Film Music and Neo-Riemannian Theory

Film Music and Neo-Riemannian Theory
Oxford Handbooks Online

Frank Lehman
Subject: Music, Music Theory Online Publication Date: Aug 2014
DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935321.013.002
Abstract and Keywords
Triadic chromaticism is a feature of much dramatic film scoring, a repertoire that has
previously received little in the way of sustained analytic attention from music theorists.
Neo-Riemannian techniques, while limited in application in most previous studies to
nineteenth-century music, are eminently suited to exploring this vast musical landscape.
Using passages of characteristically “nonfunctional” tonal logic from scores by
Hollywood’s leading composers, this article demonstrates the relevance of
transformational parameters to the investigation of cinematic musical structure and
expression. The interpretive usefulness of neo-Riemannian harmonic combinatoriality and
its sensitivity to voice-leading is highlighted with intuitive but hermeneutically revealing
analyses of music from John Williams, Bernard Herrmann, and Howard Shore. The
interaction of diatonic functional and chromatic idioms is broached with examples from
Alfred Newman, as is the notion of “tonal agnosticism,” which underlies much neo-
Riemannian scholarship. Two larger analyses, of Alan Silvestri’s Back to the Future and
Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s The Sea Hawk, illustrate the power and limitations of
symmetry—too often an uncritically assumed desideratum for transformational
approaches—for organizing film time. In light of these analyses, the wider prospects for
future research in cinematic transformational analysis are considered.
Keywords: neo-Riemannian theory, film music, film music analysis, music analysis, transformation theory,
chromaticism, Hollywood, film score, tonality, Herrmann, Williams, Silvestri, Korngold
Although assembled from diverse and often detachable theoretical components, there is
one thing that has remained consistent in the development and application of neo-
Riemannian theory (NRT): its target repertoire of nineteenth-century chromaticism.1 This
specificity owes partially to the genesis of those theoretical components, many of which
were formulated by German theorists of the mid-to-late 1800s such as Moritz
Hauptmann, Arthur von Oettingen, and most of all Hugo Riemann. As Richard Cohn and
other modern theorists have argued, these imported concerns include harmonic dualism,2
the combinatoriality of pitch relations,3 and variously configured Tonnetze.4 The urge to
adapt German dualist theories with modern tools and priorities also stems from American
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theorists’ interest in Romantic-era music.5 The “Second Practice” of nineteenth-century

harmony has been framed by neo-Riemannians as a corpus problematically resistant to
leading theoretical paradigms for functional monotonality, but highly responsive to
transformational approaches.6 These are taken to include any analytic practice that
focuses on group-theoretically specified progression classes, idealized voice-leading
patterns, or that adopts a dynamic view towards musical process such as cultivated by
David Lewin in the 1980s and 1990s.7
Without a doubt some of the most perplexing and captivating music of the Romantic era
is singularly compatible with transformational analytic techniques. Nevertheless, there is
little in the toolkit that makes up NRT, or indeed the larger umbrella of transformation
theory, which insists upon its sole application to works from the century of Schubert and
Wagner. In fact, other repertoires may be better suited than this originally intended
corpus. If nothing else, a great versatility comes from NRT’s combination of friendliness
to nondiatonic materials and sensitivity to the expressive qualities of chromaticism.
Despite almost three decades of disciplinary solidification, neo-Riemannian scholarship
has not yet witnessed a concerted drive to serve other repertoires that use consonant
triads (set-class (037)) in the ways the theory is eminently comfortable handling.
Important exceptions in the realm of pop/rock,8 jazz,9 and twentieth-century concert
idioms10 demonstrate a growing interest in widening NRT’s scope. Such extensions not
only provide novel tools for under-inspected musical corpora but also enrich the theory as
a whole and clarify its intellectual bases.11 And no repertoire is so primed to offer itself
gladly to the mechanisms of triadic transformation theory as film music.
Page 2 of 43

In film music, tonal

language and expressive
requirements frequently
collaborate to produce
passages like that
reproduced in Example
1.12 This excerpt from
Bernard Herrmann’s score
to Mysterious Island (1961,
dir. Endfield) behaves in a
more textbook “neo-
Riemannian” fashion than
many canonical NRT
passages investigated by
Click to view larger Romantic era–focused
Example 1 : Bernard Herrmann, “The Nautilus” mm. theorists. The music
1-8, from Mysterious Island. accompanies a dialogue-
free scene in which the
castaways on a fantastic
island discover a
submarine—soon revealed
to be the property of
Captain Nemo himself
(Image 1). No diatonic
prolongation of one (or
several) key areas is
present, nor does there
seem to be a tonal
teleology based on
cadential goals or
telegraphed thematic
completion. The majority
Click to view larger of triad-to-triad motions
Image 1 : Discovery of the Nautilus, Mysterious are chromatic, linking
Island.
modally matched triads
removed by thirds or
semitones, governed by no predetermined scale. Herrmann’s voice-leading is
nevertheless quite smooth, and the lexicon of triadic progressions is actually fairly
limited. The organization into two-bar, three-chord units allows certain melodic motifs
(such as permutations of the melodic intervallic pattern T1∙T3) to come to the fore. It is
Page 3 of 43

music that does have to it a sense of order, though the full nature of that order awaits
discovery.
Despite the fact that Herrmann’s passage is clearly not a random assemblage of pitches,
the tendency in film musicology with regard to passages such this—which are extremely
common and characteristic of scores for “genre”—has been to fall back on analytical non-
explanations. Abundant and audience-understood progressions are cause for the invoking
of “nonfunctional” harmonies, “constant modulation,” “polytonality,” and “unrelated keys/
chords.” The last is a particularly flagrant abdication of analytical rigor, as it supposes
that the only way two harmonic objects could be meaningfully related is by a diatonic
interval or process. A transformational approach can show that what seems erratic by
diatonic logic may exhibit a perfectly sturdy logic by other relational parameters.
Transformation theory is sensitive to matters of process and development. At the same
time, it is less committed to static or a priori musical architectonics—the stuff that has
come under heavy and sometimes deserved fire following the New Musicological regime,
the same shift that opened the door for the current explosion of film musicological
research. Neo-Riemannian theory’s bottom-up emphasis serves the perceptual realities of
music for screen well, where salient musical features customarily occur close to the
surface or shallow middle-ground, only very rarely relying on overarching tonal
structures.13 The neo-Riemannian evaporation of classical tonal design expectations
proves particularly liberating for the analysis of screen media.14
In this essay I provide an overview of this promising avenue for transformational

research. Without question the flow of theoretical scholarship on film music analysis is
steadily growing.15 With few exceptions, there is not yet a literature on neo-Riemannian
analysis of film, however.16 For this reason, my efforts here are directed at outlining the
ways in which neo-Riemannian tenets apply to the analysis of chromatic film music.
Chromaticism based on the structure of the consonant triad (pan-triadicism, after Cohn
2012) is capable of serving a number of cinematic ends and has accordingly been well
exploited by those involved in scoring films, from the earliest compilation scores to the
latest summer blockbuster soundtracks. In the sections to follow, I consider four
elements of NRT in relation to this repertoire: combinatoriality, parsimony, tonal
agnosticism, and symmetry. While most of these investigations apply the tools and
priorities of NRT and film musicology in a fairly conventional fashion, the two final
analyses of this essay assume more heterodox perspectives. My investigation of the use of
minor third sequences in Alan Silvestri’s score for Back to the Future jettisons the
apparent foundational units of NRT analysis— its algebraic operators and directed
networks— and instead uses a linear-reductive approach in considering harmonic
cyclicality in film scoring. For my analysis of the meticulous hexatonicism of Korngold’s
The Sea Hawk, the thing abjured is the need to immediately relate musical design back to
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drama. Formalistic analysis is an understandably taboo approach among film

musicologists as it would seem to marginalize the very element—drama—that makes its
subject distinctive. Yet if it is done conscientiously (and without making undue claims
about composer intentionality or aesthetic value), analysis of film music-qua-pure music
can be instructive on matters such as musical style and design, and its findings can be
appreciated on their own or, often, related back to the film.
This narrative-neutral investigation of the Sea Hawk will be the exception however, and
film music’s expressive purposes will in all other cases lie at the forefront of my analyses.
Admittedly my attention does not primarily fall on the aesthetics or stylistic evolution of
cinematic triadic chromaticism.17 But despite setting aside a full semiotics of pan-
triadicism, one important lesson regarding tonal signification becomes clear from my
analyses: musical meaning habitually arises from a deliberate play with the parameters
singled out by transformation theory, those seemingly well suited to NRT analysis and
those that slip outside its analytic comfort zone. Signification in chromatic film music are
often the upshot of calculated maneuvers between binary categories such as parsimony/
roughness, unary/complex, and tonal/atonal. That meaning in multimedia turns out to be
dialectical in character should come as no surprise to theorists of film or music. But that
it does so within the framework of this particular theoretical paradigm holds the promise
of analytic mutual beneficiality: that investigating film music may provide insights back
into the nature of transformation theory at large.
II. Combinatoriality
The transformational “alphabet” of any neo-Riemannian analysis consists of operators
that alter triads in distinct and readily definable ways. Example 2 presents the inventory
that will be employed in this study. For clarity’s sake, transformations are defined in
terms of both inversion and pitch-displacements.18
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All are “dualistic” in the

sense that they act in
equal and opposite ways
on triads of opposing
mode. For example, R
transforms a major triad
into a minor one rooted a
m3 up, and transforms a
minor triad into a major
one a m3 down.19 The
inventory is organized into
two families. The first
comprises the “canonical”
neo-Riemannian operators
Click to view larger (NROs), being P, L, and R.
Example 2 : Transformation inventory. The second family includes
two inversional cousins of
the canonical group (S, N); these can be composed from combinations of P, L, and R, but
occur with enough frequency and bear sufficient “absolute” sound in film music to
occasionally warrant unary treatment.20
There exists some combination of Ls, Ps, and Rs that models any conceivable relation
between the twenty-four major and minor triads.21 (In fact, L and R alone are sufficient).
These atomic transformations assume the status of NRT’s absolute progressions. A
harmonic motion that requires more than one NRO for its description will bear a
compound transformation composed under the rules of algebraic associativity. From this
potential for combinatorial description come two of the most useful properties of neo-
Riemannian theory within the context of film musical analysis: the linkage of
transformational complexity with aural distance, and the capacity to interpret one
progression in terms of another.
The length and voice-leading work of a transformation—that is, how many constituent
operators generate it and by how many semitones they shift—is useful in informally
assessing distance and pitch-space pathways between triads without relying on a naive
diatonic model.22 The more transformations included within a compound, the more
complex it is. Two triads related by L are therefore “closer” than two related by LPL, and
even closer than LPLPLPL (despite the fact that they produce exactly the same pair of
chords). This distance metric can be used to capture intuitions regarding proximity vs.
remoteness as well as familiarity vs. strangeness, both of which are important expressive
parameters in film music.23
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Click to view larger

Image 2 : Clark of the Arctic.

Example 3a : John Williams, arctic progression in cue
“Fortress of Solitude,” from Superman.
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Example 3a reproduces an
illustrative extract from
John Williams’s 1978 score
to Superman (dir. Richard
Donner). This reduction is
paired with Example 3b, a
short diachronic network
that demonstrates the way
in which transformational
length maps neatly onto
perceived tonal distance.
Like the example from
Mysterious Island, this
material accompanies a
Click to view larger character as he explores a
Example 3b : Analysis of progression from “Fortress strange and wondrous
of Solitude.” landscape. In this case, it
is Kansas farm boy Clark
Kent making his way across a barren arctic plain (Image 2).24 The dozen chords involved
in this progression are untethered to even the loosest sense of a governing tonic, but not
every motion between them feels equally harmonically alien. The first four harmonies
coincide with medium-distance shots of Kent. As if to match the relatively tight visual
perspective in this portion of the scene, the transition from F to D and A minor is
accomplished by relatively simple binary transformations, first a PR and then an RL. Both
compounds retain triadic mode and involve only one intermediary chord, F major,
increasing their sense of relatedness. As though to cement the background role of the
implicit linking triad, Williams’s next chord is F itself, a tiny adjustment via the unary L of
the previous A minor. F major matches a swell in orchestral volume and a newly
awestruck look in Kent’s eyes.
The object of telegraphed wonder is revealed in the next shot and corresponding chord
change—an impressive wide shot of the sprawling wilderness (depicted in Image 2) and a
thickly scored C♯ minor. The PLP that accomplishes this cut is a particular ternary
compound singled out by theorist Richard Cohn as historically associated with moments
of musical uncanniness—the hexatonic pole, the most distant progression available
between M3-related triads.25 The camera returns to Kent through the next four triadic
steps through the progression, repeating the pattern of moderate⇨short⇨lengthy
transformations as anticipation builds over what he will remove from his backpack (a
magical crystal, it turns out). When the film’s perspective once again dilates to present
the entire frozen landscape, another ternary transformation synchronizes with the cut.
Page 8 of 43

Williams lands now on G major, far-flung relative to its immediate predecessor G♯ minor
as well as a parallel event within the scene’s cutting rhythm, C♯. In my analysis, a dotted
nonlocal RPR transformation from those two emboldened chords captures this
connection. And, to further associate the sight of that yawning landscape once again with
the hexatonic pole relation, Williams launches G to D♯, albeit now with an intermediary of
E minor that makes the transit even more extreme. Harmonically speaking, we are most
assuredly not in Kansas anymore.
This musical paragraph from Superman demonstrates how the analysis of

transformational complexity can reveal filmically significant patterns of aural proximity
and remoteness. However, the number of operators involved in a transformation will only
ever be part of the story of how a progression is heard.26 As important to analysis is the
process of choosing a transformation in the first place, and—of particular relevance for
the reading of a film score—the interrelationships between multiple transformations. This
is the second boon of NRT’s combinatorial inclination: the ability to interpret one
harmonic progression in terms of another. The decomposability of any tonal move into
some concatenation of harmonic atoms allows the analyst to refer complex or novel
sounding harmonic events back to simpler or accustomed motions and vice versa. This
has great utility in tracking the shift of harmonic material across a cue or whole score as
a function of an underlying model. For instance, if the motion C-maj⇨A♭-maj (PL) is
motivic in a score, then a latter occurrence of, say, F♯-min⇨B♭-maj could be interpreted in
terms of the original transformational motive, as PL∙P. In another situation, that same
move may be heard as a variant of a different parent, say F♯-min⇨B-min (LR), in which
case Fs-min⇨B♭-maj could garner a less intuitive but perfectly justifiable LR∙S
description. Such interpretive underdetermination opens the avenue for a hermeneutics
not unlike that commonly applied to traditional leitmotifs, and bears the same potential
for charting gross or subtle shifts in dramatic representation across large spans of film
time.27
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Analysis of “The Nautilus”

from Herrmann’s
Mysterious Island
illustrates the interpretive
upshots of neo-Riemannian
combinatoriality. Example
4a assigns neo-Riemannian
operators to the opening of
the cue, with the coloristic
but transformationally
inessential vibraphone
part reduced out. Note
that some of the motions
between triads are
Click to view larger analyzed with more
Example 4a : Herrmann, “The Nautilus” analysis. complex relations than are
strictly necessary given
our full inventory of NROs. The switch from B♭-min to E♭-maj in m. 2–3 could be
interpreted as a ternary compound, PRL.28 Yet the analysis describes it through the
considerably more elaborate (PL∙PR)∙PLP. Why the complexity?
The rationale for this

decision stems from the
thematic derivation of the
harmonies in “The
Nautilus”: the cue, like
many in Mysterious
Island’s score, is based on
a germinal motif heard in
the opening credits, and
twenty-nine (!) additional
times prior to “The
Nautilus.” The three-chord
fanfare is shown in
Example 4b, where it is
Click to view larger analyzed as a succession of
Example 4b : Herrmann, germinal three chord 3rd-relationship spawning
fanfare found throughout Mysterious Island. RP and LP progressions,
combined and reversed so
as to return to the original B-min triad. By virtue of the sheer amount of repetition it
Page 10 of 43

undergoes, this fanfare cannot help but assume the status of a referential harmonic cell
in Herrmann’s score, such that passages with similar but nonexact melodies, textures or
progression types are all eventually heard in terms of it. The listener is accustomed to
hearing minor triads at the end of three-chord units as progressing via PL∙PR back to the
place where the units began. Since “The Nautilus” initiates an identical pattern in its first
two measures, whatever pathway the third chord will take to the fourth will invariably be
perceived through the lens of the expected first. Transformational analysis brings out this
feature in a way no other analytic apparatus can. When E♭ major is heard in m. 4, it is
through B minor that it must be referred. The analysis has the progression first “pass
back through” B-min en route to E♭-maj, a step that garners PL∙PR, the normative
transformation. The difference between expected and actual destination is represented
by a further modification to E♭, through a PLP transformation. The result is a compound
transformation that derives its intelligibility from the larger context of the score, rather
than a rote application of the simplest combination of Ls, Ps, and Rs.
Analyses of this sort,

which rely on a normative
transformational frame
against which variants and
excursions are measured,
are most elegantly
represented through visual
networks.29 Example 4c
produces a network for the
entire “Nautilus” cue that
captures each sounding
and possible progression
in terms of that basic
harmonic frame from the
Click to view larger three-chord fanfare. The
Example 4c : Transformational network for “The bolded right triangle
Nautilus.” consisting of B-,D-, and B♭-
min triads is the
transformational basis for the cue, while triads E♭-maj and D♯-min are shown attached as
harmonic supplements off to the left side. Directed arrows indicate the path taken during
the first eight measures, and dotted edges suggest implied but untaken pathways during
this segment. A noteworthy aspect of the network is how it reveals that the triad D♯-min
effectively creates a mirror-image sub-network to the normative 3-chord fanfare
(composed from the same relations of PL, RP and PR∙LP). Such consistency of harmonic
shapes and materials helps solidify the impression that E♭ is related primarily to B-min,
Page 11 of 43

rather than being an auxiliary chord to B♭ minor. But, more importantly, transformational
regularity helps unify the tonal space Herrmann explores throughout the Mysterious
Island score, maintaining its enigmatic tone even as it develops originary harmonic
materials outside their initial, fairly static reference frame.
III. Voice-Leading
One rarely discussed dimension of film music is voice-leading. This is perhaps because
unlike other parametric axes such as dissonance/consonance, tonal proximity/
remoteness, and diatonic/chromatic, voice-leading does not suggest an obvious
associative lane of interpretation. Neo-Riemannian methods can redress this neglect,
directing us to refined but impactful ways in which the treatment of multiple musical
lines can influence emotion and narrative. Common-tone retention and parsimony are
prime among attributes to which NRT draws attention. L, P, and R are the only motions
possible between two triads such that two common tones are preserved while a third is
displaced; this leads to the potential of “voice-leading parsimony,” in which a sonority’s
pitch classes are either held fast or moved by single tone. While the operators S, and N
preserve only a single common pc, their parsimonious credentials are still vouched by the
fact that acted-upon triads see their pitches move by only ic1. Like combinatorial
complexity, the degree of smoothness achieved— either sounding literally or idealized
between abstract Klangs—can provide another informal measure of distance and
proximity where progressions seem no longer dictated by diatonic logic. This comes in
particularly handy in analyzing the transitions between remote tonal stations; the simple
presence of a common-tone connection can soften what may have otherwise been a
bumpy path. Parsimony is an especially useful compositional tool if the individual
harmonic waypoints themselves bear strikingly different colors. Smooth voice-leading
enables them to be stitched together in such a way that their delicate connection may
seem almost magical.
In one of the few allusions to film music’s amenability to neo-Riemannian analysis in

scholarly literature, theorist Guy Capuzzo enlists the cue “Aniron” from Howard Shore’s
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2002), using it as an example of
parsimony across chromatic third relations (in an article primarily on pop music and
NRT).30 Capuzzo isolates a passage that accompanies an ominous conversation between
characters Aragorn and Arwen, shortly preceding a scene change that reveals the two are
romantically involved (Image 3).31 Shore provides a brief chorale to accompany their
dialogue, an elliptical discussion of Aragorn’s burden as secret heir to the throne. The
music is analyzed in Example 5. The pervasive chromatic third relations that Capuzzo
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observes in this passage are very much tied up with Shore’s voice-leading procedures—
they chiefly stem from harmonized neighbor motions involving alternation between root-
position and inverted chords. During the vocal portion of the passage, starting at m. 11,
the melodic line comes to rest on the common-tone A♭/G♯, while inner voices
simultaneously alternate B and C (P) and E and E♭/D♯ (L). This PL compound is mirrored
in the linkage of A and F minor by LP at the cue’s onset. The semitonal contrary motion is
identical, there with L sending E to F and P sending A to A♭. However, the effect is subtly
different due to the absence of common tones in the sustained wholetone pedal pitches,
leaving the implication of linear continuity mostly to the melodic arpeggiations in the
cello. Along with the comparatively non-parsimonious transition to C-maj in second
inversion (a textbook instance of N) the overall trajectory is from greater contrast
between chords to less.

Example 5 : Howard Shore, analysis of preamble to
“Aniron,” from Fellowship of the Ring.
Page 13 of 43

Shore uses the gradual

shift in smoothness to
achieve a tranquilizing
effect, matching in
harmonic content the
move from the weighty
realm of kingly
responsibility into the
private safe-haven of
Aragorn and Arwen’s
romance. The relaxation of
voice-leading is reinforced
by the overall harmonic
exhalation, a kind of global
SLIDE (S) from the dark A
minor to the softly lit
Image 3 : Aragorn and Arwen’s romantic tryst.
warmth of A♭/G♯ major—
shown with the vertical
transformation arrow between m. 1 and m. 7. This SLIDE is achieved not by direct
motion, but by parsimonious recasting of E as LP-partner of A♭/G♯ (not, as one might
expect in a functional setting, as an unrealized dominant of A minor). Perhaps the finest
touch is how the LP bringing about the destination key occurs at the moment Arwen
begins whispering to Aragorn in Elvish instead of speaking in English. It is a model usage
of a major-mode major-mediant progression to suggest otherworldliness and
enchantment.
Common tone–retaining operations such as realized in Shore’s Fellowship of the Ring

score are esteemed highly by analysts in repertoires where harmonic shifts—and so it is
argued, harmonic coherence—are accomplished with parsimonious voice-leading. That so
much of Hollywood-style chromaticism hews closely to these conditions says as much
about the general desire for linear clarity, or a tactile affinity for certain routines at
keyboard/guitar, as it does the inherent structure of the LPRSN group. However, film
composers have never felt beholden to principles of common practice voice-leading, such
as prohibitions against parallel 8ves and 5ths or avoidance of jumpy bass lines.
Considerable swathes of many scores from even the most “classically” trained composers
may contain nothing but root position triads. Block-like shuffling of chords,
transpositional shifts, and invariant chordal inversions are all common traits of film
music, which together should steer us from any reflexive “smoothness = coherence”
outlook. Rather, we ought to entertain surface roughness as a compositional choice to be
integrated, not ignored or reduced away, within a transformational analysis.
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Thankfully, NRT need not

deal solely with literal
surface smoothness. It can
handle implicit (or
“abstract”) parsimony
when physical voice-
leading consists in
something other than a
series of clean scootches
by little increments.
Indeed, LPR compounds
quickly generate triadic
relations with no common
tones. For such rough or
Click to view larger “extravagant”32 relations,
Example 6 : Herrmann, registral displacement one has the option of
maximizing disjunction in motif from Mysterious casting them as
Island.
compounds of LPR, or
inventing a unary
operation that captures their behavior if tonal context deems them “basic” or “directly
intelligible.”33 Linear smoothness should be evaluated along a continuum that can convey
dramatic or symbolic meaning. As witnessed in “Aniron,” tightly voice-led passages can
map onto states of relaxation or effortlessness, while rough progressions (either complex
compounds or bumpily led NROs) may project effort, tension, or intensification,
particularly if triadic mode remains invariant. The effect need not be understated as it
was during Aragorn’s nocturnal tryst. Take the motivic cell from Herrmann’s Mysterious
Island analyzed in Example 6. The tritonal and hexatonic pole progressions are already
complex by dint of their lengthy concatenation of NROs, but Herrmann magnifies the
disjunction between each by placing chords in differing octaves (indicated with bracketed
T-12 transformations). The play with register erases any trace of implicit semitonal voice-
leading and evokes a feeling of inassimilable enormity and otherness.
Page 15 of 43

An extended passage
James Horner’s recent
score to Avatar (2008, dir.
James Cameron)
demonstrates how
pronounced motion along
the spectrum of
smooth⬄rough voice-
leading can serve formal
and expressive ends.
Example 7 provides a
heavily reduced
transcription of a portion
of the film’s first cue “You
Click to view larger Don’t Dream in Cryo,”
Example 7 : James Horner, passage from “You Don’t which occurs during an
Dream in Cryo,” from Avatar. arrival sequence on the
alien jungle planet of
Pandora. This musical
material scores Jake’s
(Sam Worthington)
preparations for landing,
followed by panoramic
tracking shot of the
arrival, including reveals
of the massive ecological
devastation to Pandora
already wrought by Jake’s
military unit. The
conclusion of the passage
matches the dispatching of
the unit onto the planet’s
Click to view larger surface. A cursory glance
Image 4 : Massive strip mining revealed on Surface at Horner’s music reveals
of Pandora. it is about as far from
idealized voice-leading
smoothness as is possible without sounding successive chords in different octaves and
voicings. Every triad is in root position, even those easily connectable by unary operators,
and the first fifteen are all voice-led by brute transposition, with no attempt to convey
contrapuntal independence among interior voices. So much for maximal smoothness!
Page 16 of 43

Measures 1–7 of Example 7 accompany the sight of Jake suiting up prior to his
disembarking on Pandora. This stretch contains both the roughest voice-leading and the
most thoroughgoing triadic chromaticism, with each root relationship following the
mostly third-driven melody in doggedly anti-functional fashion. Only the transformations
R and RPL could conceivably occupy a diatonic space, and surrounded by so many
chromatic progressions, they sound as tonally unanchored as anything else. Yet even
within this thicket of parallel voice-leading, a neo-Riemannian methodology can reveal
significant aspects of tonal design. Among the first things noticeable from the analysis is
the near complete avoidance of transformational repetition. Even as the “melody” [pc
0-4-7-2-5, 1-4-8-2-5, E-2-6 …] adheres to a roughly predictable contour, the chords that
decorate it do not. Just as very few triads are heard repeatedly, only one of the nine
intertriadic moves are used on more than one occasion. This is RP, shifting minor triads
up by m. 3, which by m. 7 lends a light octatonic feel to the overall progression.
Harmonic density amidst linear bumpiness is an apt means of reinforcing the affect of the
scene. The rigidity of triadic motion aligns with the feeling of imposed militarized order.
But that order chafes against the inbuilt apprehension of the tonally ungrounded—and
actively parsimony-resistant—progression. Small vacillations in the degree of
transformational complexity contribute to the mood of suspense-despite-regimentation.
The most parsimonious move, the S in m. 3, provides a momentary sigh within the larger
musical sentence, but its calming effect is neutralized as it matches an ancillary
character’s reference to the threat of death (a nice instance among many in modern film
music of the SLIDE-relation associating with mortality or the uncanny).
The arrival at the next portion of this musical paragraph, mm. 7–9, continues this play
with of parsimony and roughness for dramatic effect. A PL progression initiates the new
section, just as it did in m. 1, and corresponds to the opening of a new vista: the reveal of
staggering ecological devastation on the surface of Pandora. A shot of the denuded
landscape is lingered upon, giving Horner a chance to arrest harmonic momentum with a
twice-repeated E♭-min⇨D-maj⇨D-min oscillation (driven by SP). This creates another
“smooth” respite that nevertheless highlights tonal polarization with its repetition of
semitonal major/minor clashes. Measures 10–16 introduce a distinctly different texture
and harmonic logic. Here a more active and teleologically driven melody focuses the tonal
trajectory into diatonic territory (possibly even monotonal territory in B minor). Horner
ushers the music first in another characteristic L oscillation, and then through a series of
downwards diatonic thirds (L∙R∙L∙R∙LR) all the way to D. This final section, smoother by
virtue of both transformational simplicity and a common-tone preserving melody,
provides at last a sense of tonal groundedness, fittingly matching the spacecraft’s
landing. The downward-chaining of diatonic thirds and the steadily arching melody also
suits the increasing sentimentality of the scene, which ends with Jake reminiscing about
how “one life ends, another begins.” As the ship’s crew disembarks on the planet for
Page 17 of 43

ethically questionable purposes, radical ambivalence is once again thrown in the mix with
a long drawn out S-oscillation that concludes the paragraph.
IV. Tonal Agnosticism

Until the ending of this passage from the Avatar, a sense of stable key is totally absent.
The constantly shifting harmonic focus precludes a robust sense of modulation, which
requires a cadentially signaled or literally prolonged tonic in the first place. The lack of
functional progressions also frustrates and ultimately obviates any definitive enharmonic
spelling for chords; for example, the move in m. 3 could just as justifiably been spelled D-
min⇨C♯-maj with no meaningful change to the analysis, nor the aural impression of the
music. As actions on pitch classes rather than diatonically specified notes, the neo-
Riemannian operators are strictly noncommittal with regard to enharmonic spelling. This
strategic underdetermination frees the analyst from some of the most vexing problems
inherent in analyzing chromatic music. By attending to abstract relations between triads
(be they conceived as inversions, displacements, or smoothly accomplished
transpositions), one is allowed to skirt issues of function, tonal weight, and prolongation
that are so often the cause of analytic capsizing in the turbulent waters of triadic
chromaticism. That is not to say that a tonic is necessarily absent in a passage described
by NRT analysis; indeed, some of the excerpts already investigated here bear a trace of
tonal hierarchy. Rather, such “tonal agnosticism” allows one to concentrate to other
musical features which may be more pertinent to a film musical analysis, without having
to claim every unusual progression is a cryptically altered diatonic motion or full-blown
modulation. This agnostic attitude is at its most liberating when multiple chromatic
transformations might otherwise demand answers to sticky questions of enharmonic
identity, even when the music is telling us that diatonic scale degrees, or indeed, tonic
orientation itself, are not strongly in operation. 34
The advantage of tonal agnosticism can be seen with the Mysterious Island fanfare
already analyzed in Example 3a. Approaching the progression with the expectation that
its constituents prolong one or more keys leads to being bogged down with unanswerable
questions of
Page 18 of 43

and so on. These tortured attempts to foist the structure of roman numeral space on a
refractory progression leave us spinning in interpretive circles and tell us nothing about
the actually pertinent qualities of the motif: that it is powered by two parsimonious third
relations of differing size (m3 and M3) that together enable an P5-m6-P5 outer-voice
pattern and a semitonal descent of both melody and fundamental bass.
While passages where functionality cedes analytic importance to transformational

structure are common in film music (Examples 3 and 7 also behave mostly this manner),
quite often we are confronted by stretches of underscore in which chromatic and diatonic
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logics interact in a meaning-generating way. Composers are quick to exploit the overlap
of harmonic domains thanks to the potent ingredients of tonal associativity: the linkage of
functional tonality, even in the most chromatic settings, with stability and normality and
nondiatonic harmony with instability and difference. The push and pull of different modes
of triadic organization can be observed in Alfred Newman’s music to Song of Bernadette
(1943, dir. Henry King). Bernadette is a religious drama chronicling the visions of the
Virgin Mary allegedly witnessed by a French teenager, Bernadette Soubirous, in the mid-
nineteenth century. Newman employs the same deeply mannered late-Romantic language
that was second nature to composers of Hollywood’s Golden Age, and the score reflects
this aesthetic with its antique church-modal-meets-Mahler tonal rhetoric. It is a highly
apt hybrid idiom, allowing Newman to suggest spiritual transcendence through means
well described by neo-Riemannian analysis.

Example 8a : Alfred Newman, reveal of Virgin Mary,
from Song of Bernadette.
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Throughout The Song of

Bernadette, Newman
employs a clever strategy
to evoke encounters of the
human and divine: the
alternation of modal and
chromatic intervals
between chords. “Modal”
here is taken to include
harmonic relationships
available through the
diatonic collection but not
necessarily incorporating
clear tonal function. In
transformational terms,
Image 5 : Virgin Mary’s F-major reveal.
such moves are
describable by a
compounding of L and R but not P relations. Bernadette’s first vision of the Marian
miracle, near a secluded grotto, is telegraphed with the passage reproduced in Example
8a below. The reveal of the figure of the Virgin (Image 5) synchronizes with a blazing B♭
major triad, the telic achievement of the music’s mounting volume and orchestral
register. Indirect though it is, the overall progression is from F major to B♭ major. (Not
pictured is a strong cadence into F-maj before the first measure.) The musical vision thus
bears the residue of a customary dominant⇨tonic motion. Nonetheless, the succession is
driven by a heaven-striving melodic line (C6 to B♭6) and the alternation of modal and
chromatic moves—not any innate need to cadence. The seemingly atonal bass contributes
to the impression of a forcible sundering of high and low, base(/bass) and empyrean.
Despite its picturesque quality, however, the cello line can be treated as harmonically
inessential, adorning more fundamental triadic pitches with piquant unresolved
neighbors.
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The transformational
analysis of Example 8b
shows how the division of
earthly and divine musical
parameters plays out on a
horizontal as well as
vertical plane. With two
PLs and a mighty tritonal
RPRP, the first, third, and
fifth chromatic
transformations tug the
tonal field away from any
stable diatonic collection.
Transformations 2 and 4,
Click to view larger by contrast, gesture back
Example 8b : Analysis of reveal of Virgin Mary in toward diatonic
Song of Bernadette. firmament, even if the keys
they specify are
underdetermined. For this reason, any feasible roman numeral routines are left in scare
quotes and are assigned more neutral “modal” Tn-type operations.
The progression that supports this revelation is transitional, preparing as it does the first
major statement of Bernadette’s vision theme in B♭. Newman, however, goes on to
circumvents the typical strategy of Classical-era scoring in which triadic chromaticism
happens only during transitions and diatonic harmony and monotonality reign over
thematic statements. Instead, Bernadette’s theme is itself intensely chromatic, and the
cue loosens its grip on B♭ almost immediately after the key is captured, modulating
widely for the remaining two minutes of the teenager’s holy visitation. When inspected in
terms of overall progress from one key area to another, Newman’s cue shows a similar
pattern to the surface-level alternation observed in the “Reveal” progression.
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Example 8c provides an
overview of the entire
tonal trajectory of the
scene, from the tonally
hazy material that
precedes the reveal
through the capture of B♭
and subsequent
peregrinations, all the way
to the conclusive E major.
The mix of solid and
broken lines reflects
aspects of the cue’s tonal
design. Dotted nodes, such
as surround F♯ and C♯,
Example 8c : Tonal design of entire “first vision” cue.
entail weakly articulated
tonal centers, and dotted
arrows connect portions of the cue where the relevant transformation is not heard
literally (that is, there is intervening material that separates tonics). As with the “reveal
progression” of Example 8b, the principal chromatic motion is that of the mode-retaining
major third progression. Similarly shared with 8b is the balanced admixture of chromatic
and modal shifts, although here they are accomplished through medium-scale
modulations rather than immediate chordal alterations. The only break in the pattern, the
move from G♭ to G, is more of a synthesis of the two tonal strategies, a functionally
explicable but nevertheless nondiatonic surprise cadence into G major. It is with touches
like this, stratifying and synthesizing modal and chromatic impulses, that Newman is able
so evocatively to paint a musical portrait of the humble teenager’s mystical ecstasy.
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V. Symmetry
Because the basic units of
neo-Riemannian analysis are
mode-flips and third
relations, the symmetrical
scale partitions that result
from their iterations are
accorded great theoretical
emphasis. Symmetry has
tremendous advantages for
organizing disparate-seeming
components of music, and it
is an analytic aspiration,
acknowledged or not, of
almost any transformational
network. The cycles most
Example 9a : Hyper-Hexatonic system.
familiar to chromatic theory
include the hexatonic
(iterated LP/PL) and
octatonic (RP/PR)
systems, as well as
Weitzmann regions (NR/
RN) and the region that
cycles through all six
triads sharing a single
pitch class (LPRLPR/
PLRPLR/RLPRLP).35
Example 9 shows the
layout of first two of these
symmetrical spaces, using
the conventionalized
nomenclature for
constituent cycles within
Example 9b : Hyper-Octatonic system.
the hyper hex- and
octatonic universe
(cardinal directions for the former, unique pitch class content for the latter). Segments of
these cycles can be found in all eras and styles of film music. Though less common,
Page 24 of 43

complete cyclical rotations are notable elements of the scores from several composers
like Miklós Rózsa and Jerry Goldsmith, who make heavy use of octatonic and hexatonic
materials. Very often, cyclical completion is not so much the driving force of underscore
as it is a by-product of the reinforcement and affective redoubling of single progression
through repetition. When many of these progressions are linked, the result can have
pronounced effects on the perceived temporal flow of a scene. With the right texture and
pacing, harmonic symmetry can make cinematic time seem to stand still due to the
uniformity of tonal procedures, or to speed up with the constant intensification that
comes from iterated chromatic patterns.
Octatonic Ladders in Back to the Future
The lure of octatonicism has held a special sway over film composers since the silent era.
The cinematic ubiquity of octatonic materials (anything deriving from the set
<0134679T>) owes much to the retention of Classical/Romantic associations surrounding
the diminished seventh sonority, that reliable common practice capsule of maximized
tertian dissonance and ambiguity. Used very much like an attention-grabbing
“stinger” (to borrow film musicological terminology) in Mozart and Beethoven, the
diminished seventh-as-shock-chord was already becoming a clichéd resource in the time
of Schubert and Berlioz.36 Outworness had little effect in dissuading film composers from
its employment, however. Composed-out diminished seventh chords are a predictable
standby in music from the earliest scores and countless silent music anthologies with
conventionalized musical topics—mysteriosos, hurries, fights, storms, struggles, and so
on.37 While the tremolo dim sevenths of the proverbial damsel-tied-to-railway scene are
far too imprinted by “old fashioned” and “corny” associations for today’s filmgoers,
composers still make use of the underlying logic of stacked minor thirds and tritones to
generate unbearable tension.
Alan Silvestri’s scores from the 1980s and 1990s contain some of the most thoroughgoing
octatonicism in modern Hollywood. Soundtracks for films of as diverse genres as
Predator, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Death Becomes Her, and Contact are in places
saturated with the collection. A distinctly Stravinskyian rhythmic and motivic sensibility
betrays a probable inspiration for much of Silvestri’s octatonic music, though by the late
1990s the Russian influences are so thoroughly integrated into Silvestri’s own tuneful
style that there is little point in drawing connections between, say, a tense cue such as
Contact’s “Good To Go” and the Symphony in Three Movements.38 As we find in
Stravinsky, Silvestri’s octatonic sonorities are often dissonant set classes rather than
pure triads. This poses a problem for neo-Riemannian analysis, which is configured to
deal with (037)s. Still, the central concerns of NRT—enharmonicism, voice-leading,
Page 25 of 43

symmetry and balance, harmonic space, and non-diatonic but tertian organization—
remain operative, and thus offer a constructive investigative avenue into Silvestri’s
oeuvre.
Minor third–derived sonorities and transformations infuse several cues from Silvestri’s
most famous score, Back To The Future (1985, dir. Robert Zemeckis), most notably the
lengthy action set piece “The Libyans” from the film’s first act. In the scene in question,
the mad scientist Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) and his spirited protégé Marty McFly
(Michael J. Fox) prepare for Brown’s inaugural visit to the future via his time machine–
equipped DeLorean. The launch is interrupted when a van full of Libyans, incensed by
Doc Brown’s theft of their plutonium, shoot and kill Brown and pursue McFly (Image 6).
The hero escapes by accelerating the DeLorean to its maximum speed, triggering its
time-travel mechanism and hurtling him into the past, just in the nick of time.
Silvestri’s music for the

scene, almost five straight
minutes, is as suffused
with octatonicism as stock
piano music for a train
chase in 1915—although
without ever outright
stating a diminished
seventh chord. Nor does
Example 10 : Alan Silvestri, cell from “The
Silvestri take the route
Libyans” (Event d. to f.), from Back to the Future.
accustomed from a
composer such as Rózsa
and employ direct RP/PR
progressions to transit
between m3-related
chords. Instead, to
continually ramp up
musical urgency, he
employs a more
Click to view larger fundamentally
Images 6a and b : The Libyans’ untimely arrival. transpositional, rather
than smoothly
displacemental, technique of harmonic transformation. Musical cells, such as the one
reproduced in Example 10, contain equal parts melodic octatonicism (such as the T6-
alternating ostinato bass), chordal superimposition (such as the overlaid and E and B♭
chords in m. 6) and incremental transposition up m. 3 (such as with the shift from C♯ to E
Page 26 of 43

to G). The seven measures of Example 10 accompany a moment of rapidly escalating

tension, with the T3 from C♯ to E corresponding with the antagonists aiming their
weapons at Doc Brown, and the parallel move up to G matching the realization that
Brown’s pistol has no ammunition.
The continual transference

up the E-G-B♭-C♯ octatonic
ladder is the tonal basis
for Silvestri’s cue on
several levels. Example 11
provides a reduction of the
harmonic content for the
entirety of “The Libyans,”
along with indications of
Example 11 : Reduction of “The Libyans.”
the shifts in dramatic
action that occur at each
carefully aligned synch point. Many of the reduced sonorities are not literal
simultaneities but prominent horizontalized portions of the octatonic scale. Until event q.,
Silvestri’s pitch materials remain almost exclusively in the <1,2> octatonic collection.
Also essentially invariant is the transpositional scheme. From events b. to j. and l. to o.,
the cue rotates around this collection more than three full times, spending almost 75
percent of its duration looping up this minor third cycle.
With this high degree of harmonic and motivic uniformity, any pattern-breaking
progression becomes highly salient. Instances of interruption, resumption, and recasting
of cyclical processes are critical devices for breathing dramatic variety into the
repetitiousness of symmetry-driven sequences, and Silvestri recruits all three as the cue
proceeds. The first major instance of interruption/resumption occurs precisely at the
moment of tragic surprise of Doc Brown’s death (events j. through l.). This shocking twist
forces a brief reversal of direction along the octatonic ladder, with a T9 dragging the B♭
bass back to its predecessor G. It is a rather literal “setback” in the otherwise ineluctable
T3 climb toward the scene’s telos of arriving in the future.
The octatonic engine does not break down with Brown’s death but quickly resumes its
revolutions as soon as Marty evades the assailants after event k. The cycle does change
character dramatically at this stage, however. The second large formal segment of “The
Libyans” (shown in the lower system of the reduction, starting with event q.) gradually
breaks free of the established pattern once Marty’s heroics install a more optimistic, if
still highly tense, tone to the scene. This is accomplished through a variety of tonal and
thematic devices. First, Silvestri performs a hypermodulation to transfer the accustomed
Page 27 of 43

oct <1,2> collection to the fresh <0,2> (or F-A♭-B-D) system, switching ladders as it were
and recasting the cue’s tonal “background” up a literal T1. Newly major-hued vertical
harmony and more conventional functional progressions also begin to take effect at event
r. The upwards T3’s return at event s., but with inverted major triads separated by whole-
tone passing chords. These are clear indicators that the film’s heroic and lydian-inflected
main theme is increasingly asserting itself over the cue’s erstwhile m. 3 intervallic
obsessions.
The moment of cyclical completion arrives at event t., back to F major, heralded by a
blazing but truncated statement of the main theme. This is a fitting harmonic telos by
virtue of its synthesis of lydian, octatonic, and functional diatonic tonal components. The
cycle is not quite done however, and one final upward twist greets the ultimate threat: a
rocket launcher aimed at McFly. Even so, the sense of musical danger has greatly
dissipated by this point. A newly strong sense of linear parsimony (indicated by the use of
LRP compounds for the first time in the analysis) helps to support this first diegetic
statement of the main theme. A♭ major is established at event v. and does not loosen its
hold for the remainder of the cue, even projecting a shade of traditional diatonic
prolongation between v. and z.. A last burst of octatonic panic at event y. matches the
last-ditch threat that the escape vehicle will not successfully travel back in time in time,
but an instantaneous success chord of A♭ at z. insures that all is well.
Hexatonic Gyrations in The Sea Hawk
Whereas the octatonic scale and associated progressions has held a lingering grip on film
composers due to its connection with suspense, its sister collection, the hexatonic
(<014589>) has retained Romantic connotations with magic, mystery, and the
otherwordly.39 Chromatic major third progressions pepper scores from all sorts of genres
and eras; the superhero, fantasy, and historical drama examples from Williams, Shore,
and Newman already discussed derive much of their harmonic suggestiveness in PL and
PLP. Just as the octatonic sound is linked with the crunchy diminished seventh, the
distinctive quality of the augmented triad—that famously disorienting and ambivalent
sonority—contributes much to hexatonicism’s fascination for film composers. Hexatonic
progressions, cycles, and cycle segments abound where film composers seek to evoke the
fantastic. When conjoined with certain stereotyped modulatory techniques, these types of
progressions make up a considerable portion of what some intuitively might call the “film
music sound.” Yet hex materials are not limited to moments of extremity or strangeness;
in the hands of some composers, a PL may be all that is needed to lend extra verve to a
swaggering swashbuckler leitmotif or sweep to a swooning love theme.
Page 28 of 43


Example 12 : Erich Wolfgang Korngold, assorted
hexatonic materials from Sea Hawk action music.
Example 12a: Downward surface-level M3 cycle in

“The Battle.”

Example 12b : Upwards phrase-level M3 cycle in
“The Battle.”

Example 12c : Whole-tone surface-level melodic
sequence and downward overall M3 progression in
“The Duel.”

Example 12d : Downward surface-level M3 cycle in
“The Duel.”
Page 29 of 43

One of the most impressive

instances of hexatonic
magic in film music is
Erich Wolfgang Korngold
score to The Sea Hawk
(1940, dir. Michael Curtiz),
a rip-roaring nautical
adventure starring Errol
Flynn as the English
privateer Geoffrey Thorpe.
Throughout the
Click to view larger soundtrack, hexatonic
Image 7 : The Sea Hawk opening naval battle and organization steers the
final duel.
musical fore- and shallow
middle-ground. This can be
observed especially in his music for action scenes, in which brief M3 cycles govern the
musical surface while stepwise intensificatory modulations and interjections of heroic
diatonic themes direct the cue’s overall tonal course. Example 12 presents a small gallery
of short extracts from two fight sequences, the first the film’s opening naval battle and
the second the climactic duel (Images 7). A variation on The Sea Hawk’s main “Romance
theme,” (explored in depth further on), Example 12a spirals down the G-E♭-B augmented
triad (of the Western system). Ex 12b sends a more extended thematic idea up the D-F♯-
B♭ (southern) circle of major thirds, connecting tonics indirectly through a deft chromatic
modulation. The measure-long sequence of Example 12c, from the final combat scene,
accomplishes an overall shift down one major third, from E to C, during its course. Rather
than pure hexatonicism, the overriding tonal force is its constantly ascending whole-tone
scales, products of melodic M2 + M2 trichords racing above a restless tritonal sequence
below. Example 12d, perhaps the most straightforwardly (048)-spawned motif in the
score, simply races down the (northern) C-A♭-E chord, though the bass line, working in
contrary motion, provides a non-augmented (but still firmly hexatonic) supporting edifice.
Collectively, these motifs supply tonal disorientation and turbulence for their scenes of
swashbuckling excitement. Each dashes from one barely established tonal center to
another, resting on one chordal footing only for as long as it takes to make the swing over
to a new one.
Page 30 of 43

Given the pugnacious

provenance of these
motifs, it may come as a
surprise that the ultimate
source for hexatonic
materials in The Sea
Hawk’s score is a
sweeping lyrical melody
heard in the main title cue,
Click to view larger reproduced in Example 13.
Example 13 : Korngold, Sea Hawk romance theme. The broad rounded binary/
small ternary form, scored
with soaring strings and luscious homophonic accompaniment, stands in affective
contrast to both the fight music motives above and to the heroically brash A theme that
precedes it in the titles. This “Romance Theme” offers a prime instance of the
contrastingly melodious second-theme paradigm de rigueur for main title cues in
Classical Hollywood.40 Swooning lyricism does not equate with diatonicism here,
however: the musical idea is hexatonic from top to bottom, with the western hexatonic
system (E♭-G–B) guiding almost every move on the fore-, middle- and background levels.
The theme’s ostensible tonic is the B major that initiates each of its two phrases, yet its
upper major mediant, E♭, encloses it at both ends. Measures 1–3 of Example 13, the
transitional tail end of the heroic A theme, showcase a prolongation of E♭ by a brisk major
third cycle through G and B major. E♭ also serves as the modulatory goal for the theme’s
second half, and following its capture in m. 15, is solidified with an restatement of the
title’s heroic fanfare in that key. The entire segment of the main title has something of an
LP∙PL(E♭) background. Closer to the surface, the independent keys Korngold traverses
within each phrase also fall entirely within the western hexatonic compass. Even the
dominant thirteenth chords that facilitate the sequencing at the end of the second phrase
serve as much as first-inversion hexatonic mediants as root-position dominants, and they
support a melody made up of the pitches of the <37E> augmented triad. Although a
handful of surface level harmonies behave diatonically, they serve to tonicize G, B, or E♭,
leading to an overall impression of unadulterated hexatonic magic.
Page 31 of 43

Examples 14a through 14c

convert these observations
into transformation
networks, all of which use
the six-sided outline of the
western hexatonic system
as their scaffolding. As in
previous networks, implied
but indirect connections
are conveyed through
dotted arrows. New to
these diagrams is the
addition of small triadic
nodes that house chords
not strictly within the
Example 14a : Analysis of m. 4–8.
governing space of the
network; these account for
the occasional dominants
and predominants that
secure various pegs along
the hexatonic cycle but do
not draw their pitches
from it. For clarity’s sake,
functioning dominants are
housed “inside” the
hexagon and predominants
outside of it. With
measures 4–8, charted in
Ex 14a, it is evident that
Click to view larger the first pass through this
Example 14b : Analysis of mm. 8–11. network is a complete
B⇨G⇨E♭…. A dotted arrow
summarizes the trajectory of measures 3–5, which on their surface rely on the insertion
temporary non-hex chords to stretch out the span between E♭ and B major. The second
phrase is a varied repetition of the first that sees the extra-hexatonic F-minor triad
landing on B minor rather than G minor; this shift signals realignment of the rotation
through the western hex system from clockwise to counterclockwise. Otherwise, B minor
behaves much as G did in the previous pass, acting as a functioning predominant en-route
to a hasty cadential affirmation of G major.
Page 32 of 43

As Example 14c shows, the

longer consequent phrase
for the theme (mm. 12–18),
makes good on this
reversal of direction,
depositing the listener first
in B and then in E♭ once
again, both of which are
prepared similarly to G by
their own personal
dominants (which are
effectively hexatonic slash-
chords). In fact, Korngold’s
Click to view larger systematized visitation of
Example 14c : Analysis of mm. 12–18. these three dominant
chordal roots creates its
own implicit internal major third cycle, a circuitous hopscotch from D to F♯ to B♭, which
suggests an enclosed, hierarchically lower eastern hex system. With a little additional
diatonic meandering around E, Korngold wraps up his theme and prepares for the
resumption of the A theme.
To synthesize the rotations

that each segment takes
through hexatonic space,
Example 15 offers an
overall analysis of the
romance theme. Visits to
non-B/E♭/G-major pegs are
elided to provide the
clearest picture of how the
hexatonic way stations
form the basis of the
theme’s symmetrical
gyrations. All told, there
are six successive full or
partial (including dotted
Example 15 : “Background” analysis of entire Sea
arcs) rotations through the
Hawk romance theme.
western hexatonic system,
represented by the six
concentric loops that encircle B, E♭, and G. Loop size corresponds purely with
Page 33 of 43

chronology. Motions within the theme (everything from mm. 4–18) are demarcated by
their occurrence within the blue hexagon, a matter of pure graphical convenience to
segregate it from the pre-theme third progressions that get the ball rolling in mm. 1–3.
What is remarkable about the tightly coiled hexatonicism evinced by this background
level network is not its total referability to a single symmetrical space per se. Passages of
comparably thorough hexatonicism are widespread in the Romantic repertoire and have
already been well-dissected by neo-Riemannian analysts. What distinguishes Korngold’s
Sea Hawk theme and many other works in the larger Hollywood harmonic practice is the
fashion in which pan-triadic chromaticism is accommodated seamlessly into a formally
straightforward—and singable—melodic structure. The transformational corkscrews here
are not tonal special effects as they so often are in Romantic musical rhetoric—the
familiar Lisztian modulations, Schubertian transitions, Brucknerian sequences, or
Wagnerian continuous stretches of developmental prose. Rather, they are essential and
smoothly assimilated components of the very fabric of a lyrical theme, replacing diatonic
logic on all but the most superficial levels. Even though the example comes from an extra-
narratival overture rather than diegetic underscore, its incorporation of neo-Riemannian
transformations is emblematic of Hollywood chromaticism in general. Absent common-
practice regulative musical syntaxes such as monotonality or long-range prolongation,
chromaticism in film music frequently finds a way to penetrate many levels of musical
structure. Best of all for filmgoers, this is done without losing any of the associative
“oomph” that attracts so many dramatically minded composers to symmetrical
progressions in the first place.
VI. Prospects
I have argued here that the range of applications of transformational thinking and neo-
Riemannian tools to film music analysis is promisingly wide. The prospects for further
research uniting NRT and film musicology are bright—for several reasons brighter than
previous attempts to bring the traditional concerns of music theory to cinema
soundtracks. Unlike the scattered attempts to incorporate Schenkerian thought to film
score analysis during the 1970s through 1990s, the present moment seems poised to
witness healthy expansion and development in “film music theory.”41 In particular, neo-
Riemannian theory is sufficiently novel to be a source of excitement to many theorists,
but, with the publication of several dedicated monographs/anthologies and routine
conference panels, it has matured out of its stage of scholarly growing pains. Elements of
NRT are widely taught and understood, in some locations even at the undergraduate
level. Something similar is true of film musicology, which is now firmly established and
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enjoying remarkable growth, albeit with still little in the way of contributions from music
theorists. That so much of the most characteristic music of the silver screen conforms
smoothly to the analytic desiderata of transformation theory makes the union of these
two disciplines a natural and encouraging development.
Much remains to be done before something like “transformational film music theory” can
be trumpeted. Although I have outlined some of the ways in which the technical
machinery of NRT can contribute to our understanding of film musical structure (and vice
versa), the value of transformational thinking goes far beyond the recognition of
combinatoriality, parsimony, enharmonicism, or symmetry in film music. Among the
largely unexplored avenues that theorists and film musicologists can most productively
investigate:
1. Stylistic evolution. Film music practice is no more a unified idiom than

nineteenth century Romanticism. Indeed, because of variety of dramatic purposes/
genres and national subcultures, it contains within it a far greater eclecticism in its
styles and methods than practically any arbitrary span of previous music history. An
important contribution neo-Riemannian methods can offer, then, is the tracking of
differences across practices, both in place and time. Where one progression falls out
of favor and another takes its place, when certain linear routines become a norm
rather than a special effect—these are stylistic questions that transformational
theory is primed to answer.
2. Aesthetics: The remarkable longevity of the fantastic associations of
chromaticism should be plainly evident in the examples on display in this chapter.
Less obvious is why triadic transformations should hold the affective sway they do in
film musical practices. Rather than falling back on analytical bad habits, such as
lumping all mediant progressions together as “coloristic” or “bizarre,”
transformational methods can arrive at fine-tuned distinctions in quality and usage of
harmonic routines. Such work as Cohn’s semiotics of the hexatonic pole, Bribitzer-
Stull’s on the Tarnhelm progression, Murphy’s work on many of the remaining
progression classes, points to one way in which an aesthetic of film harmony may
benefit from transformational tools. Other ways, suggested by the hermeneutic
orientation of this chapter, may involve investigating the relationship of voice-
leading or symmetry to larger units of musical discourse than the atoms of absolute
progressions.
3. Non-triadic Harmony: Neo-Riemannian operators constrain one’s focus to
motions between consonant triads. But film music draws on a much richer
vocabulary of sonorities than simple major and minor chords. Though the NROs offer
less help there, specialized operations for 7th chords (developed independently by
several theorists) as well as generic transformational tools, such as GISes and Tn/In
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networks, offer an auspicious way into the music of composers with complex
harmonic languages, including the neglected figures of Leonard Rosenman, Jerry
Fielding, David Shire, and John Corigliano.
4. Nonc-chromatic Harmony: If a transformational theory can be applied to non-
triadic harmony, it can also be reconfigured to handle functional diatonic music—
which makes up the vast majority of non-genre film scoring—with equal facility.
Diatonic function was built into Lewin’s vision of transformational analysis from the
beginning, and recent work from Steven Rings indicates that tonality, viewed
through a transformational lens, can yield surprisingly deep (and, useful for film
music, hermeneutically rich) insights.
5. Score Analysis: The passages analyzed by neo-Riemannian theory tend to be
restricted in scope, demonstrating interesting features at the level of the progression
rather than larger scale formal units. While there are good reasons for this, mindful
application of transformational thinking to broader spans of musical content can
provide a way to track patterns of change and evolution in the grosser components
of a film score (whole cues, or even soundtracks) while sidestepping fraught grounds
of searching for something like “a movie’s home key.”
6. Repertoires: Hollywood genre film proffered the bulk of the examples
investigated in this chapter. However, generic domain—underanalyzed by theorists
as it is—makes up but one of the promising repertoires that these methods could
benefit. Alternative corpuses are an obvious place to start, including the huge worlds
of independent and international film. Television, a sister repertoire to film but one
with sometimes importantly different practices, is another. Video game music
comprises another area with emerging analytical literature that could profit from
transformational approaches. Particularly because of their distinct modes of listening
and temporality, electronic games may generate insights into musical transformation
unavailable to the linear structure shared by film and concert musics.
As music theory continues to healthily shed its preoccupation with western art musics in
favor of a more ecumenical purview, it is hoped that these sites for further investigation
(and many more in the vast universe of music for screen) will garner full treatments
warranted by their scope and relevance to contemporary listeners. Once momentum
gathers for analyzing film music, the prospect of delving into such a rewarding
repertoire, so close to home for many, should promise transformations of film musicology
and theory undreamt of even a decade ago. Film music will then finally no longer
resemble an untouched “mysterious island” of a repertoire.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Alex Rehding, Christopher Hasty, and especially Scott Murphy for
their generous feedback and advice at various stages of this research.
Notes:
(1) Richard Cohn’s article, “An Introduction to Neo-Riemannian Theory: A Survey and
Historical Perspective,” Journal of Music Theory 42.2 (1998), presents the domain of this
theoretical system—both in terms of repertoire and conceptual apparatus—as squarely
located in the nineteenth century.
(2) A concise account of the origins of dualist thinking can be found in Henry
Klumpenhouwer’s “Dualist Tonal Space and Transformation in Nineteenth-Century
Thought,” in The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory, ed. Thomas Christensen
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002). For an introduction to and
reevaluation of harmonic dualism in Riemann specifically, see Alexander Rehding, Hugo
Riemann and the Birth of Modern Musical Thought (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 2003). Contemporary defenses, critiques, and analytic applications of
this highly contentious theoretical attitude can be found, respectively, in Klumpenhouwer
“Harmonic Dualism as Historical and Structural Imperative”; Dmitri Tymoczko “Dualism
and the Beholder’s Eye: Inversional Symmetry in Chromatic Tonal Music”; and Rehding
“Dualistic Forms”, all in The Oxford Handbook to Neo-Riemannian Music Theories, ed.
Alexander Rehding and Edward Gollin (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011).
(3) See Edward Gollin, “From Matrix to Map: Tonbestimmung, the Tonnetz, and
Riemann’s Combinatorial Conception of the Interval,” in Oxford Handbook to Neo-
Riemannian Music Theories (OHTNRMT). Gollin locates the origins of Riemann’s
symbolic and combinatorial (and, for neo-Riemannians, protoalgebraic) representation of
tone relations in the work of Moritz Drobisch. Nora Engebretsen discusses Riemann’s
versatile taxonomy of root-relations and their relation to current transformational
attitudes in “Neo-Riemannian Perspectives on the Harmonieschritte” in OHTNRMT. The
“UTT” system devised by Julian Hook in “Uniform Triadic Transformations,” Journal of
Music Theory 46.1–2 (2002) presents the culmination of the Riemannian abstraction of
harmonic progressions to algebraic functions.
(4) Background on tone networks and applications to modern transformational theories

can be found in Kevin Mooney, “The ‘Table of Relations’ and Music Psychology in Hugo
Page 37 of 43

Riemann’s Harmonic Theory” (Ph.D. diss., New York, Columbia University, 1996) and
Gollin, “Representations of Space and Conceptions of Distance in Transformational
Theories” (Ph.D. diss., Cambridge, MA, Harvard University, 2000).
(5) The centrality of the romantic repertoire to NRT is clear in the objects of some of its
most notable analyses. These include Cohn, “As Wonderful as Star Clusters: Instruments
for Gazing at Tonality in Schubert,” Nineteenth-Century Music 22.3 (1999); David Lewin,
“Some Notes on Analyzing Wagner: The Ring and Parsifal,” 19th-Century Music 16.1
(1992); and all the case studies in David Kopp’s Chromatic Transformations in
Nineteenth-Century Music (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
(6) The idea that non-monotonality and pervasive chromaticism in the nineteenth century
constitutes a genuinely distinct tonal mode of composition (and hearing) from common
practice tonality is explored in the essays of William Kinderman and Harald Krebs’ The
Second Practice of Nineteenth Century Tonality (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1996). This notion is further treated by Tymoczko, “Dualism and the Beholder’s Eye” and
Cohn, Audacious Euphony: Chromaticism and the Triad’s Second Nature (Oxford, UK:
Oxford University Press, 2012).
(7) The Lewinian attitude towards music as a product of active changes rather than
discrete objects is one of the most significant and enduring legacies of modern music
theory; its foundational text is Lewin, Generalized Musical Intervals and Transformations
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). Steven Rings’s work carries on this tradition
strongly, nicely outlining it in Tonality and Transformation (Oxford, UK: Oxford University
Press, 2011). The transformational stance is provided intellectual background in
Klumpenhouwer, “In Order to Stay Asleep as Observers: The Nature and Origins of Anti-
Cartesian in Lewin’s GMIT,” Music Theory Spectrum 28.2 (2006), and problematized in
Harrison, “Three Short Essays on Neo-Riemannian Theory,” in OHTNRMT, 2011.
(8) See Guy Capuzzo, “Neo-Riemannian Theory and the Analysis of Pop-Rock Music,”
Music Theory Spectrum 26.2 (2004).
(9) See Maristella Feustle, “Neo-Riemannian Theory and Post-Bop Jazz: Applications of an
Extended Analytical Framework for Seventh Chords,” (PhD diss., Bowling Green
University, 2005); Capuzzo, “Pat Martino and the ‘Nature of the Guitar’: An Intersection
of Neo-Riemannian Theory and Jazz Theory,” Music Theory Online 12.1 (2006); John
Bishop, “A Permutational Triadic Approach to Jazz Harmony and the Chord/Scale
Relationship,” (Ph.D. diss., Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University, 2012); and Sara
Briginshaw, “A Neo-Riemannian Approach to Jazz Analysis,” Nota Bene: The Canadian
Undergraduate Journal of Research 5.1 (2012).
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(10) See Harrison, “Three Essays,” and Timothy Johnson, John Adams’s Nixon in China
(Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2011).
(11) There is also good reason to expand NRT’s musical scope: it magnifies its
pedagogical value for students more familiar with Radiohead than Reger. See, for
example Nora Engebretsen and Per Broman’s article “Transformational Theory in the
Undergraduate Curriculum: A Case for Teaching the Neo-Riemannian Approach,” Journal
of Music Theory Pedagogy 21 (2007).
(12) All musical examples in this article are solely the product of the author’s own
transcription from film DVDs and soundtrack albums.
(13) One theorist who has contemplated the possibility of film-spanning tonal design is
Ronald Rodman. See Rodman, “Tonal Closure and Design in The Wizard of Oz,” Indiana
Theory Review (1998); and “Tonal Design and the Aesthetic of Pastiche in Herbert
Stothart’s Maytime” in Music and Cinema, ed. James Buhler et al. (Hanover, NH:
Wesleyan University Press, 2000).
(14) David Neumeyer considers the standard categories of large-scale tonal structure in
light of the logistical demands of film composition. He concludes that projecting tonal
norms from concert music onto soundtracks is a questionable enterprise, one that should
be entertained only in exceptional cases and with an eye to music’s associational, rather
than abstract and teleological, qualities. See Neumeyer, “Tonal Design and Narrative in
Film Music: Herrmann’s A Portrait of Hitch and The Trouble with Harry,” Indiana Theory
Review (2001). For a perspective on classical cadential categories in film music, see
Lehman, “Hollywood Cadences: Music and the Structure of Cinematic Expectation,”
Music Theory Online 19.4 (2013).
(15) For a description of the state of music theory in film musicology, see Lehman, “Music
Theory Through the Lens of Film,” Journal of Film Music 5.1-2 (2013). A pandisciplinary
survey that includes reference to extant theory research in film studies can be found in
Robyn Stillwell, “Film Music Literature Review,” Journal of Film Music 1.1 (2002).
(16) What exists of a literature on transformational film music analysis is largely the
product of one theorist, Scott Murphy. Murphy’s primary line of research has been the
application of the Kurthian concept of “absolute progression” to film musical syntax.
Representative publications of his in this area include “The Major Tritone Progression in
Recent Hollywood Science Fiction Films” (Music Theory Online 12.2, 2006); “The Tritone
Within: Interpreting Harmony in Elliot Goldenthat’s Score for Final Fantasy: The Spirits
Within” in The Music of Fantasy Cinema, ed. Janet K. Halfyard (Sheffield: Equinox
Page 39 of 43

Publishing Ltd, 2012); “Transformational Theory and the Analysis of Film Music” in The
Oxford Handbook of Film Music Studies, ed. David Neumeyer (Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press, 2013); and “Scoring Loss in Recent Popular Film and Television,” Music
Theory Spectrum (forthcoming). The author’s own work on neo-Riemannian analysis of
film music can be found in Lehman, “Transformational Analysis and the Representation of
Genius in Film Music,” Music Theory Spectrum 35.1 (2013); “Reading Tonality Through
Film: Transformational Hermeneutics and the Music of Hollywood,” (Ph.D. diss.,
Cambridge, MA, Harvard University, 2012); and “Frame-Scapes: Exploring Boundaries in
Goldsmith’s Star Trek,” Paper presented at New York Music and Moving Image
Conference (May 2011).
(17) Some forays into the aesthetics of film chromaticism include Royal Brown,
Undertones and Overtones: Reading Film Music (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1994); Janet Halfyard, “Music Afoot: Supernatural Horror-comedies and the Diabolus in
Musica” in Music in The Horror Film, ed. Neil Lerner (New York: Routledge, 2009); and
Ilario Meandri, “Dal Meraviglioso all’Antimusica su alcuni cliché del fantastico nel
mainstream musicale hollywoodiano” in Suono/Immagine/Genere, ed. Ilario Meandri and
Andrea Valle (Turin: Kaplan, 2011).
(18) These are the only five operators that involve two or fewer semitonal displacements.
This accounts for the nonadmission of Cohn’s H(expole, e.g., C-maj⬄A♭-min) and my own
M(odalverwandt, e.g., C-maj⬄G-min), both of which have a voice-leading work value of 3.
(19) One could also incorporate nondualistic transformations into such an inventory.
These may be simple transpositions (Tn-type operations) or Lewinian diatonic-functional
transformations (such as DOM or MED). While such extended libraries of available
moves may have their uses in studies where functional tonicity is an important
parameter, I focus on more purely chromatic passages (hence the more homogenous
dualistic family).
(20) S, the so-called “SLIDE” relation, has the peculiar role of altering chord quality while
retaining the triadic third. This quality opens the door for a variety of interesting usages
and associations in film music, such as representation of dream-space in Hans Zimmer’s
Inception or undeath in James Newton Howard’s The Sixth Sense.
(21) The properties of generalized L, P, and R operators are explored in Cohn, “Neo-
Riemannian Operations, Parsimonious trichords, and Their “Tonnetz” Representations,”
Journal of Music Theory 41.1 (1997); and Robert Morris, “Voice Leading Spaces,” Music
Theory Spectrum 20.2 (1998).
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(22) These two metrics do not always yield comparable distances. For example, the
transformation S has a unary word length but voice-leading work of two. Cohn (2012, 6–8)
explores this important misalignment.
(23) See Gollin 2000 for an exhaustive exploration of the linkage of transformational
“word length” and aural complexity.
(24) Manifest similarities in orchestration and tonal vocabulary point toward an

inspiration from Vaughan Williams’s score to the 1948 film Scott of the Antarctic (and its
resultant adaptation in his Sinfonia Antartica). Vaughan Williams’s score is a feast of
triadic chromaticism that also inspired Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams’s compositional
peer, on several occasions.
(25) Besides its rich archaeology of a single progression, Cohn’s article, “Uncanny
Resemblances: Tonal Signification in the Freudian Age,” Journal of the American
Musicological Society 57.2 (2004), is of significance for bringing semiotic and cultural
perspectives into what had previously been the fairly meaning-averse landscape of
transformation theory.
(26) The “Fortress” passage itself behaves this way at times. Melodic and linear forces
stitch together the chords between D♯ minor and G major more closely than the book-end
transformations, overriding some of the “complexity” of the interior RLRP
transformation. Of course, dynamics and especially orchestration play a role of equal
importance in establishing norms of distance and perspective in landscape music such as
this, and a more thorough analysis would certainly take their contributions into account.
(27) In his analysis of James Newton Howard’s Treasure Planet, Scott Murphy (2006)
treats the score’s emblematic progression, T6, in this way, as a leitharmonie that can be
transformationally varied without changing its ultimate referand.
(28) In a different setting, it could be labeled more simply still, with a transformation that
exchanges P5 related chords such as C-maj⬄G-min (a transformation I have elsewhere
called M, the “Modalverwandt,” inverting a triad about its dualistic “fifth”).
(29) The default space for network analysis among many neo-Riemannians has been the
symmetrical lattice known as the equal-tempered Tonnetz. While I rely on less
predetermined grids in this chapter, the Tonnetz can be a powerful tool. For a film
musical application, see Jamie Lynn Webster, “The Music of Harry Potter: Continuity and
Change in the First Five Films,” Ph.D. diss., Eugene, University of Oregon, 2009.
(30) Capuzzo 2004, 196–197.
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(31) Capuzzo notes that the “passage is shot through with chromatic third relations and p
parsimony [literally sounded retention of common tones], a few octave doublings and
register shifts notwithstanding.” His reduction, which segregates the progression into
three registral streams, shows a taut semitonal continuity from sonority to sonority,
especially in the upper voices. Capuzzo’s analysis highlight the way in which chromatic
mediants are spawned from the treatment of individual voices; in this specific cue, the
preponderance of M3-related chords may be the result of the passage’s motivic derivation
from the “Rivendell” theme, which is comprised of little more than to LP related chords,
each of which is internally ornamented by a ^5-^♭6-^5 pattern (the essence of L).
(32) See Robert C. Cook, “Parsimony and Extravagance,” Journal of Music Theory 48.1
(2005).
(33) This is the tack taken by Kopp (2000, 166–169) in devising chromatic mediant
progressions that rely on no intervening chords to garner their intelligibility. For
example, Kopp’s M relation links triads that may only share one common tone together
(ex C-maj to A♭-maj).
(34) Another upshot of this enharmonically liberated landscape is the ability to deal with
root progressions that hew to symmetrical partitions of the octave (the hex- and octatonic
cycles, namely) with far greater ease than diatonic theories of chromaticism are able to,
something that is explored in Section Vthis chapter.
(35) Cohn presents something approaching a unified theory of triadic chromaticism using
these various cyclic transformations in Audacious Euphony (2012).
(36) Richard Taruskin’s article, “Chernomor to Kashchei: Harmonic Sorcery; Or,

Stravinsky’s Angle,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 38.1 (1985), stands as
the definitive study of the stylistic and associative aspects of the octatonic scale in the
nineteenth century, which he ascribes mostly to the music and theories of Russian
nationalist composers, of which (early) Stravinsky was a member.
(37) Diminished sevenths pepper what is considered by many musicologists to be the

original film score, Saint-Säens’s L’Assassinat de duc de Guise of 1908. By the time of
Hans Erdmann’s Nosferatu in 1922, the device’s de rigueur status, particularly for horror
genre films, was truly solidified.
(38) See Halfyard 2009, 34–35, for more on the Silvestri/Stravinsky connection.
(39) Discussion and a number of archetypically fantastic examples can be found in Cohn,
“Maximally Smooth Cycles, Hexatonic Systems, and the Analysis of Late-Romantic Triadic
Progressions,” Music Analysis 15.1 (1996), and, regarding one particular hexatonic
Page 42 of 43

progression, Matthew Bribitzer-Stull, “From Nibelheim to Hollywood: The Associativity of

Harmonic Progression,” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Music
Theory, Baltimore (2007).
(40) The label romantic theme is adopted from Royal S. Brown, who calls it a “floating
theme … that attaches itself to various characters and situations” (Brown 1994, 98).
(41) Besides important work from Rodman (1998 and 2010) and especially Neumeyer
(1998), some Schenkerian and pseudo-Schenkerian endeavors include Alfred Cochran,
“Style, Structure, and Tonal Organization in the Early Film Scores of Aaron
Copland” (Ph.D. diss., Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1986), and
George Burt, The Art of Film Music (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1994).
Frank Lehman
Frank Lehman, Tufts University
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Film Music and Neo-Riemannian Theory

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Oxford Handbooks Online

Abstract and Keywords

date: 17 October 2016

theorists’ interest in Romantic-era music.5 The “Second Practice” of nineteenth-century

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In film music, tonal

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In this essay I provide an overview of this promising avenue for transformational

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drama. Formalistic analysis is an understandably taboo approach among film

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All are “dualistic” in the

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This musical paragraph from Superman demonstrates how the analysis of

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Analysis of “The Nautilus”

The rationale for this

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Analyses of this sort,

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In one of the few allusions to film music’s amenability to neo-Riemannian analysis in

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Shore uses the gradual

Common tone–retaining operations such as realized in Shore’s Fellowship of the Ring

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Thankfully, NRT need not

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IV. Tonal Agnosticism

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While passages where functionality cedes analytic importance to transformational

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Throughout The Song of

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Octatonic Ladders in Back to the Future

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Silvestri’s music for the

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to G). The seven measures of Example 10 accompany a moment of rapidly escalating

The continual transference

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Hexatonic Gyrations in The Sea Hawk

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Example 12a: Downward surface-level M3 cycle in

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One of the most impressive

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