Distant Ecologies: Sci-Fi Film Scores and the Music of the Final Frontier

My overarching concept is simple: ecomusicology in outer space.

I’ve told this to many people and their immediate response is, “Oh! So, like how sound functions in space? Like physics!” While my physics roommates would certainly come in handy if this were the case, as I might have something to contribute to their own daily work, instead I consider the sonic imagination of American film composers of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, and their conjecture about how outer space might sound.

Chapter One: The Golden Age of Science Fiction
Science fiction scholars frequently reference the 1950s as the “Golden Age of Science Fiction.” In this chapter, I analyze how composers wrote for the earliest science fiction films that dealt with outer space, looking for particular composition methods, or any specific instruments that contributed to what they were hoping would be the “sound of outer space.” This chapter covers Bernhard Herrmann’s score for The Day the Earth Stood Still, Ferde Grofé’s score for Rocketship X-M, and Leith Stevens’s score for Destination Moon. I place these three composers and their soundtracks in concert with one another to understand how these composers approached this new cinematic environment.

Chapter Two: The Electrified Outer Space: Louis and Bebe Barron’s Forbidden Planet
This chapter began initially as a seminar paper for a course taught by my advisor, Beth Levy, on ecomusicology. I chose to write about Louis and Bebe Barron and their crazy, fully-electronic soundtrack for the 1956 film Forbidden Planet. This soundtrack was way ahead of its time and it was the starting point for me to explore the possibility of an ecomusicological study of outer space films. A shorter version of this chapter, under the title “Cyborgs and Cybernetics: Electroacoustic Characterization and Ecology in Forbidden Planet (1956),” was presented at the American Musicological Society’s annual meeting in 2018 in San Antonio and was published in 2019 in the Jahrbuch des Zentrums für Populäre Kultur und Musik.

Chapter Three: Jerry Goldsmith Goes to Outer Space
Chapter Three explores Hollywood’s return to acoustic film scoring practices, showing a clear refusal of the electronic composition practices of the previous decade. I demonstrate this shift by highlighting Jerry Goldsmith’s outstanding score for Planet of the Apes (1968) and its incorporation of a serialist structure and unconventional instrumentation to represent the nuclear wasteland that the explorers come to find is their home planet, Earth. Current scholarship by Philip Hayward and Jon Fitzgerald connects the primitivist and modernist sounds to the characters, social stratification, and narrative of the film, and I consider this discourse as I link these sounds to an apparently unfamiliar, hostile environment for the human explorers. I then compare and contrast Goldsmith’s work on Planet of the Apes to his film score for Alien, premiering just over one decade later in 1979. To fully understand Goldsmith’s approach to each film and how the music relates to the outer space environments, I consider each film’s genre precedents: Planet of the Apes engages with perception and psychology as a means to disorient and puzzle the viewer, whereas Alien is undeniably drawing from horror and thriller tropes. Additionally, I suggest that some of the elements of Goldsmith’s score relate to pastoral musical tropes, though Goldsmith modifies them slightly to accommodate the wildness of the sci-fi environment. 

In contrast with the previous chapters that engage with conventional Hollywood scoring and instances of electronic instruments and sounds, this chapter examines the ecological effects that result from an acoustic, but contemporary film score. Goldsmith has stated in interviews that he believes the linking of electronic music and science fiction is too cliché. An examination of the acoustic avant garde sound present in both Planet of the Apes and Alien reveals how Goldsmith and approached the sound of outer space ecologies, such as the desolate, ape-dominated planet and the treacherous, bleak lunar surface, home to the deadly alien, and the sonic representation of non-humans and aliens, without resorting to the “cliché” electronic sounds of the previous decade.

Chapter Four: Sci-Fi’s Return to Convention

Chapter Four offers insight into the work of John Williams: one of the foremost composers in Hollywood history. In this chapter, I will explore the retransition from avant-garde scoring practices back to the late Romantic styles that were popular before and during the early 1950s, as well as the continuously developing technologies that made for innovative sound effects design. I open the chapter by revisiting Jerry Goldsmith and his score for the movie Star Trekto draw comparisons between his avant-garde styles and his conventional scoring practices. After an abrasive relationship with Scott in Alien, working with Robert Wise and Gene Roddenberry, who shared and encouraged Goldsmith’s vision of outer space, was a breath of fresh air for the composer. Several interviews and scholarly publications reveal that Goldsmith was conscious of his score’s relationship with the image, characters, and narrative, and for Star Trek, he finally got his chance to compose a romantic score for outer space. Though he followed Williams’s neoromantic footsteps, he clung to his individual style of embedding unconventional instruments and sounds, demonstrated prominently by the Blaster Beam.

Williams’s score for Star Wars completely changed the sonic landscape of sci-fi. In my analysis of Star Wars, I focus on the many leitmotifs that Williams composed for the characters and themes throughout the original trilogy. I next consider the role of sound effects and how they interface with Williams’s score. I suggest that, through these two analyses, the treatment of technology differs greatly from the Rebellion to the Empire. I close the chapter by examining how Williams’s approached landscape in his score. To achieve that, I analyze how the themes of four characters (Luke, Yoda, the Jawa and the Tusken Raiders) are connected to their surrounding environments. Whereas the heroic main characters like Luke travel across the galaxy, carrying their theme with them, other characters like the Jawa, who are indigenous to Tatooine, have a theme that more closely integrates with Williams’s desert music.

During the boom of the 1970s, composers such as Jerry Goldsmith and John Williams capitalized on the heightened popularity of the genre. This chapter links my analysis of older films to more contemporary science fiction films, as it witnessed the thawing of the Cold War, and the emergence of more modern critiques of environmental degradation, colonialism, and the rapid development of technology. The soundtracks for these films are much more challenging to analyze ecologically, however, since their soundtracks focus more on representations of characters rather than place. By reframing our perspective of these film scores to a more ecomusicological reading, relating the music and sounds to the environments in each film, I demonstrate that both film scores go beyond simple character sonification and exhibit sonic relationships with the other-worldly environments in which they are set.