This commentary documents the compositional process of writing film music for the classic expressionist silent film Metropolis (Lang, 1927), using MIDI-based orchestral sound resources. Metropolis was chosen from within other possibilities, such as Battleship Potemkin or Nosferatu, not only due to the belief that the film’s surreal eerie mood and machine-like characters could be represented well by the Second Viennese School’s musical style that I intended to adopt, but also due to a judgment that leitmotivic transformation and use of themes as character links fit into a work so rich with characters’ showing subtle psychological states. I set out to compose an original orchestral score for Metropolis with the idea in mind, that film music should contribute to the audience’s integration with the drama and reinforcement of dramatic tensions by strategically supporting the film’s plot and narrative, and that an agreeable conceptual blending between film and music would be crucial to a successful composition. For this task, a thorough review of the leitmotif and related literature about music semiotics and meanings, together with a brief discussion of the MIDI sampler orchestra, proved to be necessary. Metropolis, a pioneering masterpiece of sci-fi, which contains a gloomy portrait of the futuristic world, encouraged me to experiment with the diverse possibilities not only of the leitmotif, but also of kaleidoscopic sound originating from various combinations of virtual instruments of the MIDI sampler orchestra and ultimately to show my musical process. The document traces the leitmotif as a primary compositional device for thematic manoeuvre in both film composers’ scores and major scholars’ discussions; it also incorporates current scholarly research about music semiotics and meanings, which has guided choices in each stage of my compositional process. I have revealed how I applied such lessons as Ennio Morricone’s microcell technique, Danny Elfman’s transformation approaches to thematic material, Howard Shore’s reflection of meaning onto music, and Ilan Eshkeri’s use of themes as character links to my Metropolis. I organized the main character’s associate themes using microcell and transformation techniques and contextualised them as character links. For instance, I produced tunes for cold-hearted characters, such as Rotwang, robot Maria, and high buildings, with the twelve-tone technique, poignant dissonances through interval-classes 1 and 6, recursive rhythmic patterns, or their combinations; I also adopted two distinct types of an octatonic scale to describe contrasting personalities of the two characters and a chord based on 2nd intervals to express the moment when Rotwang’s evil reaches its zenith. Metropolis serves not only as an artistic repository for numerous symbols, but also as a web of leitmotifs towards musical and filmic unity.

The primary focus of this thesis is a selection of lesser-known Ballets Russes works, which, despite being largely neglected in academic studies, constitute important chapters in the history of the company. The bright light of publicity that shone on Stravinsky - in particular on Le Sacre du Printemps - has cast shadows over other Ballets Russes works, creating an over-simplified historical perspective. This is not to deny that Le Sacre was a watershed moment for the company, and in seeking to enrich our understanding of its place within broader musical trends, the thesis is divided into three sections, representing works composed before, around the same time as, and after, Stravinsky’s notorious masterpiece. Following a brief introduction, and a descriptive chapter outlining Diaghilev’s artistic heritage, as well as Paris before the arrival of his company, the first section deals with the Ballets Russes’s early modus operandi; focusing on Nikolai Tcherepnin’s Le Pavillon d’Armide and Reynaldo Hahn’s Le Dieu bleu. The next explores the Ballets Russes in the wake of Le Sacre du Printemps, using Erik Satie’s Parade as an example of a ballet indebted to Stravinsky’s innovations. However, influence was not entirely a one-way phenomenon, and part of this section also discusses connections between the early Ballets Russes works and Le Sacre. Finally, the season of French ballets performed in 1924 allows me to reflect on the stylistic changes that occurred in the later years of the company, using Darius Milhaud’s Le Train bleu, Georges Auric’s Les Fâcheux, and Francis Poulenc’s Les Biches as examples of the company’s shift to an enterprise that placed greater emphasis on the visual. This research argues that even the lesser-known works, despite their apparent lack of musical innovation, contributed to the more path-breaking scores that have come to command scholarly interest. Moreover, the seasons I have highlighted reflect the changing ideologies of Diaghilev and his company, as it evolved from a Russian troupe inspired by the Mir Iskusstva, to a European artistic collective presenting the ideas of Cocteau and Les Six to Paris. Areas of future research extend from this thesis, as many other lesser-known ballets not encompassed here would clearly benefit from detailed scrutiny. Applying the principles of musical examination here outlined, together with an open-minded approach to new historical perspectives, should further help to redress the balance of scholarly attention that has skewed the overall understanding of the Ballets Russes.

The videogame now occupies a unique territory in contemporary culture that offers a new perspective on conceptions of high and low art. While the fear that the majority of videogames 'pacify' their audience in an Adornian "culture industry" is not without justification, its reductionism can be countered by a recognition of the diversity and aesthetic potential of the medium. This has been proposed by sociologist, Graeme Kirkpatrick, although without close attention to the role of music. Videogame music often operates in similar ways to music in other mixed-media scenarios, such as film, or opera. In the same way that film music cannot be completely divorced from film, videogame music is contingent on and a crucial part of the videogame aesthetic. However, the interactive nature of the medium - its différance - has naturally led to the development of nonlinear musical systems that tailor music in real time to the game's dynamically changing dramatic action. Musical non-linearity points beyond both music and videogames (and their respective discourses) toward broader issues pertinent to contemporary musicology and critical thinking, not least to matters concerning high modernism (traditionally conceived of as resistant to mass culture). Such issues include Barthes's "death of the author", the significance of order/disorder as a formal spectrum, and postmodern conceptions and experiences of temporality. I argue that in this sense the videogame medium - and its music - warrants attention as a unique but not sui generis aesthetic experience. Precedent can be found for many of the formal ideas employed in such systems in certain aspects of avant-garde art, and especially in the aleatoric music prevalent in the 1950s and 60s. This thesis explores this paradox by considering videogames as both high and low, and, more significantly, I argue that the aesthetics of videogame music draw attention to the centrality of "play" in all cultural objects.

This study contributes to practical discussions on the composition of dynamic music for video games from the composer’s perspective. Creating greater levels of immersion in players is used as a justification for the proposals of the thesis. It lays down foundational aesthetic elements in order to proceed with a logical methodology. The aim of this paper is to build upon, and further hybridise, two techniques used by composers and by video game designers to increase further the reactive agility and memorability of the music for the player. Each chapter of this paper explores a different technique for joining two (possibly disparate) types of gameplay, or gamestates, with appropriate continuous music. In each, I discuss a particular musical engine capable of implementing continuous music. Chapter One will discuss a branching-music engine, which uses a precomposed musical mosaic (or musical pixels) to create a linear score with the potential to diverge at appropriate moments accompanying onscreen action. I use the case study of the Final Fantasy battle system to show how the implementation of a branching-music engine could assist in maintaining the continuity of gameplay experience that current disjointed scores, which appear in many games, create. To aid this argument I have implemented a branching-music engine, using the graphical object oriented programming environment MaxMSP, in the style of the battle music composed by Nobuo Uematsu, the composer of the early Final Fantasy series. The reader can find this in the accompanying demonstrations patch. In Chapter Two I consider how a generative-music engine can also implement a continuous music and also address some of the limitations of the branching-music engine. Further I describe a technique for an effective generative music for video games that creates musical ‘personalities’ that can mimic a particular style of music for a limited period of time. Crucially, this engine is able to transition between any two personalities to create musical coincidence with the game. GMGEn (<b>G</b>ame <b>M</b>usic <b>G</b>eneration <b>E</b>ngine) is a program I have created in MaxMSP to act as an example of this concept. GMGEn is available in the Demonstrations_Application. Chapter Three will discuss potential limitations of the branching music engine described in Chapter One and the generative music engine described in Chapter Two, and highlights how these issues can be solved by way of a third engine, which hybridises both. As this engine has an indeterminate musical state it is termed the intermittent-music engine. I go on to discuss the implementation of this engine in two different game scenarios and how emergent structures of this music will appear. The final outcome is to formulate a new compositional approach delivering dynamic music, which accompanies the onscreen action with greater agility than currently present in the field, increasing the memorability and therefore the immersive effect of the video-game music.