Analysis and Theory - John Corigliano / Symphony No. 3 & Music For Film

 

 John Corigliano Symphony No. 3 and Perspective on the Symbiosis of Film and Music

Alexander Goodhart I. Introduction How many Western composers, born in the second half of the twentieth century, were not exposed to the music of American film in their youth? Hint: none.  none.  For how many of these aspiring artists was the music of cinema their first encounter with orchestral writing? Today, hundreds—if not thousands—of young composers are pursuing degrees in Composition for Visual Media; this is a testament to the powerful relationship between film and contemporary composers. And while those desiring to make a living off of their craft may find it impossible to not dabble, at the least, in the film industry, the distinctive role of an autonomous artistic aesthetic is absent from most commercial composition projects. This moves many young musicians, such as myself, to study the discipline under “classical” virtues, which can be so academically distinct from film music (as is the case at the Esther Boyer College of Music) that we very well may be excommunicating a central component of our intrinsic musical rhetoric. Without a significant academic elision between historically “classical music” theory and the cultural impact of music for film, the “21st century composer’s voice” is at stake of being lost. Through the end of the last and into our new century, a birds-eye perspective of contemporary classical music looks something like an international potluck crammed into one disorganized dish; and, while the consolidation of emerging theoretical principals will only be at its clearest in retrospect, it would do our community

 

due justice to reexamine the influential forces at play in our works. Luckily, as the postmodern era progresses, many careers of elder composers can be seen flittering between the conservatory and commercial styles. A suite from John Williams’ score to Close Encounters of the Third Kind   has been programmed for the Philadelphia Orchestra’s 2014-15 season; Henryk Gorecki—a composer made famous to the layman while failure to the aficionado by his Symphony of Sorrowful Songs— received an April 2014 premiere of his posthumously completed Symphony No. 4; and John Corigliano, known most widely for his score to the 1997 film The Red Violin, Violin, received his first Pulitzer Prize for his Symphony No. 2 in 2001. Corigliano is an exemplary role model for the new generations of composers, having successfully straddled a career ranging from classical composition, film scoring, conservatory and university pedagogy, and even assistant producer with the New York Philharmonic. It is a versatility of professional musicianship that has propelled him to success, and that same versatility is a unifying factor among his musical works. In reckoning the influence of film music on the modern composer, theorists have been at odds for decades over the cross-pollination of aesthetic, meaning, and compositional procedures between film and music. This argument is thoroughly explored in a 2010 article by Scott Paulin, “Cinematic” “ Cinematic” Music: Analogies, Fallacies, and the Case of Debussy. As his title suggests, the author is cautionary towards drawing lines between the genres. Yet, the brilliant and successful music of Corigliano can demonstrate that these lines are well drawn, crossed, and so permeating as to be invisible. The composer’s music exhibits strong theoretical unification, uniqueness in sound and form, and a fresh approach to interaction between performers and audiences alike. This paper will present a survey of and theoretical approach to the first

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three movements to his Symphony No. 3 (“Circus Maximus”), and also serve as an intermediary in the ongoing discussion of “media specificity” and the symbiotic relationship of film and music.

II. Symphony No. 3 As Paulin demonstrates in “Cinematic” Music , theoretical perspectives reliant on the canon of American film to classical scores give rise to integral issues of media specificity and linguistic meaning. However important these examinations are, there is clear evidence in the case Corigliano that the aesthetics and functions of music for concert hall and visual media are comparable and fit for complimentary analytical study. In their marriage, conservatory and commercial compositional strategies provide a more advantageous arsenal of perspectives with which to approach Symphony No. 3. The piece is enormous in scope and considerable in length: it encompasses eight movements over 35-minutes; and employs an oversized ensemble of winds, brass, harp, percussion with piano (on stage)— woodwinds, brass, percussion, and double bass (surrounding the audience)— a miniature marching band (moving through audience)— and a 12-gauge shotgun. This tour de force is not merely a novelty show for Corigliano, but a foundation on which to set a remarkably unique musical language. Corigliano’s notational methods are not even close to the avant-garde scores of his conservatory-focused colleagues; the reasonably conservative score does rely on non-metronomic repetition in the first movement, a method with great influence on its acoustic result and explored deeply in his preceding symphony. Graphic notation is sparingly used in accompaniment of unfamiliar extended techniques such as a “siren/doppler sound” in clarinets and “wolf

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howl” in horns. Truly, Corigliano succeeds in crafting music that is cohesive in its newly tailored rhetoric. How, then, is the music structured—and can it function meaningfully within the classical idiom? The symphony’s subtitle, Circus Maximus , is taken from an ancient Roman stadium of the same name—the empire’s first and largest arena, which was host to the most aggressively passionate games and celebrations of Western civilization: festive religious ceremonies, theatrical recitals, chariot races, and gladiator contests. Through this electrifying realm the piece is presented in eight movements: I. 

Introitus

IV. 

Night Music I

 VII. 

Prayer

II. 

Screen / Siren

 V. 

Night Music II

 VIII. 

Coda: Veritas

III. 

Channel surfing

 VI. 

Circus Maximus

While the movements’ titles do little to describe their programmatic relationship with the subtitle, the music instantly translates the sensory experiences of the ancient coliseum into palpable narrations and illustrations expressed through both linear and surreal perspectives. The colossal events invoked by the symphony were, in their time, predicated by the pompa circensis , a parade of the circus’ participants—complete with horsemen, chorus, and statues of the gods. This affair was especially pompous at The Circus Maximus, as described by Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus in his work Roman Antiquities . Corigliano’s introductory movement is strikingly evocative of the ritual; the first gesture is a piling of declamatory ostinati in the snare drums, trumpets, and woodwinds. When the full ensemble enters, it energizes the music with magnanimous depth and movement: piccolo and clarinets in their highest register shriek wildly against the brutally rigid brass. The spectacle is as exhilarating as it is horrifying.

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As a piece of pure music, the collective sound seems confounding, with no traceable connection to the Western canon. One might feel compelled to disregard Corigliano’s sonic onslaught as an artifice designed merely to provoke emotional response (a dangerous choice, as Gorecki’s Third shows us). However, when the program of Circus Maximus   is is taken into account, the music takes on a whole new life and meaning. The antiphonal trumpet ostinati are bugles blowing from the corners of the stadium; the loud tremolandi of flexatones are the thrashings of slaves and animals chained to the ground, and that exhilarating fear evoked is not just a meaningless trick: it is a modern interpretation of the colliding passions of celebration and bloodlust. In this way, Corigliano’s music is made more meaningful by a visual interpretation: for without artists’ impressions of Roman stadiums—such as those in the 2nd century illustrated play Hecyra Hecyra or  or the 2000 film Gladiator —there —there would be much less of a conception of the Circus Maximus on which to set music. That is not where the composer’s work ends, however. While a film soundtrack may seek only to effectively underscore the action of a scene (playing the part of an amplifier, rather than a separate actor), Corigliano is engaging with his theatrical subject: making with it a unique impression that is musically codified. While the first movement explores the sensory façade of the Circus Maximus, the music goes on to explore its subjects much more deeply. In stark contrast to the introduction, the second movement “Screen/Siren” is thinly orchestrated, quiet, and meandering. A duet of alto saxophones introduce the music, which has a harmonic quality akin to Samuel Barber’s Summer Music   and melodic gestures reminiscent of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloe.  Chloe.  In this pastoral terrain, the music is sumptuous and dreamy, taking the listener into a distance: away from the

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frenzy of Circus Maximus. The soft timbre of the saxophones set apart from each other by a tritone creates a cool and misty atmosphere—the thin orchestration providing depth through intimacy. This movement is not about the games themselves, but one of their individual players: a gladiator, perhaps, alone in the moonlight on the eve of a match that could be his last. To engross the listener in this cerebral realm, Corigliano calls only on players in the audience-surrounding ensemble. The duet grows into a quartet of saxophones, who lament the brutality with unresolved dissonance. Above the quartet, a solo clarinet echoes the savage crowds: their fortissimo trills reduced to quietly descending melodic line. In mimicry of the silent and unfeeling earth, the pizzicato of a solo contrabass responds to the saxophones’ cries with the occasional single-note answer. Without preparation, the dream is interrupted with the blare of a whistle and lurid staccato chromatic ascents in the horns. The rush of ascending motion invokes the visceral commotion of a stampede, perhaps of stadium patrons brutishly filling into the Roman coliseum. As quickly as this violence appeared, it is replaced by the lugubrious dream that preceded. This extrapolation through unprepared juxtaposition continues through the third movement, “Channel Surfing.” The disparate sections that open this movement are delineated through the diagram on the next page.

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CORIGLIANO: Symphony No. 3 | Movement III (“Channel Surfing”) – Opening 50 Bars '

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Within the first one and a half minutes of the third movement, the music moves boldly through eight highly disparate sections. Beginning with alternations between the “stampede” and “Screen/Siren” sections, any remaining musical unity evaporates as the composer employs idiomatic textures reminiscent of Latin American dances, college marching bands, and traumatic bird songs that could easily find a home in Messiaen’s Symphonie-Turangalîla. Throughout these contrasting sections, Corigliano utilizes equally incongruent notational methods, ranging from multiple simultaneous meters to wholly unmetrical segments. As the rate of juxtaposition increases, separate motivic elements of harmony,

orchestration, and melodic gesture splinter away from their original presentation and are unpredictably littered through subsequent iterations: making for an overwhelming spectacle of recall and rephrase. The strategy of continuity through juxtaposition, while  jarring, effectively forces the listener to examine the music attentively to determine some sense of linearity. Upon that examination, the musical elements, delicately organized by the composer but obscured by aural disorder, are illuminated. As one may expect, “Channel Surfing” provides many facets to approach analytically but none fully encompassing; numerous dissimilarly marked moments comprise the movement. The momentary outburst of salsa fanfare is one of the most distinct in terms of both its syntax and gesture; by invoking a musical style that is truly alien to the musical language presented thus far in the symphony, Corigliano gains an uncanny device for dialoguing with his own music. The way in which he wields that dialogue is captivatingly brilliant. As the movement progresses, the musical dialects of salsa and Corigliano’s

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unique vernacular begin to collide. The frenzy towards fusion is announced with a fleeting call from the saxophone quartet, playing a quickened and rather desperatesounding version of their lament from the previous movement. This particular reiteration is so invigorated by its surrounding texture and new tempo that it seems to proclaim an official rivalry between the symphony’s first/second movements and the celebratory Latin-American vignettes which have so unwelcomely intruded. In response, the salsa dancing jettisons into a solo for the surrounding-band’s clarinet and some of its neighboring percussion. Just as the lively rhythm and harmony seem to be taking hold, the music cuts to the stage where a harmonically anguished

chord rings from the brass. From here, the conflicting sections’ entrances and departures begin to dovetail and grow into each other. Eventually, they are playing simultaneously with each other, though constantly bolting between the three spatially separate ensembles. The ensuing dissonance is dense and barely intelligible. As these sections overlap, atonal chromaticism saturates the harmony. This intensification of gestural and harmonic chaos leads the ear backwards, towards the opening movement. Just as the ensemble reaches a point of interminable disorder, the music suddenly becomes nearly monophonic and focused into the horns: a distinctive texture harkening towards the Introitus. A moment later, the frightening fanfare from movement one returns, as if to suddenly swallow hole the enormous musical display that had been evolving throughout the movement. The opening fanfare dissolves into downwards glissandi, with forlorn echoes of its theme in the horns bringing the movement to its close. At this point, the symphony is only one third completed; however, the first three movements are poignantly

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representative of the compositional strategies the composer applies in this work. What is so obvious about “Circus Maximus” is its polystylism—and, yet, what is so striking is Corigliano’s ability to contextualize opposing styles in a manner that allows them to function cohesively. The symphony has a beautiful and almost intangible balance of forces at work, those unique to the composer’s musical vocabulary and ones derived from long-extant sources. While the amalgamation of individually and sociallyconstructed voices is an established norm of postmodern music, its execution here is so extreme in terms of both rhetoric and orchestrational force that the piece remains remarkable and unique.

III. The Symbiosis of Film and Music, Conclusion

“Any sounds in any combination and in any succession are, henceforth,  free to be used in musical m usical continuity.” – Claude Debussy

How can an analysis account for all of the disunity in John Corigliano’s Symphony No. 3? The work’s titles and subtitles offer little help to deciphering its musical message; its movements are all virtually formless, and no harmonic or contrapuntal approach holds dominion throughout the relentlessly fragmented movements. Merely concluding that a lack of unity  is   is what unifies the piece is unjustifiable: it is both ignorant of the extra-musical activity at work and irrespective of the work’s compelling (yet baffling) sense of cohesion. However, understanding that conventional tactics of analysis would be both exhausting and unfulfilling gives a clue towards revealing a more valid approach. The foregoing quote of Debussy is a testament to the fact that what may be perceived as “discontinuous” is an acceptable musical rhetoric. If

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it is accepted, then, that discontinuity permeates the piece, then what is that pattern born out of? If John Corigliano is a composer to be respected, it should be that the meaning of his music is inseparable from its aesthetic. I would like to assert, in blatant contradiction to Paulin’s “Cinematic” Music   discussion, that the role of visual storytelling is paramount to the understanding of “Circus Maximus”. Corigliano owes a great deal of his success to music he has composed for film, and from there it can be surmised that at least some of that work has become a part of his artistic aesthetic. However, parallels to film and film music do not serve this analysis to justify to justify musical discontinuity, but rather see past it .

Debussy himself described Richard Strauss’ music, particularly, Heldenleben Heldenleben,, as “cinematic.” Paulin points out that “Debussy remarks precisely upon the surprise of [the music’s] continuity… not as a reference to editing, discontinuity, or shock.” While Paulin is plagued by the manifold meaning of the term, the “cinematic” analogy serves music greatly when that music (like Strauss’ tone poems) are directly referencing a narrative. In a single scene from a film, the camera may pan both smoothly and suddenly between different subjects, objects, colors, textures, and so on. Those changes of perspective are not for the sake of being jarring, but for providing a more depthful perspective. In the Corigliano Symphony No. 3, the strategy of juxtaposition does   work to be jarring and provocative, which is demonstrative that these seemingly analogous actions have profoundly different meanings and affects across the mediums of film and music. Instead, then, of focusing on procedural parallels between the media, attention should be placed onto the received effects of those methods. In the case of “Circus Maximus,” Corigliano uses the sonic imagery of both a spatially separated ensemble

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and rhetorically separate musical devices to successfully engross his audience in its programmatic story. Intriguingly, his program’s subject is ancient, yet its subtitles (like the musical vocabulary) are contrastingly pre-modern and 20th  century. The first movement title, “Introitus”, is an ancient Italic language—and, appropriately, the music is primal and unrefined. The third movement title, “Channel Surfing,” refers to a modern practice of switching quickly between different broadcast frequencies (predominantly television)—an idea which his schizophrenic music aptly suits. Unlike contemporary channel surfers, however, Corigliano is seeking to create continuity through his disjointed episodes. Just as the composer uses Latin-American music to

enter into dialogue with his own musical language, the discontinuous musical style that dominates the movement is in dialogue with both the contemporary listener and the music’s ancient subject. It is a critique, or at least a frightening representation, of the hyperactive behavior of consumers, be they Italic or American. How, now, does film—with its distinctly visual role—play into the storytelling at work in “Circus Maximus?” As was mentioned in the final paragraph of page 5, the subject on which Corigliano is setting his music is made more meaningful by visual interpretations of coliseums, which have been introduced to Western viewers through various film and television programs. In addition to this, the cinematographic technique of macro/microcosmic perspectives (the panning over a mountain before switching to a view of hikers gearing up at their base, for example) is translated musically into the symphony; “Introitus” is a staging of the stadium itself, “Screen/Siren” is a journey through a single gladiator’s cerebral experience before or after his battles, “Channel Surfing” sets the two previous subjects into motion by bringing the games to life. While the first three movements provide a sizeable framework on which to

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explore the symphony, the remaining five offer many more perspectives through which to understand “Circus Maximus” as aurally visual storytelling. Particularly of interest are the Night Music movements, which rely heavily on antiphonal discussion between the separated ensembles. As of now, theoretical vocabulary is a cumbersome tool for understanding the symbiosis of music and film. Paulin’s article demonstrates that, academically, the two worlds continue to exist separately and have yet to merge in a way that will let the lessons of film production be a friend to the musical analyst. Academic inquiry should be made less into what is intrinsically different between the media, which is a

modernist/constructivist endeavor that can rob both parties of identity and meaning, and more into the similar and dissimilar ways that the two achieve similar and dissimilar goals. For composers and theorists alike, John Corigliano’s Symphony No. 3 offers a compelling reason to re-evaluate our inspiration from and reliance on visual media as part of our musical aesthetic and voice.

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