Welcome back to Scoring for Films, as always, this is Vito Lo Re and as always, by my side is Fabrizio Campanelli, maybe. Welcome back to the section "What lies underneath", in which we talk about film music and indeed today we're talking about Giorgio De Chirico But wasn't he a painter?... Yes, yes, but... Today we're talking about Thomas Newman. And you need to explain to our listeners, and also to me, how De Chirico relates to Thomas Newman. But first let's remember one thing: Thomas Newman has had 1?

No. 2? No. 10?... No 14 Oscar nominations. And he won?...

Zero! Why? Because some things are unfathomable. But there's another rather strange mystery, because if you think about it, the Newmans in film music are like the Orfei in the circus. There's David, there's Randy, and their father Alfred Newman, who also has a small record: he is the composer who has won the most Oscars in cinema history. And so to balance the family...

He's won 9! I believe that even Williams, whom we wish 150 years of life, will never reach nine Oscars. Have they compensated, you say? Today we are talking about Thomas Newman, in a soundtrack that in my opinion should have won the Oscar, indeed for me, it did. But maybe one day we could do an episode on the soundtracks that should have won... And we talk about "American Beauty".

And what does De Chirico have to do with "American Beauty"? So, let's start delving a bit into metaphysics. Giorgio De Chirico was born in 1888 in Volos, Greece. He will also study in Athens and will become very famous for his metaphysics and his empty squares; his squares are flooded with light. Moreover, he will not be the only painter who will make blinding, dazzling light in emptiness his trademark. We will also have Hopper, another very famous painter, known for the loneliness of spaces.

We are interested in what the light creates as a sensation in the viewer. In this case of those who look at the paintings, but also in the viewer of cinema. For example, in American Beauty, the photography of Conrad Hall, whom Sam Mendes, the director, calls as the director of photography, is a photography where the light plays a fundamental role. Since those who write film music are subject to sensations of various kinds, not only to their imagination, their desire and sometimes their ego. They retrace in another way what are the essential lines of the film. Why metaphysics?

Because beauty is discussed in the film. What more than beauty is an ideal? What better than beauty can be suited to an archetypal idea? An idea that transcends reality, an idea that also offers sensations of various kinds, which we will now see. Let's me get this straight because our viewers are aware that you are the intellectual guy: you are telling me that the same sense of emptiness and at the same time beauty was brought into the soundtrack? Exactly.

Just as when we see a painting by De Chirico or a painting by Hopper we have a sensation of dazzling light, of that loneliness that makes us perceive the beyond, a world that is beyond. We manage to perceive that world in this case visually in the painting, but in the case of Thomas Newman also acoustically. If he succeeded, he is a phenomenon. He did succeed. Indeed, it is one of the soundtracks that made me say: wow, I want to... in the future do this job, namely to tell, something of what is beyond, what is beyond what you see.

Well, today we start by telling how Thomas Newman told all this. Exactly, and how did he tell it? With a very, very famous, very iconic scene in which we will see the now famous... plastic bag floating in the air. and it begins at that point in the film to make us perceive that there is a beauty beyond the boundaries of reality. And also emptiness, though.

Let's go immediately to see it. Here is Ricky, who is about to say a fundamental sentence: "Do you want to see the most beautiful thing I’ve ever filmed?" And we're all intrigued, let's see. Everyone here is wondering: "What will he show us?" And for him this is the most beautiful thing he has filmed and indeed it is beautiful. The first notes of Thomas Newman start and I realize that there is not only beauty, but genius. "It was one of those days, when in a minute it's going to snow. And there's electricity in the air." Note well, we...

observe the beauty of the other world, the beyond, portrayed in an elsewhere, which is that of the screen. Beautiful the fixed image with the two of them motionless... And you hypnotically... observe this bag... with Thomas Newman's notes behind it. Later we will explain how musically the soundtrack conveys this sense of emptiness and also of beauty.

This theme we will also find in the final scene. "Seeing it on video is a poor thing, I know. But it helps me remember. I need to remember. Sometimes there's so much... beauty in the world I can't accept it." There is so much beauty, he says, and where did he portray that beauty?

In everything that is behind, in all that world he sees through the lens, like when we see through the painter's canvas - hence De Chirico and Hopper - he sees it with another medium and we discover it thanks to the music of Thomas Newman. And if we want that shot with them watching is not different from a painting, right? Sure, it's an animated painting. And if they had been in a museum, the scene would have been the same. Let's try to frame how we travel to the beyond. So, the first thing that emerges is the use of reverb.

Thomas Newman makes extensive use of reverb. Perhaps because it might be what gives us the sense of space and emptiness? Exactly, in fact the reverb offers a boundary. Reverb, essentially, is that effect which, starting from natural origins, is now emulated, giving us a certain space, a certain depth through a certain number of reflections. These reflections have a duration that is more or less short, more or less long. Obviously, our brain is accustomed to associate long durations with large spaces.

So you're saying that if I listen to a musical piece with a lot of reverb, my mind will automatically be led to think of something vast. Very good. Reverb recreates in the listener's mental space a virtual space, which is what the brain automatically associates with the length of the reflections, the number of reflections, the very tail of the sound. Imagine being in a cave, we would hear a long sound. Instead, imagine being in a kitchen, a small space, it will be much drier, much closer. We grew up in different environments and our brain has been trained to receive information, to encode and decode them.

And we may not even be fully aware of it. When we, making music, play with reverb, we also play to recreate a virtual space in the listener's brain. Another fundamental element, besides reverb, is equalization. That is, how the piano frequencies are more or less enhanced, more or less softened. We hear a piano that is very soft, incisive on certain frequencies; we will also see this in the next episode when we recreate it. But for now, we are interested in understanding that the sensation that comes to us from those piano notes played very softly, with a very soft timbre, probably closed in equalization, as we will see, reverberated, can only refer us to amniotic fluid.

So to our intrauterine life, which is a protected life, safe, serene, a beautiful life. So are you telling me that that bag spinning in the end within the same space was a kind of fetus? We can see it as delineating a barrier which can be either the wall behind or the screen itself. And as if the bag were traveling and floating in the amniotic fluid and we were with it to see the beauty of that world, the beauty of that primordial world that we lived in, which obviously we do not consciously remember; through the filter dictated in this case by Thomas Newman's piano or by the same lens, by the same separation offered to us by the view on the screen: they watch seated in another reality, so that separation immerses us in that other world where everything is beautiful, everything is warm, everything is protected, everything is safe. Probably it is one of those elements in which humans tend to return. But if we had that exact same music, just as we heard it, but without that reverb and without that equalization?

We would not have the same sensations. Even with the same notes? Even with the same notes, exactly as if we did not have that treatment of light in De Chirico's painting we would not have the same sense of estrangement. If I draw a square identical to De Chirico's and that's it I have the impression that I will not get the same result. Absolutely. Do we want to recreate that light?

Let's use reverb. Let's go on, let's open up, and what else do we offer to the viewer? Not only a spatial dimension, but also a temporal dimension, because to a very large spatial dimension is also associated an internalized slower time in the viewer. Perhaps because the brain associates large spaces with a longer travel time, so instinctively also a slowing down: the longer the distance, the more our perception is of slowness. It is no coincidence that in an action scene we have very fast, very excited music, because it transports us even more into the action. This is the exact opposite.

Or, it happens to see at key moments maybe, those in which you have to emphasize the highest, elevated, lyrical aspects of the scene, we see playing in contrast, exactly the opposite: we see very slow music that on a frantic moving scene is as if it takes us out of, beyond reality, as if we were watching from an absolute point of view what is happening with all the lyricism and epicness of the scene. In this case, then, the time of the piano of "American Beauty", of the piece we saw of the bag, is a slow time. A time that harmonizes us with the reverberated space, with the slow movements of our being. And we add the fact that this theme of few notes, albeit very beautiful, repeats itself, because the bag keeps spinning. So there is no real beginning, no real climax and no real end. It is something circular, circular music, which makes us think of something enclosed, if you will.

Ultimately absolute. He wants to tell the absolute, he wants to tell the beauty, that beauty that he perceives and that he cannot, as if it were all imploded inside him, touch. And if you think about it, this thing is even more extraordinary because he achieves an artistically excellent result, with few chords, few notes and without the use of a big theme. No, indeed, the famous few notes that manage to tell you a world that few Maestros are able to do. We hear this theme again in the final scene, that same final scene where the theme of beauty re-emerges forcefully, which we are going to hear now. But Fabri, I suggest one thing: before seeing how the great Thomas Newman scored this scene, I propose we see and show those who follow us how it came to him.

You're right, because we always remember that when writing music for a film or a scene the scene arrives without music, for me not to have a temp track. It's beautiful to see a final result. But for good Thomas, good Tommy, what did he receive? I would say to see it. And we with our famous very powerful NASA tools have removed the music and left only the dialogue, the little dialogue there is. Let's see.

So, first of all, let's notice how there is a total prairie for music is available. Of course, because it is a scene with very few words, but those few are very important. He is remembering something that no longer exists. Not only that, but now there's the plot twist. "But look, but look, but look..." This scene is fantastic. He puts it down and...

Of course, you hear the shot. Now, here you could score this scene with a shot in the "Psycho" style, with something full of percussion, something tense. And here too, we notice afterward, their descent down the stairs, the movement... slow. ...slow. Here, they find themselves facing, obviously, the corpse of the man we saw earlier.

And Rick does something challenging at the directorial level, which is he kneels down - the camera is on him - very slowly and begins to observe Lester, dead, still, for an indescribable amount of seconds. Newman must have thought: How do I fill this? Not with 200 instruments and percussions. How do I fill this? Wait, let's see, let's try to write perhaps the most beautiful theme that has ever been written about a person looking... And Lester's monologue begins.

Here, of course, I would suggest a change in the music, because it's a kind of explanation. He starts his beautiful monologue. For me, it was lying under the stars at the Boy Scout camp, watching the falling stars. Remember, the theme is beauty. In that tenth of a second that separates him between life and death he tells us what beauty is to him. And where is beauty?

Beauty is also where you don't expect it, in Carolyn herself. Pay attention to the difficulty of the editing, because all the characters are about to relive the moment of the shot. so we see what they were doing at the moment of the shot, so the daughter, the wife... the colonel, the neighbor and before we saw the daughter and Rick. and Jane... He see her now and when she was a child.

Now we are Thomas Newman who has received... this scene. This scene is really difficult to score! It is very difficult. Carolyn's cry. And Carolyn whom we will see to be a bearer of dissonance.

Then he resumes Rick's theme: the theme of beauty, which refers us to the beyond. And in Lester's case, it's appropriate to say "the other world". And we are going to see it instead, this time, with music. The synths begin played by Tavaglione. Lydian scale, we are in a kind of E-flat, altered fourth degree. Augmented fourth degree.

It's interesting how the augmentation in this case corresponds, not coincidentally, to a resolved Lester. He just finished telling Angela: "I'm fine". So his being well reaches us also through the use of the Lydian scale, the use of the augmented fourth degree. It is increased not by chance, oscillating between the stability of E-flat and the increase of the fourth degree. In his resolution, he looks, observes what he loves. He observes his beauty.

So much so that here, when we see the gun there is no kind of change; simply the music is suspended and disappears for a few seconds. Let's take a step back. Let's start to get a fundamental element: the different layers in Thomas Newman's music which are represented by the piano and the synths. This difference is very important because - always working on a parallel level of psychological introjection and basically in a symbolic key that belongs to deep psychology - we are led to assign symbolic values to the piano and what lies behind it. The piano is Lester's world in this moment, but it is also everyone's world. With the presence of the synths that we hear in the background and the piano that is telling Lester's positive moment of resolution, there is the relationship between the figure and the background, between Lester's world in which we enter thanks to the piano in the foreground and the characters in the background who are ambiguous.

The ambiguity of Lester's world, Lester is resolved, has abandoned the world of dissonance, has abandoned that world of shadows that are represented by the synths working in the background and thanks to the reverb and the equalization of the piano always keeps us in his own space. Could it be that the piano is Lester and what he thinks and the synths are the ambiguity you were talking about? Absolutely, they are the ghosts, the synths are the ghosts. Let's go on: Lester is dead at the peak of his journey, he had reached happiness, he had reached his contact with the beautiful, the beautiful that he has at this moment in his memories, which we will see later when our co-protagonists descend the stairs. Here come the synths again. And here on dead Lester the same theme of beauty reappears.

Lester is the bag. Lester is the link between Rick - and at this moment we are with Rick - and the world of beauty, the world of the beyond, the world where Lester has gone. And here we return again to that theme... with the augmented fourth. The strings... I think this is the most delicate and romantic scene in which a violent death was described So much poetry!

We talked earlier about the "monument" to parallel fifths that here we can see clearly. There are two things we need to say about these blessed parallel fifths. First of all, that the fifth without the third gives the empty chord that does not tell you if it is major or if it is minor. and in this sense of emptiness that the director wants to communicate to us and surely also the composer, it is perfect. These parallel fifths are very different from what we have seen in John Williams. Do you remember those triplets with the trumpets?

It's the effect that interests him. In this case it is different because what Thomas Newman does is more modality than tonality and therefore responds to other rules, other needs and other centers of aggregation. The very concept of tonic is debatable. This music must be made this way; not only is it not an error, but in this language they must be present, because the fifths and often also the fourths parallels give us that sense of emptiness and in some cases also of hardness in the left-hand part, but at the same time, with a very simple line of one, two, three, four notes that make a theme of infinite sweetness that softens the hardness of the fifths. Remember: the absence of the third does not make us take a position, that is, we remain in ambiguity, that ambiguity of ambiguity that in the film we have generated by the presence of the two opposites, of love and death. Love and death are the two oppositions that coexist in the same theme, coexist in the absence of the third and that immediately bring us to that sense of absolute and beauty that is at the same time love and death.

And about this, we could reference so much of that literature and that art... And also myth, archetype... Let's just continue with the development of Thomas Newman's theme. Let’s see how now in the theme main proposition we go into the Dorian mode: C minor with the raised sixth degree. The only harmonic change at that point is with Lester's world of beauty in which we have entered thanks to Thomas Newman. We did not enter by watching the scene, we did not enter by watching the beautiful images and even watching the beautiful cinematography.

We entered with the theme, we are on Jane The appoggiatura on Jane. And on Carolyn We return again to the augmented fourth. You see, here it resumes the same fragment with the augmented fourth of the resolved Lester. And this is precisely the sublimation of everything: Lester has won. He managed to make win someone who died a violent death. that implies a great director and a great composer to do something like this.

She ideally embraces - in her scream of pain - Lester through Lester's resolved theme. And we note that on Carolyn what does our Thomas Newman give us? A nice dissonance. There it is, a nice F G. And the dissonance is not coincidental. We do not know if the editor placed it there or Thomas himself...

...placed the dissonance. But, in short, nothing is coincidental. Whether it is instinctive, whether it is the result of rational thought, whether it is the result of a linguistic decision nothing is by chance. That dissonance is the Carolyn's dissonance. Even in Carolun, Lester, dead, tells us that there is so much beauty. But, on the opposites that clash, that fight inside Carolyn.

From the point of view of classical harmony, this would be an appoggiatura of G to A; incorrect because there is already an A below. But, at the moment we go to A perhaps these two souls, in some way return to the absolute. Back to the bag. The beautiful voice of Roberto Pedicini... And here, chills..... we say goodbye to Lester, who gives us a nice treatise on beauty.

Thanks to Thomas Newman. It is interesting to note how Thomas Newman approaches the composition, by asking a question that all composers should ask themselves, namely about the relationship that music has with the scene and if that music must be, as he says, "character" or "landscape". I believe that one of the first crossroads a composer faces is precisely whether to narrate the action, the exterior, or the interior. The character or what he calls "landscape", that is the world. He says that in a very beautiful interview, which we will link to in the description, where he talks about how sometimes he tried to narrate the character and it, in agreement with the director, did not work and in that case instead projected himself into the narration of the world of the scene, which is among other things what he does in American Beauty, where we are not with Lester; we are in Lester's world and in the everyone's world, by the way. He is narrating everyone's world.

That's also why he can harmonize and unify it so well, because otherwise we have many characters with different emotions that are all linked by the same music, fundamentally, for the reason you mentioned. And these may seem like things for intellectuals, speculations. But actually, retracing that path backwards that we are doing helps to shed light on the famous couch of the psychoanalyst - which ideally we always place in front of us, here in the studio - helps to bring to light those elements that perhaps instinctively, due to the sensitivity of the composer, were connected in scoring a scene, in placing notes, in using a certain type of sound, because remember that nothing is by chance. And therefore a composer may use them rationally or instead use them instinctively, these elements that end up acting on a symbolic level and in the psychology of the depths of the listener are fundamental elements in the communication of a composer. Because otherwise, we reduce everything to scales, chords, harmonic progressions that are needed, obviously we must known this stuff, But then otherwise we end up always making these insignificant and bland pads, or making something correct from the point of view of dramaturgy and image. But the composer must ask himself these questions, so this is the main reason why we shout to the young composers: ask yourself this problem.

Then, how will you solve it? With the chords, with the notes, with the sound and with what we will see in the next episode. So for today, I would say we could stop here. But it doesn't end here. In the next episode we'll recreate Thomas Newman's piano. We will recreate it in the studio with the real piano, but that doesn't mean it can't also be recreated with samples, working on the samples, something that we might analyze even further down the line.

In the meantime, subscribe to the channel, leave a like and comment on what we've said and don't miss the next episode. Bye!