Louis and Bebe Barron's Forbidden Planet: A Film Score Guide 0810856700, 9780810856707

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Scarecrow Pi[m Score quU£es Series P.cfitor: 1(ate (])au6ney 1. Gabriel Yared's The English Patient: A Film Score Guide, by Heather Laing. 2004. 2. Danny Elfman's Batman: A Film Score Guide, by Janet K. Halfyard. 2004. 3. Ennio Morricone 's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: A Film Score Guide, by Charles Leinberger. 2004. 4. Louis and Bebe Barron's Forbidden Planet: A Film Score Guide, by James Wierzbicki. 2005. 5. Bernard Herrmann's The Ghost and Mrs. Muir: A Film Score Guide, by David Cooper. 2005.

Louis and Bebe Barron's Forbidden Planet A Film Score Guide James Wierzbicki

Scarecrow Film Score Guides, No.4

The Scarecrow Press, Inc. Lanham, Maryland • Toronto • Oxford 2005

SCARECROW PRESS, INC. Published in the United States of America by Scarecrow Press, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www. scarecrowpress.com PO Box 317 Oxford OX2 9RU, UK Copyright© 2005 by James Wierzbicki All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wierzbicki, James Eugene. Louis and Bebe Barron's Forbidden planet : a film score guide I by James Wierzbicki. 2005. p. em.- (Scarecrow film score guides; no. 4) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8108-5670-7 I. Barron, Louis, musician. Forbidden planet. 2. Barron, Bebe. Forbidden planet. I. Title. II. Series. ML410.B258W54 2005 781.5'42-dc22 2005008132

eTMThe paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Manufactured in the United States of America.

To Helene, who knows the stuff that dreams are made on

Contents Figures Editor's Foreword Kate Daubney Preface

VIII

ix xi

Chapter 1

Origins and Connections

Chapter 2

Compositional Techniques

17

Chapter 3

Historical and Critical Contexts

43

Chapter 4

The Music

63

Chapter 5

The Film Score

99 155 175 179 185

Notes Bibliography Index About the Author

vii

Figures Titles refer to Forbidden Planet soundtrack album.

4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 4.10 4.11 4.12 4.13 4.14 4.15 4.16 4.17 4.18 4.19 5.1 5.2

"Main Titles-Overture," motif no. 1 Harmonic progression (ii -V-i) in F minor "Main Titles-Overture," motif no. 2 (first part) "Main Titles-Overture," motif no. 2 (second part) "Main Titles-Overture," structural design "A Shangri-La in the Desert/Garden with Cuddly Tiger," first melodic sequence "A Shangri-La in the Desert/Garden with Cuddly Tiger," second melodic sequence "An Invisible Monster Approaches," principal motif "Love at the Swimming Hole," concluding sequence "Ancient Krell Music," motif "Robby, the Cook, and 60 Gallons of Booze," motif "The Homecoming," melodic sequence Forbidden Planet soundtrack album, tracks by category Forbidden Planet soundtrack album, motivic design Forbidden Planet soundtrack album, tonal design Forbidden Planet soundtrack album, melodic patterns in tracks 1 and 23 Forbidden Planet soundtrack album, implied harmonies in tracks 1 and 23 Forbidden Planet soundtrack album, symmetries in tonal design Forbidden Planet soundtrack album, proportions in tonal design Forbidden Planet score, list of cues Forbidden Planet score, array of cues 0

vm

66 67 68 68 71 75 76 78 81 83 85 89 90

91 94 95 95 96 96 147 148

Editor's Foreword

The Scarecrow series of Film Score Guides is dedicated to drawing together the variety of analytical practices and ideological approaches in film musicology for the purpose of studying individual scores. Much value has been drawn from case studies of film scoring practice in other film music texts, but these guides offer substantial, wide-ranging, and comprehensive studies of single scores. Subjects are chosen for the series on the basis that they have become and are widely recognized as benchmarks for the way in which film music is composed and experienced, or because they represent a significant stage in the compositional development of an individual film composer. A guide explores the context of a score's composition through its place in the career of the composer and its relationship to the techniques of the composer. The context of the score in narrative and production terms is also considered, and readings of the film as a whole are discussed in order to situate in their filmic context the musical analyses which conclude the guide. Furthermore, although these guides usually focus on the score as written text, bringing forward often previously unknown details about the process of composition as they are manifested in the manuscript, analysis also includes exploration of the music as an aural text, for this is the first and, for most audiences, the only way in which they will experience the music of the film. Forbidden Planet meets the criteria for inclusion in the series in a number of ways, not least for the historical, stylistic, and generic precedents and standards set by its electronic score. But beyond that, as Dr. Wierzbicki identifies, the score raises multiple questions which challenge those interested in film music, such as the exact definition of the score in technical and musical terms, and how the process of creation is affected when two composers are involved. There are wider questions concerning the relationship between music and sound effects, and the effect of this relationship on both our sense of the boundary IX

X

Editor's Foreword

between diegetic and non-diegetic, and our certainty of what we mean by 'music.' And for film scholars, there is the issue of a soundscape that is integrated into the narrative fabric in a manner far different from traditional, classical attitudes to Hollywood scoring. Dr. Wierzbicki's insightful analyses-made entirely from the aural text, for no written manuscript exists for the score-also tackle the soundtrack album, a phenomenon which should not be disregarded in film musicology for its 'perfect capture' of a score without the intrusions of other elements of the film. In the case of Forbidden Planet the album reveals some surprising analytical conclusions which juxtapose strikingly with the Barrons' strongly ideological approach to composition, and allow the contextualization of the score in developments in electronic music outside film. This book provides a wide-ranging and detailed consideration of a score which not only broke the mold for science-fiction film, but set the standard for the genre, and whatever the reader's level of musical knowledge or understanding, there is much to be learned here about this extraordinary soundtrack. Dr. Kate Daubney Series Editor

Preface

Forbidden Planet, by almost any measurement, counts as an unusual film. It is a product of the MGM studio, which in the 1950s was hardly in the business of making science-fiction films. Originally planned as a 'B' picture, the 1956 Forbidden Planet features spectacular special effects and-rare for the sci-fi genre's 'Golden Age'-brilliant color cinematography. The plot fairly tingles with sexual innuendo and the dialogue is rich in references to Freudian psychology, yet the film was marketed to a juvenile audience. Notwithstanding the way Forbidden Planet looks and plays, perhaps the most unusual thing about the film is the way it sounds. Never before had a major Hollywood effort utilized a score generated entirely by electronic means. In and of itself, this is quite enough to install the contributions of composers Louis and Bebe Barron in the canonic chronicles not just of film but also of twentieth-century music. But the standard texts on film history and music history typically allude only to the simple fact of the matter. In reviewing the relatively extensive literature on the development of electronic music, seldom does one encounter an account of the Barrons' technology and methodology. Likewise, in reviewing the literature on film music in general, seldom does one find commentary on how the Barrons' score--quite aside from its unprecedented sonorities-again and again challenges Hollywood norms. This study of the music for Forbidden Planet explores first the backgrounds of Louis and Bebe Barron, the genesis of the film project, the peculiar circumstances through which the Barrons came into contact with MGM, and the equally peculiar aftermath of Hollywood's first-ever electronic film score. Chapter 2 begins with a brief history of electronic music and its use in science-fiction films, but primarily it examines the Barrons' compositional techniques, which differ markedly from those of the two more or less official 'schools' of electronic xi

xii

Preface

music-the Paris-based musique concrete, which focused on manipulations of recorded sounds, and the Cologne-based elektronische Musik, which focused on synthesized sound-that held sway in the 1950s. Chapter 3 attempts to place Forbidden Planet, quite aside from its music, into historical and critical context. The chapter begins with an exploration of the basic narrative formulas of American science-fiction films from the 1950s and then measures Forbidden Planet against the norm. While suggesting that the film remains open to interpretation, the chapter summarizes modern readings that focus intensely on such issues as special effects, robotics, Freudian psychology, and allusions to Shakespeare's The Tempest. Returning to the music, chapter 4 deals analytically with the Barrons' material as pure sonic phenomena, deliberately removed from its filmic context and examined in terms of its presentation on an 'original soundtrack recording' issued more than twenty years after the film's release. Finally, at length and in detail, chapter 5 analyzes the Barrons' music as a functional film score. The project originated with my approach to Kate Daubney, editor of Scarecrow Press's series of Film Score Guides, regarding Franz Waxman's 1950 Oscar-winning music for Sunset Boulevard. Daubney suggested that a treatment of Sunset Boulevard indeed warrants a place in the Scarecrow series, but apparently she was aware of my work both with electronic music and with music for science-fiction films, and she pressed me hard as to whom I might recommend for a study of the score for Forbidden Planet. Reading between the lines of her communications, eventually it dawned on me that she wanted me to do the book myself. For this impetus and confidence I will be eternally grateful, and I am thankful, too, for Kate's assistance in shaping a sometimes unwieldy original manuscript into publishable form. I am also indebted to Bebe Barron, who graciously responded to requests for information regarding compositional processes; to William H. Rosar, editor of the Journal of Film Music, who challenged my suppositions and pointed me in the direction of pertinent source materials; to Bernard Gilmore, Alan Terricciano, and others of my former colleagues at the University of California, Irvine, who dutifully listened to my burgeoning theories regarding possible tonal relationships in the Barrons' score; to University of Michigan graduate students Colin Roust and Nathan Platte, who reminded me often that film music is indeed a field worthy of serious study; to Andrew Nardone, who carefully proofread an early draft of this book; to my daughters Anna, Helene, and Eva, who offered encouragement whenever energy waned; and to my brother Michael Wierzbicki, who never let me forget that Forbidden Planet is, after all, just a movie.

Chapter 1

Origins and Connections The co-composers of the score for Forbidden Planet were both born in Minneapolis, Minnesota-Louis Barron on 23 April 1920 and Charlotte Wind (later Bebe Barron) on 16 June 1927. Bebe Barron grew up in North Dakota and returned to her native city in her late teens to enroll in the music department of the University of Minnesota. She thought of herself primarily as a pianist, but she took composition lessons with Roque Cordero (b. 1917), a Panamanian composer who since 1943 had been affiliated with the University of Minnesota as a graduate student. Her music studies apparently behind her, Bebe Barron stayed on at the University of Minnesota and earned a master's degree in political science. She recalls that she met her future husband in Minneapolis "after he attended the University of Chicago where he had studied music. He was trying to decide if he should study electronics-for a long time that had been his hobby." 1 When they met, Bebe Barron recalled, "Louis had just returned from years of living in the jungles of Mexico where he had been trying to write a play." 2 At the time, Louis Barron was also studying piano at the University of Minnesota and writing jazz reviews for one of the local newspapers. 3 In 1947 both musicians moved to New York, where he worked as a social psychologist for the Gallup organization4 and she-in addition to studying composition with Henry Cowell and Wallingford Riegger-worked as a researcher for Time-Life publications. 5 The next year they married. 6 For a wedding present a German friend had given them "one of the first tape recorders imported into [the United States] . . . the same model Hitler had used to record his

2

Chapter I

speeches." 7 The Barrons were intrigued by the gift and immediately "started playing around with it." 8 Sensing the possibilities, Bebe Barron recalled, the couple "did the usual experiments: slowing the tapes down, running them backwards, and adding echo." 9 Shortly after their marriage and initial experiments with the manipulation of sounds recorded on tape, the couple relocated to Monterey, California. Aware that author AnaYs Nin was scheduled to give a lecture in Monterey, the Barrons asked if they might make an audio recording of the event, and Nin gave her consent. A few months later, at Nin's home in San Francisco, the Barrons recorded Nin again, this time reading selections from her House of Incest and Under a Glass Bell, accompanied by hand drums played by Josephine Premice. With an engraving by Nin's husband, Ian Hugo, 10 as the cover art, the Barrons released the recording as the first installment of a series called Sound Portraits. By this time they had moved from Monterey to San Francisco, where Bebe Barron supported the household by working as an administrator in the office of Coronet magazine. The next release in the Sound Portraits series featured the voice ofNin's associate Henry Miller. After the Barrons returned to New York in 1950, two more commercial recordings ensued, one featuring Aldous Huxley and the other devoted to Tennessee Williams. These were "fabulous records," Bebe Barron recalled, and they became "instant collector's items." 11 But marketing the product proved difficult; its documentary value notwithstanding, the Sound Portraits venture was "a total flop." 12 Upon their return to the East Coast the Barrons took an apartment on West 8th Street in Greenwich Village. "The scene there was amazing," Bebe Barron recalled. "All the artists would meet and discuss what they were doing and encourage one another .... We used to go to what was called the 'Artists' Club.' Every type of artist went-all the visual artists of the time like Jackson Pollack; filmmakers; architects; musicians .... And that's where we met John Cage." 13 A few weeks after their first meeting, Cage phoned the Barrons and asked if they might be interested in serving as recording engineers for a series of works he was conceiving, based on the idea of"making music directly onto tape," in collaboration with fellow experimental composers Earle Brown, Morton Feldman, David Tudor, and Christian Wolff. 14 With a project called "Music for Magnetic Tape" in mind, Cage had already applied unsuccessfully for funding from the Ford and Rockefeller foundations. In 1951, however, Cage received a grant of $5,000 from Paul Williams, "an unlicensed New York architect" 15 who had had been a student at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where

Origins and Connections

3

Cage had had an affiliation since the summer of 1948, and who, upon the death of his father, had become a young millionaire. 16 The money from the grant paid the Barrons' rent for a year. In exchange for cash, the Barrons "worked for many months" on the "incredibly intricate task of recording a library of sounds . . . and then cutting, splicing, altering, and combining all the various aspects of these sounds on eight tracks of tape according to chance operations" derived from the ancient Chinese oracular text known as the I Ching. 11 Cage "had us make all these sound recordings (which today would be called samples) and categorize them eight ways: natural sounds, country sounds, city sounds, electronic sounds, small sounds," Bebe Barron recalled. "Then ... we spent immeasurable amounts of time cutting them up into little, tiny, tiny pieces of different shapes, like triangles. I doubt if anybody ever 'heard' all that went into the work, but John [Cage] knew it was there." 18 Four works resulted from the "Music for Magnetic Tape" project. The most famous of these-named after patron Paul Williams-was Cage's 1952 Williams Mix, for which the Barrons recorded "some 500 to 600 sounds" that over a nine-month period were assembled by Cage, Brown, and Tudor into eight separate tapes whose collective duration lasts four and a quarter minutes. 19 On commission from a dance company, Wolff completed Music for Magnetic Tape (1952), and Brown used "remaindered tape cuttings" 20 from the Cage piece for his Octet I (1952-53). The fourth composition to emerge from the project was the Barrons' own For an Electronic Nervous System (1953-54)? 1 Before this, however, the Barrons had completed a work titled Heavenly Menagerie. 22 Significantly, they had also provided an electronic score for a film titled The Bells of Atlantis that was screened in the autumn of 1952 at the Venice Festival. 23 Produced by Ian Hugo and featuring imagery by Hugo and Len Lye, the ten-minute Bells of Atlantis film was based on watery "birthing" imagery contained in the Anars Nin House of Incest prose-poem that had been featured on the first release of the Barrons' Sound Portraits series. Unlike the other works connected with the "Music for Magnetic Tape" project, the Barrons' compositions did not use realworld sounds as their raw material but, rather, sounds generated by electronic oscillators oftheir own making. Heavenly Menagerie, For an Electronic Nervous System, and the score for The Bells ofAtlantis all grew out of "an aesthetic of composition based on the characteristics of [the Barrons'] equipment." 24 "We began to explore the possibilities of simple circuits [that] had characteristic behavior patterns," Louis Barron recalled. "The desiderata was

4

Chapter I

that the behavior should not be regulated, but rather nonlogical. The most interesting sounds came from circuits that were not stable." 25 That the Barrons were involved with music produced by electrical circuitry that was "nonlogical" and "not stable" at first appealed to Cage. But Cage was paying the bills for the "Music for Magnetic Tape" project, and after a while, Bebe Barron recalled, "he got annoyed because we took off on our own!" 26 Along with scoring The Bells ofAtlantis, taking off on their own for the Barrons meant scoring a nine-minute film by Walter Lewisohn titled Miramagic (1954) and then-in the first half of 1955-providing music for a production by the American Mime Theater titled Legend and another Hugo-Nin film (not exhibited until 1956) called Jazz of Lights. 21 After that, for the Barrons, it was on to Hollywood.

Genesis of Forbidden Planet The idea of Forbidden Planet was born with Irving Block, a graphic artist who had settled in Hollywood in 1945 following wartime service as a mapmaker. Block's first job was in the special effects department at Twentieth Century-Fox. In 1949, in partnership with Jack Rabin, Block launched an independent special effects studio called Septa Productions. A fervent believer in the entertainment value of science fiction and as much a developer of story lines as he was an artist, the newly freelance Block busied himself with a project having to do with lunar exploration. Block abandoned this idea when he learned that George Pal's Destination Moon ( 1950) was already in production, but he was able to interest producer Robert Lippert in certain of his visual concepts, and Lippert engaged him to execute special effects for his forthcoming Rocketship X-M(I950). After Destination Moon proved the commercial viability of the science-fiction film, for the next few years Block and Rabin provided special effects for "a succession of ill-conceived, low-budget films that exploited, rather than developed, the new genre." 28 In 1954, when business for Septa Productions had temporarily fallen off, Block came into contact with the writer Allen Adler. Adler suggested that the two collaborate on a really "good science fiction tale." 29 Block agreed, and he suggested that they base their tale on a classic play that had long been one of his favorites: Shakespeare's The Tempest. 30 In Block's vision, the enisled magician Prospero would be a scientist holed up on a long-forgotten planet, and his would-be

Origins and Connections

5

rescuers would be not Italian seamen but the crew of an interplanetary flying saucer. For Block, Shakespeare's two otherworldly charactersthe beautiful spirit Ariel, a master at conjuring illusions, and the malformed witch-born Caliban, a slave to Prospero's bidding-