SMT-V: The Society for Music Theory Videocast Journal
SMT-V is the open-access, peer-reviewed video journal of the Society for Music Theory. Founded in 2014, SMT-V publishes video essays that showcase research in music theory in a dynamic, audiovisual format, presented so as to have the potential to engage both specialists within the field as well as interested viewers outside the music theory community. The journal features a supportive and collaborative production process, and publishes several videos each year. Read more about SMT-V here.
Latest Issue: 10.5 (September 2024)
“Whole-Tone Collections and Temporal Dislocation in Film Music”
Zachary Cairns (University of Missouri - St. Louis)
Film composers have often drawn on the whole-tone collection to accompany dream sequences, partly because the intervals the collection contains provide a sense of stillness that seems well suited to depicting altered states of consciousness. But composers also use whole-tone collections as agents of temporal dislocation. Temporal dislocation refers to the experience of an intertwining of past, present, and future. There are three primary categories of temporal dislocation: narrative dislocation, where the film’s narrative removes itself from predominant temporal mode of storytelling; character dislocation, where a character experiences an event that challenges their chronological understanding of past, present, and/or future; and audience dislocation, where the film challenges the audience’s chronological understanding of past, present, and/or future. This video demonstrates these types of temporal dislocation through examples from Jaws (1975), Back to the Future II (1989), and Star Wars: Episode IV (1977). None of these films use a primarily whole-tone language, but they all turn to whole-tone collections for these specific moments.
Keywords: film music John Williams, Alan Silvestri, Whole-Tone Collection, Temporality, musical meaning