Presenter: Hyrum Kohler, College of Fine Arts and Communications, Music
Authors: Hyrum Kohler
Faculty Advisors: Jeff Lyon, College of Fine Arts and Communications, Music
Institution: Brigham Young University
Max Steiner is well-known for his timeless film-scoring of King Kong (1933). This particular film score is heralded as a hallmark work filled with milestones and unprecedented developments that are still used in the film industry today. For example, instead of relying on diegetic music and popular tunes to transport the audience into the world of the characters, Steiner used the music to express the emotions and motives of Kong in a remarkable way. Additionally, just the sheer scope of the work swamps other films at the time in terms of length and continuity. Consequently, film score researchers have analysed and written a great deal about this momentous work. It may seem as though Steiner jumped from minor roles immediately to Kong status film scores, but Roar of the Dragon (1932) and other films from Steiner’s earlier work at RKO Radio Pictures are evidence of his growth and experimentation leading up to his first major success as film composer. These films are not as well known because they were relatively unsuccessful at the box office and the manuscript scores have been lost. Research has been conducted at Brigham Young University as a part of a corpus study of all of his film scores in order to recreate what the score of this film would have looked like by aural transcription and surviving musical information. This restorative process has revealed substantial amounts of harmonic complexity, developed motifs and gestures, and nearly half of the film accompanied by music. Especially developed is the villain’s theme and motifs, the bandit Voronsky Tartar. Research of this kind allows for us to explore what techniques Steiner employed to express the development of Voronsky and set the mood for an adventure in a foreign land.