Musical Storytelling: Aestheticism vs Thematicism

Continuing from yesterday’s post, I’d like to get deeper into this idea of aesthetics vs philosophy in your work. Today, we will be considering philosophy from the point of thematic material: recurring ideas on what your music is about.

Aestheticism vs Thematicism

There is no “one” approach to defining who you are as an artist, and even when you find a way to describe yourself, it will never describe 100% of your work in the present, past or future. We are constantly evolving, which is a good thing, and so is our art. That said, I think we can look at this from two main angles: aesthetics and thematics.

The aesthetics of our art are the actual sound quality of what we work in: genre, instrumentation, tempo, etc. Film composers probably are less likely to lock themselves into a rigid aesthetic as a film can be anything form orchestral, to electronic, to folk inspired yet still identify who you are. Though, you can definitely have broad strokes. For example John Williams is definitely a primarily orchestral composer, but even he incorporates electronics, synths, and folk instruments from time to time. Similarly, Hans Zimmer works with a lot of digital music production, but he'll creates everything from dense electronic textures to otherworldly music with lots of "real world" instrumentation. These are very generalized statements of course but I think it illustrates the idea.

So if not aesthetic, what can define us? Well, I think themes play an important role for who we are as artists, even in the context of commission based work. Understanding who we are is an important first step in understanding the stories we are trying to tell. And when we are brought onto a project, we shouldn’t be thinking in terms of “where does the music make sense?” but rather “what are we adding to this story with our music?" and I think that’s an important distinction.

What is musical storytelling?

Imagine for a second you are a director directing your first student film and you put out a cattle call for composers: Many young media composers will espouse these grand ideas that they can compose any music with soaring melodies to bring new life into your project in any genre. They’ll claim they are storytellers and beg you to work on your film. And then when time comes to start the film, they may be writing great music but the story they are telling is not exactly what you want to say with your movie.

Well, unfortunately this is a reality for many of our clients. Composers (and many artists in general) are so quick to be willing to do anything in order to get a gig that there’s hardly any real reason to pick one over the hundreds, if not thousands, of others who are willing to do the work for free/cheap. This is unfortunate, but there is a fix and it comes with understanding our role as composers.

A Composer is the last and final writer on a film.

In movies, a story gets told three times. It gets told by the writer, who conceptualizes the idea, puts it down on paper, and refines it until it is perfect. It is then taken by a director, who’s vision guides the cast and crew as they take these scripts and make them tangible pieces of life. Lastly, comes the composer. Our role is often to provide the final layer of “commentary” on a story, or the “subtext” if you will. If you give 100 composers the same movie, you will have told 100 different stories.

A film score brings out different elements in the movie depending on what the music is, where it is spotted, and even how it sounds. All of these are emotional narrative devices that we can use to enhance our storytelling. From timbre to location of music, every choice we make should have a guided focal point of “why?” we are making those choices.

This is where aesthetic and themes come into play.

As I discussed on my short article about spotting, I believe spotting is an important part of style & genre, and by extension aesthetic. What moments we choose to score has a direct impact on the pacing and “feel” of the movie and spotting styles that are common in one genre may not translate to another. On top of that, our instrumentation is also expressive. Film music lives in the “now” with immediate recognition of context and sound being an important story telling device. We do not have the luxury of letting music develop more than a few seconds before the film moves on and our thoughts become outdated. At first, this can be incredibly terrifying but in reality it is powerful. And one of the most powerful ways we get through this is our sonic palette.

So what this means in the most simple terms is the instruments we choose as part of our aesthetic have inherent qualities to them that people recognize and provide context to our story. Bagpipes might evoke the Scottish Highlands. A banjo, the American south. This is why some composers, such as Hans Zimmer on the Dune soundtrack, go to incredible lengths to create or discover unique instruments and instrument pairings for their sound worlds. An alien sounding instrument will instantly make something sound more “alien”, or an instrument we often associate with aliens, such as the theremin, can also accomplish the same thing instantly (but doing so relies more on tradition than innovation)

The other elements of music: harmony, melody, rhythm, texture, etc are all aesthetic choices to be aware of too. These create the basis of “style” and “genre” and can be used effectively to tell many different stories, but this is only one side of the coin. Ten painters may all use the same colors, but explore different ideas. This is where themes come in.

Themes as Musical Style

Going back to our idea of storytelling, every film has thematic material that can be discussed: it’s what makes films interesting and relatable. And even when the writer/director weren’t intending to have XYZ interpretation of their film, the beautiful thing about humans is we can find it when we see it. It’s a bit of a confirmation bias, sure, but at the same time if/when we truly believe in something we will find all sorts of evidence to support it. This can be incredibly powerful in something as abstract as storytelling through art, as our final interpretation of a movie ultimately comes down to us and our discussions about the story with the director.

In that sense, what themes interest us as artists, and what we make ourselves experts on, should be incredibly relevant when a director is hiring you. Our thematic sensibility is the lens in which they will view their final project. If you are a composer who deals in political themes, you might have a different understanding of the musical “Wicked” than a composer who deals with girlhood and friendship. Both of these themes can be inherent in the project, but the moments that jump out at you as “we need to highlight this and bring this particular intention out” will vastly change the story, regardless of the actual aesthetic quality of the music itself.

It is here where the film composer makes their identity known, as often times our aesthetic changes from film to film but the collection of themes and ideas that speak to us as artists (and that we advocate for in the spotting session to enhance the story!) are where we leave our mark on a film and bring in that final layer of musical storytelling. And this is a big reason why director’s might hire you over another.

Your musical voice is not just about what your music sounds like, but what stories you are trying to tell, the choices you make in order to do so, and even the projects that interest you and you sign on to be a part of. Understanding your role and interests as a story teller can help set you apart from the many other composers going for the same gig.

So this week, try looking back at your past projects.

• What stories or emotional ideas keep showing up, even unintentionally?

• What kinds of characters or conflicts do you feel drawn to score?

You might discover that you’ve already been who you are all along. ScoringTech.Net is operated by Joe Chris as a means of trying to give back to the composer community. Consider joining the monthly mailing list to have these articles sent to your inbox on the first of every month! Follow me on instagram @Joe_Chris_ , youtube, or Join our free discord community where we host bi-weekly composition challenges!