Music by Max Steiner by Steven C. Smith

Author:Steven C. Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2020-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Publicity stills from Gone with the Wind.

no scene was more of a musical minefield than Scarlett’s walk through hundreds of wounded soldiers at the Atlanta train station. Selznick’s directions were intricate. “Score the square with a pathetic medley of Southern songs to give the impression of the South bleeding to death . . . Suggest off-key [dissonant] ‘Dixie’ in funereal tempo with ‘Taps,’ etc., and perhaps ‘Maryland, My Maryland,’ ‘My Old Kentucky Home,’ ‘Swanee River,’ etc . . . No original music at all.”39

Steiner rose to the challenge. As Scarlett is walking among the men, “Dixie” is played laboriously in B-minor. The camera rises, revealing the scene’s epic scale. Max matches the camera move with an upward modulation, allowing a subtle change into a major-key rendition of “Maryland, My Maryland,” as trumpets intone “Taps” as countermelody. As the crane shot nears its zenith, Foster’s “Old Folks at Home” (aka “Swanee River”) dominates, an ironic counterpoint to the carnage of dead and dying. The mood becomes plangent, as “Taps” returns in final, forceful counterpoint, just as the billowing Confederate flag is revealed above the panorama.

Steiner has included everything on Selznick’s list except “My Old Kentucky Home.” And while there was “no original music” per request, his use of the many melodic cells—their arrangement and harmonization—puts the cue in Steiner’s voice.

“THE SOUTH IS DEAD. And so am I!” Max writes pages later. But he summoned the energy to spar with Selznick, over the scoring of Scarlett’s discovery at Tara that her mother is dead.

For the preview, Selznick temp-tracked the scene with two Waxman cues from the movie His Brother’s Wife. The second employed a hypnotic, heartbeat-like rhythm for timpani, similar to Waxman’s classic “creation music” for The Bride of Frankenstein. Steiner’s scoring for the scene used a quietly suspenseful variant of the Tara theme, tying music to the larger narrative.

When Selznick chose to use Waxman, Max pleaded his case in a letter. “While I do not question or criticize your liking that piece of preview track, I do strongly object to it on account of bad modulation, different type recording, different orchestra, and improper ending under [Scarlett’s] scream. . . . Why have such glaring imperfections in what may prove to be the best picture to date? . . . Please excuse my rotten typing, but I am extremely nervous and worried.”40

Selznick was unmoved.

The rest of the Act One finale stayed as Steiner planned. Gerald O’Hara’s theme returns, shadowed by whispering dissonances as Scarlett realizes he has lost his mind. “Now we know he’s NUTS . . . just even as you and I!”

At the close of the film’s first half—Scarlett’s speech “As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again!”—Steiner’s mastery of Wagnerian music-drama is fully utilized. The finale begins with the Tara theme presented as swirling musical question; then builds into a defiant statement of Tara for orchestra and chorus. As Scarlett slowly rises from the ground, climbing key modulations match her. “Grandioso . . . a tone higher .

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