Table Of ContentRe-Locating the Sounds of
the Western
Re-Locating the Sounds of the Western examines the use and function of musical
tropes and gestures traditionally associated with the American Western in new and
different contexts ranging from Elizabethan theatre, contemporary drama, space
opera and science fiction, Cold War era European filmmaking, and advertising.
Each chapter focuses on a notable use of Western musical tropes, textures,
instrumentation, form, and harmonic language, delving into the resonance of the
music of the Western to cite bravura, machismo, colonisation, violence, gender
roles and essentialism, exploration, and other concepts.
Kendra Preston Leonard is a musicologist and music theorist whose work
focuses on women and music in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and
music and adaptations of Shakespeare. She is the author of five scholarly books
and numerous book chapters and articles. Her work has appeared in Borrowers
and Lenders, Cerae, The Journal of Historical Biography, The Journal of
Musicological Research, and Current Musicology, among other journals and
collections. She is the winner of many scholarly awards and prizes, including the
2017–2018 Rudolph Ganz Long-Term Fellowship at the Newberry Library. She
is the Director of the Silent Film Sound and Music Archive.
Mariana Whitmer is Executive Director of the Society for American Music and
adjunct faculty at West Virginia University and the University of Pittsburgh. She
has published widely on music in the silent and classic Western, including Film
Score Guides for Jerome Moross’s The Big Country (2012) and Elmer Bernstein’s
The Magnificent Seven (2017). Her current book projects continue to focus on
studies of classic Western film scores, including Scoring the Plains: Music in the
Classic Hollywood Western and Dissonance Intended: the Western Film Scores of
Max Steiner.
Ashgate Screen Music
Series Editors: James Deaville,
Carlton University, Canada
Kathryn Kalinak,
Rhode Island College, USA and
Ben Winters,
Open University, UK
The Ashgate Screen Music series publishes monographs and edited collections
about music in film, television, video games, and in new screening contexts
such as the internet from any time and any location. All of these titles share the
common dedication to advancing our understanding of how music interacts with
moving images, supporting narrative, creating affect, suspending disbelief, and
engrossing audiences. The series is not tied to a particular medium or genre,
but can range from director-composer auteur studies (Hitchcock and Herrmann,
Leone and Morricone, Burton and Elfman), through multi-author volumes on
music in specific television programmes (Glee, Doctor Who, Lost), to collective
explorations of topics that cut across genres and media (music on small screens,
non-Western music in Western moving-image representations). As such, the Ash-
gate Screen Music series is intended to make a valuable contribution to the litera-
ture about music and moving images.
Re-Locating the Sounds of the Western
Edited by Kendra Preston Leonard and
Mariana Whitmer
Recomposing the Past: Representations of Early Music on
Stage and Screen
Edited by James Cook, Alexander Kolassa, and
Adam Whittaker
Reeled In: Pre-existing Music in Narrative Film
Jonathan Godsall
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/music/
series/ASM
Re-Locating the Sounds of
the Western
Edited by Kendra Preston Leonard
and Mariana Whitmer
First published 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 selection and editorial matter, Kendra Preston Leonard and
Mariana Whitmer; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Kendra Preston Leonard and Mariana Whitmer to be
identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for
their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77
and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Leonard, Kendra Preston. | Whitmer, Mariana.
Title: Re-locating the sounds of the western / edited by Kendra Preston
Leonard and Mariana Whitmer.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2018. | Series:
Ashgate screen music | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018018237 | ISBN 9781138571532 (hardback) |
ISBN 9780203702703 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Motion picture music—History and criticism. | Western
films—History and criticism.
Classification: LCC ML2075 .R417 2018 | DDC 781.5/42—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018018237
ISBN: 978-1-138-57153-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-70270-3 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
List of figures vii
List of tables viii
List of examples ix
List of contributors x
Introduction 1
KENDRA PRESTON LEONARD AND MARIANA WHITMER
1 The Wild West meets the wives of Windsor: Shakespeare
and music in the mythological American West 13
KENDRA PRESTON LEONARD
2 The commodification of the Western soundscape 27
MARIANA WHITMER
3 High-senberg noon: Breaking Bad and the sounds of the West 43
JEFFREY BULLINS
4 Reinterpreting the American Western in Ry Cooder’s
soundtrack to Paris, Texas (1984) 57
ERIN E. BAUER
5 Sonic markers of the science fiction Western 74
S. ANDREW GRANADE
6 ‘You can’t build an empire without getting a mite
unscrupulous’: music, ethics, and Cold War criticism in
Doctor Who’s ‘The Gunfighters’ (1966) 90
STANLEY C. PELKEY II
vi Contents
7 From the Old West to the new future: Stoney Burke,
The Outer Limits, and the Daystar stock music library 111
REBA A. WISSNER
8 The soundscape of the East German Indianerfilme 131
JOHANNA FRANCES YUNKER
Index 145
Figures
5.1 The rear cover of editor H.L. Gold’s Galaxy Science Fiction,
issue 1, October 1950 75
5.2 On the left, Gene Autry and his Radio Riders perform ‘Uncle
Noah’s Ark’ in the first chapter of The Phantom Empire. On the
right is the first view the serial provides of the ‘Scientific City’
of Murania, which rests underneath Autry’s Radio Ranch 77
5.3 In HBO’s Westworld, Host Maeve (Thandie Newton)
demonstrates her growing control of herself and the constructed
world in which she lives by slamming the lid on the Mariposa
Saloon’s player piano, shutting off the music that defines and
confines her actions 81
5.4 Ilena Wolfe portrays an Irathient popular singer performing
‘Besásh’, an original song written by Bear McCreary and lyricist
David J. Peterson, in Defiance’s town square in the pilot episode
for Defiance 84
5.5 Cowboys and Aliens takes place in the American West and is full
of visual cues of the classic filmed Western with small, added
touches of science fiction 85
6.1 The Docs and Kate 92
6.2 Steven sings 101
6.3 Boots and bodies 104
7.1 Tess and Wade in ‘The Guests’ 124
Tables
6.1 Representative excerpts from ‘The Ballad of the Last
Chance Saloon’ 97
7.1 Stoney Burke episodes with cues reused in The Outer Limits 117
7.2 Stoney Burke cue reuses in The Outer Limits 118
7.3 Total number of Stoney Burke cue reuses in each episode
of The Outer Limits 119
7.4 Recomposed Stoney Burke cues in The Outer Limits 120
8.1 The 12 Indianerfilme, listed by premiere date 132
Examples
1.1 The whistle of the West: Ennio Morricone’s iconic motif for
Sergio Leone’s ‘Man with No Name’ Westerns 15
2.1 Elmer Bernstein, The Magnificent Seven, ‘Main Title’ introduction 30
2.2 The Magnificent Seven, ‘Main Title’ theme, mm. 12–24 31
2.3 Quiet music from Marlboro ad 31
2.4 ‘Petra’s Declaration’ 32
2.5 Added resolution to main theme 32
2.6 Typical horse rhythm 33
2.7 Music for recent Marlboro commercial 34
2.8 ‘Ringo’ chorus 37
2.9 Ennio Morricone, ‘Main Title’, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly 39
2.10 Verizon, ‘A better network, Luke McCown’ 40
4.1 Cooder’s guitar motive in Paris, Texas 64
6.1 ‘So Fill Up Your Glasses’ 94
6.2 ‘It’s Curtains for Warren’ 95
6.3 ‘With Rings on Their Fingers’ 95
6.4 Shorter version of ‘With Rings on Their Fingers’ 96
7.1 ‘Good Glory Blues’ (Control# SB130), mm. 1–4 115
7.2 ‘Good Glory, Carla!’ (Control OL#237), mm. 1–4 115
7.3 ‘Voit Bombs’ (Control #SB163), double bass solo, mm. 1–2 121
7.4 ‘Voit Bombs’ (Control #SB163), woodwinds, celesta,
vibraphone, and guitar, mm. 9–14 121
7.5 ‘Ves Lies’ (Control #SB160), woodwinds, celesta, vibraphone,
and guitar, mm. 7–8 122
7.6 ‘His Name’s Kaiser’ (Control #SB386), piano only, mm. 9–10 125
7.7 ‘His Name’s Kaiser’ (Control #SB386), violins only, mm. 22–26 125
7.8 ‘The Sniper Gets Caught’ (Control #SB316), flutes and guitar
only, mm. 7–12 126
