Extradiegetic music.

Television music.

A term for all music that is broadcast on television. It has functioned in several different ways, reflecting the array of genres and modes of broadcasting. In American television, music has been heard as entertainment through the performances of songs and instrumental works by classical, jazz, country, pop, rock, and other performers, in other words, music presented as music. It has also been heard as “production music,” to underscore dramatic programs, enhance mood and narrative structure and meaning, similar to music’s function in films, and as a way to mark transitions within a television program and between programs. Music has functioned in these ways in both programs and in commercials. During the early years of television, these modes of television music were discrete, but from the 1980s the distinctions in the form that music takes has been blurred.

The functions of television music listed above may be generalized in three categories, using terminology for narrative agency. First, it can be “extradiegetic”—used to navigate and transition through the many programs and advertisements of a broadcasting schedule, often called the “flow” of television: from program to station break and vice-versa, and between station breaks, public service announcements, program promotions, and commercials. Second, television music can be “intradiegetic,” where it is used as background or mood music within narrative programs, such as situation comedies, dramas, and documentaries. Intradiegetic music is usually “acousmatic,” meaning the source of the music is not seen on the screen. Finally, television music can be “diegetic,” that is, music whose source appears on screen and is heard as part of the action or the mise-en-scène of a program. Diegetic music is often performed by musicians shown on the screen in genres such as musical variety shows, late-night talk shows, and music videos, but may also be featured in a narrative program.

A historical periodization of music practice in television is tied to developments in broadcasting practices and technology of the medium itself. However, music practice periods in TV differ somewhat from many media theorists’ periodization of television in general. As in any periodization, there are significant overlaps where traits of a certain period can be found earlier and continue on into the next period. With these caveats, the history of television music in television can be viewed as progressing through four overlapping stages: a “pre-broadcasting” period (c1925–48), an experimental era during which television and television programs served as exhibitions and curiosities for demonstrations private and public; a “radiophonic” period (c1948–55), in which television music borrowed heavily from vaudeville, live theater, and radio (its immediate electronic media predecessor), while also experimenting with new modes of presentation; a cinematic period (c1955–80) marked by improved production and broadcasting practices of diegetic and extradiegetic music, but also by the involvement and influence of film studios in television production, when music followed the conventions of Hollywood film scoring; and a “televideo” period (from 1981) characterized by a proliferation of music styles and a breakdown of intertextual boundaries that has been marked by the importing of popular music into TV episodes, but also the export of music from TV episodes to CDs, Internet websites, and podcasts.

Music has been an integral part of American television from its earliest days and has served as a reflection of the musical tastes of the American public through the years. This reflection can be found in the historic shift from light classical and popular standard musical styles used between the 1940s and 1970s to the rock and pop music that was adopted in the 1980s. Moreover, the dual function of television music as artistic text and commodity text has reflected perceptions of television as a whole and is perhaps a uniquely American way of utilizing artistic texts such as music for commercial ends. Much of what has been seen and heard on television has been of high artistic quality, but it has also had to be popular with a significant portion of the viewing audience in order to attract and maintain sponsorship from private corporations.

Early experimental broadcasts in the 1920s, such as those of the television pioneer Charles Jenkins, often featured musicians as subjects. The era of broadcast television can be said to have begun on 21 July 1931 when the CBS network went on the air with the “Television Inaugural Broadcast,” airing on W2XAB, an experimental station in New York. The broadcast featured Kate Smith and other singers, as well as George Gershwin, who was interviewed and who played some of his piano pieces. NBC began experimental broadcasts from New York’s Empire State Building in 1932, but did not begin public broadcasting until 1939, when its “First Night” program featured the musician Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians.

World War II delayed the widespread development of television, but after the war television stations began public broadcasting on a national scale. The first post-war musical variety show was “Hour Glass,” which debuted on 9 May 1946 and featured Dennis Day and Peggy Lee as regulars on the show. The show retained a vaudeville concept from radio and theater, featuring comedy sketches, ballroom dancing, and musical numbers accompanied by a live orchestra. Uncertain of the role of music on television, James Petrillo, the president of the AFM, sought to ban live music on TV until a remuneration schedule could be worked out. The ban was lifted on 20 March 1948 when the major networks (NBC, CBS, ABC, and DuMont) worked out an agreement with the union, and musical variety shows flourished. While continuing the “vaudeo” (vaudeville on video) format of “Hour Glass,” “Texaco Star Theater” (starring Milton Berle) set a musical standard by hiring an orchestra and the singer Pearl Bailey to feature as regulars on the show.

From 1948 music developed in the three modes of broadcasting. The remainder of this article will cover each in turn, along with historical coverage of music in animated cartoons and television advertising.

Extradiegetic music.

Extradiegetic music is a musical category unique to broadcast media like television and radio, where many texts are temporally juxtaposed against each other in broadcasting time in a phenomenon called “flow.” Extradiegetic music, or music outside of a “diegesis” (story), often serves as transition between these texts. Some examples of extradiegetic television music are theme music, music for station breaks, network logos, and “bumpers.”

Studio logos are brief musical mottos that help to identify the network on which a program is being viewed or the studio that produced a particular program. Although these musical texts are brief, they have significant histories and have been written by composers who work for particular studios. Perhaps the most famous of these is the three-note motif (G–E–C) that has been used to identify the NBC television network. Employing the motif reportedly took three years to implement, and it was finally played on a glockenspiel in 1926 for NBC radio. It was later transferred to television. The other networks also employed such musical logos: CBS used compositions by Jerry Goldsmith and Bill Conti, and ABC employed logos by Dominic Frontiere and Harry Geller. Musical logos identifying production studios have also been used at the end of TV programs, with notable examples by Stanley Wilson, Walter Greene, Quincy Jones, and Pete Rugolo (all for MCA/Universal), and William Lava, George Duning, and Frank Comstock (all Warner Bros.).

Perhaps the most popular musical aspect of television is theme music. Musical themes carry both extradiegetic and intradiegetic traits, transitioning broadcasting away from the flow of television and into the diegetic world of a particular TV show. Themes to TV shows have several functions: extradiegetically, they announce that a particular show is about to air and entice the viewer to come and watch, a mechanism that Tagg (2000) calls an “appellative” function. Intradiegetically, a theme provides a narrative frame to a show, serving as opening and closing, while also identifying the genre or overall mood of the program. Composers of TV theme music seek to create music that is unique to the particular program, while also providing musical style traits, or “topics,” that are familiar to the audience. Certain style topics of music have been associated with certain TV genres, usually based on pre-existing patterns with which the audience is familiar. For example, a situation comedy may feature light, upbeat music, while dramas feature more somber, serious-sounding music. Television themes are perhaps the greatest source of television discourse, as the themes repeated week after week are retained in the audience’s memory. Some themes have reached such popularity that they have been disseminated through commercial recordings, the sale of sheet music, and performances by professional and school groups. Notable themes in this regard have been those to Peter Gunn (Henry Mancini), Bonanza (David Rose), Hawaii Five-O(Morton Stevens), and The Rockford Files and Hill Street Blues (both Mike Post).

Many early television programs used fragments of pre-existing music as themes. Some early effective examples of this practice are: Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, which used Reznicek’s overture to Donna Diana; The Lone Ranger, which employed part of Rossini’s overture toGuillaume Tell, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which drew on Gounod’s Funeral March of a Marionette. Other programs relied on libraries from small B-movie studios for their theme music. Early filmed TV Westerns, such as Hopalong Cassidy and The Cisco Kid are among these programs.

Theme music in television has developed through two generic categories: instrumental themes and theme songs (with lyrics). Of the notable theme songs in American TV history, several have persisted in American cultural memory, beginning with “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” by Tom Blackburn and George Bruns, and continuing with, among others, “The Ballad of Jed Clampett” (from The Beverly Hillbillies) by Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs (music) and Paul Henning (lyrics), “The Brady Bunch Theme” by Frank De Vol, “Three’s Company” by Don Nicholl and Joe Raposo, and “I’ll be there for you” (Friends) by David Crane, Marta Kauffman, Michael Skloff, Allee Willis, Phil Sōlem, and Danny Wilde. Perhaps not coincidentally, many theme songs have correlated with situation comedies, Westerns, or children’s programming, while instrumental themes tend to correlate with dramas, news, and documentary programs.

Although themes have been used to denote particular television programs, the musical style in which these themes have been composed has often served to connote the genre of the program. Musical style in this sense can be understood in relationship to commonly disseminated labels that have been popular with mass audiences, particularly the stylistic categories that have been adopted from format radio. Stylistic labels such as classical, jazz, rock, and country have been useful as signifying devices that correlate with television shows. For example, situation comedies of the 1950s usually featured music that could be described as light classical, and detective and private investigator programs of the 1960s often used jazz. The history of network television programs may be seen as a shift from light classical and the cinematic Hollywood symphonic style to a plethora of musical styles that includes rock and pop music.

Along with theme music, other extradiegetic musical devices are notable for TV: the “bumper” is a brief segment (three to five seconds) of music derived from the theme accompanying the logo of the show that is broadcast during commercial breaks. The bumper’s function is to remind viewers that the show will return after commercials. Act-ins and act-outs are transition segments of music that transition from show to commercial or commercial to show. Musical act-ins have usually been accompanied by an establishing shot of the narrative setting, while act-outs have been accompanied by “stage waits” where the actors freeze a pose, usually in reaction to a suspenseful event. Both types of cues are heard as intradiegetic music (during the action of the show), but serve to transition to or from a commercial break.

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 909