone interval, whereas the same progression’s harmonic contentstipulates consonance for the same interval; this duplicity thenundergirds his homology. More recently he has acknowledgedthat other progressions—from a triad to either its T4 or its T8

transposition—evince this same duplicity.34 On the one hand,this inclusivity can help to explain why T4 and T8 triadic pro-gressions have been associated with things magical, strange, andotherworldly. On the other hand, this broadening diffusesthe nonarbitrariness of Cohn’s original homology, sullying thehomology’s explanation of a specific connection between thehexatonic pole and the more precise unheimlich commixture oflife and death. As David Huron puts it, “one needs to discernwhether the description offered succeeds in distinguishing theobject of interest from other similar objects.”35 In fact, if bothone- and two-semitone voice-leading intervals are reckoned asdiatonic seconds, then seven other progressions create compara-ble consonance-dissonance discrepancies through idealizedvoice leading in addition to the three progressions discussedabove. (Retrogrades or inversions of these progressions wouldresult in the same disparities.) Example 6 depicts these tenprogressions; when the idealized voice leading between thehalf-note chords is reckoned entirely diatonically, the second

half-note chord must be respelled (provided in quarter notes) toresemble a consonant triad.

I see two ways to reinforce Cohn’s original homology. First,perhaps one or more of these other progressions has also beenconsistently associated with the liminal space between life anddeath. For example, before the SLIDE (e.g., C+↔C♯–) pro-gression became more commonplace and semiotically general-ized in Hollywood film scoring starting around 2000, composerJames Newton Howard synchronized SLIDEs with narrativemoments in two films that bring life and death into uncomfort-ably close quarters: Outbreak (1995)—humans dealing withlethal pathogens—and The Sixth Sense (1999)—the presence ofghosts. Second, while the idealized voice leading of multipleprogressions can lead to contradictions between diatonic voiceleading and diatonic harmonies, only one progression—thehexatonic pole—creates such contradictions for all six of itsbijective voice leadings, as shown in Example 7, in which thenotated registral ordering prescribes voice-leading mappings.With the twenty-three other triadic progressions, there exists atleast one bijective voice-leading solution, however far it isabstracted away from the musical surface, that reconciles thediatonicism of the horizontal and vertical dimensions, if an aug-mented fourth or diminished fifth is allowed as a diatonic inter-val. Example 8 provides one such voice leading for each of thelast nine progressions in Example 6. Only the hexatonic-poleprogression defies even far-fetched rationalizations to sometwo-dimensional diatonic network, just as evocation of theuncanny can be argued to be distinct from far-fetched appealsto magic, exoticism, or other forms of the unknown.

These suggested addenda to Cohn’s homology foregroundthe proposition that, in Saussure’s famous words, “in languagethere are only differences,” and “the idea or phonic substancethat a sign contains is of less importance than the other signsthat surround it.”36 For Hatten, markedness provides this

. Contradictions between diatonic harmony and diatonic idealized voice leading in ten nonequivalent progressions.

. Contradictions between diatonic harmony and diatonic voice leading in the six bijective voice leadings of the hexatonic pole.

Gorbman (1987), Neumeyer (1993), and Buhler, Neumeyer, and Deemer(2010) describe and make use of commutation tests.

Cohn (2012, 22). Huron (2001, 62). Saussure (1959, 120).

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“surrounding” on both sides of the significance equation: hisiconic homology emerges through analogy, mapping and“lining up” a marked/unmarked musical pair such as major/minor with a marked/unmarked expressive pair such as nontra-gic/tragic. The homology between minor and tragic relies uponthe differences between minor and major, and between tragicand nontragic. But difference need not be only binary andoppositional. For the investigation of meaning in pantriadicmusic, a set of progression classes (such as the forty-six nontriv-ial MnMs) can provide this “surrounding” on at least themusical side of the equation. Likewise, many theories of emo-tional or narrative classification use multidimensional spacesthat may include, but still exceed, dichotomous categorization.Therefore, the less one of the homologies proposed belowworks just as well for other MnMs beside M4m, or the less oneof the homologies proposed below works just as well for otheremotional depictions besides those of loss-induced sadness, themore I will champion it.

In fact, the recognition of the role of difference in the emer-gence of the sorrowful association with the loss gesture ingeneral, and with M4m in particular, may help to explain whythe M4m did not assume such a consistency of any associationuntil the late twentieth century. When Carl Dahlhaus writes ofthe “individualization of harmony” in the music of Wagner,Liszt, and Brahms, he is identifying “single chords or unusualharmonic progressions” that rival leitmotivs in their ability to beassociated with a certain character, place, or narrative state.37

But, for most Dahlhaus readers familiar with this repertoire,“unusual” certainly means not only “rare,” but probably alsoevokes the more specific “chromatic,” such as Wagner’s “Tarn-helm.” This is certainly true for mainstream American filmmusic before 1985: MnMs set aside for expressive functions—M6M for space, m8m for evil, and so forth—tend to be chro-matic. As certain MnM associations age and ossify owing to apopular art form’s propensity toward cliché, I speculate thatsome film composers who use the pantriadic Romantic styletend to keep one ear open for different sounds within the spaceof forty-eight MnMs that are nonetheless still distinctive andthus suited for significance. The protracted, and especially the

undulatory, M4m may be diatonic, but, in both concert halls ofthe 1880s and movie theatres in the 1980s, it was just as rare, ifnot more so, than many of its chromatic counterparts made toprotract and undulate, and thus made for a good foundation fora new significant musical gesture.

But why couple this gesture with loss-induced sadness? Myvarious endeavors to provide answers to this question in the fivehomologies that follow will focus primarily on the importantM4m feature of the loss gesture. Certainly the non-M4m fea-tures of the loss gesture itself support homologous relationswith its narrative correlate. These features include not only suchexpected qualities as its slow tempo, deliberate harmonicrhythm, low volume, and gentle timbres, but also its more pecu-liar undulatory quality, which could be interpreted as consola-tory in its rocking, psychologically imprisoning in its stasis,and/or spiritually transcendent in its cyclicity. In fact, given anexemplary loss gesture, one could substitute for M4m any oneof a good number of the other forty-five nontrivial MnMs andthe music could still be appropriate for a sad scene. But, of theforty-six nontrivial MnMs, why has M4m been apparentlysingled out as the most appropriate? In at least my experiencewith recent popular film music, the correlation between a pro-tracted M4m—relative to the remaining forty-five nontrivialMnMs—and the reflection upon a sorrowful loss—relative toother emotional states and narrative situations of the samedegree of specificity—is too distinctive to settle for a satisfactoryexplanation that does not work for M4m alone. Put anotherway, I know of no “ersatz loss gesture”—a gesture with all of theloss gesture’s non-M4m features but with another MnM sub-stituting for M4m—that is associated nearly as often withdepictions of loss in this genre as much as the original lossgesture is. Therefore, the five homologies below will concentrateon the M4m feature of the loss gesture.

First, the scarcity of the mediant triad in general and theundulating M4m in particular, reviewed earlier, could be usedto argue for the motivation of the association: as the medianttriad or the undulating M4m is rare in tonal music, so theinstances of traumatic loss that it accompanies are (mercifully)rare in the real world that these conventional narratives reflect.However, such narratives may include a wide variety of rareevents, not only those involving loss or sorrow; such an argu-ment cannot make a distinction.

Second, the loss gesture foregrounds the stark contrastbetween major and minor sonorities, just as the moments ofloss they underscore accentuate the stark contrast between thedelight of possessing something cherished and the tragedy of itsremoval. The presence of ♯4̂, while ultimately a microtoniciza-tion of the mediant due to the loss gesture’s overarching majormode, intensifies the contrast, for the conflict plays out bothbetween triadic harmonies and between implied scalar modes.However, twenty-four of the forty-six nontrivial MnMs pitmajor triad against minor triad, so an explanation based onmajor-minor contrast cannot say why the M4m in particular isset apart to accompany such scenes of reflecting upon loss. Tobe sure, among these twenty-four, it is significant that M4m is

. One reconciliation between diatonic harmony anddiatonic, but not idealized, voice leading for each of the last nine

progressions from Example 6 (the total number of possiblereconciliations for each progression is shown in parentheses).

Dahlhaus (1980, 73).

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one of only ten that takes place within a diatonic scale,untouched by chromatic alienation; likewise, it is significantthat some of these scenes of loss take place within an ordinarysetting where the loss, as well as the coping with the loss, seem“natural.” Yet this argument still underdetermines the exactharmonic features of the gesture: why could not the loss gesturedepend just as well upon M2m or M9m, which are equallydiatonic?

A third homology recognizes that, in tonal music, an initiat-ing progression from a major tonic triad to a minor medianttriad typically continues to a subdominant or submediant triad,rather than returning via undulation to the tonic triad. Onecould argue within an expectancy framework that, just as thereturn to I denies the normative progression from iii to IV or vi,the sorrowful moment denies the sweetness and pleasantries ofa more general sentimentality with which a slow I–iii–IV . . . isoften associated in popular music and film music. The progres-sion is thus disrupted and short-circuited: appropriate musicalanalogies for the intrusion of a painful, often senseless, loss intoan otherwise normal life. While this explanation is attractive, itfounders on two significant points. First, the normative contin-uations for a number of different chord progressions could bethwarted: why is it that I–iii has been singled out to be associ-ated with the loss gesture? Second, the loss gesture’s ability toconvey poignancy seems to manifest itself sufficiently beforeanother chord—any other chord—follows the I–iii progression.

A fourth homology involves the voice leading of the M4m.Apart from interests in its expressive qualities, this progression—or, more generally, the L progression—has garnered specialinterest in recent years because it is “maximally smooth”: thesymmetric difference between the two chords, considered aspitch-class sets, is a member of set-class 2–1[01].38 It is ironicthat, from this perspective, a progression that is incrediblymoving hardly moves at all! This structure of minimal changemight be argued, in conjunction with the second explanationabove, to match some of the narratives from Example 4 thatparticularly involve, for example, gun-related deaths: as theminimal physical effort of the squeezing of a trigger directlywreaks a disproportionally tragic loss of life, a mere half-stepvoice leading transforms a major triad—made the baseline cour-tesy of the tonicization—into a minor triad. The same may besaid, of course, of a departure M0m: the progression from atonic triad in an established major-mode key to the tonic triadof its parallel minor. This musical darkening has a time-honored association with extramusical darkening; perhapstoday’s M4m is a latter-day M0m. But even if affect couldsomehow transfer along the lines of voice-leading equivalence,the change of mode that the departure M0m synecdochicallyimplies may accompany, at least in recent popular film, any oneof a number of negatively valenced emotions or many kinds ofworsening situations. M4m seems to be particularly affiliatedwith an intense loss and the sorrow that comes from dwellingon this loss. Moreover, other excerpts from Example 4, in

which the loss in the narrative transpires due to considerable,instead of minimal, effort, complicate a metaphorical link withvoice-leading smoothness. Lastly, even if one allows this link—that a minute voice-leading change from a major triad to aminor triad well associates with loss—then why is not M9m(I–vi) at least partially represented? Granted, its symmetricaldifference is a whole step, not a half- step, but it is still a step.Yet I know of not a single undulating or protracted M9m inrecent popular film music that accompanies a loss like those sur-veyed in Example 4, even though this explanation, tempered bythe slight difference of degree between the M4m’s and M9m’sidealized voice leading, would predict such an association.

From another perspective, however, M4m and M9m differin kind. If the tonicized major triad serves as the starting refer-ence point, then the idealized voice leading of the departureM4m involves one voice moving down by step, whereas thesame for the departure M9m involves one voice moving up bystep. This perspective takes this inquiry into territory that hasbeen well charted by philosophers of music. The emotion ofsadness figures prominently in Peter Kivy’s claim, made overthirty years ago, regarding the association between certain emo-tions and certain musical structures. His “physiognomy ofmusical expression” theory essentially claims that we associatean emotion with a musical utterance because the musical utter-ance resembles human utterances associated with the sameemotion.39 When the melody moves slowly and droops down,listeners liken this to vocal or gestural expressions of sadnessthat behave in a similar manner; parallel arguments are used forjoy and other emotions. The “physiognomy” component stemsfrom Kivy’s analogue to the sad face of a St. Bernard: we associ-ate sadness with the St. Bernard’s face because the St. Bernardface resembles (human) faces that are associated with sadness.Stephen Davies offered much the same idea in an article pub-lished around the same time as Kivy’s book and then elaboratedupon it in a book five years later.40

This theory, which also acquired the designations of“contour theory” or “resemblance theory,” garnered supportfrom other philosophers and theorists. Malcolm Budd and PaulBoghossian have generally endorsed it, Aaron Ridley’s “melis-mas” essentially followed its suit, and even several of RobertHatten’s gestures, such as “lift” or “shrug off,” acquire theirextramusical significance through a similar process.41 However,contour theory falls short in explaining the emotional expressiv-ity of harmonic progression. Kivy acknowledged this to somedegree when he first presented the physiognomy theory in1980, as he admitted that the vertical minor third bears nomore resemblance to grief-expressing behavior than the verticalmajor third. And yet, he has more recently (and fancifully, byhis own admission) suggested that we “hear the vertical

Cohn (1996).

Kivy (1980, 51ff ). Davies (1980, 1994). Budd (1995), Boghassian (2007), Ridley (1995), and Hatten (2004).

Matravers (2010), however, considers Budd’s work apart from other resem-blance theorists.

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structure of chords as a kind of contour,” so that the lowering ofthe major third to a minor third above, say, C creates “a kind ofsagging, or sinking, depressingly from E to E flat.”42 If thisargument is permitted, then the similar lowering of a half-stepthat occurs in the idealized voice leading of the loss gesture(such as the C to B in Example 3) could also be considered tocreate a similar depressing slump. It is, at the least, serendipi-tous that I–i (the departure M0m) and I–iii (the departureM4m) have the same progression of chord quality (major triadto minor triad), the same idealized voice leading (two voices donot move, one voice descends by semitone), and similar extra-musical associations with sadness or tragedy in their own well-defined repertoires, albeit the second much more circumscribedand recent than the first.

But I suspect it is at the most serendipitous. First, an under-standing of the significance of the minor mode, and that of itstonic-minor triad, does not require an immediate juxtapositionwith the parallel major mode and its tonic-minor triad. In otherwords, although the temporal experience of sagging created bythis immediate juxtaposition might certainly add to the effect,the sagging is not necessary to a culturally suitable interpretationof the associations of a musical passage in the minor mode,which seems more dependent upon paradigmatic rather thansyntagmatic relations. In this light, Kivy’s description ofsagging actually better suits the experience of the departureM4m: it is not merely the occurrence of a iii chord in a major-mode context, but it is I–iii in particular that enjoys the associa-tion with sorrow in contemporary film music. One could hearthe semitone drop in its idealized voice leading as an appropri-ately despondent musical “sigh”—but somewhat unusual forthis well-worn gesture as both notes of the sigh boast triadicmembership.

Second, Kivy’s contour interpretation of the major-minorshift moves the homological mapping away from using the well-oriented and thus clearer linear space of registral pitch andpushes it toward using the unorientable and thus murkier quo-tient space of pitch class. What of the progression from a rela-tively low C-major triad to a relatively high C-minor triad? Andwhat of all the instances in Example 4 with an “Up” in themelodic direction column? Is there still a sagging quality toeither of these kinds of progression, even though the primarymotion rises through registral pitch space? If we persist with ananswer of “yes,” because the idealized voice leading, althoughnot manifested, uses only descending motions, then this strat-egy weakens the explanatory power of the contour theory somuch—odds are, either the registral motion or the idealizedvoice leading will go the way you want—as to render it insignifi-cant and essentially useless. If we instead answer “no,” then thecontour theory’s account of musical expression remains viable—as far as it goes—but we must concede that the expressivenessof musical utterances that are defined solely in pitch-class space,of which M4m is clearly one, cannot be satisfactorily explainedby using contour theory.

This is essentially the same conclusion to which philosopherGeoffrey Madell, as part of his critique of Kivy’s theory ofmusical expressiveness, arrives: “in introducing the element ofharmony we introduce something which really does not haveany parallel to human behaviour.”43 This statement is certainlyvalid with respect to contour theory; one needs the linearity ofregistral space in order to engage the VERTICALITY imageschema, which, paired with the flow of time, permits structuralresemblances between musical motions and human motions,yet harmonic motion defined solely in pitch-class space per-plexes the use of the VERTICALITY image schema. But there areother schemata that can metaphorically, or cross-domain, mapto a chain of musical events, even those events confined to theprovince of pitch class, to behaviors and experiences in oureveryday lives.44 The following account, which functions as myfifth and final homology, proposes one such metaphoricalmapping.

The loss gesture typically opens with a soft tonic-major triadthat lasts around four seconds. Although one experiences theacoustic presence of three different pitch classes within thistriad, these three pitch classes are not equal constituents of thechord. Rather, the root is the triad’s representative member, theone pitch class of the three with which the listener most identi-fies when conceiving of the chord as a pitch-class collection.Thus, the root is the chord’s essence; in the centuries-old, syn-opsizing terms of the basse fondamentale and the Romannumeral, the chord “is” what pitch class the root belongs to(e.g., “it is a C chord”). In contrast, the third and fifth incarnatethe root and flesh out the chord; they are nominalized by theroot—thus they are typically labeled by intervals above the root,instead of assuming individual names—while simultaneouslyenhancing the root, boosting its overtones, augmenting itsacoustic traces. The metaphorical overlay from the biologicaland generative meanings of the word “root,” while not an exactfit, easily brings this asymmetry to bear on the imagination. Thefact that this root is also the tonic pitch class increases evenfurther its value as a point of orientation and intention.45

When this major tonic triad continues to a minor triad witha root on the mediant, something special happens: this progres-sion takes away the root-cum-tonic pitch class, the essence ofthe opening major triad and the emblem of the diatonic tonalspace, but leaves intact the remaining two members of the tonictriad, this chord’s flesh, the root’s manifestation. Granted, ifthe progression is swift, the extraction of the root is scarcely felt,if at all. But in slow music, each chord eventually becomes itsown musical event, facilitating a deliberate contemplation of theroot’s extraction as the departure M4m takes place. Hence, the

Kivy (2002, 44).

Madell (2002, 13). My invocation, although informal, of image schemata, cross-domain

mapping, and conceptual metaphors and their application to music drawsupon scholarship such as Zbikowski (2002) and Spitzer (2004).

The fact that roots and tonics are, as Tymoczko (2011, 169) describesthem, “music-theoretic cousins, sharing a number of physiognomic charac-teristics while being of distinct parentage” is important to recognize here.Rings (2011, 107) makes a similar point.

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temporal component of the loss gesture provides not only a like-ness with the slow gestural and bodily motions associated withsadness, but also an opportunity to dwell on each harmony andthe differences between adjacent harmonies.

Certainly, any one of a multiple number of chords—ii, V, orvii°, in addition to iii—could follow the tonic triad and alsoarrest the sounding presence of the tonic triad’s root and thekey’s tonic. Yet, in the immediate context of the tonic-majortriad, what the mediant-minor triad invokes that these othersdo not is the sense of a void; one cannot have a hole withouthaving something in which to have the hole. By leaving thethird and the fifth to linger as the unmarked ground, the root’sabsence as the marked figure gains a genuine, emphatic status.And simply removing the root and leaving the third-fifth dyadis not sufficient; by residing in the mediant triad, the leadingtone may be stripped of some of its familiar tension, but itplays the important supplanting role of “not tonic.” By contrast,the progression I–V makes the marked difference one of preser-vation instead of absence: only the fifth of the tonic triadlingers. And a progression that maintains no common pitchclasses, such as I–ii or I–vii°, erases the sense that the secondchord is some chord-tone transformation of the first chord.This obliterates any dichotomy between tones lost and toneskept, which is crucial to the contrastive significance of chord-tone loss.

A common part-writing rule advises one, ceteris paribus, tomaintain as many chord tones as possible as triads progress onthe surface: as Cohn puts it, “maximisation of commontones . . . [is one of] the most characteristic features of ourmusical tradition.”46 One may also attend to which triadic tonesare kept in common in a progression. A revised rule might readas follows: “Keep as many common tones as you can, but themore common tones you keep, the more important it is that oneof them be the root.” Instead of placing all instances of L, P,and R transformations equally into the same privileged category“whose defining feature is double common-tone retention,”47

this revised rule teases apart instances of L, P, and R triadic pro-gressions, as well as other progressions, according to root reten-tion. This subcategorization may shed light on certainconventions of surface-level harmonic progression in tonalmusic. For example, while double common-tone retentionalone would encourage diatonic root motion by third in eitherdirection, my revised rule would encourage only descending-third diatonic root motion and discourage its inverse, whichcorresponds to how triads tend to behave in tonal music.This revised rule would also suggest a weaker bias between thetwo root motions by fifth—descending-fifth root motionswould be preferred over ascending-fifth root motions—whichcorresponds well with recent studies.48 Thus, the out-of-time

preference among triadic members (root or not-root) can beargued to translate into an in-time preference between the twodirections (up or down) of certain root progressions.

My present interest, however, is more in semantics ratherthan in syntax. Moments of loss in contemporary popular filmsas those collected in Example 4 tend not to be associated with aprotracted or undulating progression of I–vi (departure M9m) aswith that of I–iii (departure M4m), although both are diatonicroot motions by third. The same can be said when comparing i–VI (m8M, M4m’s tonal inverse) with I–iii, although both are Ltransformations. The difference may be accounted for by consid-ering what happens to the root: in I–vi and i–VI, the root ismaintained, but in I–iii, the root, which is the most significantand fundamental component of the triad, is lost. And I proposethat this loss can homologously resonate with the significant andfundamental loss that underlies the sorrow portrayed in each ofthe various filmic excerpts listed in Example 4. Furthermore, thehomological correspondence strengthens with the observationthat just as the listener of the loss gesture is left with vestiges ofthe lost triadic root (the third and fifth), characters in these par-ticular scenes are left, often painfully, with vestiges of that whichis lost, such as a dead or dying body, or a less extreme form ofbody without spirit (like paralyzed legs), or a fond memory,picture, or verbal representation. In both musical and narrativecases, although these traces of the lost one remain behind, theessence of what these traces were tied to, what served as theirsource, is (or will be) gone—uprooted.

Now, when a minor-tonic triad progresses to a major-mediant triad: i–III (a departure m3M), one creates the samemusical situation: the root is lost, and the third and fifth remainbehind. In this case, however, the loss of root coincides with achange in chord quality from minor to major. If one ascribes tothis shift a microcosmic version of per aspera ad astra, then theloss of root would be synchronized with a momentary musicalheartening, which would make little sense as a match for thesaddening losses surveyed in Example 4. Therefore, a combina-tion of the second homology—the major-to-minor transforma-tion as generally unfavorable—and this fifth and final homology—loss of root-cum-tonic as loss of something dear—singles outthe departure M4m from all the possible ordered MnMs as par-ticularly appropriate harmonic and tonal material for a lossgesture.

What happens in the next few seconds is crucial to how thismusical loss is interpreted. I propose that a mediant triad thatlasts at least one second has enough time to create a perceptibleexperience of a darkening loss of root-cum-tonic as describedabove. However, as insinuated in my third homology, an imme-diately subsequent move to the expected subdominant or sub-mediant triad can significantly mitigate the experience ofroot-tonic loss, because this unusual local relationship is over-shadowed by the mediant triad’s service of a usual globalpurpose: most often, the harmonization of an upper voice’smoderately paced 8̂–7̂–6̂. Crossing between domains, thismusical progression well matches sentimentality: the fleetingloss stirs, but then is folded into, a broader and more neutral

Cohn (1996, 15). Cohn (1997, 1). Tymoczko’s (2011, 227) third-based geometric model for harmonic syntax

elegantly accounts for the rule that “descending thirds and fifths are moreoften permissible than ascending thirds and fifths.” However, his bookoffers no explanation for this bias.

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mix of emotions. But when the third normalizing triad comeslate, this mitigation proportionally loses efficacy, and if insteadthe progression undulates, returning to the tonic triad, a gestureappropriate for sentimentality is declined and the composerreloads and fires at least one more departure M4m: in only oneinstance in Example 4 is I–iii–I not followed by another iii. Theundulation forces its departure M4ms into the limelight andonto a certain listener who attends to the retention and turnoverof a triad’s variegated membership—a listener who, like thecharacters in the moment this music accompanies, is left alonewith the contemplation of a considerable loss.

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Music Theory Spectrum, Vol. 36, Issue 2, pp. 295–314, ISSN 0195-6167,electronic ISSN 1533-8339. © The Author 2014. Published by OxfordUniversity Press on behalf of The Society for Music Theory. All rightsreserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]: 10.1093/mts/mtu014

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scott murphy_scoring loss in some recent popular film and television

Documents

lm music

television music

music of example

alien team

walter goddamnit

languid alien

alien rescueteam

walter brian dennehy