The God of Movie Music

 

An undated picture of Richard Wagner, holding movie music prisoner in his left hand

 

Re-posted by Nicholas Stix  

Wagner’s Influence on Movie Music
By McDuff
December 13, 2013
Wagner Tripping

Every man or woman in charge of the music of moving picture theater is, consciously or unconsciously, a disciple or follower of Richard Wagner
– Stephen Bush, film critic, 1911

 

Please write music like Wagner, only louder

– Sam Goldwyn to a film composer

 

If my grandfather were alive today, he would undoubtedly be working in Hollywood

—Wolfgang Wagner

 

(Note: When I mention a film composer in this post, the film listed next to his name is the one–or more–he wrote that is listed among the 25 best film scores of all time, according to a survey by the American Film Institute. More on that below.)

There is no area in which Wagner’s musical influence is felt more broadly and deeply than in film music. It was very clear to the early Hollywood moguls, and their film composers, that Wagner’s music was the perfect model for the newly created industry. He is widely credited for developing the musical language that was self-consciously adopted from his works for the movies. For example, the man who is often called “the father of movie music,” Max Steiner¹ (King Kong, Gone with the Wind), denied he was the “inventor” and deflected that title to Wagner:

“Nonsense. The idea originated with Richard Wagner. Listen to the incidental scoring behind the recitatives in his operas. If Wagner had lived in this century, he would have been the No. 1 film composer.”²

 

Max Steiner  

The influential 20th century composer, and teacher of several film composers, Arnold Schoenberg, said that Wagner “bequeathed to us three things: first, rich harmony; second, the short motive with its possibility of adapting the phrase as quickly and often as required to the smallest details of the mood; and third, at the same time, the art of building large-scale structures and the prospect of developing this art still further.”³

All three of these bequests were adopted by film composers, though at the base was usually “the short motive,” a.k.a. leitmotifs – what Wagner called “motifs of memory” – whose purpose is “to represent or symbolize a person, object, place, idea, state of mind, supernatural force or any other ingredient in a dramatic work.”⁴