ABSTRACT
Hollywood film music has changed considerably since the 1950s, as both the melodic style of the earlier Steiner generation’s work and the counterpoint of the Rosenman and North generation are only rarely heard. The temporality of film music has also changed; where North or Rosenman used melodic developing variation or goal-directed harmonic progressions to give an impression of forward movement, recent film scoring tends to use forward-moving modular repetition to vectorise time. The scores of 1950s films, along with their acting and other stylistic features, can seem overblown to today’s audiences, unused as the audiences are to the extremes of musical and physical expression they so frequently foreground. Gyllenhaal is also one of the closer current analogues of Clift/Dean/Brando style star: an actor with a wide range but consistent performative rigour who has attracted accomplished directors and engaging scores. Earlier styles of romanticism merged with modernist experimentation, notably in the intensified combination of new acting styles with new musical styles.
