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• / Essay by Mark Hare

I asked my friend and music historian Mark about the musical memes that cause us to emote. He responded with this history of today's popular film, Twilight. --Valerie

Twilight and Its Musical Roots
--by Mark Hare

While a movie like Twilight relies on modern rock ballads to connect with its teen audience, the music used to depict the supernatural elements draws upon a 19th century tradition of the supernatural in classical music. Before then, musical pieces with a macabre or spooky twist were rarities. Bach’s "Toccata and Fugue in D minor" for organ and Tartini’s “The Devil’s Trill” violin sonata are such exceptions.

Gothic romances and horror appeared in the late 18th century. These works coincided with the rise of the Romanticism in literature and art, which emphasized strong emotion and the imagination as sources of aesthetic experience. Gothic art and literature featured exotic or atmospheric locations, melodrama, motifs suggesting death, decay and the bizarre, and a list of stock characters such as bandits, werewolves, vampires, witches, and lunatics. The Gothic contained a range that spanned Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dracula, and parodies like Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey.

Composers were slow to incorporate Romantic or Gothic elements into their music. That changed by the 1820’s with an explosion of supernatural themed operas and concert pieces. Works produced between 1815 and 1910 include the “Danse Macabre” by Camille Saint-Saëns; “Totentanz” for piano and orchestra by Franz Liszt; “Hexentanz” by Edward MacDowell; the “Symphonie Fantastique” by Hector Berlioz; “Le chausseur maudit” by César Franck; “The Noon Witch” by Antonin Dvořák; and “Night on Bald Mountain” by Modest Mussorgsky. The fascination with the supernatural in music continued into the 20th century. “Gaspard de la nuit” by Maurice Ravel, the “Isle of the Dead” by Sergei Rachmaninov and “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” by Paul Dukas show this influence.

When motion pictures first developed soundtracks, no one wrote music scores for the films. Dracula and Frankenstein did not have incidental music. Franz Waxman’s score to Bride of Frankenstein was one of the first original music sound tracks for a horror film. Over time, film scores created a vocabulary that became an additional character in the movie. Psycho would not be the same without the jagged, unnerving score by Bernard Hermann. Halloween would not resonate in memory without the obsessive repeating notes of John Carpenter’s music. The Shining would not deeply unsettle us without the atonal works of György Ligeti in the background. Twilight inherits the literary and musical traditions of Romanticism and the Victorian Gothic to present an old tale in modern dress.

Essay by Mark Hare ©2009

So when was the last time you listened to this music when you were alone? Dare ya!
Touch the pointer to a music or movie title to see the Amazon.com product. --Val

Get sheet music, album, dvd, and memorabilia...
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Carter Burwell - Bella's Lullaby (From Twilight) Music Book
Carter Burwell - Twilight - Motion Picture Score Music Book

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