Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Plates
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Introduction : Music in the Shadows
- 1 A New and Foreign Land
- 2 Experiment, Experiment, and again Experiment
- 3 Enter Mathieson
- 4 Intoxicating Documentary Days; First Feature
- 5 An Art of Persuasion
- 6 “Pulling Together”
- 7 The People’s War
- 8 Ordinary People
- 9 The Success of the Season
- 10 War’s End
- 11 Reconstruction
- 12 Launder and Gilliat: Soundtrack as Art Form
- 13 A Big Score
- 14 Outcasts and Idioms
- 15 Pennies from Hollywood
- 16 Reed again, and Asquith
- 17 Péllisier, a Forgotten Talent
- 18 Kitsch or Art?
- 19 “Choosing my Palette”
- 20 Seeing Another Meaning
- 21 Swashbucklers and Noir
- 22 Music and the Spoken Word
- 23 Music My Task-Master
- 24 I Labour On …
- 25 And On …
- 26 Dark Themes
- 27 Endings
- 28 Utopian Sunset
- Glossary of Musical Terms
- Filmography
- Discography
- Select Bibliography
- Index
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Plates
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Introduction : Music in the Shadows
- 1 A New and Foreign Land
- 2 Experiment, Experiment, and again Experiment
- 3 Enter Mathieson
- 4 Intoxicating Documentary Days; First Feature
- 5 An Art of Persuasion
- 6 “Pulling Together”
- 7 The People’s War
- 8 Ordinary People
- 9 The Success of the Season
- 10 War’s End
- 11 Reconstruction
- 12 Launder and Gilliat: Soundtrack as Art Form
- 13 A Big Score
- 14 Outcasts and Idioms
- 15 Pennies from Hollywood
- 16 Reed again, and Asquith
- 17 Péllisier, a Forgotten Talent
- 18 Kitsch or Art?
- 19 “Choosing my Palette”
- 20 Seeing Another Meaning
- 21 Swashbucklers and Noir
- 22 Music and the Spoken Word
- 23 Music My Task-Master
- 24 I Labour On …
- 25 And On …
- 26 Dark Themes
- 27 Endings
- 28 Utopian Sunset
- Glossary of Musical Terms
- Filmography
- Discography
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The elegance and sophistication acquired by the British propaganda machine after some five years of war is suggested by Frances Thorpe and Nicholas Pronay:
A film apparently designed to provide straightforward “instruction” on how to approach a government agency for relief might in fact be effective propaganda designed to show how comprehensively the government cared for those suffering from needs resulting from the war.
Moreover,
a series of beautifully made “educational” documentaries about the history of various medical discoveries with apparently no “propaganda” purpose … were in fact part of a propaganda campaign designed to bring home to the public how many of the wounded in the present war were being saved by lavish medical attention, how many of the maimed and disfigured were at this very time being successfully rehabilitated, and how strongly and effectively the present government cared for the wounded soldiers and civilians … The makers of these films might themselves have been quite innocent of the real propaganda purpose which gave them their commissions, and which gave them subjects and scripts quite free from any overt “propaganda”…
Nevertheless, no matter how “innocent” of propagandist intent an instructional film appears, its music score often contains a message “unheard” by the average viewer. Caution is advised : such messages could be conveyed by the composer's unconscious mind-set, rather than from a conscious propagandist intent. Moreover, one must beware of “finding” something that is not there. Alwyn's thesis that music is non-representational, illustrating whatever the listener imagines it to illustrate, is a reminder and a warning.
Despite the caveats, however, listening to the “hidden message” of the music track is revealing. From the very start of the war Alwyn's contribution to propaganda films was enthusiastic and industrious, and covert propagandist content can be detected in many of the titles already considered here. Throughout 1944 and 1945 Alwyn was called upon to score some twenty official propaganda films, including contributions to Rotha's Worker and Warfront magazine series and the RAF newsreel The Gen.
Realist's A Start in Life (1944), directed by Brian Smith for the MoI and Board of Health, was originally for the Latin-American market, but its value at home was plain. As propaganda, documentaries about the care of children have much to offer – for who else's sake was the war being fought?
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- Chapter
- Information
- William AlwynThe Art of Film Music, pp. 109 - 122Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2006