The question of American music is just as often debated as the one of American literature and American arts in general. But while the discussions flaming around the works by the US composers and musicians, the latter simply do their job and create fantastic musical pieces daily and nightly. Now I shall try to talk about some of the most recent and most argued upon musical pieces that have been produced in the US.
The subject of our discussion will be the music played in the movie called The Lord of the Rings: the Return of the King. I consider this the music that is the closest to the classical genre and yet known to the wide public, which is a rare case when speaking of the instrumental music.
Since America is constantly trying to support something classical in orchestral music (Elson, 324), the impact it has on the people watching the movie is rather solemn. As they breathe in the air of the ceremony and traditions, they begin to understand that only these powerful stir of emotions could suit the picture itself (Ferris, 73).
Speaking about the special things about the music to the movie, I would like to add that though every tune is absolutely unique, there is something that holds these melodies together and creates the vision of the imaginary world so bright that it seems a piece of reality.
The third part of the trilogy begins with the song named Journey to the Cross-Roads. It spins the audience into a meditative trance which makes them ponder over the same problem of the paths we choose. Its alarming and wistful sound sends shivers right through you as you hear the very first notes.
The winds are very important here. The tube speaks about the trouble that is approaching the leads slowly, and the violins sing lie the troubled birds before the storm breaks out. I just love the perfect way to show that the most difficult part of the journey is way ahead, and this way will certainly be full of danger. This danger is lurking behind every rock, the flute says, but the strings say that you should not fall into despair, for there will be friends to help you on your hard way. They sound like the ray of hope and get the sunken spirit higher.
I really don’t want to blasphemies, but, actually, the very way of playing the song reminds me much of the music classics, with its organ and well-balanced melody that leaves the air of incompletion, of something unsaid or undone. This is the very detail that makes the total impression about the movie scene right: the leads, on their way to the future full of danger that may be leading them to their death feel bad about leaving the place they got used to so much (don’t forget that hobbits are a stay-at-home type). The horses are biting the bridle and ready to start the journey, the warriors in their armor are about to spur the horses, and the wind is singing the song that you have heard a thousand of times. Indeed, that is a piece that indicates American music as a “perennial work in progress” (Reyes, 13)!
This is the hardest way to say good-bye, and the composer understood it perfectly well as he was creating this masterpiece of a melody. Enchanting and soft, it makes the audience feel the situation to the bone as if they could be present there and be a part of this fantastic world as well.
The next song I want to drive your attention to is the one called The Battle on the Pelennor Fields. Now that is where the action starts taking its toll on the storyline!
As you might have guessed, the story spins into the events that the whole book was about. Finally, the two armies meet and they start fighting for their ideas, values and lives. On the one hand there is the greedy Sauron who wants to take over the world and the ring that only the wisest can possess. Of course, his reasons are most mean and his ways are most uncompromising. The other army is those who had the heart to face the evil and struggle with it.
The composer managed to express that in a piece. Isn’t that a miracle?
The music itself reminds of someone tremendous making huge steps towards you. It must be the king or even God Himself, that is how impressive it is. That must be the sound of the drum. Just listen to how solemnly and slowly the song is pacing the battlefield.
The winds create the feeling of something coming on, and as the drums enter this amazing action, they add to the impression. It seems for a moment that a giant is getting closer to the army and that mountains tremble as he treads with his huge feet. Or can that be an ancient god that shakes the earth in the suspense that precedes the fiery battle?
The drums are very important in this short piece. Can you remember an old cinema tradition to use the drumming as something important is going to break off? that is much what the composer was trying to show with his little masterpiece this time. It seems as if the drums are trying to say, “Be careful! Don’t fall into a trap that the foes are making!”
It ends rather abruptly, but the ending shows clearly that the victory is just around the corner. The winds are triumphing about the on-coming victory, and there is no doubt that it follows soon.
Personally, as I was listening to this piece, I had an image of a rainy day, even of a storm, that was going to tear all living beings to pieces with its cruel and harsh ways, but then it suddenly ceases, and the sun shines out of the cloud, and the world looks so tossed and turned, but it is still a bright day, the nightmare is over and it is clear that everything can be fixed, as long as you have some hope and will to make it. While your heart is tick-tacking, it is still warm and you feel like things can work out well. The composer has found a perfect way to put these feeling to music.
The next piece I am going to talk about is called The Fellowship Reunited.
It is clear from the very name of the song that it is all about the victory oncoming and about going home. Yes, whatever the results of the battle might be, there is one good thing about it, and this is going back to where you belong. The leads are on their way with a great victory, with a pack of new truths they have learned and a handful of tears they have shed over those whom they had lost. It is a day full of triumph and light sadness, the day when they finally realize how tired and homesick they are.
The music is fantastic. Again, the composers did a splendid job to show what the author meant in this very scene.
And the music is the perfect way to tell all this without a single word.
The tune of the flute speaks more than words can do. It is light and rising, like a feather in the wind. The upheaval it stirs in one’s soul is unbelievable. As you listen to the song, it brings you back to your childhood when you believed in magic and fairy tales. It makes you understand that life is the very place for all those miracles to happen and that they are just around the corner. However, the slight sadness that drags one into philosophical meditations reminds that those miracles do not knock on the door of those who does nothing.
Is it possible to be a hero? The music says that there could not be anything impossible about that.
But then it ask you, “Why should you?” The strange thing about heroes is that they always know what to do and what to say. But, as a rule, people – and, as a matter of fact, hobbits as well – do not, and the magic of the moment for them is that it will bring something new and unexpected. “Who am I? What should I do?” are not merely the questions to waste your time on a quasi-philosophical nonsense. These are the things that will guide you to your own victory. However, I am sure that the battle long as lifetime is a journey itself.
What I like especially about the American music is its self-taught utopia (Crawford, 111). It is the genius of the improvisation that guided it through all the years of its development.
Still there is one thing that needs clarifying. Sometimes the surprised people raise a lot of questions which lead to the same idea, namely: how come classical music live and prosper in the country of jazz and soul? By the way, here the influence of the African music can be traced (Nicholls 103).
I would say that here classical music gets the second wind owing exactly to jazz and soul. The musical interpreters make the classical compositions sound new and fresh, and they make people forget that what they are listening to is old as the gills.
The very special thing about this sort of music is that as you listen to it you do not associate it with the pomposity and false festivity. Here it shakes off all the seriousness and stands in front of the dazzled public in its natural beauty.
The alleged misconceptions that the two separate kinds of music in America, the classic one and the popular one, cause are nothing but an exaggeration. They coexist, sometimes interweaving into a pattern that creates beautiful masterpieces and makes people stand in awe of those who create it.
As Goethe said, “Music begins where the word ceases”.
Works Cited
Crawford, Richard. America’s Musical Landscape. Berkeley, CA: University of Carolina Press, 2000. Print.
Elson, Louis C. The History of American Music. New York, NY: The MacMillan Company, 1994. Print.
Ferris, Jean. America’s Musical Landscape. 6th ed. New York, NY: Mc-Graw Hill, 2009. Print.
Nicholls, David. Cambridge History of American Music. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Print.
Reyes, Adelaida. Music in America: Expressing Music, Expressing Culture. Michigan: Oxford University Press, 2005. Print.