For Halloween I thought that I'd offer up this brief (and otherwise incomplete) film score analysis of a few scenes from Stanley Kubrick's 1980 horror masterpiece, The Shining. I wrote a massive research paper on this in grad school, but lost it, so I'm starting from scratch here. The film itself is a 142 minute long exercise in the art of building tension. The music plays such a key role in the pacing of the film and in establishing the suspense that it almost becomes another character in of itself. There is actually very little in the way of original score in the film, Kubrick opting once again to use the music of past and present masters as opposed to typical Hollywood factory music.
What little original score there is, is provided by Wendy Carlos. In the opening scene, her arrangement of the Dies Irae accompanies the gorgeous second unit photography that follows Jack Torrance's car through the Rocky Mountains. The Dies Irae is a part of the Catholic Requiem Mass that deals with the Day of Judgement. The actual sequence of notes heard dates back to Gregorian chant and has been used by many composers over the years. Carlos' arrangement is especially reminiscent of Berlioz's setting in the Symphonie Fantastique. She chooses to add haunting effects throughout as well, using a combination of electronic sounds and and samples to give an eerie quality to the already ominous notes of the ancient melody. The effect of this scoring, combined with the cinematography, is to immediately draw us in to the vulnerability of Jack Torrance and clearly sets the tone for the events that will unfold over the course of the film.
One of my favorite appropriations of concert music in the film is the scene of Danny and Wendy in the hedge maze set to Bela Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta. What always amazes me about this scene, is that without the music, it is almost entirely innocuous. Go ahead and watch it without the music, you'll see what I mean. It is unclear to me whether or not Kubrick intended from the start to use this music over this scene, but it is clear that he cut the scene to fit directly to the music as opposed to the traditional method of writing music to film. The end result is to push the tension to a new level and to expose a possible predatory relationship between Jack and Danny and Wendy.
The scene begins with the sound of a tennis ball (ominous in of itself for some reason) hitting the wall as we see an unused typewriter, indicative of the fact that Jack is getting no work done. A dissolve from Jack throwing the ball to Danny and Wendy running towards the maze leads into the beginning of the cue. The music is from the third “Adagio” movement of the piece and was heard in part in a previous scene where Jack and Danny have a slightly unnerving conversation. The cue plays over Danny and Wendy walking through the maze and makes it clear to us that this is not just a walk in the park. A dissolve to Jack pacing the hallways of the hotel leads to a minor climax in the music that lines up exactly with Jack's tennis ball hitting the floor (sorry, for some reason this is missing in the only clip of this on YouTube). Jack approaches a model of the maze and as he gazes over it there is a cut to an overhead shot of the real maze making it feel as though Jack is looking down on them. The cut happens exactly in time to the point in the music that multiple overlayed glissandi in the harp and celeste begin, a beautiful orchestrational effect that works perfectly in conjunction with the effects shot (a flawless composite) that we see. As the music builds, Wendy and Danny continue their banal conversation until finally the tension is released with a loud cymbal crash and a title card that reads “Tuesday” (also missing from this clip. Seriously, go watch this tonight). The scene would have little impact without the music. Although it serves to establish a crucial location for the climax of the film, it would hardly ratchet up the suspense or move the plot forward without the Bartok.
The next scene to look at is the one where Wendy finds Jack's stack of papers and an ensuing confrontation takes the situation to a new level. The music here is from Polish composer Krzysztof Pendereki's Polymorphy. The piece was not written to be scary, rather it was another exercise in the sound mass music that was being explored at the time by Pendereki and others such as Gyorgy Ligeti, whose music is also featured earlier in the film. The extended string techniques and timbre organization of this piece have had an enormous effect on film scoring (specifically in horror-genre films). Once again Kubrick cuts the scene to the music. The audio and visual marry together so well that it is hard to imagine that Kubrick didn't envision this music for the scene from an early point.
When Wendy enters the lounge carrying the bat, we hear the low rumble of the basses. This idea builds as Wendy crosses the lounge hesitantly and ultimately ends up at the typewriter. Jack's true mental state begins to dawn on Wendy as she looks through the stack of papers that he has been typing. The music at this point changes. We still hear the basses but high piercing harmonics in the violins enter into the orchestration followed soon after by glissandi in the cellos and violas. The moment that Jack steps into frame behind Wendy, the timbre changes to the random pizzicati (plucked strings) and establishes a new dynamic for both the music and the scene. Watch as Jack drops his hand on the stack of papers. It is synced up with the larger more prominent pizzicato at that moment. The rest of the scene plays out with the music providing a subtle bed of uneasiness underneath. When Wendy finally hits Jack with the bat, the music is actually from another Pendereki piece, the “Kanon Pascy” from Utrenja, which is actually a sacred choral piece believe it or not.
Hope you enjoy these clips. I can't resist leaving you with this final little video that some genius asshole posted up. Brilliant.
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