Hollywood Cadences: Music and the Structure of Cinematic Expectation

Table of Contents* I. The Hollywood Sound [1.1]* II. Cadential Synchronization [2.1]* III. Definining Cadences [3.1]* IV. Cowboy Chromaticism [4.1]* IV. Chromatically Modulating Cadential Resolutions [5.1]* VI. Soaring Scoring [6.1]I. The Hollywood Sound(1)[1.1] One of the fruits of film musicology's extraordinary growth during the past decade is an increasing appreciation of the exuberant complexity of meaning in musical multimedia. Several attempts have been made to establish broad principles for musical meaning-making across film styles and eras, particularly for "Classical Hollywood" (roughly 1930-1960).(2) At the same time, other, more targeted studies-several from music theorists-have striven to characterize meaning in terms more cellular than holistic.(3) From this vantage, film music is seen as a play of particles and routines that accumulate associations and generate expectations through various inter- and intratextual means. One such particle that has, as yet, received minimal attention is among music's most fundamental elements: the cadence.Example 1. Newman - Twentieth Century Fox Fanfare(click to enlarge and listen)[1.2] Cadences contribute to the distinctive, if difficult to pin down "film music sound."(4) Take, for example, the symphonic statement shown in the reduced transcription of Example 1.(5) One of the most widely played and recognized pieces of American film music, Alfred Newman's "Twentieth Century Fox Fanfare" was composed in 1933 for the newly formed film studio, 20th Century Pictures. In 1953, Newman extended the fanfare with a bold cadence to celebrate the advent of Cinemascope technology. This version continues to be heard today, and serves the same suite of functions that it did during the birth of the studio system in the '30s. The fanfare is part heraldic celebration of a studio, part "ballyhoo" to arrest the viewer's attention, and part mini-overture to formally demarcate the onset of the film. Perhaps most importantly, it is part icon for all the desired affective states the Hollywood cinematic experience strives to evoke-glamour, escape, sentiment, and wonder.Example 2. "Hollywood Cadence" (after Laitz)[1.3] Though a late addition, the CinemaScope Extension is crucial in conjuring those associations. A great deal rests on Newman's choice of harmonic progression: a ii7-iio7-V-I modally-mixed perfect authentic cadence (PAC). With its blend of bittersweet melodrama and intimations of the transcendent, this cadential idea possessed connotations of romantic sentiment that were well-worn even in the 1930s; it is a sound that would have struck 1953 audiences as a throwback, as it does today as well.(6) Newman's gesture is a variant of a more generalized routine, the --cadence, or more simply "mixed cadence" (M-C). In this harmonic formula, the sixth scale degree in major drops directly from its natural to flattened state prior to the capture of major tonic at a phrase's end. In the "Fanfare," G4 in an inner voice descends through G4 en route to F4 (), producing a half-diminished supertonic and altered dominant on the way. The fanfare brings to mind what Steven Laitz describes as the "Hollywood Cadence," a type of plagal motion for which he cites the familiar stock melody shown in Example 2. Laitz bases this ascription on an assumption of widespread use in modern film and commercial repertoires, the cadence being "commonly heard in popular music of the 1920s through 1950s and in films today" (Laitz 2012, 429-30).[1.4] Laitz's "Hollywood Cadence" is a latter-day manifestation of the nineteenth-century harmonic proclivity for modal inflection of the subdominant in order to suggest sentiment or sublimity. It is an inclination that courses through the works of Schumann, Chopin, and Mendelssohn and reaches its peak with the act-concluding plagal sighs of Wagner. …