Harry Potter: Magic vs. Muggle
The score for the Harry Potter films have become some of the most recognisable pieces of music in the world and I reckon you would be hard done by to find someone who had never heard it. It’s one of the few scores that remain timeless and conjures the immediate imagination and wonder that it first gave audiences when it was released. This week, the latest spin-off instalment, The Crimes of Grindelwald takes to the cinemas and it's got me thinking about the musical soundscape in the original movies. I wondered, how does one develop a soundtrack that is thematically concise while in tandem developing itself in the places required to, to display progression with the narrative structure of the story. More so, how do you keep the music interesting over eight films, using different director/composer partnerships, a multiplying family of characters and one linear narrative?
The films are musically speaking, dense and in most places tends to gently guide the path of the film. Aesthetically, there is a shift in tone over the course of the first few films, this is predominantly seen in instalments 1- 5 with the last of films being quite similar in tonality. However, it is usually overlooked just how much of a role the music plays in affecting the interpretation that the viewer has, especially one that deals with various composers cross-working over a template with continuing story and characters. The music is interwoven with the visual connection very tightly. So tightly, that the it provides us with narrative hints prior to the visual reveal of said moment. On the most fundamental level, in the Philosopher’s stone, when there is a visual correlation of magic shown on screen, the musical cue will be played, as the magic in the scene fades, so does the music.
It’s a very simple and interesting musical devise to use and one that I am particularly fond of is the intention behind the use of Silence. Here it is used divisively to create a space between the muggle world and the magical world, and in doing so portrays the muggle world as unpleasant and awkward; where the magical world is lush, colourful and animated. It plans ahead and plays the audience into the idea that there is something bigger and unknown out there about to be uncovered.
It is down to this small rule of thumb during the Philosopher’s Stone that creates a dynamical shift in the visuals, acting as our eyes into the magical world, and the musical hand that guides us. For example, the scene in which the letters appear in the house, delivered by owls. There is no music to begin with, but eventually it begins to rise. We know that there is something magical about the letter because the music indicated the theme. Otherwise we would have assumed it was just a regular letter. But it is only when he opens the letter and sees the contents that the music takes the foreground, and the dominance of the theme takes over, subverting and silencing the realism.
Although the music creates a polarisation between the two realities, as the films go on, the soundscape becomes more complex and ambiguous. And the dividing magic/non-magic rule is cast away as newer thematic structures must assume. For example, where a scene may not have had a musical cue in previous films, there may be a scene set in the muggle world but that uses dark magic etc.
In the process of this definition between the magical world and the increasingly drab in comparison muggle world, the score is able to create cultural and temporal landscapes that draw the viewer into the world seen in the film. Harry’s emotional arc is the primary journey of the story and the music defines how the viewer interoperates Harry’s emotional experiences throughout and how he deals with experiences of love, joy or death and the overall battle of good vs. evil. On a superficial level, the score also does a good job of ‘typecasting’ instruments, in this instance, the use of celeste and harp are effective in conjuring the imagery of whimsical fantasy, already being instruments that are associated with that style of music. However, the score conjures more than just surface level connotations. The music is used to suggest a metaphorical narrative, one that suggests a deeper meaning than that which is possible to see in surface level action, or, that the dialogue is able to dictate.
On a macro-scale, the series’ soundtrack is a cacophony of duple meters, many fanfares (oh, the fanfares!) and tonic-centric harmonies can be read as historical code for hierarchical masculinity and the rational world, although this is an entirely different discussion to divulge in. As the triple meter music dominates the first two instalments in the franchise, duple meters in the fourth and fifth instalments create a symbolic and temporal shift towards stressing realism as well as Harry’s gradual maturity into manhood. Carefully Interwoven into each of the scores is the theme of loneliness, which gently announces itself throughout. Thematically, things start to become more complex as the films progress. The themes heard in the scores vary in their role, sometimes they are representative of good and evil telling us that they represent opposite forces, while other themes will suggest that it stems from the same source. This is partially what contributes to the gradual (and necessary) disconnection with the music and visuals. Ultimately showing that the comprehensive narrative is overall affected by the cumulative and linear aural experience of the full suite of 8 scores.
Even looking at the gradual discourse of the first half of the series, we can see how each of the composers different interpretations effected the overall interpretation of the franchises narrative. Where, as we see in the Philosopher’s Stone and the Chamber of Secrets, that John Williams aligns relatively closely with the corresponding visual movement on screen, where as later composer’s like Patrick Doyle’s score actually acts in counter point to the visual cue’s, then Nicholas Hooper’s score only loosely parallels. In the Philosopher’s Stone, music acts as a pansophical pair of eyes, defining and examining what is seen. It sets the fundamental and foundational groundwork the the rest of the series will go on to build on in some shape or form. It’s wickedly successful in creating a landscape both British and magical, infusing a dimensionality within the characters,
There is a lot more to talk about here, for example: the role of music as an interpreter of narrative in film, representation through music of gendered, national, historical and cosmopolitan identities in film as well as continuing research on the idea of each composer incorporating cumulative musical resources from the work of their predecessors in a long series of franchise production.
Maybe that’s for another time…
S