Encounters Between Electronic Music and Orchestras in Cinema - Text 4
One also has the sense that the use of the delay, with the wind sound repeated more softly each time, echoes these humans “lost” in the boundlessness of space, but also that it echoes the slogan on the film’s poster: “In space, no one can hear you scream.” The slow alternation between the harmonic passages and the more abstract textures, aided by the calm pan seen in the images, creates a feeling of weightlessness, as well as incomprehension. We need time to read the title and understand what we are seeing, and to grasp the logic of what we hear. This blend of genres right from the opening credits is probably what led Ridley Scott to declare: “[The music in Alien] seems to play the DNA of some distant society.”[6]
John Williams, the composer of the score for Star Wars, used synthesizers in a completely different manner. He began incorporating them into the orchestra as early as the 1980s, but in order to reinforce the sound through doubling or softening or by blending timbres. In this way electro beats and the orchestra are in dialogue during the scene of the restricted library in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Chris Columbus, 2001). The harp’s arpeggios which open the scene are doubled by electronic sounds, creating a particularly striking effect when the invisible cape appears. Then a ghost-like synth pad accompanies the use of the cape, almost like a sound effect, halting when Harry Potter removes the cape. Nevertheless, this does not change in the slightest John Williams’ taste for underscoring,[7] in this case to highlight an important phrase (“Who did gave it to you?”) with the subtle return to an orchestral texture, and then the change of shot and ellipsis by a phrase on lower strings. Thus while Jerry Goldsmith incorporates electronics structurally and creates an overall colour for the entire film, John Williams foregrounds it occasionally in order to bring out the strangeness and tension of a scene.
