From 1966 to1976, science fiction films tended to depict civilizations of the future that had become intrinsically antagonistic to their inhabitants as a result of some internal or external cataclysm. This dystopian turn in science fiction films, following a similar move in science fiction literature, reflected concerns about social and ecological changes occurring during the late 1960s and early 1970s and their future implications. In these films, "dystopian" conditions are indicated as such by music incorporating distinctly modernist sounds and techniques reminiscent of twentieth-century concert works that abandon the common practice. In contrast, music associated with the protagonists is generally more accessible, often using common practice harmonies and traditional instrumentation. These films appeared during a period referred to as the "New Hollywood," which saw younger American filmmakers responding to developments in European cinema, notably the French New Wave. New Hollywood filmmakers treated their films as cinematic "statements" reflecting the filmmaker's artistic vision. Often, this encouraged an idiosyncratic use of music to enhance the perceived artistic nature of their films. This study examines the scores of ten science fiction films produced between 1966 and 1976: Fahrenheit 451, Planet of the Apes, 2001: A Space Odyssey, THX-1138, A Clockwork Orange, Silent Running, Soylent Green, Zardoz, Rollerball, and Logan's Run. Each is set in a dystopian environment of the future and each reflects the New Hollywood's aspirations to artistic seriousness and social relevance. The music accompanying these films connoted an image of technological and human progress at odds with the critical notions informing similar music for the concert hall. These film scores emphasized the extrapolated consequences of developments occurring during the 1950s and 1960s that social activists, science fiction writers, and even filmmakers regarded as worrisome trends. Filmmakers drew on the popular perceptions of these musical sounds to reinforce pessimistic visions of the future, thereby imbuing these sounds with new meanings for listeners of the contemporaneous present.

The work grafted hymnologies, a piece for chamber orchestra, explores connections between twentieth century formalist compositional techniques and formalist techniques of pretonal music. This document, which accompanies the score for the piece, provides an analysis of the work that explains the various techniques and their application to the music. This piece is composed in five large sections. The work pairs compositional techniques associated with pre-tonal music from those of twentieth century modernist music. For example, the second section employs the Medieval idea of tropes-- each time the melody is repeated, new melodic material is added, in the style of the elaborations to the Gregorian repertory that were common as early as the tenth century. This is paired with a single pitch class drone that evolves by timbral modulation, a technique influenced in part by Schoenberg and carried out exactingly by Elliot Carter. Each section contains a similar pairings, which are explained in detail herein. That these kinds of pairings could co-exist in a single piece seems natural; certainly, the intricate formalism that appeared in some Western concert music before 1600 exhibits a certain degree of aesthetic concurrence with the formalist music of the early to mid- twentieth century. Artistically, reaching back to the past (both near and far) and creating something new is an interesting exploration of how history can inform the creative process. / text