Identifying and Interpreting Incongruent Film Music by David Ireland

Author:David Ireland
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9783030005061
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Hans Zimmer’s Score for Gladiator

Gladiator tells the story of Maximus (Russell Crowe), a general in the army of the Roman Empire who becomes a gladiator after falling into slavery following betrayal by Commodus (Joaquin Pheonix), the son of the recently deceased Emperor, Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris). As ‘[t]he first ancient epic produced for the silver screen since the mid-1960s’, Gladiator may have faced stereotypical preconceptions fuelled by genre expectations associated with earlier epics that conceived such films as lengthy with ‘often lumbering, if inspirationally minded, plots’ (Winkler, 2004, p. xi). However, the film enjoyed success at the box office, with Schauer and Bordwell’s (2006) Hollywood Timeline calculating that it was the fourth top-earning film in the US market in 2000, drawing in $187.7 million (p. 237). It also received critical recognition winning the Academy Award for Best Picture. This success might be attributed, at least partially, to Scott’s revival of a ‘rather moribund genre ’ and its accompanying spectacle, subject matter, bittersweet ending, and engaging characters, amongst other factors (Irvine , 2005, p. 47). Hans Zimmer’s music also likely contributed to this success and received praise, winning the Best Original Score at the Golden Globe Awards.

Zimmer’s music is in many ways synonymous with conceptions of the epic in contemporary film music and to assess these claims Frank Lehman (2017) initially draws upon listener responses to the cue for the battle sequence under analysis in this chapter (pp. 30–31). Of the musical tropes that Lehman contends characterise the epic qualities of Zimmer’s music, the Teutonic Theme is particularly prevalent in Gladiator . This trope incorporates minor-key melodies and “German-sounding” influences in the orchestrations and voicings, which are intended to signify strength and honour (pp. 40–42). Joakim Tillman’s (2017) analysis of the music for Gladiator also emphasises the importance of melodic material in this score. He identifies various musical themes that are used across the film, observing how these relate to broader stylistic topoi and can convey intertextual references.

Zimmer’s compositional ‘vocabulary’ has changed ‘drastically and repeatedly’ throughout his career (Hexel, 2016, p. 7), and in many senses the Gladiator score sits somewhat differently to his more recent output. Whilst a prominent feature in this score, since the early 2000s Zimmer has drawn less frequently on a thematic approach, perhaps demonstrating ‘a certain embarrassment with conventional melody’ (Lehman , 2017, p. 42). Instead, according to Lehman , the composer now appears to favour devices like the Abstract Anthem and the Cathartic Ostinato: the Abstract Anthem refers to shorter, less complex motifs that are suitable for repetition; and the Cathartic Ostinato refers to cues that rely on repeated figures that build and fall away through the use of dynamics and changing instrumental resources. Zimmer too, confirms this development in his compositional approach by referring to how the thematic properties of Gladiator would be ‘inappropriate’ for more recent films (as cited in Lehman , 2017, p. 43).

This melodic emphasis and use of large-scale orchestral resources in Gladiator echo qualities of the classical Hollywood score .

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