Finding Newman: The Compositional Process and Musical Style of Thomas Newman

Finding Newman: The Compositional Process and Musical Style of Thomas Newman

Adam Schoenberg

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Musical Arts degree

May 2010

© 2010 by Adam Schoenberg All Rights Reserved

ABSTRACT The genre of film music and its composers has typically been excluded from discussion in a traditional conservatory environment. Although film music is beginning to be embraced as an art form, there is still no established methodology when it comes to studying an individual film composer’s style and techniques.

Many sources trace the techniques of film music

composition and discuss the evolution of film music, but thorough research and documentation on the composers themselves are missing. The goal of this document is to examine the compositions, musical style, and signature sound of one specific film composer, Thomas Newman.

Ever since hearing the film score to American Beauty in 1999, this writer has been fascinated by Thomas Newman’s music and unique harmonic sound.

Thomas Newman’s

harmonic language consists of a chromatically altered tonal world, utilizing chords and clusters that embrace traditional aspects of tonal harmony but function in nontraditional ways. This doctoral document offers an in-depth discussion on Newman’s compositional process and provides a harmonic analysis of his music.

Chapter One contains a biographical background on Newman. Chapter Two discusses Newman’s diverse compositional processes.

These include conceptual composition,

experimentation, and collaboration. Chapter Three examines Newman’s musical style, covering the use of piano, strings, electronics, world instruments, percussion, rhythm, repetitive motives, drones, and the harmonic language employed throughout his scores.

Lastly, Chapter Four

summarizes Newman’s compositional processes and musical style, and brings the significance of his harmonic language to the foreground. This ultimately aligns him with some of the most influential

composers

of

the

twentieth

and

twenty-first

centuries.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE The music of composer Adam Schoenberg (b. November 15, 1980) has been hailed as "ruminative" (New York Times), "stunning" (Memphis Commercial Appeal), and "open, bold, and optimistic" (Atlanta Journal-Constitution). Performance highlights include presentations by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Kansas City Symphony, New World Symphony, Charleston Symphony, Aspen Music Festival Chamber Orchestra, IRIS Chamber Orchestra, Juilliard Symphony, Chicago Youth Symphony, American Brass Quintet, New Juilliard Ensemble, and Sybarite Chamber Players. In Fall 2010, the American Brass Quintet will release a CD of Schoenberg’s brass quintet, which was commissioned by and premiered at the Aspen Music Festival, as part of a recording celebrating its fiftieth anniversary. Commissions have come from the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Kansas City Symphony, and The Blakemore Trio for premieres in 2011.

Schoenberg is a Doctor of Musical Arts candidate at The Juilliard School, where he studied with John Corigliano and Robert Beaser. He received his Master of Music degree in 2005 from Juilliard and his Bachelor of Music degree from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in 2002.

Recently completed commissions include pieces for the IRIS Chamber Orchestra, Sybarite Chamber Players, and harpist Gretchen Van Hoesen of the Pittsburgh Symphony. Schoenberg is the 2010 guest composer for Aspen Music Festival and School’s M.O.R.E Music program, and a 2009 MacDowell Fellow.

He was the First Prize winner at the 2008 International Brass

Chamber Music Festival for best Brass Quintet, resulting in the publication of his quintet by Brass Chamber Music. In 2007, he was awarded ASCAP’s Morton Gould Young Composer Award, Juilliard’s Palmer-Dixon Prize for Most Outstanding Composition, and a Meet the Composer Grant from the Southern Arts Federation. He received the 2006 Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has garnered further acclaim from ASCAP and the Society for New Music. His music has been performed throughout the United States at such venues as Alice Tully Hall (Lincoln Center), the Benedict Music Tent (Aspen Music Festival), the Midwest Composers' Symposium, and the Merce Cunningham Studio, as well as broadcast on WCNY in New York. Mr. Schoenberg is a member of BMI and his official website is http://www.adamschoenberg.com.

iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS For their continuous love and support throughout my life, I would like to acknowledge and thank my parents, Jane and Steven, my sister, Sarah, and my grandparents, Naomi and Mickey. I am forever grateful to my mentors, Robert Beaser and John Corigliano. Individually, they changed my life as a composer, and I thank them both for always allowing me to be myself.

Words cannot express my gratitude to L. Michael Griffel, my advisor and most beloved professor. Thank you for your guidance and support throughout this process, and for being the most inspiring professor. I would like to thank Katrina Walter for her support during my academic residency and help with the transcription of my interview with Thomas Newman. I am deeply indebted to Leslie Morris, Thomas Newman’s music contractor for more than twentyeight years, who personally contacted each member of Newman’s core group on my behalf. On that note, I would like to thank George Doering, Rick Cox, Michael Fisher, Steve Tavaglione, John Beasley, George Budd, Chas Smith, Steve Kujala, Sid Page, Nico Abondolo, Larry Mah, Tommy Vicari, and Bill Bernstein for taking the time to be interviewed. I would like to thank Jamie Richardson at The Gorfaine/Schwartz Agency for granting me access to view Thomas Newman’s film scores, and for providing me with all appropriate contacts to obtain copyright approval. I am also indebted to Julian Bratolyubov, Thomas Newman’s librarian, for personally copying and sending me the scores that were examined. A special thank you to Fran Block and Fox Music Publishing for granting me permission to use the cues from Road to Perdition on a gratis basis. Lastly, I owe a special thanks to Thomas Newman. This document would not have been possible without his generosity of time and for agreeing to allow me to write about his compositional process and musical style.

v

TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract

iii

Biographical Note

iv

Acknowledgments

v

List of Examples

vii

Chapter One

Biography

1

Chapter Two

Compositional Process

6

Chapter Three

Musical Style

31

Chapter Four

Conclusion

65

Appendix: Description of Instruments

68

Filmography

70

List of Compositions

71

Albums

71

Bibliography

72

vi

LIST OF EXAMPLES

1.

LITTLE CHILDREN: “Bandshell”- 1M3

32

2.

SCENT OF A WOMAN: “A Tour of Pleasures”

35

3a.

ROAD TO PERDITION: “Just The Feller”

38

3b.

ROAD TO PERDITION: “Just The Feller”

38

3c.

ROAD TO PERDITION: “Just The Feller”

38

3d.

ROAD TO PERDITION: “Just The Feller”

39

4.

THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION: “Brooks Was Here”

40

5.

Melodic reduction from “Brooks Was Here”

41

6a.

ROAD TO PERDITION: “Road to Chicago”

42

6b.

ROAD TO PERDITION: “Road to Chicago”

43

6c.

ROAD TO PERDITION: “Road to Chicago”

44

7.

LITTLE CHILDREN: “Tissue”

46

8.

LITTLE CHILDREN: “End Title”

50

9.

ROAD TO PERDITION: “Meet Maguire”

56

10.

LITTLE CHILDREN: “Little Children”

59

11.

Transcription of two piano chords from RAPTURE

62

12.

SCENT OF A WOMAN: “Other Plans”

63

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Chapter One Biography Thomas Newman seemed destined to become a film composer. After all, “since the beginning of sound film, the Newman name has been an integral part of the evolution of film scoring.”1 Thomas’s father, Alfred Newman, was one of the most prolific film composers of his generation, scoring more than 230 films, earning 45 Academy Award nominations, and winning nine Oscars for Best Musical Score.2 Lionel Newman, Thomas’s uncle, not only succeeded Alfred as musical director of Fox Music but was also an Academy Award-winning composer himself. Thomas’s cousin Randy Newman is an internationally recognized singer-songwriter and film composer, and David, Thomas’s older brother, is also a successful film composer, having scored such films as The Mighty Ducks, Anastasia, and Ice Age. Together, the family is known throughout Hollywood as the “Newman Dynasty.” However, unlike his father, uncle, cousin, and brother, Thomas Newman initially avoided the traditional Hollywood family scheme and did not intend to follow the same path.

Known as “Tommy” to his family and close friends and “Tom” to his acquaintances, Newman was born on October 20, 1955, in Los Angeles, CA, the youngest son of Alfred Newman and Martha Louis née Montgomery, an actress and Goldwyn girl. Although Thomas studied the piano as a child and “grew up surrounded by music -- with string quartets playing frequently in his Los Angeles home -- Newman says he never felt any pressure to pursue the family tradition.”3 All of that changed “after his father’s early death in 1970” when Thomas was

1

Anonymous, “Thomas Newman Biography.” PDF supplied by the Gorfaine/Schwartz Agency.

Christopher Palmer and Fred Steiner, "Newman, Alfred," Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, <http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com> (accessed September 10, 2008).

3 Anonymous, “Thomas Newman Biography.”

2

1

fourteen years old, after which “he felt charged with the desire to pursue composition professionally.”4 Newman attended the University of Southern California for two years where he studied composition and orchestration with Frederick Lesemann and David Raksin. He also took private lessons with George Tremblay outside of USC. In the fall of 1975, Thomas transferred to Yale, a decision that was as formative as it was difficult for him to make: I don’t know why I [went to Yale], to tell you the truth, other than [that] the idea was put into my head. It was Yale, and I remember I got accepted. I didn’t want to go. I said to my mom, “I don’t want to go.”

But there was a part of me that knew I should, [that] it was going to hurt, and it did. I went there and I think [that] for the first three months I lived off campus, I didn’t know a soul. I wandered around New Haven by myself. I didn’t write much.5 A self-described “controversial student” who was mostly “interested in musical theatre at the time,” Newman felt out of his element and “not sure everyone in the composition department thought much of [him].”6 In the 1970s, composers at the Yale School of Music and most other conservatories around the country were predominantly interested in the avant garde techniques of the time: extended serialism, indeterminacy and chance, and the use of electronic music—a practice pioneered by Jacob Druckman, the main composition teacher at Yale. Newman was not uninterested in exploring these techniques, because they clearly have had an influence on him, as is evident when one studies his film scores. However, at the time when he was a student, musical theater and other tonal or lyrical forms of composition were less popular in academia.

Although composition professors Robert Moore and Bruce MacCombie were relatively supportive of Newman’s endeavors, his music was not well received by Jacob Druckman, whom

4

Ibid.

Thomas Newman, interviewed by author, September 2, 2008, The Juilliard School, New York, NY. 6 Ibid.

5

2

he describes as “dismissive” and “at best, […] condescending.”7 Difficulties notwithstanding, Newman graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Music in 1977 and received a Master of Music degree in Composition one year later.

At this point, after his graduation from Yale, Newman met his greatest mentor, Stephen Sondheim.

A lot of it for me was Stephen Sondheim. I remember I had done a showcase of some of my songs and I met Hal Prince through another guy, and Prince brought Sondheim down to the showcase that I had done. I asked Sondheim if I could come and just talk to him—“Mr. Sondheim” kind of a thing. And I remember he listened to me. I would say something, he would say, “Oh really? You think that?” It was like, “You mean you’re listening to what I have to say?” And there are these moments when you think, “Wow. Okay. Someone is taking me seriously.” As opposed to talking down and condescending, which was Jacob Druckman. But the thing is, how do you find your value, and when do you give up? I think if I had anything it was probably grit, and I didn’t give up—and there were many moments I could, you know, early in my adult life following Yale.8 During the period of his life after Yale, Newman played keyboard/piano with a band called The Innocents and an experimental-improvisation group called Tokyo 77. He also wrote his first musical, Three Mean Fairy Tales (1979), which received a workshop production courtesy of the Stuart Ostrow Foundation.

I wrote a musical that was based on three fairy tales and workshopped in New York and it had performances in the Kennedy Center in DC. And it was just… awful. It was badly reviewed; it was just awful. I remember calling Sondheim, just kind of half in tears, and him saying, “Ah, it’s just a knuckle sandwich.” He said, “Come on.” I remember asking him, “You’ve done all these great things, you’ve had this incredible career.”

He said, “It’s not like I charted this career; I just did what came next. I did the opportunity that was in front of me.” And you know, on a certain level I think that’s what’s defaulted me to being the pragmatist. I don’t want to be the effete artist; I don’t want to be the guy coming off as a something. I want to get to the good ideas. I want to identify the bad 7 8

Ibid.

Ibid.

3

ideas and make it as good as I can and grow honestly. And a lot of that maybe was how beat up I felt. You know, maybe Yale didn’t beat me up.

Maybe I just thought it did. I mean, I was very grateful for my Yale experience […] years later -- it really changed my life.9 Despite the unsuccessful premiere of Three Mean Fairy Tales, Newman managed to create opportunities for himself. In 1984, he “won the support of a young New York casting agent, Scott Rudin, who brought Newman aboard director James Foley's film Reckless as a musical assistant. Newman's initiative on the project soon elevated him to the position of composer, and at age 29 he had successfully scored his first film.”10 From this point forward, Newman quickly became known for his distinctive and original voice, and by the year 1994, a decade later, Newman had scored films such as Desperately Seeking Susan, Girls Just Want To Have Fun, Gung Ho, The Lost Boys, The Rapture, Fried Green Tomatoes, The Player, Scent of a Woman, The Shawshank Redemption, The War, and Little Women. In 1994, Newman was nominated for his first Academy Award as a double nominee for his scores to The Shawshank Redemption and Little Women. Since then, Newman has been nominated eight additional times: for Unstrung Heroes, American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Finding Nemo, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Good German, and Wall·E, and for Best Original Song for Wall·E, which he cowrote with Peter Gabriel.11 He was awarded the 2001 Grammy for “Best Score Soundtrack Album For Motion Picture, Television Or Other Visual Media” for American Beauty, the 2002 Emmy for “Outstanding Main Title Theme Music” for Six Feet Under, and 10 BMI “Film Music Awards.”

9

Ibid.

Anonymous, “Thomas Newman Biography.”

11 Peter Gabriel is an internationally recognized musician and songwriter. He is best known as lead vocalist with the rock group Genesis, but he has had a very successful solo career.

10

4

In 1996, Newman was commissioned to write a new symphonic work, Reach Forth Our Hands, for the city of Cleveland to commemorate its Bicentennial. He also was commissioned to write At Wardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Ferry, a contrabass concerto for the Pittsburgh Symphony that was premiered in 2002. Newman most recently finished scoring Sam Mendesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s latest film, Revolutionary Road, and Brothers, directed by Jim Sheridan. He also completed a new concerto, It Got Dark, for the Kronos String Quartet and Los Angeles Philharmonic, which was premiered in December of 2009. Newman resides in Los Angeles, CA, with his wife Ann Marie and three children.

From his genetic make-up, to his studies at USC and Yale, to the individual growth that has transpired over the past twenty-five years, Newman has become one of todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s greatest living film composers. He is second among living composers only to John Williams in terms of Academy Award Nominations. The struggles that he felt at Yale and immediately after appear to have made him a stronger and better composer. The musical style, with its unique harmonic language, that emerged from his past experiences has helped build the pillar of sound that makes his music so remarkable and recognizable today.

He is known for working with repetitive

motives, electronics, strings, pedal tones, piano, percussion, and world instruments. He is an extraordinary improviser, and he believes in collaborating with other artists who share a similar style and aesthetic. Newman is an experimenter at heart, and he has helped codify a musical style and language that is now being employed by many film and concert composers. In order to provide a deeper understanding of his music, one must discuss its fundamental properties and how it came to be.

5

Chapter Two Compositional Process Newman has been referred to as the “Experimenter”12 on more than one occasion.

Whether it be waking up and composing in the morning, improvising on an instrument, using a computer, writing by hand, singing into a tape, or collaborating with others, most composers seem to have one general routine. The initial stages of Newman’s compositional process, however, utilize several different methods in no particular order, therefore making his process harder to pin down. He almost always incorporates piano improvisation, but he is also known to improvise on instruments he has collected around the world over the years in order to generate different sounds and colors that may later become compositional elements. He uses traditional pencil and paper notation, midi realizations, and electronics. Newman also collaborates with his core group of musicians. On the macro level, Newman embodies the spirit of an experimenter, simply because his compositional process is so expansive and never follows a prescribed set of rules. However, when examining his process at the micro level, one can divide his methods into three categories: conceptual composition, collaboration, and experimentation.

Conceptual Composition Conceptual composition is a term that the present writer is coining to help understand Newman’s compositional process. Because Newman is an experimenter and collaborator, he does not think of himself purely as a composer. Newman thinks of his compositions also as music for a recorded medium, and what one sees on his manuscript will not always reflect what

12

Amy Wallace, “Oscars ’98; The Newman Conquests; With 70 Oscar Nominations in Film Music, Alfred, Emil and Lionel and Their Modern-day Descendants Outscore the Rest,” Los Angeles Times, March 22, 1998.

6

one hears. He composes for the speakers in addition to the instrumentalists, but very few of his scores (e.g., The Good German) are solely orchestral. Conceptual composition for Newman begins in the early stages of the scoring process: Oftentimes you get a script, you read a script, and the terrible thing about a script is sometimes it tells you the wrong things about the movie. Now you see the rough cut after you’ve read the script, and you go, oh yeah, what about that scene…and they say, “Oh, we cut that out long ago.” The thing about movies, too, particularly when they come to you with temp music, is that it immediately starts to narrow the focus of your creative act. Simply because there it is and you’ve heard it…and you think, “Well, what do I do now?” To avoid that, sometimes I will gather old ideas that will just slather up against an image; I’ll make new ideas; I’ll sketch small ideas on manuscript; sometimes then I’ll re-perform it in a computer and put it up against image. Oftentimes, the best way is to gather tons of ideas and put them anywhere against an image and then have an honest reaction. That’s what I think fundamentally makes music for film different than music for music’s sake. You can really get into an argument about what shade and coloring is when you just say, “Here’s my piece.” But when you’re looking at a piece of music up against an image, you really have a reaction. And you’re not intellectualizing that.

You’re not deciding, well, you know, you’re in this register… Maybe you can, but in the end it just doesn’t work. And then you ask yourself why doesn’t it work. It’s saying too much, this movie needs more of a neutral tone, a less emotive tone, a more emotive tone. It needs to be oldfashioned, it needs to be new-fangled. Any number of decisions you make about what this is, and that bears itself out over the course of the movie. It’s like a corner piece of a puzzle. You try to find the corners, and the corners lead you to the sides, and then you work to find the meat and then you go towards refinement. Oftentimes though when I have ideas [that] I love and so want to work, they don’t work. And I guess that’s what led me to some of these conclusions. Probably the failure of process—“This is going to be great”, you do it, you record it, and it isn’t great. And you think why isn’t it great. And if it isn’t great, I should have known that early enough to do something different as opposed to have held on and hoped that it was great. Oftentimes we’re insecure, and therefore we have an idea and need to be territorial with that idea because it’s all we’ve got. So, I want to have more ideas, I want to present more ideas to directors so that they have a better idea of what it is that I’m going for. And so they don’t feel hamstrung—like I’m telling them they have to like it because here it is. So what I try to do is start by making it as fun as I can; what if we do this, what if we did that; and gather a kind of library of ideas, like a spice rack; and you avoid then this kind of empty page, blank page—kind of “WHAT do I do now?” Because here’s

7

this, let’s try this, oh that’s interesting, but it’s such and such, well let’s try this, well that’s interesting, too, which is better.

You wear glasses. You know how they do eye tests, right, and they say A or B, what’s more in focus, A or B? If someone were to put a lens on you and say, “Well, how does that feel, is that in focus?” You’d go, “Yeah, I think it is.” But the minute you have a reference, you know for sure if there is better focus in one or better focus in the other. So, because image is king, I try to do that with different ideas. Which idea is better, and then I ask myself why. And then I surround myself with people whose aesthetic I share and who are sympathetic to my process. And then I gather more material until there’s a moment where I start to actually sketch from beginning to end of a particular part of a movie.13 These ideas and sketches that Newman mentions might contain chords, motivic gestures, or more developed musical ideas (e.g., a two- or three-note motive that gradually is transformed into a larger motive or phrase). Whatever the concept may be, he continues to make sketches until enough information has been provided to develop the idea(s) fully on his own; or he has enough information to offer guidance with his core group of musicians for what he calls a “directed improvisation in a prescribed harmonic environment.”

As for sketches of early work, I have a good amount. How notated composition differs from recorded composition is another thing altogether, particularly when you consider that the vehicle of communication has been, for the most part, speakers and not a concert stage. So a big issue has always been an interpretation of notated ideas versus directed improvisation in a prescribed harmonic environment.14 Essentially, Newman has fully notated ideas for orchestra recording sessions, because the instrumentalists and conductor (which almost always is Newman) need to be reading the same music. However, if he wants to collaborate with his core group of musicians, he has to provide only enough information for them to improvise on, unless there is a very specific passage that he has written out in its entirety.

Newman does have the tools and resources to write and

13

Thomas Newman, interviewed by author, September 2, 2008, The Juilliard School, New York, NY. 14 Thomas Newman, e-mail message to author, January 16, 2008.

8

orchestrate an entire score. However, he finds that part of the process less revealing in terms of what one hears in the final score, and would therefore prefer to focus his time on finding new sounds and colors that make the score more interesting to him, rather than solely composing and orchestrating everything by himself.

Well it’s true. I’m a student, so on a certain level I don’t want to not do my work. The last thing I want is for people to do it for me or to cheat the process, but I find probably the most interesting colors you find in a lot of these pieces are going to be less on the page and more coming out of the speakers. Listen, and one of the things you should probably recognize is this is music for a recorded environment, and if you were to ask me to take some of these things out of the recorded environment and into a concert hall, there would be major issues in terms of what it would mean to mount the pieces. Maybe they sound very orchestrally dominant, but maybe there are these strange colors that enter into some of the holes that if you didn’t hear would be more jarring.15 Because Newman is composing for speakers and not the concert hall, he chooses to direct his attention on the more experimental and collaborative aspects of composition in order to enhance the recorded medium experience for the film itself. In terms of orchestration, Newman provides enough information for the orchestrator to know what he wants (e.g., Newman writes detailed notes in the actual score as to which instrument should be playing), and this gives Newman more time and flexibility to find these interesting colors that he mentioned.

It’s not that I can’t do it; it’s just that on a certain level I don’t mind not doing it. I remember hearing Ennio Morricone talking about “anyone who doesn’t orchestrate is not a composer,” and I bet I disagree with that —in terms of what I do in film. I mean, most of why you use an orchestrator in film is just elements of time. You’re just out of time before you’ve started; by the time something’s approved, you really need someone to just lay it out for you. But my scores are fairly extensive.16

15

Thomas Newman, interviewed by author, September 2, 2008, The Juilliard School, New York, NY. 16 Ibid.

9

Conceptual composition provides Newman with an outlet to express himself without feeling restricted. If he were not interested in incorporating improvisation or collaboration into his process, then he would naturally be inclined to compose everything traditionally by hand or on computer and then present a final score. With this method, he can present many different ideas to the director and his core group of musicians before finalizing a cue, and this allows him inevitably to become more experimental.

The Experimenter There were some moments probably when I was around 27 where I messed around a lot. I’d had lots of opportunities, all had led to failure, and I think I thought alright I really have to decide what it is that I like. I kind of locked myself in a room, and I started working with electronic instruments. I found I was really good at sequencing, and [using] rhythm as a propulsion—rhythmic propulsion I guess has always been a part of how my music moves forward, or how I am most comfortable with it moving forward—probably because it is less compositional.17 The majority of Newman’s earliest film scores are predominantly electronic-based (e.g., The Man with One Red Shoe, Desperately Seeking Susan). He emerged as a film composer during a time when most scores were being produced by way of computer and midi realizations.

He also evolved from academia during a time when tape pieces were very popular. In fact, Newman attributes much of his composition philosophy to an Alvin Lucier tape-delay piece, “I Am Sitting in a Room.” The composition, written in 1970, features Lucier sitting in a room while recording himself as he narrates a text. He then plays back that recording in the same room while rerecording it.

After repeating this process several times, the words become

incomprehensible, and one is left with resonant tones and frequencies.

17

Ibid.

10

That [“I Am Sitting in a Room”] piece probably had a huge impact on what you think you’re going for and what you end up with and how willing you are as an interested creative person to give up what you’ve brought in and to take what you’re taking out, without saying “Oh my god, this isn’t me any more or I don’t know where I am.”18 Whether Newman is working electronically, acoustically, or by combining both methods to form a hybrid score, he is always interested in creating something new. He will come to the drawing table with a plethora of ideas, but he is always willing to give them up, or change them, to create something potentially even better. He describes this as a “constantly degenerative morphing process”:19 A lot of times I’ll come in with ideas that I really like and I put these ideas up and players play them and it starts to morph away from what I like and I’m not sure what I think of this… but I guess on a political level or philosophic level I don’t want to be sentimental about ideas simply because I have them. I always think that is the big mark of a composer who’s saying, “No, this is how I wrote it this is how it should be done.”20 Newman’s attitude is that composing should be about the music and nothing more.

I think in the end, the idea of composition kind of strikes me sometimes as egocentric. I want to get away from an aspect of composition that says, “Look at me. Look at all my great ideas.”21 Because of his general philosophy, the music inevitably is less about him and more about the process, and this ultimately provides him with an outlet to be even more experimental. Rather than getting hung up on one idea, he might explore several ideas simultaneously. Typically, these more experimental ideas contain improvisations, turning live instruments into digital samples that go through many transformations, and working with his core group of players.

18

Ibid.

Ibid.

20 Ibid.

21 Ibid.

19

11

Interestingly, these experimental ideas parallel the philosophy of his experimental group, called Tokyo 77.

Several years after Yale, Newman became a founding member of Tokyo 77, a new music improvisational ensemble that is a four-person group, of which he has been a part for more than twenty years. They released a CD in 2002, which contains recordings of several improvisations that the group made collectively. Although no scores exist for these recorded improvisations, the way in which Newman’s compositional process has been influenced and enhanced by this experimental exploration is clear. Each track in the album is significantly more avant-garde than his film scores. In fact, the album as a whole resembles the tape pieces of Cage (Williams Mix), Varèse (Poème électronique), Berio (Visage), Xenakis (Mycenae-Alpha), Babbitt (Philomel), and Ligeti (Artikulation). Although Newman was working in a digital era when the album was made, he was interested in exploring silence as sound, sounds of nature, less conventional instruments, altered instruments, world sounds, and random generated noise. The album sounds like a modern-day version of musique concrète, and it has a more experimental and atmospheric ambience than most of Newman’s film scores. It is evident how the level of experimentation in Tokyo 77 helped Newman create the electronic environment that has become one of his staple sounds today. There is an abundance of traditional and less conventional instruments in the album, all of which play an important role in Newman’s intuitive use of color as composition.

They also happen to be used in many of his film scores.

The most common of Newman’s less conventional instruments are: BuddBox, pedal steel guitar, PezEater, Guitarzilla, clayflutes, Hurdy-gurdy, Maui Xaphoon, ebow, bowed tromba, bandura, whale drum, Copper box, Lockhead, 5-string electric violin, string box, baritone electric guitar, reverse electric autoharp, slate marimba, lithophone melody, Khol, and guitar with glass,

12

maraca, metal, and sponge.22 Most of these instruments are world instruments, instruments made by some of his collaborators (e.g., Chas Smith designed and built the PezEater and Guitarzilla), or electronic instruments.

As Tokyo 77 further shaped Newman’s compositional process, it also created a musical community with other musicians who share a similar aesthetic. All of the performers in Tokyo 77 also happen to be part of Newman’s core group of musicians with whom he still collaborates today.

The Collaborator The art of collaboration has long existed in many different artistic disciplines. It is less common for classical composers to work with musicians during the composing process, unless the piece specifically calls for some type of collaboration (e.g., a concerto, for which the composer may want to work with the soloist). In jazz and popular arts forms such as rock, the members of the group tend to have more flexibility when weighing in on a musical moment.

Given Newman’s background in musical theater, as a rock musician, and as a member of Tokyo 77, one finds it only appropriate and natural that he would be open to the idea of collaboration.

However, no one would have predicted how influential he finds collaboration to be, and this makes his compositional process especially fascinating and rare.

Newman works with a core group of musicians who all contribute to his definition of color. He met most of his collaborators between 1982 and 1988, and because of this, he says, “There's a real creative bond and procedural comfort there.”23 The author was invited to attend the recording session for Revolutionary Road in August of 2008, and was witness to the type of 22 23

Refer to Appendix for a description of less-known instruments.

Thomas Newman, e-mail message to author, September 7, 2009.

13

environment in which Newman prefers to work. The core collaborators at the time were present for the sessions and ready to improvise when needed. There was a definite bond and sense of loyalty among all of them, and this provided a working environment that is unlike any other.

Newman’s compositional process unfolds over two different kinds of recording sessions.

He begins with a small-ensemble recording session with his core collaborators. This is when all of the electronics, ambient sounds, piano writing, percussion, and instrumental improvisation occur. Once that session is complete, they move on to the orchestra recording session. A typical small-ensemble recording session begins like this: Generally on the evening before a session, Larry Mah — who is always credited in Newman’s films as “Digital Audio,” but may be credited in other composers’ films as “Digital Recordist,” “Digital Score Recordist,” or “Pro Tools Operator”24 — goes to the recording studio and sets up his own Pro Tools rig for the following day’s recording. He prepares the recording environment in advance to make it as easy as possible to record and move through all of the cues without delay. Time is of the essence, and recording sessions are extremely expensive. Most of Newman’s small-ensemble sessions have three to six players. Mah receives computer files from Newman in advance. The computer files contain audio tracks along with the original MIDI tracks, when Newman uses MIDI. The audio tracks vary from cue to cue. “They can be a sequenced track, a loop that [Newman] has created from audio that he's recorded of himself or one of the guys [Newman’s collaborators], or a straight live performance by one of the guys.”25 Mah then imports the files into the Pro Tools recording template that he designed. The files vary between one and ten tracks per cue, although a typical file generally has three to four tracks. On the day of the recording session, Mah receives video files from the assistant music editor. He 24 25

Larry Mah, e-mail message to author, September 13, 2009.

Ibid.

14

then has roughly forty-five minutes to import all of the video files to match each musical cue.

Once his Pro Tools rig is finalized, Mah can playback Newman’s computer files, video, dialogue, and click track, and record the session.26 Meanwhile, Tommy Vicari, Newman’s “Scoring Mixer,” prepares the actual recording environment. Although Vicari is credited as “Scoring Mixer,” he is specifically a “Music Scoring Mixer” and a “Recording Engineer.” His responsibility is to record and mix the score.

Vicari’s first project with Newman was mixing the main title for HBO’s Six Feet Under. It has been approximately nine years since they first met, and they continue to work closely today.

While Mah is organizing his Pro Tools rig, Vicari is preparing all of the microphones for each of the core musicians.

I create an environment for the musicians to collaborate on the themes that Tom brings to the pre-record [small-ensemble] sessions, without interference or delay in the process, achieving as much as we can in the time we have been granted.27 At this point, the small-ensemble recording session is ready to begin.

Tom will tell us which cue he wants to start with. If there aren't written charts yet, George Doering [a core collaborator] will do a quick take down of Tom's demo. Tom doesn't usually have written charts [for the] early recording stage of the process, although if he has time he will make them.

George’s take down is basically bar numbers, meter changes, chords, motives, rhythmic patterns where they change, melodies... that sort of thing. It's not a full lead sheet, more like something you'd see in a fake book, but not exactly that either. He'll put whatever information in there that he thinks will be most useful for the guys. That usually takes about ten minutes. Either during this time or right afterwards Tommy Vicari will get a mix up on the board of the framework.

When we start recording, first thing we'll record is Tom doing a bar count.

Then we’ll start recording and building the cue up bit by bit... usually one musician at a time. Tom will guide things along while giving a lot of

26 27

Ibid.

Tommy Vicari, e-mail message to author, September 15, 2009.

15

freedom to the musicians to create around the framework that Tom has brought in.28 This is simply the genesis. This could be as simple as a piano and string melody, a myriad of pads, percussion, and string instruments that weave rhythmically into something totally original and apropos.29 Usually itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s obvious what to keep and what to discard, but if not we'll talk about it briefly. We will usually record a lot more than we end up using.

It's not unusual for us to have upwards of 100 tracks. I liken the process to planting a lot of seeds, and that the magic is in the pruning back of the garden. I do a lot of editing of the performances at this point. Tom is so good at that [making editorial decisions] and this process is a lot of why things come out the way that they do. If the budget is lower, then that will somewhat limit how much time we can spend doing that. That is the simple description of what happens in the session. Obviously some cues will take unexpected turns and go on tangents, the director may push us in a direction... only to later go back. That's all part of the fun of the discovery of it. We may restructure a cue after the recording. We may combine two or more cues together in Pro Tools. We maybe change the tempo, or process some instruments heavily so they become unrecognizable. I will organize the files in a way that we can go back to earlier versions if necessary, and access all previous ideas and recordings if they choose.30 With this method, and because Newman is always interested in â&#x20AC;&#x153;playingâ&#x20AC;? (i.e., having fun) at work, he can at times have several different versions of one cue to present to the director. With technology, it is easy for Newman to have these added colors at his disposal. He can then add or subtract different sounds that the director can hear in conjunction with the film.

The core musicians play a fundamental role in this process, as Newman gives them the freedom to interpret his musical ideas and make them their own. He considers the following musicians his most important musical allies: George Doering, Rick Cox, Michael Fisher, Steve Tavaglione, John Beasley, George Budd, Chas Smith, Steve Kujala, Sid Page, and Nico Abondolo.

28

Larry Mah, e-mail message to author, September 13, 2009.

Tommy Vicari, e-mail message to author, September 15, 2009.

30 Larry Mah, e-mail message to author, September 13, 2009.

29

16

George Doering played for Newman’s very first film, Reckless. He is the guitar and stringed instrument player. Doering is known for playing “ethnic acoustic string instruments and electric guitars—plucking, bowing, and hammering, and using a lot of effects to make things sound ‘different’ than what [one is] used to hearing.”31 He may be asked at times to improvise and add new colors to the already existing music. Doering says the following with regard to his personal experience and Newman’s process: Tom is the best (and most of the people he works with also work with other composers, so we have a good frame of reference to compare him to). There's no one way he works--it's certainly not just a craft with him. It all depends on what the movie seems to call for. Lately, he comes in with a track of certain synth patterns (or some acoustic thing he's chopped up), and the small band group will put different colors and rhythms on it to hopefully propel the movie forward at the correct pace (of course, the correct pace may be completely suspended if that's what's called for). It's kind of like doing a record date session where the artist comes in with a tune and the band tries to figure out which instruments and drum/percussion patterns make the tune have the best feel. He's always there listening as you're trying to figure out what might work—often he'll suggest what instrument to try or comment that he really likes some lick you played while you were maybe just warming up—usually it's something you already rejected but he sees something in it of value, so you mess around with it and in five minutes you're thinking it's the best thing you ever heard. That happens a lot. Of course, this could completely change on the next movie—he might go for a different approach, just to try to get something new. He's extremely open to happy accidents, which can then be molded into what's best for the movie (and he tends to score movies that are a little different than a lot of composers so the experiments make sense). He's VERY open to what other players might have to offer (if they spend hours and hours working on ambient sounds, why wouldn't you want to see what they can do?). He's extremely appreciative of the different players, because he's a musician and a player himself—he knows what's involved. Then later on he tends to overdub the strings and brass after the smaller band colors are on the cues (of course, this could all change—it's just what the method has been for the last few years). I should mention that sometimes we ARE just playing lines he has written—though that tends to be for the flute and woodwind melodies, or

31

George Doering, e-mail message to author, September 14, 2009.

17

the piano parts (which Tom almost always plays himself). There really isn't any more of a fun gig in Hollywood; we all REALLY enjoy it.32 Rick Cox has also worked with Newman since Reckless, and both he and George have known Newman the longest (since 1982 or 1983). He is also one of the founding members of Tokyo 77. Cox plays guitar, maui xaphoon (bamboo pocket saxophone), contrabass clarinet, extended mouthpiece, among others, and also does sound design. He is also a composer and has worked extensively with RY Cooder. He has collaborated closely with Newman over the years to develop “techniques of manipulating sounds and instruments.”33 His work with Newman has pioneered both “color” (extended/prepared/processed instrument techniques) and “phrase sampling” (based on improvisation and subsequent aesthetic editorial choice) as compositional techniques. Cox adds, On both a professional and personal level, Thomas Newman is incredibly generous and encouraging in his embrace of all his players and their creative input in his compositional process. Always with an eye for the larger picture (which I’m convinced is known only to himself, with perhaps the exception of Bill Bernstein [Newman’s musical editor]), his unique ability to direct and draw out the best is really a very rare, and visionary, talent.34 Michael Fisher has been working with Tom since Desperately Seeking Susan. He began playing professional percussion at the age of fourteen, and has more than 400 films to his credit.

He has also recorded with artists such as Joni Mitchell, Bruce Springsteen, Barbra Streisand, and Barry Manilow. He is the percussionist for the small-ensemble and orchestra recording sessions.

My task is, hopefully, to come up with some grooves that enhance the music. I am also called upon to come up with different sounds for specific events in the movie. Tom likes to find different sounds for each new movie, so I am constantly collecting new instruments and experimenting 32

Ibid.

Rick Cox, e-mail message to author, September 14, 2009.

34 Ibid.

33

18

with new sounds. It is challenging, keeps me on my toes, and encourages me to keep my chops up and find new sounds even when we're not recording a specific film.35 Steve Tavaglione began working with Newman on Career Opportunities in 1991, and has played on almost every movie since The People vs. Larry Flynt. Tavaglione had no formal music education, but did take years of private lessons on clarinet. He became a professional musician at the age of seventeen, and considers himself to be “self-taught through listening and doing.

Trying to make sense of what [he] hear[s].”36

His role with Newman is as a

“musician/sound designer playing woodwinds, saxophones, flutes, a wind synthesizer called an EWI (Electronic Wind Instrument), and sound performance played on a synthesizer.”37 Tavaglione is not only a fantastic improviser but also a master EWI musician. He can record himself live into a computer using any EWI made by AKAI Professional, LLC, and can convert the recording into a sample that he then processes into his computer to generate an organic ambient tone. These ambient tones later become added colors that Newman may or may not choose to use. Tavaglione essentially acts as a soloist and uses sound as music creator.

John Beasley, a Louisiana native, grew up playing the trumpet, oboe, percussion, saxophone, flute, and piano. He turned down an oboe scholarship from Juilliard to pursue his love for jazz. Unfortunately, Juilliard’s jazz program was not available at the time. He had the opportunity to play with jazz legends such as Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard, and Christian McBride, and he also performed with James Brown and Steely Dan.

Beasley has eight

recordings as an artist. As a member of Newman’s core group, he primarily plays synthesizers and the piano, but he has been asked at times to play a Hammond organ, pump organ, 35

Michael Fisher, e-mail message to author, September 13, 2009.

Steve Tavaglinoe, e-mail message to author, September 11, 2009.

37 Ibid.

36

19

harpsichord, Wurlitzer, and vibraphone. He also creates drum and percussion programming tracks. Beasley essentially improvises whenever Newman asks him to participate, “be it demos, midi orchestra, [Newman’s small-ensemble] tracks, or real orchestra.”38

He also plays

Newman’s written music on orchestra dates. Beasley began working with Newman on Career Opportunities.

George Budd, sound designer, instrument builder, and musician, has been working with Newman since 1985. Budd is also a founding member of Tokyo 77. His role involves the “generation of raw material and its subsequent processing and preparation for performance.”39 This raw material may include improvisations from Budd, Newman, and other core members either in an individual or group setting.

It may also contain material that Newman has

specifically written out to be performed before Budd manipulates the material as a sound designer. “Regardless of the genesis of the raw material, the next step is to process it using the host of hardware/software tools available today, and then sample it for maximum performability.”40 Budd will then turn over a copy of the processed material for Newman to use at his own discretion. Budd notes, “There is a distinction to be made here between material that is pre-compositional (i.e., material which Tom may employ during his composing process) and material which is chosen by individual players during a recording session from their own [sound/sample] libraries.”41 Even though Budd is preparing his sound design material for a specific film, and Newman is the “final arbiter” as to what is used in the final mix, the context of the film inevitably determines what is appropriate.42 This means that even though Budd and

38

John Beasley, e-mail message to author, September 16, 2009.

George Budd, e-mail message to author, September 22, 2009.

40 Ibid.

41 George Budd, e-mail message to author, October 27, 2009.

42 Ibid.

39

20

Newman may be fascinated with the new sounds and colors being created, these designs may not be the ideal ones when placed in context.

Chas Smith first began working with Newman on Light of Day in 1987. A founding member of Tokyo 77, he studied composition at Cal Arts and his principal private teachers were Morton Subotnick, Harold Budd, Earle Brown, and James Tenney.

Among the core

collaborators, Smith brings one of the most experimental backgrounds into the equation.

My primary instrument is the pedal steel guitar, which I played through “delay lines” using traditional techniques and “extended” or prepared techniques, so you could say that I was the “floating” steel guitar up above everything or I was part of the texture. Typically, the cues I played on were the ambient ones where if there was a meter, it was my job to “knock down” the bar lines. I also build instruments that make unusual sounds, and these would sometimes be brought into the recording or I would sample them, in my studio, and then play the samples.43 Steve Kujala is a technically sound and classically trained flutist, but also a wonderful improviser. He received his formal training at the Eastman School of Music. Kujala first began working with Newman on Flesh and Bone in 1993. He was asked to contribute by recording a number of special effects (e.g., whistle-tones, low non-vibrato long tones on alto flute, air-tones, percussive effects).

I remember that first session well, and it would serve as a template for all of our future sessions. We were recording “pre-lays” at Village Recorders in Santa Monica. A small group of L.A.’s most creative studio musicians were already well into the conception of the score by the time I was brought in. Among them: George Doering (guitars), Michael Fisher (percussion), Rick Cox (synths), George Budd (miscellaneous sampling and turntable re-synthesis), Chas Smith (midi slide guitar), and a couple of others. As I recall, the music was very ethereal and transparent. I was set up in an iso-booth with a video monitor. My instructions were to add to— but not disturb—the colors and moods of the elements already on tape at that point. I played using a combination of whistle-tones on the flute and low non-vibrato long tones on the alto flute. Tom provided immediate

43

Chas Smith, e-mail message to author, September 15, 2009.

21

feedback and directed my interpretation to fit in appropriately with his concept.

This was an extremely rare opportunity for me to be creatively involved with the film-scoring process at an early stage of its conception.

Normally, I am in an orchestral environment where every note is rigidly orchestrated and there is no need for—or call for—the musician to add any creative input whatsoever.

In the later stages of Tom’s process, there is indeed a full orchestra used in more of a traditional function, but the orchestration itself is often informed by the small ensemble pre-lays we have already done.

In this way, Tom avoids “boxing himself in” musically. To be sure, Tom’s melodic and thematic material are already written well before he ever calls together his small ensemble, and the director has signed off on the material and direction of the score. So my role is more of a musical brush-stroke on the sonic canvas, providing horizontal texture to the vertical textures already established by Doering, Fisher, and Cox. Often I will pre-record the actual written flute solos that will later be encountered on the scoring stage with the orchestra, so that Tom’s mix engineer has more control over the isolation, mix, and effects, if any.

Then, during the orchestra session, I will play the pre-recorded solo with the orchestra for the rehearsals, and then tacet on the actual takes since the “real” solo is already in the can. This pre-lay and orchestra-session process has remained relatively unchanged over the years, and we have all developed a kind of musical shorthand as a result of our innate familiarity with each other.

Tom likes to surround himself with like-minded smart people. He can often be heard teasing us with the phrase "large brains, tiny skulls" when one of us has an idea that's interesting but "too smart for the film." And I always love when he occasionally uses a word that I've never heard before to coax a performance out of me during a small ensemble session.

Some years ago, he asked me to play a phrase more gossamer. So I pretended I knew what he meant, played something that sounded....gossamer-like, and then went online to look up the word!

Turns out my instincts were correct.

The degree to which we of the small ensemble are guided by Tom is in direct proportion to the degree to which Tom must accommodate the director of the film. As all film composers are taught, the score is always at the service of the film/director, and we as musicians—“creative contributors” or otherwise—are at the service of the composer. During the pre-lay sessions, we are often privy to creative discussions between Tom and his director. It is at once apparent that, as a composer, Tom must have

22

the ability to “translate” the director’s notes and comments in concrete musical terms and solutions for the sake of his musicians, but the director is not expected to know anything about the composer’s language. (On very rare occasions, a musician might be given a specific comment or suggestion from the director via Tom.) Likewise, at the large orchestra sessions, my role as leader of the woodwind section is to clarify Tom’s intentions as to phrasing and articulation in “woodwind parlance,” as I have been “living” with the musical material well before the orchestra becomes involved. (The same with concertmaster Sid Page and his string section, Mike Fisher and his percussion section, etc.) One can see a very clear creative and collaborative chain of command that—in the case of a “successful” film—works seamlessly on every level.

Most of my flutistic contributions tend to be my “patented” whistle-tones and portamento effects, as well as “air-tone,” quarter-tones, percussive sounds, micro-tone clusters, and other timbral effects. As composers and improvisers ourselves, those of us in Tom’s “inner-core” ensemble may on occasion be tempted into filling up the musical canvas with too much selfindulgent “sonic information,” in which case Tom quickly invokes the “hungry tiger” (as in the book by L. Frank Baum) warning, reins us in, and gets us back on track. That said, it is always a special privilege to be part of Tom’s creative process and final product.44 Sid Page has been Newman’s concertmaster since Green Mile, but his first personal collaboration with Newman was in 1994 while working on The Shawshank Redemption. He played all the fiddle solos and participated in the orchestra recording sessions. Page describes his experience working with Newman on The Horse Whisperer, the film he considers to be his most involved collaboration.

In that [The Horse Whisperer] and other films where I join in with the ''core'' group (George, Michael, etc.), we will generally work one instrument at a time on a cue. Tommy will always have his piano track as a reference for us to base ideas off of. Tommy usually has prerecorded his track, but will often record his tracks live with the rest of us in the studio.

Tommy will generally have a motive in mind. He will either have me interpret it, or have me take greater extemporizing freedom with the lines.

Other times he'll have me entirely improvise lines, where I'll keep playing through the cue, under his direction, until he hears what he's looking for.

It is a wonderfully creative experience. These ‘in the moment’

44

Steve Kujala, e-mail message to author, September 17, 2009.

23

experiments will often evolve into the themes Tommy incorporates into the orchestral score.

While Tommy is always in charge and clear as to his vision for the score, the process for arriving at his decisions always includes asking those around him, ''What do you guys think?'' It is this generous lack of ego, laced with a great acerbic wit, that makes working with this creative genius such a supreme pleasure.45 Nico Abondolo, a classically trained double bassist who made his solo debut at age fourteen with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, first began working with Tom in 2001 as a collaborator on the Contrabass Concerto, a commission from the Pittsburgh Symphony.

Tom and I spent several hours discussing existing solo bass literature, orchestrations, acoustical considerations, and aesthetics of timbre.

Subsequently, he recorded me improvising over prerecorded piano, percussion, strings, etc., guiding the process with requests, both specific and general, for pitch, rhythm, timbre, and emotion. Tom would then identify recorded material and assemble a prototype bass solo, which we would further refine.46 This initial collaboration established Abondoloâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s working relationship with Newman, and he has served as principal bass for the orchestra recording sessions since The Salton Sea. From this time forward, Abondolo has been involved in several film projects for which he is asked to improvise and occasionally elaborate on an orchestral bass part at an orchestra recording session.

Once the small-ensemble recording sessions are complete, Newman is ready to move on to the orchestra recording session.

We take the cues [from the small-ensemble recording session] that have been keenly crafted to the scoring stage, where I will then proceed to rough mix the cues for sweetening. Armin Steiner, a master at recording orchestras, sweetens the cues while Tom conducts. Of course, not all cues are sweetened, some simply stand on their own.47

45

Sid Page, e-mail message to author, September 22, 2009.

Nico Abondolo, e-mail message to author, September 19, 2009.

47 Tommy Vicari, e-mail message to author, September 15, 2009.

46

24

While Vicari is mixing on the spot, Mah is preparing his Pro Tools rig for the orchestra.

When there are orchestral sessions, I have to prepare the sessions for that.

Armin will give me the track layout and I will build my template based on that. [â&#x20AC;Ś] I will playback the band [small-ensemble] files from one rig and record the orchestra on another rig. Because Tom likes to have flexibility with the band files on the orchestra date, we don't create submixes... we have all the band tracks available to be muted or adjusted. This can be unwieldy if not well planned for, so I have to plan and organize that so that things can go smoothly and quickly. Once the orchestra sessions are done, we go back to a smaller studio for mixing.48 Depending on the budget and schedule, Newman sometimes has an extra small-ensemble recording session that follows the orchestra recording sessions. He may want to add new layers of color and sound after hearing the small-ensemble recordings mixed with the orchestra. It is too expensive to change the orchestra, but he can find ways to heighten his cues with his core group of musicians. From this point forward, they move on to the final mix. Vicari explains: When the orchestra sessions are completed, I then take all the elements back to our mixing studio where the cues become complete pieces of music. It may or may not resemble what we have been listening to, since the cues can dramatically evolve in the mix!

In the mix, I blend the music we produced in the prerecord [smallensemble] sessions with the orchestra performances. I clean, compress, equalize, add echo, and deliver with almost complete separation, a series of discreet stems to the dubbing stage since the music has to coexist with dialogue and sound effects. At the same time, I create complete 5.1 mixes for the movie and I am also responsible for stereo mixes used for the soundtrack CD.49 Mah also works simultaneously.

When we mix I will usually put all the orchestra and band files into one computer for playing back. I'll do more editing as needed to get the best performance takes, and processing as requested by Tommy Vicari. Lots of the band editing decisions are made at this phase. We'll mix it all down through an analog console into another Pro Tools rig in separate stems.

We mix it in such a way that they have lots of control during the dub.

48 49

Larry Mah, e-mail message to author, September 13, 2009.

Tommy Vicari, e-mail message to author, September 15, 2009.

25

Everyone in the control room affects the feel and vibe of the session, and I try to be a valuable piece of the equation. All along the way, even though we all have a lot of input into the final product, it is always Tom's vision for the scene that is being molded. Of all the composers I work with, he brings the most to the storytelling.50 There are many musicians and engineers involved in the collaborative stages of Newman’s compositional process, but there is one person in particular who oversees most of the aforementioned activity. This person, Bill Bernstein, is Newman’s Music Editor, and he has been working with Tom since The Prince of Pennsylvania in 1988. He explains his entire role in the film-scoring process.

My title is “Music Editor,” which is already a hodge-podge of duties, which vary depending on the nature of each particular project. I may be called upon to do some temping before Tom is even involved though that has not been the case in recent years. We will typically spot the movie with the director—determining the location, approximate duration, and nature of all the music cues. Then Tom and I will start to play music up against scenes to try and discover what works and what doesn’t. This is the “discovery” period, where anything goes. Tom will often improvise with players (sometimes me if I’m lucky) and then use that material to make samples from which pieces can be developed. We will then prepare for meetings with the director, playing what are often just fragments of music to see what “flies” and where the boundaries are in terms of colors, groove, abstraction, etc. When a piece is approved in theory it must then be written to picture—a painstaking process in which I often sit with Tom to give opinions, suggestions, or just support. This is when every note, every tempo change, every meter change must be determined, and it is often my duty to keep abreast of any picture changes that might occur during this period. Some pictures are (relatively) locked by this point but many are in constant flux and it is frustrating to spend time on details only to find that there have been wholesale edits in a sequence. Even little edits can throw off a careful design of tempo and meter.

I attend recording sessions with individual musicians, and these are often Tom’s moment to load on all kinds of different colors and instruments—it is another discovery period. The idea is usually to record in anything we might like and then whittle down the piece later when we mix. The next step is preparing for the scoring dates: for me this involves programming 50

Larry Mah, e-mail message to author, September 13, 2009.

26

the streaming software, which provides variable clicks and visual cues for the conductor and musicians. There are also lists to be made and distributed and videos to be updated and any number of logistical tasks. In recent years the Pro-Tools operator (Larry Mah in our case) has taken over a number of the music editorial tasks (as well as those of recordist and engineer), as click tracks and bar and beat information can be gotten directly from the Pro-Tools. So I listen and make suggestions and keep track of information and schmooze with the director and picture editorial crew, many of whom come to the scoring session, which, as you know, can be quite an event.

Next phase is music mixdown, which is a creative phase as this is when all the “pre-records” and orchestral tracks are combined and culled. The tracks are mixed and then re-recorded into a second Pro-Tools rig (usually mine) in a stem format: that is to say, broken into those elements, which need separation for the dub stage. We might combine ambient elements, for example, while leaving the piano separate. Percussion tracks may be combined, though if one element stands out or seems problematic, it may be separated so that the director will be able to control its level during the final dub. I will usually have between sixteen and thirty-two tracks to take to the dubbing stage. The final dub of course is where the music, dialogue, and sound effects are combined to make the final soundtrack.

Tom is not present at this stage. For one thing, he may still be mixing, but also the negotiations which go on between the music and other sound elements can be discouraging to a composer. I become his representative at the dub—making sure the sound is as it was when we mixed, lobbying for it, and defending it as necessary, and cutting it, moving it, or even removing it when required. Then I call Tom and tell him how it went down in the most positive way possible. “Well, they tried taking out the cue over the sailboat scene and it kind of worked but they might put it back in…”—often there’s no sugar-coating it.

Sometimes I am required to re-cut a piece for a different area or fashion a new piece from existing elements. Of course, if the picture has changed in an area of music since the cue was recorded, it is my job to edit it—the raison d’être of the music editor. The task is to meet all the dramatic requirements of the cue—hitting things at the right time—while still maintaining the musical nature of the piece (i.e., the composer’s intention). Naturally if one does a good job, the edits go unnoticed. C’est la vie.

Sometimes I’m called on to edit cues together for an end title suite. Then I provide the studio with licensing information (names of cues, durations, usage, etc.) Finally—maybe much later—Tom and I will put together the CD: editing cues, determining order, choosing titles, sometimes remixing.

Project over.

27

Tom is my best friend. I have known him for a long time. He is very sensitive, often insecure, and just a brilliantly talented guy. I marvel at his ability to write movie music that defies the conventions: to me it never seems trite or obvious or phoned in. He takes the job on very seriously and conscientiously; he has great work habits and a tireless attention to detail. Tom has the rare skill of writing pieces that do several things at once: sad, hopeful, and distant at the same time, or, say, groovy, quiet, foreboding at the same time. His pieces are—according to my musiceditor friends—the most used in temp dubs, I think because they do the job so efficiently—providing much emotion with seemingly very little effort. His use of samples and off-beat colors evokes deep feelings in very unconventional ways and for this he receives much attention. I believe his music has—as much as anyone’s—changed the landscape of film composition in the last fifteen years. It is a great privilege to work with such a person.51 As evidenced, there are many people involved in Newman’s process. In a sense, he is a bandleader, as the music is his vision. However, because he believes in sharing the process with those people whose aesthetic he trusts, he is able to make the compositional process even more expansive. To summarize the entire process, Newman says the following: The other thing I guess you should know is, in terms of the process—if it starts the way it starts either with me doing whatever I do, wherever I do it, piano, computer, all of the above, improvising on all these found instruments that I’ve collected over the years, just to make samples, and then to turn the samples into compositional elements. So finally I start to write the piece. The piece typically incorporates sampled elements that now become part of the composition, and now I get together with my core group of guys […]. I’ve presented a piece of music to the director, and it’s approved. So now I feel like I have done my required homework. I have satisfied those requirements that the director asked me to satisfy.

And now I am going to get together with my players and anything goes, because I have satisfied the requirements; I am going to overdub all this stuff, anything can come or go, let’s just mess around. Let’s just now see what happens.

What if I want a high kind of wailing tone in a such-and-such instrument, and I’ll turn to Rick [Cox] and say, “What if we did a wailing tone in one of your programs.” And he’ll go to work on a small set-up he has with 51

Bill Bernstein, e-mail message to author, September 22, 2009.

28

speakers.

Typically with percussion, too—if things are driving, percussionists will talk about, you know, “We want to do timpani here, bass drums there, snare figures here and there.” All of which is done prior to my orchestral date.

And part of this is trying to trick the system, which is the system of now you are a composer but there is a director behind you kind of looking sternly and judgmentally at a time when you want to just be open and vulnerable.

So, he has approved this cue. Now I go in with my players. He’s not— not that I don’t allow him; I discourage them from coming around those environments, because I don’t know what I am going to do. And I tell them, you can be there, but every time I have a terrible idea I’d turn to you like “I know this is terrible.” So, we do all this work. A lot of percussion elements are added, color elements, elements of twang and strum and pluck. And then we get to the orchestra, and now I have lots of information, and I’m not sure what I think of a lot of it. I know that it satisfied enough for me to say, “Yes I’m done” in a small-ensemble recording environment to now move to a big-ensemble recording environment. Now there is Tommy Vicari, my engineer, and now he has to get a rough mix up [a mix that contains the small-ensemble recordings juxtaposed with the live orchestra], and now the director is back…. So this is Revolutionary Road, so Sam Mendes comes by. He has approved these cues, and now he is going to hear them again with orchestra. But not only is he going to hear the orchestral element, he’s now going to listen to all these other elements that I’ve added and he’s going to weigh in on those. We’re now flexible enough to say, “OK, if you don’t like this sound, we can get rid of it. I hope you do like it.” I’m not coming in like a doormat, but I don’t know what I think either. Because in the end, my composition process ends, I think, when I mix. I think that’s when I’m done composing. Now, the orchestral aspect of it is complete, because it has to be copied, conducted, and all that. It’s part of the requirement. It may be that the requirement aspect of it is what makes me recoil from it a bit. The idea of being a conductor out there with violins left and cellos and bass right is in a way a very old-fashioned proscenium notion that I’m now applying to this much more complex sonic atmosphere of how things come out of speakers. A director is hearing, I’m on a podium, this rough mix is up, and now he’s going to weigh in on both orchestral performance and also these [prerecorded small-ensemble] instruments. “Oh yeah, I really like that, I like how that goes forward,” and this and that. Some things I like but aren’t sure that he’s going to like; he’ll say “Oh yeah, I really like how that….” It calms me and encourages me, and hopefully a good director knows how to do that, to be encouraging.

29

And then we get by that moment, and I’m done recording, and you were there, til the end of that, and then we mix. And then typically we’ll have a director come in and listen to all the mixes back and weigh in. Because you figure he’s going to weigh in at some moment, and you want him to weigh in when there’s still some flexibility, some ability to make some further changes.52 Newman’s compositional process is fascinating, open-minded, and playful.

He creates an

environment where everyone feels free to express himself in a musical way. He wants to bring out the best in everyone, including himself, and he therefore surrounds himself with similar people. He brings his handwritten cues, improvisations, experimentations with electronics, and prerecorded sessions with his core musicians to each new film-scoring session. Although all of his film scores are different, and the process is clearly eccentric, there is in them an enchanting sense of familiarity.

52

Thomas Newman, interviewed by author, September 2, 2008, The Juilliard School, New York, NY.

30

Chapter Three Musical Style Newman’s musical style consists of several elements, which collectively define his voice and also represent what has come to be known as his signature sound. These elements include the use of piano, strings, electronics, world instruments, percussion, rhythm, repetitive motives, drones, and an overarching common harmonic language employed throughout his scores. When discussing his style, Newman says, I think my style is based in repetition. By that I mean I think in short motives—two-measure motives or three one-measure motives or whatever. And that if those motives are being repeated, then the way in which you add sound makes you listen dimensionally. You’re not challenged by harmonic information, but you’re encouraged by color.

And then where does color become composition?53 Newman definitely likes to work with short motives, and even as they tend to repeat, he finds ways to transform the motives into something new without losing the integrity of the initial sound. This transformation as he says is less about harmonic information or change than about color. Color to Newman is anything from an actual orchestration, to improvised percussion, to an ambient tone created organically from a live sample. Together with Newman’s motives and different layers of color, his language becomes more obvious to the ear. The following is an example of his use of repetitive motives with added layers of sound:

53

Ibid.

31

Example 1, musical cue from LITTLE CHILDREN: “Bandshell”- 1M3 54

Thomas Newman

Copyright © 2006 SONGS OF UNIVERSAL, INC., and NEW LINE MUSIC CORP. All Rights Controlled and Administered by SONGS OF UNIVERSAL, INC. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.

54

Each cue is given a code in order to keep all of the cues organized. The first digit signifies the reel number and the next digit represents the cue number within the specified reel. As an example, the “Bandshell” cue from Little Children is listed as 1M3. This means, Reel 1, Cue 3.

32

This cue, taken from Little Children, begins with a pizzicato motive that is immediately repeated in m. 2. At the macro level, Newman is composing eight-bar phrases based on the initial pizzicato motive. At the micro level, the eight-bar phrases can be divided into two fourbar subphrases. The subphrases begin with a repetition of the opening measure, followed by a reduced version of the pizzicato (notice the sole G in m. 3) motive, and end with a rhythmically developed version of the gesture (in m. 4 notice the parallel major 6ths, D-B and F-D, with the passing E-C# major 6th in between). The second subphrase (mm. 5-8) replicates mm. 1-2 exactly as written and then develops a rhythmic embellishment of m. 4. Interestingly, the development begins with a pizzicato on the “and” of beat 4 in m. 7, followed by four eighth notes that hint at (D-E) and outline (C#-E) the major 6th chords that were heard in m. 4. These eight bars are then repeated throughout the cue, except when Newman modulates in m. 25.

Once Newman

establishes a motive, in this case, the pizzicato motive, he then can begin to add layers.

The first additional layer heard in the “Bandshell” cue is a four-bar phrase played by the violin II and viola sections beginning in m. 9. Newman takes the already existing material and uses the opening pizzicato gesture (G-D-B) as the foundation. This time, however, the G-D-B motive is played arco. He then adds three new chords, which either copy the intervallic structure of the opening motive (perfect 5th plus major 6th) exactly, or toy with the structure ever so slightly by changing one of the intervals or its original inversion. For example, m. 10 contains C-G-Eb. The perfect 5th is present, but this time Newman uses a minor 6th instead of the major 6th. In m. 11, Newman replicates m. 9 but a semitone higher (Ab-Eb-C). The original motive returns in m. 12, but this time it appears in its first inversion (B-G-D). Thus, a minor 6th (B-G) and perfect 5th (G-D) are present. Measures 13-16 repeat the four-bar phrase with a variant ending.

33

The next layer that Newman composes is played by the violin I section beginning in m.

17. This line also happens to be in four-bar units, but it is the only layer that is conceived more linearly in that it serves the purpose of providing a melodic line. The melody is then varied in mm. 21-24. At this point (m. 25), Newman adds four new bars to the melody, and abandons the previous layers as he temporarily modulates. However, he soon returns to the original motive and first additional layer in m. 29. The final layer, one that is not reflected in the manuscript score, contains a pedal steel guitar, electronics, a piano improvisation, and percussion. In m. 4, a pedal steel guitar is heard striking the G major chord on the downbeat. Newman will have his guitarist play sporadically at times to accent the downbeat or end of certain phrases (mm. 13, 17, 20, 29, and 33). In m. 12, at the end of the violin II and viola four-bar phrase, Newman incorporates the use of electronics. It sounds as if a flute is being played flutter-tongue, but Newman has actually called on Steve Taviglione to play his EWI. In m. 24, another color/sound emerges, which emulates the pedal steel guitar ricochet at the end of m. 20. Because this color is not pictured in the score, it is hard to identify exactly what the sound is, but it seems to be either a sample that sounds like a cimbalom (hammered dulcimer), or a type of suspended cymbal with a triangle beater. Finally, in mm. 25-28, Newman improvises a skittering, chromatic, jazzlike riff on the piano.

As evidenced, the above written material is essential to the foundation of the score itself, but this is not necessarily the most interesting aspect of the process and style that Newman is eager to explore. These added colors (electronics, pedal steel guitar, piano improvisation, etc.) that can be discovered only when listening to the score are also fundamental to Newmanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s musical style.

34

Another signature of Newman’s style is his use of pedal point, or what he likes to call “drone harmony.” This drone stays constant throughout a cue, and it becomes the backbone of the harmonic structure. However, because it remains the same, one always finds it difficult to know what key he is actually working in. For example, in Scent of a Woman Newman has a Bb pedal tone throughout the cue called “A Tour of Pleasures.” He has moving triads in parallel motion over the Bb pedal tone. The triads are arranged in their most open form (perfect 5th plus major/minor 6th; opposed to its closed form, “stacked thirds”: C-E-G). As Newman has stated, "I do a lot of modal stretching. I find I can really stretch modes if I have a drone harmony.”55 He is able to create a harmonically ambiguous moment: Example 2, musical cue from SCENT OF A WOMAN: “A Tour of Pleasures”- 3M4

Thomas Newman

Copyright © 1992 SONGS OF UNIVERSAL, INC. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.

55

Thomas Newman, interviewed by author, September 2, 2008, The Juilliard School, New York, NY. 35

The “A Tour of Pleasures” cue is harmonically ambiguous, because one can make an argument for Bb minor or Db major. Bb natural minor, or Aeolian, is the most plausible explanation, as the Bb natural minor scale is employed throughout the cue. In the piano part, the root of each chord (major and minor triads in their most open form: Root-Fifth-Third) represents a different scale degree of the natural minor scale (Bb-C-Db-Eb-F-Gb). However, as seen in the score, the seventh scale degree (Ab) is not present, and yet it is implied as roots Db and F (scale degrees three and five) contain Ab in their respective triads.

A less likely explanation, but one that is still conceivable, is Db major. This is similar to what happens harmonically in Schumann’s “Im wunderschönen Monat Mai” from the Dichterliebe, as Newman juxtaposes the major with the relative minor. Here, Db major is present with the Bb pedal point. Interestingly, because the triads are mostly major (e.g., Bb-F-D, Db-Ab-F, Eb-Bb-G), the presence of Bb minor as the tonal center is weakened, thus hinting at Db major. This ultimately reflects Newman’s interest in and exploration of modal stretching.

He uses modal mixture to move smoothly between major and minor modes.

Another aspect that is evident in Newman’s musical style is his use of the piano.

Newman’s primary instrument is the piano, and he is probably most comfortable expressing himself using this medium. To the listener, his piano writing is best described as personal. He tends to use the piano in calmer and more reflective moments, and his playing is extraordinarily delicate and sensitive. His piano writing is recognizable for its simplicity and beauty. It also helps define what has become known as his signature sound. When asking Newman if he was aware of his signature sound, he said, I tend to have a three-note piano style. It’s probably because you need three notes to really define harmony. I guess it was this whole feeling of wanting to reduce things down. Not wanting to be flowery. Not wanting to say too much. If I use three notes to make harmonic activity, I want to

36

make sure that every note matters. Again, it’s trying to find the value of an idea and not be sentimental. In a way, it’s a reaction against sentimentality, but toward myself. How I see myself. In a way, I wish not to share myself with others. I think there is a real reason I’m a film composer more than anything else. Because I’m automatically moved to the background. You know, you could argue, people in academia could argue that it’s a low art, it’s a bastard art. They could! People I respect a lot could say that, and I want to be ready for that. I don’t want to be defensive about it, but if I ask myself, I’m probably a pretty shy person.

It’s not like I’m ever the life of the party at a party where I sit at the piano and say here’s what I wrote. I tend not to share my music with many people, and I think that’s why my piano style is so scaled back.56 Newman’s piano writing is certainly scaled back, but to the listener this reduced style feels incredibly personal and intimate. Interestingly, Newman’s three notes tend more to create harmonic ambiguity than to delineate harmony, and this perhaps is the defining moment that encapsulates the uniqueness of his music. How does one make sense (harmonically) of these three-note chords that do not function in a traditional western-theoretical way?

From Road to Perdition, the first example (see Ex. 3) of Newman’s piano writing is similar to the “A Tour of Pleasures” cue from Scent of a Woman, as his piano writing is completely homophonic and uses only triads in their most open position. It is also harmonically similar as Newman exploits the Aeolian mode, this time in the key of G natural minor.

However, this is less harmonically ambiguous than the “A Tour of Pleasures” cue, because Newman’s opening chord (G-D-Bb) states G minor (whereas the opening chord of “A Tour of Pleasures” was Bb major). The cue begins with a synthesized and ambient G pedal tone. The pedal tone is constant throughout. Next, Steve Tavaglione performs a free improvisation on his EWI that employs pitches D-Eb-F-C. These notes outline scale degrees 4, 5, 6, and 7 of the G natural minor scale. Finally, the piano enters (m. 5), announcing a four-chord motive:

56

Ibid.

37

Example 3a, musical cue from ROAD TO PERDITION: “Just The Feller”- 8M2

Thomas Newman

The four chords are then repeated beginning in m. 7, and Newman adds a two-chord descending motive, which immediately becomes a tonal sequence that rises a major second each time it is presented.

Example 3b, musical cue from ROAD TO PERDITION: “Just The Feller”- 8M2

Thomas Newman

Newman then plays the four-chord motive again in m. 13, which is immediately followed by the two-chord descending motive. He then presents the four-chord motive one last time before abandoning these motives altogether. This time, he plays a descending G natural minor scale with his open chords on top, concluding with a cadence on C: Example 3c, musical cue from ROAD TO PERDITION: “Just The Feller”- 8M2

38

Thomas Newman

With the combination of all the above different elements (four-chord motive, two-chord descending motive, and the descending G natural minor scale), Newman puts together the rest of the cue based on the same material to form an overall cohesive and fluid cue: Example 3d, musical cue from ROAD TO PERDITION: “Just The Feller”- 8M2

Thomas Newman

©2002 Fox Film Music Corp., Songs of SKG (BMI). All Rights Reserved.

Another example of Newman’s piano style comes from The Shawshank Redemption. In what might be considered the most musically profound scene, Brooks Was Here, Newman is able to capture the solitude of a man who, now sent out into the real world, had spent the majority of his life in prison. Brooks was not given the tools to reacclimatize himself within society and therefore had only two options: to find a way to return to prison or to end his life. He chose the latter. In this cue, Newman uses his three-note style to create an atmosphere that expresses Brooks’s loneliness, fear of entering society, and a glimpse of solace knowing that there will be

39

no more pain. In order to do this, Newman’s uses his scaled back homophonic style, but this time adds a subtle melody rather than being solely atmospheric.

The cue begins with electronics hinting at A Aeolian or Dorian. The piano then enters in m. 3 playing only A-E-A: Example 4, musical cue from THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION: “Brooks Was Here”- 7M1

Thomas Newman

Copyright © 1994 SONGS OF UNIVERSAL, INC., and BEVERLY DRIVE MUSIC All Rights Controlled and Administered by SONGS OF UNIVERSAL, INC. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.

At first glance, it appears that Newman is using his signature three-note triads in their most open form. However, he immediately abandons the sole use of the triad in m. 6, where he employs a quintal harmony (C-G-D) for the first time. He then resolves the D in m. 6 to an F major triad in first inversion. This presentation of a first inversion triad, but still in its most open form, is a new chord-spacing technique for Newman. All of his triads have been in root position until this moment. In m. 9, Newman again uses A-E-A (as in m. 3) as his pitches. Measure 10 opens with

40

the signature root-position open triad (G-D-B), which is immediately followed by a minor 7th chord in first inversion (F-D-C). This minor 7th chord resolves to a G major triad in m. 11. In turn, the G major triad moves down to a D major root-position open triad (mm. 11 and 12).

Harmonically, this creates a beautiful moment, as G major is enclosed between the false octave of F and F#. Newman subtly weaves D minor and D major around the G major root-position open triad. It is important to note that all of this harmonic activity is happening while the music is still in A Aeolian. In fact, the strings only highlight the ghost and ambient tones A-E-G (tonicdominant-subtonic) during the first presentation of the cue. In m. 13, Newman intentionally avoids the D major plagal cadence to A minor, by moving right to a C major root-position open triad. A B minor root-position open triad follows this C major triad, as in m. 4. Newman then moves in parallel motion up to an E minor root-position open triad, which resolves down to a D major root-position open triad in m. 14. Although the D is the root of the triad, Newman implies a suspension in the right hand in m. 15, as he has D resolving to C# within the A major rootposition open triad. Measures 16-19 are a modified replication of mm. 7-12.

The melody itself is quite simple and delicate, yet extremely thoughtful and profound.

Newman more or less creates two balanced phrases, although he is using mixed meters, which make the shape of the melody less symmetrical. The phrases are originally divided into ten measures plus seven measures, but this could be reorganized into two eight-bar phrases: Example 5, melodic reduction from â&#x20AC;&#x153;Brooks Was Hereâ&#x20AC;?- 7M1

41

Thomas Newman

Phrase 1 is A-E-D-C#-D-C (subphrase 1, mm. 1-4), plus A-A-B-C-B-F# (subphrase 2, mm. 5-8).

Phrase 2 is E-D-G-F#-D-C#-C (subphrase 1, mm. 9-12), plus A-A-B-C-B-A (subphrase 2, mm.

13-16). The new section, beginning in m. 16 (m. 20 in the original cue), uses the harp instead of the piano but still shows the resolution to A. This results in an even eight-bar phrase with a cadence on A. Interestingly, the melody itself suggests either A Mixolydian (A-B-C#-D-E-F#G) or A Dorian (A-B-C-D-E-F#-G), whereas the fundamental harmonic properties solely point to Aeolian as the left hand outlines the F major triad in first inversion (mm. 7 and 16). It seems as if Newman intentionally avoids establishing the tonality of Aeolian because the F major triads are the only triads in first inversion. Additionally, the presence of F# in the D major triads points towards Dorian as the tonality of the cue, and this only further obscures the true tonality.

Because of the triads and melody, Newman fluidly moves among three tonalities without ever explicitly establishing a sole key.

The final example demonstrating Newman’s piano writing is from Road to Perdition. In this cue, “Road to Chicago,” Newman abandons the previous homophonic style to write in a more traditional way. He now utilizes a left-hand accompaniment juxtaposed with a right-hand motion. However, true to Newman’s process and style, the cue begins with a two-measure motive, which immediately becomes the genesis of his material to be developed, transformed, and modified: Example 6a, musical cue from ROAD TO PERDITION: “Road to Chicago”- 4M1 revised

42

Thomas Newman

The opening two-measure motive functions like a musical sentence. The initial idea (motive) is presented, and it then gets repeated with an embellishment in mm. 3-4. Measures 5-8 are a melodic expansion of the preceding four measures.

Regardless of how one interprets the

structure, Newman is clearly working with motives. Measures 9-16 replicate the opening eight measures.

This time, however, Newman adds strings and a ringing chord (comprised of

percussion and a synthesizer) to the mix. Beginning in m. 17, Newman transforms the opening eight measures into new material.

Example 6b, musical cue from ROAD TO PERDITION: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Road to Chicagoâ&#x20AC;?- 4M1 revised

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Thomas Newman

2002 Fox Film Music Corp., Songs of SKG (BMI). All Rights Reserved.

This new material relies heavily on the structure of the rhythm that Newman establishes in the opening eight bars. Measures 2 and 5 emphasize the significance of C# on beat three, and Newman carefully exploits the strength of C# in the new section. Once again, Newman is working with a two-measure motive. At m. 17, however, the right hand plays on the downbeat of the first measure of the phrase, in order to provide a sense of variety, before continuing to focus on the strong-beat C#. From this point forward (mm. 17-24), beat 3 is always highlighted with the quarter-note C#. Newman abandons the piano altogether in mm. 25-32, in order to introduce his signature string writing.

Most of Newman’s film scores incorporate the use of strings. He uses the strings to accompany the piano, create pedal points, highlight rhythmic motives, play solos, and occasionally play in full tutti cues. In the case of his “Road to Chicago” cue in Road to Perdition, Newman takes the already existing piano (see ex. 6a) material and embellishes it contrapuntally and harmonically before returning to the piano.

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Example 6c, musical cue from ROAD TO PERDITION: “Road to Chicago”- 4M1 revised

Thomas Newman

©2002 Fox Film Music Corp., Songs of SKG (BMI). All Rights Reserved.

Beginning in m. 25, the first violin plays the right-hand piano part (one octave higher) as written in mm. 1-8, 9-16, and 33-40. This time, however, Newman adds more harmonic variety to the accompaniment. The piano merely played F#-C#-(F#) in the left hand, but now the strings employ quintal harmonies and open root-position triads to further support the violin I theme.

Measure 25 consists of an F# major root-position open triad. Newman utilizes two quintal chords (A-E-B-F# and B-F#-C#) in m. 26. This harmonic technique is effective for two reasons.

First, he has two common tones (B and F#) in the two chords, and this enables the ear to hear a smooth and easy transition. Second, he is able to create more harmonic ambiguity because no third is present. Measures 27-28 repeat mm. 25-26, paying homage to the two-measure motive.

The violin 1 line in m. 28 is now divided for the first time, and a contrapuntal line is added to enhance the theme. This is the first time Newman adds counterpoint as an additional layer. The second subphrase begins in m. 29, and Newman suggests a possible replication of the previous four measures. He begins with the F# root-position open triad. However, he quickly abandons 45

the repetition scheme, as he moves to D and E root-position open triads in m. 30. In m. 32, Newman returns to the chords of mm. 26 and 28. Once again, he divides the violin I to add extra counterpoint.

The uniqueness of this particular cue stems from the right-hand theme in the opening eight bars. Newman builds a melody around an imaginary scale: F#-G#-A#-B-C#-D-E. Aurally, this entire cue sounds as if it is in some type of F# major/modal key. However, no theoretical key can be identified based on the actual pitches. Under further investigation, one concludes that Newman conceives of this cue in the key of B ascending minor. However, he never once resolves to B minor, and he relies more heavily on the dominant F#. In fact, the quintal section (mm. 26, 28, and 32) is the only time in the cue when Newman flirts with B minor as the overall tonality.

Two examples that further expound on Newman’s diverse string writing style are seen in cues from Little Children. The cues are grouped together, first to show their musical differences and second to illustrate how one cue is a further development and transformation of the other.

The first example is from the beginning of the film. Newman creates a Baroque-like ambience, when he uses diatonic harmonies for the first time, including a circle-of-fifths progression, and writes in the style of a minuet as he employs a ¾ time signature.

Example 7, musical cue from LITTLE CHILDREN: “Tissue”- 2M5

46

Thomas Newman

Copyright © 2006 SONGS OF UNIVERSAL, INC., and NEW LINE MUSIC CORP. All Rights Controlled and Administered by SONGS OF UNIVERSAL, INC. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.

The cue begins with the strings evoking the style of a four-part chorale, and the first violin embellishing the “soprano” voice. Harmonically, the cue begins with a C major triad (m. 1), but the implied tonality is G major. Measure 2 consists of an F# diminished triad in first inversion.

There is no presence of D, and this chord is analyzed as viiº6/G. Instead of resolving the viiº6/G to some type of G chord, Newman keeps the common tones A (in the cello) and C (in the violin II) and chromatically moves to an F major triad in first inversion. This resolves back to C major in m. 6, thus presenting the inception of a possible circle-of-fifths progression. Newman returns to F major in first inversion in m. 8, and then moves in parallel motion to a G major triad in first

47

inversion (m. 9). The first violin then moves from G to F, outlining a G dominant 7th chord in first inversion, and then the harmony resolves to a C major triad (m. 10). The C major triad then moves to a D dominant 7th chord (m. 11), which has a missing fifth (A). The beauty of this excerpt is that Newman begins in C major and ends on a D dominant 7th chord. He is playing with the subdominant and dominant of G, which not only suggests a circle-of-fifths progression but also demonstrates Newmanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ability to explore quintal harmonies (C-G-D).

In m. 13, Newman resolves the D dominant 7th chord, as the second part of the cue announces G major as the tonal center.

Immediately upon the arrival of G major, a circle-of-

fifths progression is used, as Newman moves from G to C (m. 15) to F (m. 16) to Bb (m. 17). In m. 18, Newman employs the tritone substitute of Bb by moving to E major. This first-inversion E major triad immediately becomes a continuation of the circle-of-fifths progression in G major, as the strings move to A (m. 18) and then to D in m. 19. At m. 21, Newman exploits the dominant (D) of G by repeating two A dominant 7th chords in first inversion both of which resolve to a D minor triad with sustained G (mm. 21-22 and 23-24). One would expect the D triad to resolve to G, but Newman quite intentionally and tastefully resolves it to VI of G. He creates a unique type of deceptive cadence, because he is employing modal mixture (a proper deceptive cadence in G major would resolve to E minor). Newman then announces a D major triad (m. 27) by way of a passing A minor 7th chord (m. 26), before resolving to E major at the conclusion of the cue.

An aspect of this cue that further demonstrates Newmanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s compositional process and craft has to do with rhythm. Measure 13 essentially provides Newman with the rhythmic material that he will later explore and develop in the next cue, which also happens to be the music for the ending credits. The viola and cello writing (quarter note plus four eighth notes)

48

becomes the rhythmic motive of the final cue.

What Newman does compositionally and

musically to transform this motive into an entire cue is extraordinary.

The cue begins with violins I and II playing a one-measure motive in straight quarter notes. The viola hints at the motive of quarter note plus four eighth notes. The cello and bass provide the harmonic outline. The violins then adapt the four eighth notes as a motive to explore (mm. 3-4). Furthermore, the phrasing of the music is in the style of a minuet, as Newman writes the entire cue in ž time and eight-bar phrases. The eight-bar phrases occasionally expand (mm.

25-34). The overall tonality is once again ambiguous, as Newman creates an unidentifiable scale: E-F#-G#-A-B-C-D. This is similar to the scale that he used in his â&#x20AC;&#x153;Road to Chicagoâ&#x20AC;? cue in Road to Perdition (see ex 6). This cue has a strong harmonic E major/modal presence, and therefore one feels that Newman conceived of it in E major/modal, as opposed to A ascending minor (which is the only explanation of the preceding scale if it is reordered). However, one can still make an argument for A ascending minor as the initial tonality.

49

Example 8, musical cue from LITTLE CHILDREN: “End Title”- 8M2

50

Thomas Newman

51

52

Copyright © 2006 SONGS OF UNIVERSAL, INC., and NEW LINE MUSIC CORP. All Rights Controlled and Administered by SONGS OF UNIVERSAL, INC. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.

53

The form of this cue can be broken into the following sections: A (mm. 1-8); B (mm. 9-16); A’ (mm. 17-24); B’ (mm. 25-34). Measures 35-71 are a variation of the first 34 measures. In m.

72, Newman abandons the Baroque-like style of the cue by creating a flamenco type of sound.

Even though the style of the string writing changes, Newman continues to work with eight-bar phrases, and he still suggests E as the major/modal tonality.

Although the beginning of the cue hints at A ascending melodic minor as the tonality, there seems to be a struggle between A ascending melodic minor and E Mixolydian.

A

ascending melodic minor is felt because of the melodic scale that Newman uses, as well as a harmonic presence of E to A, thus suggesting a dominant to tonic relationship. However, the ear wants to be drawn to E as the tonal center, and further support for the E major/modal tonality occurs in the expanded phrase (mm. 25-34). Newman introduces C# for the first time, and this presents E Mixolydian (E-F#-G#-A-B-C#-D-E) as the implied tonality. In this case, A becomes the subdominant of E. In this same area, Newman also pays homage to the Baroque-like feel of the “Tissue” cue from Little Children (see ex. 7) by using a plagal cadence from A to E (mm. 3031 and 34-35). This cadence strengthens the feeling of E as the tonality.

The pedal tone at the end of the cue (mm. 88-98) also contributes to the obscurity of the tonality. Although tonic pedal points are present in classical works, the dominant pedal tone occurs more often, as it generally pulls the harmony back to the root. Because Newman is writing modally, E Mixolydian feels like the root. However, E Mixolydian also functions as A major and therefore can stress the pedal point as the possible dominant.

Finally, in consideration of the main theme of the film (a stay-at-home mom and stay-athome dad meet in a park and begin to have an affair that can never last), an ambiguous musical tone is set. The style of the minuet reflects the strict formal nature of the adulterers’ relationship.

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They are afraid to commit to each other because of their respective life situations. They walk a very fine line, and although they cross it, they eventually return to their own spouses. Newman creates a harmonic world that toys with, and accurately reflects, the polarity between two people.

The next musical example exhibits Newman’s ability to write for electronics, as well as to provide opportunities for his collaborators to improvise. In this cue, “Meet Maguire,” from Road to Perdition, Newman uses a four-measure ostinato that is present throughout.

The

ostinato is a synthesized pizzicato low string ensemble sound. Although the example below is a reduction of the original cue, all of the written notes are present. This is an example of why Newman thinks of his compositions as a recorded medium. What you hear will not reflect what you see.

The cue (see ex. 9) begins with an atmospheric array of electronic sounds before the fourmeasure ostinato is announced. Additionally, Michael Fisher improvises a percussion hit on the downbeat of the ostinato. More percussion is added to the pickup of m. 3, and these types of percussive hits continue throughout the remainder of the cue. In m. 6, Newman prescribes a harmonic environment for Steve Tavaglione to work with. Tavaglione takes the information from Newman and improvises with his clarinet, which is processed with many effects. The score suggests entry points as well as structural closing points as guides. After listening to the cue and comparing it to the score, one sees clearly that Tavaglione has a good amount of freedom to explore and can add his own flavor to the cue. He even improvises beginning in m. 21, and the score does not call on him to enter at that moment.

Fisher adds a new percussion sound in the pickup to m. 13. He introduces a rhythm that the notated synthesizer soon picks up in m. 18. This new synthesizer sound is striking and also somewhat familiar to Newman’s color palette. He likes to explore plucked string sounds that can

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be further tweaked in order to bend and manipulate the sound. He uses a dulcimer-like sound in his “Balloon” cue from Scent of a Woman. In this case, he has multiple plucked string samples that appear to be detuned. He combines them to add a rhythmic and musical element to the cue.

As in many of the previous cues, Newman intentionally avoids establishing the “true” tonality of this cue. He uses the pitches F#-G#-A-B-C#-E for most of the cue. There is no initial presence of D or D#, and this makes the cue sway between F# Dorian or F# Aeolian. In m. 31, Newman introduces acoustic strings playing pizzicato as the final layer of the cue. Interestingly, this layer presents D# as part of the mode, thus declaring F# Dorian as the true tonality. In m.

35, Newman, abandoning the acoustic pizzicato strings, has the strings play arco until the end of the cue.

Example 9, musical cue from ROAD TO PERDITION: “Meet Maguire”- 4M3

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Thomas Newman

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©2002 Fox Film Music Corp., Songs of SKG (BMI). All Rights Reserved.

The following example further demonstrates Newman’s compositional process and musical style. Here he creates a hybrid cue that relies heavily on electronics, strings, and his collaborators. This cue, “Little Children,” from Little Children employs a repeating synthesized ostinato, with another synthesizer adding the highest voice, electric bass, strings, improvised guitar, and ambient electronics. Newman combines all of these elements to form a cohesive unit in this rather simple, yet elegant, cue.

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Example 10, musical cue from LITTLE CHILDREN: “Little Children”- 8M1

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Thomas Newman

Copyright © 2006 SONGS OF UNIVERSAL, INC., and NEW LINE MUSIC CORP. All Rights Controlled and Administered by SONGS OF UNIVERSAL, INC. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.

The score itself reveals only part of what the listener hears. Newman’s collaborators help to create an electronic ambience in the background throughout the cue that enhances the overall “feel” of what the listener hears. An improvised guitar enters on beat 3 in m. 2 and adds a layer of rhythm by playing straight eighth notes. It cuts out on the downbeat in m. 4, and then resumes on the “and” of beat two in m. 6. In m. 9, the rhythm of the guitar becomes one eighth plus two sixteenth notes that continuously repeat. From this point forward, subtle electronic and ambient

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nuances are added to the background. This makes the cue open up dimensionally, but one would never understand this by solely looking at the score.

There are additional elements that make this cue beautiful and also recognizable as Newman’s sound. The synthesizer drone (D-A-D) played throughout the score reflects his use of pedal tones (drone harmony). The string writing, beginning in m. 17 reflects the overarching harmonic language that is present in most of his cues. In this case, Newman is in D Mixolydian.

The strings enter by playing an open-root position triad (D-A-F#). The first violin plays the descending F#-E-D in m. 19. The second violin creates an appoggiatura (C-D) in m. 20, while the cello plays a G. Therefore, Newman moves between I and IV in D Mixolydian. Again, one could argue that he is fluctuating between D Mixolydian and G major, but the presence of D from the beginning clearly defines the tonality as D. The most apparent Newman “signature” lies more in his harmonic writing than anywhere else. Even his earlier scores, like Desperately Seeking Susan, hint at his current harmonic language: use of parallel fifths. The Man with One Red Shoe employs the same harmonic progression (parallel fifths) that is heard in Desperately Seeking Susan, and this is a testament to Newman’s sound world that later comes to fruition: root-position open triadic harmonies, employing a predominant number of parallel major 10th chords (perfect 5th-Major 6th: C-G-E), parallel minor 10th chords (perfect 5th-minor 6th: C-G-Eb), and the occasional quintal harmonies, also known as “stacked fifths” chords (C-G-D) that create hauntingly beautiful sonorities while achieving tonal ambiguity. When this writer asked Newman if he was aware of his signature sound, and if he could describe how it came to fruition, Newman said, “I am. I can tell you it

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began with a movie called Rapture. There were two kind of very Charles Ives-ian chords that repeated. It was two chords that repeated.â&#x20AC;?57 Example 11, two piano chords transcribed from the film RAPTURE

Thomas Newman

When analyzing the chords individually, one sees that the first chord is built on quintal harmonies and is essentially a chord of stacked fifths (F#-C#-G#). The second chord is an augmented triad (D-F#-A#) in second inversion. When played in sequence, these two chords juxtapose quintal harmony with chromatic harmony. Ives, whose birthday Newman shares, was known for exploring quartal and quintal harmonies. Ives also employed different types of scales (e.g., his use of whole-tone scales, which outline an augmented triad) in his works to explore intervallic harmonies that create polytonal chords.

The spacing of the Rapture chords reflects Newmanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s desire to create harmonies in their most open form. The quintal harmonic chord will always be presented in its most open form, unless he inverts the chord as fourths (quartal harmonies: G#-C#-F#). The augmented triad, however, has three different permutations (first, second, and third inversions), and only one spacing is the most closed: D-F#-A#. Therefore, Newman can take the second chord and present it in three equally open variations (D-A#-F#, A#-F#-D, F#-D-A#). Although these Charles Ivesian chords sound more chromatic and dissonant than the majority of chords that were previously discussed, this compositional and musical moment becomes the genesis of what is now

57

Ibid.

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considered to be Newman’s signature sound. The first chord presents harmonic ambiguity because stacked fifths, although sounding tonal, are detached by nature and never truly establish a key center. The augmented triad by itself does not function in a tonal way, because Newman avoids using it within a diatonic landscape. If he were composing a cue in B minor, than the D augmented triad would function diatonically. In this case, he is interested in exploring modal and chromatic harmonies more to create an atmospheric effect than to provide a defined type of theoretical sound.

Interestingly, when both chords are combined, Newman’s sound world

becomes transparent; from this point of view, his signature sound is birthed.

An early example that reveals Newman’s chromatic harmonies juxtaposed with quintal/quartal chords is seen in “Other Plans” from Scent of a Woman. In this cue, Newman creates a drone harmony (C#-G#-E) through the use of ghost and ambient tones. These tones are not written in the score, hence the “ghost,” but are implemented to generate an atmosphere that hints at a key center of C#.

Example 12, musical cue from SCENT OF A WOMAN: “Other Plans”- 13M2

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Thomas Newman

Copyright Š 1992 SONGS OF UNIVERSAL, INC. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.

The piano writing in this cue reflects the chromatic and quartal/quintal nature already displayed in the Rapture chords. In this case, Newman harmonically moves between G# minor (G#-D#-B) and A major (A-E-C#), but he adds two dissonant notes (C# and D#, respectively).

The C#

could also be perceived as the root since the bass plays C# as well, thus outlining a quintal chord (C#-G#-D# with an added B. Both chords are openly spaced and ultimately illustrate how they grew organically from the Rapture chords.

As indicated, Newmanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s musical style is eclectic and inhabits seemingly disparate techniques that, when combined, create an identifiable language. His embrace of harmony in conjunction with electronics, repetitive motives, strings, percussion, world instruments, rhythm, and improvisation makes his style one-of-a-kind.

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Chapter Four Conclusion In the post-World War II era, schools of thought in music became increasingly fragmented.

Some of the most important and influential trends included postmodernism,

serialism, new tonalism, minimalism, indeterminacy, and new complexity. Beginning in the early 1980s, however, the lines between schools became somewhat blurred, and composers were more at liberty to “pick and choose,” as it were, between schools and styles. Once this melding of styles occurred, it became possible for a composer to exemplify several different schools at once. One such composer is Thomas Newman.

Over the past two decades, Newman has created a diverse repertoire of styles; however, within each film score there looms a unique personal language. Although Newman might be most closely aligned with the postmodernists and new tonalists, because of his inclination toward tonalism, his musical language includes a multitude of post-World War II influences (e.g., jazz, tonalism, minimalism, indeterminacy). He tends to recycle music so that he is fully able to develop each idea, thus creating a sense of familiarity and fluidity among his scores.

Through the use of repetitive motives, pedal tones, piano, electronics, strings, percussion, less conventional instruments, improvisation, rhythm, collaboration, and an overall harmonic language, Newman has created a signature sound that is distinct, emotionally beautiful, and completely original.

Newman’s sound palette utilizes chords and clusters that embrace

traditional aspects of tonal harmony while functioning in nontraditional ways. Newman’s music has many external layers and, as evidenced, he thinks of his music as music for a recorded medium. In fact, he is one of the pioneering composers truly to compose music for speakers that incorporate a hybrid of acoustic and electronic mediums. There is an abundance of colors that

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one hears when listening to the soundtrack, but these musical pieces of information will not be seen in the score. He is a composer who works in a modal and tonal landscape and is almost entirely harmonically ambiguous. One could easily call him an atmospheric composer.

The most important element is his harmonic language, as everything evolves around it.

Newman creates a germ and plays with it. The motive may be rhythmic, melodic, homophonic, clusterlike, or completely electronic, but it almost always revolves around a harmonic idea. He makes sketches, notates ideas, and improvises.

He is a true collaborator. He is the musical director, writing all the preliminary material and making full sketches to give to the orchestrator. Newman brings many of these sketches to the recording sessions and improvises with his core group of musicians. They literally distill the fundamental properties of his motives and create organic sounds to overdub the original motives.

He acknowledges the importance of his musical allies, and, unlike most other composers, gives them credit in his scores.

Newman has broken Hollywood film music traditions by creating his own sound.

Thinking of himself as an experimenter, he loves to improvise, record himself playing obscure instruments that he has collected around the world, and perform with electronics. An innovator who is constantly searching for something new, he wants to stretch his imagination.

Writing concert music is of interest to Newman, but in many instances he finds that classical composition limits his needs. Most composers would argue that having complete control of the compositional process means possessing the potential for pure, full self-expression.

Newman would argue, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The more it was just me, the less it ever rose to something beyond me, so I think I really always wanted to encourage participation.â&#x20AC;?58 This is a testament to his desire

58

Ibid.

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and ability to seek something “newfangled.” He is open to learning from his colleagues and continues to push himself to grow.

A kaleidoscope of sounds, Newman’s scores contain classical ideas, gestures, and tonal cells interspersed throughout to illuminate a landscape of color and harmony. Some moments are reminiscent of Ives and Messiaen in their chromaticism, e.g., his “Other Plans” cue from Scent of a Woman and his Rapture chords. Other moments are more like Debussy in that he creates a harmonically static world with the use of modes and scalar patterns. Almost all of his scores exemplify his affinity for parallel fifths, root-position open triads, major and minor 10th chords, and quartal/quintal harmonies. Beyond the technical and theoretical, what I find to be so profound in Newman’s work is its transcendence—the way he takes the listener to a brand new world. Newman, like Stravinsky, Debussy, Dutilleux, Copland, and Ives, among others, has developed a unique and identifiable sound. His music is not only personal but also incredibly deep, thoughtful, provocative, haunting, and beautiful.

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APPENDIX: DESCRIPTION OF INSTRUMENTS Bass Tweed+ has a helix of rods, welded to a round steel plate, that can be bowed or struck and a dozen bass strings with pickups. The strings can be tuned to any pitches and will vibrate sympathetically with the rods.

BuddBox is a melange of wood, plastic, and metal pieces attached to a resonator.

Copper box+ has two steel plates that “mirror” each other with a helix of rods welded around the perimeter, which extend above and below the plates in a chamber that “feeds” a folded-horn resonator.

DADO+ is steel plates that have been cut and shaped, which spin over a dozen pickups, for the doppler effect.

Hurdy-gurdy is a crank string instrument that uses a round piece of wood which, when turned, is like a bow up against a gut string.59 Khol is a two-sided Indian hand drum.

Lithophone melody consists of pieces of rock that produce notes when struck in succession.

Lockheed+ is a suspended two-dimensional structure of welded titanium pieces that weighs more than 100 pounds and has a resonant soundboard attached to it. It can be struck with hammers and the plate and rods can be bowed.

Mantis+ is a three-dimensional titanium structure that spins and makes a “bell” shape. Two microphones can be positioned inside the “bell” shape, looking up, and as the structure is spinning around them, the microphones “hear” the sounds of the structure’s components spinning around them. A spatial effect is created, which falls into the doppler category of sounds.

Maui Xaphoon is a bamboo saxophone or flute.

Pez Eater+ has tuned rods, in front of pickups, that are bowed with ribbons, struck with pencil erasers or hammered dulcimer hammers, or trilled with thin wire.

Replicant+ is a rod and plate instrument using 66 thin rods welded to a tool steel plate over 3 pickups. It can be free-standing or mounted on the front of the Ti-al.

Sceptre+ is a spinning saw blade weldment structure that makes low sounds.

Designed and commentary provided by Chas Smith.

Designed and commentary provided by George Budd.

59 Thomas Newman, e-mail message to author, September 7, 2009. + 

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Ti-al+ is a titanium tube frame steel guitar with a 12-string neck and an 8-string bass neck that “replaces” Guitarzilla+, which weighs 110 pounds in the case.

Towers+ are 9 titanium rods, of different lengths from 4 ½ feet to 9 feet that have titanium plates welded on the ends. They can make pitched sounds and very complicated “noise” at well over 100 decibels.

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FILMOGRAPHY IN REVERSE CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER Brothers (2009) Revolutionary Road (2008) Towelhead (2008) WALLâ&#x20AC;¢E (2008) The Good German (2006) Little Children (2006) Jarhead (2005) Cinderella Man (2005) Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004) Angels in America (2003) (TV) Finding Nemo (2003) White Oleander (2002) Road to Perdition (2002) The Salton Sea (2002) Six Feet Under (2001) (TV; main theme) In the Bedroom (2001) Boston Public (2000) (TV; main theme) Pay It Forward (2000) Erin Brockovich (2000) American Beauty (1999) The Green Mile (1999) Meet Joe Black (1998) The Horse Whisperer (1998) Oscar and Lucinda (1997) Mad City (1997) Red Corner (1997) Up Close & Personal (1996) Phenomenon (1996) American Buffalo (1996) The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996) Unstrung Heroes (1995) How to Make an American Quilt (1995) The War (1994) The Shawshank Redemption (1994) Little Women (1994) Flesh and Bone (1993) Scent of a Woman (1992) Fried Green Tomatoes (1992) The Player (1992) Men Don't Leave (1990) The Prince of Pennsylvania (1987) The Lost Boys (1987) Light of Day (1987) Less Than Zero (1987)

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Jumpin' Jack Flash (1986) Real Genius (1985) The Man with One Red Shoe (1985) Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985) Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) Grandview, U.S.A. (1984) Revenge of the Nerds (1984) Reckless (1984)

LIST OF COMPOSITIONS Reach Forth Our Hands (1996) for the Cleveland Orchestra At Wardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Ferry (2001), contrabass concerto for the Pittsburgh Symphony It Got Dark (2009), concerto for string quartet and orchestra for the Kronos String Quartet and Los Angeles Philharmonic ALBUMS Tokyo 77 (2002)

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Abondolo, Nico. E-mail message to author. September 19, 2009.

Anonymous. “Thomas Newman Biography.” PDF supplied by the Gorfaine/Schwartz Agency.

Beasley, John. E-mail message to author. September 16, 2009.

Bernstein, Bill. E-mail message to author. September 22, 2009.

Budd, George. E-mail message to author. September 22, 2009.

Cox, Rick. E-mail message to author. September 14, 2009.

Doering, George. E-mail message to author. September 14, 2009.

Fisher, Michael. E-mail message to author. September 13, 2009.

Kujala, Steve. E-mail message to author. September 17, 2009.

Mah, Larry. E-mail message to author. September 13, 2009.

Newman, Thomas. E-mail message to author. January, 16 2008. ______________. Interviewed by author. The Juilliard School, New York, NY. September 2, 2008.

Page, Sid. E-mail message to author. September 22, 2009.

Palmer, Christopher and Fred Steiner. "Newman, Alfred." Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online. Edited by Deane Root. <http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com> (accessed September 10, 2008).

Smith, Chas. E-mail message to author. September 15, 2009.

Tavaglinoe, Steve. E-mail message to author. September 11, 2009.

Vicari, Tommy. E-mail message to author. September 15, 2009.

Wallace, Amy. “Oscars ’98; The Newman Conquests; With 70 Oscar Nominations in Film Music, Alfred, Emil and Lionel and Their Modern-day Descendants Outscore the Rest.”

Los Angeles Times, March 22, 1998.

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