March 2010 April 2010 May 2010 June 2010 July 2010
August 2010
September 2010 October 2010
November 2010
December 2010
January 2011
February 2011 March 2011 April 2011 May 2011 June 2011 July 2011 August 2011 September 2011 October 2011 November 2011 December 2011 January 2012 February 2012 March 2012 April 2012 May 2012 June 2012 July 2012 August 2012 September 2012 October 2012 November 2012 December 2012 January 2013 February 2013 March 2013 April 2013 May 2013 June 2013 July 2013 August 2013 September 2013 October 2013 November 2013 December 2013 January 2014 February 2014 March 2014 April 2014 May 2014 June 2014 July 2014 August 2014 September 2014 October 2014 November 2014 December 2014 January 2015 February 2015 March 2015 April 2015 May 2015 June 2015 July 2015 August 2015 September 2015 October 2015 November 2015 December 2015 January 2016 February 2016 March 2016 April 2016 May 2016 June 2016 July 2016 August 2016 September 2016 October 2016 November 2016 December 2016 January 2017 February 2017 March 2017 April 2017 May 2017 June 2017 July 2017 August 2017 September 2017 October 2017 November 2017 December 2017 January 2018 February 2018 March 2018 April 2018 May 2018 June 2018 July 2018 August 2018 September 2018 October 2018 November 2018 December 2018 January 2019 February 2019 March 2019 April 2019 May 2019 June 2019 July 2019 August 2019 September 2019 October 2019 November 2019 December 2019 January 2020 February 2020 March 2020 April 2020 May 2020 June 2020 July 2020 August 2020 September 2020 October 2020 November 2020 December 2020 January 2021 February 2021 March 2021 April 2021 May 2021 June 2021 July 2021 August 2021 September 2021 October 2021 November 2021 December 2021 January 2022 February 2022 March 2022 April 2022 May 2022 June 2022 July 2022 August 2022 September 2022 October 2022 November 2022 December 2022 January 2023 February 2023 March 2023 April 2023 May 2023 June 2023 July 2023 August 2023 September 2023 October 2023 November 2023 December 2023 January 2024 February 2024 March 2024
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30
31
News Every Day |

How the sounds of ‘Succession’ shred the grandeur and respect the characters so desperately try to project

While the Roy siblings are shielded by their wealth, the show’s music chips away at their armor.
Macall Polay/HBO

Delia Casadei, University of California, Berkeley

HBO’s “Succession” delivered its grand finale on May 28, 2023 – the climax of four award-packed seasons of searing put-downs, nihilistic humor and desperate power plays.

The show tells the story of ailing media tycoon Logan Roy and his four horrid children who aim to inherit his empire. I loved it because it rendered despicable people in power as human – funny, pathetic, capable of deep feeling – without once trying to redeem them.

But as a music historian, I will miss the series’ use of music and sound the most.

As many critics have noticed, one of the series’ best elements is its soundtrack, which is as complex and propulsive as the drama it accompanies.

To me, the show’s clever sound design, combined with composer Nicholas Britell’s gleefully dark score, reflects a level of emotional sophistication that is unrivaled on television.

The theme song for ‘Succession,’ composed by Nicholas Britell.
YouTube/HBO1.42 MB (download)

Corrupting classical music

Most contemporary political dramas are about corruption, and music is great at progressively turning something seemingly wholesome into something sour.

Traditionally, this is done by adding chromaticism – the black keys of the piano keyboard – into the chords and melody, which produces a sense of darkening and dissonance. But these days, anything sounding weird – an off-beat rhythm, an unexpected sound – can do the trick. It is the composer’s skill in layering the strangeness into the music that makes the difference.

Britell has described being inspired by European late-18th century music. And the theme of “Succession” does draw from a couple of unmemorable bars from Beethoven’s “Pathétique Sonata,” slowed down and with a few changed notes.

However, I’d say the theme song’s soundworld is closer to the opening dance of Sergei Prokofiev’s 1935 ballet “Romeo and Juliet” or Sergei Rachmaninov’s famous 1892 piano prelude in C Sharp minor: big romantic pieces that swing between bass notes and thick block chords like the batter of a church bell.

But Britell then adds details that work in outlandish tension with the romantic musical language he’s adopted.

For example, the piano that plays the theme song is audibly out of tune. That’s no accident. Meanwhile, the melody, which is in a high register, awkwardly tries, but ultimately fails, to squirm its way to a brighter key. Throughout the show, there are a lot of reality-show-style pans to the faces of characters saying things like “I am excited.” This is their music.

The rhythm is littered by small dissonant accents in the upper register of the piano that sound like a fun-house version of the “low battery” sound on a cellphone. The effect is alarming – and oddly befitting of the topic of a corrupt media conglomerate.

Lastly, Britell is a hip-hop beat maker and layers the theme song with a cheesy 1990s synthesizer beat. This adds bounce, and a smirk, to the romantic broodiness of the chords and melody.

In his very 21st-century way, Britell festoons earnest Romantic music with details that gleefully desecrate it, bringing viewers right into the psychological dynamics of the show’s protagonists: a hunger for power, accompanied by levels of self-loathing that vacillate between comedy and tragedy.

Brood too much and the effect is lost

For comparison, “House of Cards,” which follows a crooked politician’s quest for the U.S. presidency, and “Yellowstone,” which tells the story of a Montana landowning family’s mission to ward off developers, Indigenous leaders and environmental activists, also attempt to convey a grim mood and crookedness in their music.

Both shows have rightly garnered attention and praise. Yet they, unlike “Succession,” have, in my view, underwhelming scores.

The title theme for ‘House of Cards,’ composed by Jeff Beal.
YouTube/Simon1.47 MB (download)

Their theme songs are symphonic, which befits the grandeur of the topic and obscene privilege of the characters; tunes are carried in the deeper, lower range, rather than the more customary bright, high register. Both theme songs make heavy use of the lower strings of violas, cellos and double basses, which further darken the sonic palette.

The title theme for ‘Yellowstone,’ composed by Brian Tyler.
YouTube/EndtheProject974 KB (download)

The composers also make an effort to signal corruption through momentarily dissonant chords or notes. At the end of the opening credits of “House of Cards,” you can hear it in the twang of the electric guitar. And in “Yellowstone,” Tyler uses chromaticism to decorate the melody.

These tricks, however, don’t quite land.

In order for the stain of corruption to stand out, musically and otherwise, it has to operate against a relatively clean background. The scores for both “House of Cards” and “Yellowstone” are already dark and twisty to begin with, which makes the “staining” effect harder to pull off.

This is where Britell’s astute ways of combining brightness and darkness in “Succession’s” music make all the difference.

Hearing what the characters hear

The unusual sound design in “Succession” also unveiled the series’ psychological complexity.

Sound design indicates the ways in which all sounds, from noises to dialogue and music, are mixed into the soundtrack.

In the pilot episode, viewers meet Kendall Roy, an eminently slappable finance bro and heir apparent to his father’s company. He’s being chauffeured to a business meeting, and he’s bouncing in the back seat to the Beastie Boys’ “An Open Letter to New York.”

It’s utterly cringeworthy: a wealthy white dude using hip-hop as emotional fluffing.

The Beastie Boys, as Britell and the showrunners must know, have been criticized for being white Jewish musicians parading as white working-class boys aping, in turn, Black hip-hop artists. At first the Beastie Boys blare out on the soundtrack; seconds later, their music disappears into Kendall’s headphones, and viewers hear his whiny voice rapping the lyrics.

Suddenly, we suspect he might hate himself more than we already do.

Film scholar Claudia Gorbman first theorized the effect toyed with here by “Succession’s” award-winning sound designers, Nicholas Renbeck and Andy Kris.

Gorbman highlights the distinction between “diegetic music” – music playing in the background, say, at a party, or ambient sounds, like cutlery and crockery – that can be heard by the characters in the film, and “non-diegetic music,” which is music heard only by the film’s audience and not by the characters.

The balance between these two kinds of music and sounds creates the psychological setup for the story: Diegetic implies that the characters’ world is not quite the audience’s own. Non-diegetic, on the other hand, implies that the filmmakers are conveying the characters’ emotions to the audience, like when the music comes in as two romantic leads share a kiss.

The switch from non-diegetic to diegetic in Kendall’s entrance gives viewers a sense that they are spying on his fragile self-delusion. He is slippery, tweaky, unknown – even to himself.

Haunted by water

Britell’s music, and the show’s use of diegetic and non-diegetic sound, may be one of the reasons why, even four seasons in, that none of the show’s fans could confidently anticipate who would succeed the family’s patriarch.

The series that begins with Kendall fittingly ends with him, too, as he walks, in a daze, along the Hudson River. The non-diegetic theme song plays in the background one last time. Then, for a brief moment – before a hard cut to a black screen – the sound goes diegetic: Viewers hear, with Kendall, the sound of the river flowing.

It’s a shocking moment. The show’s sound designers deliberately avoided ambient noises so as to show how the Roy siblings are too privileged and too busy scheming to notice their surroundings.

The moment Kendall hears the Hudson, everyone understands – first by ear, then by sight – that this story is over.The Conversation

Delia Casadei, Assistant Professor of Music, University of California, Berkeley

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post How the sounds of ‘Succession’ shred the grandeur and respect the characters so desperately try to project appeared first on The Moderate Voice.

Новости 24 часа

Федеральный девелопер: ЦФА позволят легко и просто накопить квадратные метры и "обернуть" их в квартиру

Top 5 Websites to Watch FREE Movies - TV Shows (No Sign up!)

Top 10 Love Affair Movies of the 2000s and 2010s

Top 10 Emmanuelle Seigner Movies

The 10 Intense New Action Movies on Netflix That Left Me on the Edge of My Seat!

Ria.city






Read also

Susan Shelley: How the people who run California behind the scenes really talk

‘The Who’s Tommy’ Broadway Review: See Me, Feel Sorry for Me

I’m not being dramatic when I say a flooring trend in interior design is the worst, it’s always in cheap flipped houses

News, articles, comments, with a minute-by-minute update, now on Today24.pro

News Every Day

The 10 Intense New Action Movies on Netflix That Left Me on the Edge of My Seat!

Today24.pro — latest news 24/7. You can add your news instantly now — here


News Every Day

The 10 Intense New Action Movies on Netflix That Left Me on the Edge of My Seat!



Sports today


Новости тенниса
Екатерина Александрова

Александрова впервые войдет в топ-15 мирового рейтинга



Спорт в России и мире
Москва

Победителями Всероссийской олимпиады по физике стали школьники Московского региона



All sports news today





Sports in Russia today

Москва

Победителями Всероссийской олимпиады по физике стали школьники Московского региона


Новости России

Game News

Пробный запуск вампирского градостроя Vampire Legacy: City Builder


Russian.city


Москва

Пассажир рейса Москва — Пермь попал в реанимацию


Губернаторы России
ТНТ

ТНТ запускает ежедневное утреннее шоу с Анной Хилькевич и Анатолием Цоем


На 1 апреля москвичей ждут "майское" тепло и новый температурный рекорд

Заказать недорогой ремонт шкафов купе в Москве и Московской области

Metaratings: "Спартак" может уволить Абаскаля по ходу сезона, клуб ищет тренера

Тысячи уникальных изданий: архивно-библиотечный центр появится в Музее транспорта Москвы


Концерт группы «Пикник» в Петербурге начался с минуты молчания о жертвах теракта

Ольга Бузова стала человеком-невидимкой на ТВ-3 в новом сезоне легендарного шоу о звёздах

«Мое сердце у твоих ног»: Сергей Шнуров признался в симпатии одной из участниц «Новой Фабрики звезд»

"Прости!!!": Пугачева попросила прощения у Манижи


Теннисистка Касаткина отреагировала на высказывания Винер о россиянах

Азаренко вышла в полуфинал турнира WTA-1000 в Майами

Теннисистка Александрова оказалась сильнее полячки Швентек на турнире WTA в США

Виктория Азаренко вышла в полуфинал турнира WTA-1000 в Майами



«Радио Зенит» – информационный партнер форума «Мы вместе. Спорт»

Архитектурные доминанты округов Москвы

Шапки женские вязаные на Wildberries, 2024 — новый цвет от 392 руб. (модель 466)

Перенос дат II этапа культурного проекта «Классика: история и современность» в Дмитрове


Финал всероссийского студенческого трека Олимпиады Кружкового движения НТО «Летающая робототехника» 2024

Сергей Собянин рассказал, как Москва помогает производителям оборудования

На ЧЭРЗ приступили к реорганизации производственной площадки

Фильм о пришельцах снятый на деньги мафии


Когда поможет коммерческая скорая помощь?

Как панда Катюша из Московского зоопарка за 7 месяцев превратилась из малышки в пушистую хулиганку

На Ленинградке запустили мост в Химках (ВИДЕО)

Кинолога из Новосибирска обвинили в мошенничестве после теракта в "Крокус Сити Холле"



Путин в России и мире






Персональные новости Russian.city
Джиган

Джиган раскрыл свой вес и описал причину похудения словами «надоело быть жирным»



News Every Day

Top 10 Emmanuelle Seigner Movies




Friends of Today24

Музыкальные новости

Персональные новости