David Shire's The Conversation by Chattah Juan;

Author:Chattah, Juan;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781442251649
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

A similar, but lengthier, expressive use of mode mixture takes place in the final scene to The Last Stand at Saber River (1997). The protagonists Paul and Martha partake in an honest exchange that helps them reach emotional conclusion. At the moment they reconcile and decide to begin a new life together, Martha’s motif, which throughout the film was in minor mode, turns into a major-mode melody.

Shire is also keen to avoid the happy or sad coloring typical of the major and minor modes by employing alternative pitch configurations such as the Greek modes. These configurations expand his tonal-color palette while providing him with new means for music-narrative inter-action. For instance, modes in which the tonic chord outlines a dominant-seventh sonority, such as the Mixolydian or the Lydian-dominant, inevitably project a sense of lack of conclusion. Shire exploits this feature in films built around unanswered questions; for Zodiac [2007], Shire recalled, “‘Irresolution’ was the word that kept coming to mind as I explored musical materials from which to develop the score . . . in particular to underscore Greysmith’s endless search for an answer.”21 Shire intertwined Mixolydian with half-diminished modes, never providing a sense of stable resolution. (See discussion in chapter 2.) Similarly, in All The President’s Men (1976), reporters Woodward and Bernstein never fully uncover the particulars of the Watergate scandal. The first cue in the film, shown in figure 4.14, builds from an empty-sounding, open-fifth sonority, to an enigmatic Lydian-dominant scale that dominates the entire score.

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