Power, Conor
(2024)
Composing America:
Patriotism, Mythology, and Piety in the Film Scores of
John Williams.
PhD thesis, National University of Ireland Maynooth.
Abstract
John Williams has been associated with the sound of Classical Hollywood Cinema (1933–58)
since his popular neoclassical scores of the 1970s seemed to revive the central European
tradition represented by composers such as Max Steiner and Erich Wolfgang Korngold (among
others). Alongside this popular European romantic style, however, Williams’s scores often
reference a diverse array of American musical idioms. When scoring American-centric narratives,
or specific genres, Williams seems to rely on three distinct idioms, each with their own specific
histories and associations both within and outside of their films. For westerns (The Cowboys),
Coplandesque pastoralism serves to glorify landscape and maintain a myth of the West in ways
reminiscent of Copland’s ballets of the 1940s. For political dramas (JFK) or war epics (The
Patriot) the use of dignified brass fanfares, marches, and calls summon metatextual links to
ceremony and the military to endow images with an earnestness and a patriotic air. In historical
dramas (Lincoln) a hymn-inspired vocabulary generates a sense of the reverential or noble. Taken
together, these idioms form a lingua franca of American-associated sounds, demonstrating how
Williams cultivates the musical legacies and traditions of his homeland, while referencing
European compositional practices. Three chapters investigate the histories of each of these
idioms and their manifestations across a selection of Williams-scored films. By tracing the lineage
of each idiom, exemplifying their associative rigidity, and revealing how Williams adapts them,
this thesis not only showcases Williams’s own nationalistic mode, but additionally highlights
issues arising from the pervasiveness of this style in a broader Hollywood context.
| Item Type: |
Thesis
(PhD)
|
| Keywords: |
Composing America;
Patriotism; Mythology; Piety; Film Scores; John Williams; |
| Academic Unit: |
Faculty of Arts,Celtic Studies and Philosophy > Music |
| Item ID: |
18642 |
| Depositing User: |
IR eTheses
|
| Date Deposited: |
11 Jun 2024 11:05 |
| URI: |
|
| Use Licence: |
This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available
here |
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