\u2018Liebestod\u2019, the \u2018Wedding March\u2019 and \u2018The Ride of the Valkyries\u2019: musical quotations from Richard Wagner\u2019s operas, suitably packaged for the silver screen, can be found in an almost endless succession of Hollywood movies. That said, however, the fact that his music has been selectively plucked and plundered in the interests of adding musical value to films is not proof of any particular affinity between Wagner and the cinematic medium. Wagner shares this fate with most composers of classical music. But it is<\/em> a matter of historical fact that Wagner\u2019s compositional technique has had an immense influence on the typical sound of Hollywood film music. And Wagner\u2019s concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk<\/em>, the \u2018total artwork\u2019, which he developed in his writings on aesthetics, is crucial to film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since as far back as the era of silent movies, the catalogue of classical music has been trawled for musical quotations suitable for use as \u2018mood music\u2019 for films. These lifted quotations were provided in the form of compendia to the cinema pianists of the day, listed according to the typical movie scenes they could be used to enhance (\u2018morning mood\u2019, \u2018wild chase\u2019, \u2018love scene\u2019, etc.). Working with quotations from the classical music repertoire continued with the \u2018talking pictures\u2019. The studios soon realised that the public were not at all disconcerted by hearing background music in scenes where there was no narrative explanation for its presence. Once this had been established, the profession of film composer really took off. From then on, a film without a score was unthinkable. The work of film composers became a fundamental part of film production and recycling quotations from classical music remained part of their practice.<\/p>\n\n Wagner\u2019s influence on the composition of film music is particularly evident in two areas: orchestral sound and the use of leitmotifs. This influence is mostly attributable to the fact that many of the composers who later made a name for themselves in Hollywood were trained in Europe before emigrating to the USA. These included, for example, Max Steiner (King Kong<\/em>, 1933), Franz Waxman (Rebecca<\/em>, 1940), and Erich Wolfgang Korngold (The Adventures of Robin Hood<\/em>, 1938). The European Late Romantic roots of these composers formed the basis on which the typical Hollywood sound developed. This was also how elements of Wagner\u2019s compositional technique found their way into film music. Passages from Wagner\u2019s operas, like the overture to Lohengrin<\/em> or the opening chords of Rheingold<\/em>, were studied as examples of how music could function as an independent narrative element, thanks to the effective use of orchestration.<\/p>\n\n Wagner\u2019s inspired use of characteristic melodies or musical phrases to signal particular figures or objects in the on-stage action \u2013 generally known as the \u2018leitmotif technique\u2019 \u2013 was also copied in film music. But where Wagner tried to integrate these leitmotifs into his scores in the most subtle way possible, in film music they have usually been employed simply as catchy and easily recognisable musical phrases. It has only been in recent decades that film composers like John Williams (Star Wars<\/em>) and Howard Shore (Lord of the Rings<\/em>) have begun to use leitmotifs more in the way that Wagner used them. This may have something to do with the fact that the epic scale of these film projects \u2013 or franchise cycles \u2013 allowed the composers sufficient room to develop more complex musical structures. If one looks, then, at the entire 100-year history of film music, the most striking aspect is the lingering dominance of the Late Romantic ideal.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n In this recycling of Wagner\u2019s music in the form of film-music quotations, two pieces appear particularly often, and the difference between them could not be more striking. On the one hand there is the bridal march from Lohengrin<\/em>, heard in practically every Hollywood wedding scene \u2013 without the general public usually being aware that it was actually composed by Wagner. On the other hand, we have the \u2018Ride of the Valkyries\u2019, which since the 1970s has become a sort of musical shorthand for caricaturing the moral hollowness of Nazi self-glorification. The history of the cinematic exploitation and interpretation of the \u2018Ride of the Valkyries\u2019 is a particularly instructive example of the interpretative power of cinema in the context of pop culture. The musical excerpt became permanently rooted in popular cultural memory when it was used in Francis Ford Coppola\u2019s Apocalypse Now<\/em> (1979) as infernal background music for the scene in which a helicopter squadron, reminiscent of the riders of the apocalypse, attack a Vietnamese village. Just a year later, in the film Blues Brothers<\/em>, it was used to caricature Nazi hubris, blaring out in a scene during an exaggerated car chase involving a gang of Nazis.<\/p>\n\n It was not until 2008, in a Japanese anime film, that this persistent Hollywood interpretation of the \u2018Ride of the Valkyries\u2019 was overwritten: in Ponyo<\/em>, adapted string passages from the music underline the urge for freedom and love of life of a small mermaid who is determined to become human. Here, Wagner\u2019s music is reconnected, completely without irony, with the composer\u2019s original intention. In their choice of music, the filmmakers seem to have been perfectly aware of the analogy with the fate of the Valkyrie in the Ring<\/em>: at one point, we learn that Ponyo\u2019s real name is Brunhilde.<\/p>\n\n It is by no means true, then, that in the world of film, Wagner\u2019s music is only used as cinematic shorthand for exaggerated heel-clicking and fascism. As early as in Chaplin\u2019s The Great Dictator<\/em> (1940), we have a perfect example of the ambivalent way musical quotations from Wagner\u2019s works are used in cinema. In this film we hear the overture to Lohengrin<\/em>, both as the musical accompaniment to the famous dance scene with the inflatable globe (where it serves to caricature Hitler\u2019s delusions of grandeur) and also, quite without irony, in the closing scene, where Chaplin makes his plea for tolerance and peace.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n Cinema is a medium in which many different artistic disciplines work together. In addition to skills already employed in opera \u2013 writing narrative as dialogue, acting, scenography, mise-en-sc\u00e8ne and set design, combined with music and possibly dance \u2013 there are new ones, like lighting, composition, and editing. The complexity of the film-production process does not, however, mean that the medium of film can be seen as a realisation of Wagner\u2019s concept of the total work of art. According to his writings on the subject, the artwork of the future \u2013 the total artwork \u2013 is precisely not<\/em> simply a matter of cooperation between the individual arts at a technical level. The total artwork arises only from the complete integration of those arts, whose separate existence at that point disappears. Wagner developed his ideas about the total artwork in two essays which he wrote in Zurich in 1849.[1]<\/a> It is clear from these that what he is postulating is not merely a combination of individual arts but, rather, a model for a utopian society \u2013 one in which the experiences of dissociation and social atomisation typical of contemporary society would be overcome. The integrative approach of these essays appears to be not only a reaction to the dashed hopes of the revolution of 1848, but also a typically Romantic reaction to the experience of alienation in the industrial age.<\/p>\n\n You can see and hear some of these film excerpts in the documentary Wagner au Cin\u00e9ma<\/a> by arte.<\/em><\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n Literature:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nOrchestral Sound and Leitmotifs<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The \u2018Wedding March\u2019 and the \u2018Ride of the Valkyries\u2019<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Film as Total Artwork?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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