Film music, antidepressants and anguish management - Philip Tagg

4 P Tagg: Film music, anti-depressants and anguish management
The madd9 chord is no stranger to film scores. For example, it is heard
during most of Morricone’s cue for the scene in The Mission (1985) in
which Carlotta tells a devastated Rodrigo (played by Robert De Niro)
that she loves not him but his brother. It also plays a prominent part
in three of the four tunes connoting ‘anguish’ to several hundred respondents,
for example in response to Rota’s theme for Zeffirelli’s
Romeo and Juliet (ex. 2). It is also a favourite of Morricone’s in situations
where poignant sadness, tragedy, separation or bitter fate are on
the narrative menu, as in the ‘Ophelia’ cues from Hamlet (1990), in the
theme underscoring the death of young Cockeye in Once upon a Time
in America (1984), in the cues ‘Abduction’ and ‘Death of Oahn’ for Casualties
of War (1989), in the title theme from Lolita (1997), or in ‘Nostalgia
of the Father’ from Marco Polo (1982, ex. 3), to name but a few.
Ex. 1.
Schubert:
Gretchen
am
Spinnrade
(1828)
Ex. 2. Rota: Romeo & Juliet (1968):
(a) initial 5-$3-2 motif;
(b) piano accompaniment madd9.
Ex. 3. Morricone (1982): ‘Nostalgia of the Father’ from Marco Polo,