Der Einfluß Richard Wagners auf die Filmmusik in Hollywood
The Austrian-born Max Steiner is the dean of Hollywood’s film composers. He invented the principle of underscoring to Hollywood’s movies. Before 1932 the source of the music had to be shown on the screen. Now the composers had the freedom to compose their music exactly where they thought it to be necessary to add to the dramatic development and the characters. Steiner’s principle of underscoring is based on Richard Wagner’s philosophy of music theatre, which has the so-called eternal harmony, a through-composed orchestral accompaniment instead of arias and recitatives like the operas used to have. The underlying harmonies are not based any more on a functional basis. This is quite typical for the romantic operas by Wagner and later composers, as Arnold Schönberg wrote in his “Harmonielehre”. The possibility to use harmonies more in an illustrative or suggestive way rather than based on a functional basis is also important for the film composer. Another principle of Wagner can be found in film music, the principle of using leitmotivs. Steiner makes extensive use of leitmotivs in his score for “Casablanca”. There are, of course, substantial differences between an opera like “Der Ring” and a Hollywood movie like “Casablanca”. But the clearest link to Wagner is made by Steiner himself, who said, “If Wagner would live in this century he would be the number-one film composer”.