Song of Achilles: A Cinematic Approach to Scoring Literary Narratives
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Abstract
Song of Achilles is the culmination of a year of growth and exploration. My personal objective when I started this program was to go as far out of my comfort zone as possible as frequently as possible in order to grow rapidly and to get the most from every opportunity. After providing myself with challenges in every project up to this one, I had to find a new mountain to climb to continue filling in the gaps in my artistic range. Having been unable to find visual media to score, I had the ability to choose something compelling to me both emotionally and intellectually that would once again stretch my limits. With these criteria in mind, I opted to adapt Chapter 30 of Madeline Miller’s novel The Song of Achilles. This narrative excerpt would push me outside my comfort zone, allowing me to experiment and find other aspects of my compositional voice within a familiar orchestral style. In preparation to write the piece, I researched and analyzed examples of films from the Peplum genre to find appropriate stylistic references and figure out what the key musical idioms of the genre were. After that initial research phase, I experimented with how my own style fit within these boundaries, and how far I could stray from cliches while still being stylistically appropriate and conveying the story’s setting clearly. As a result of the global pandemic and postponement of the recording session, this essay shall cover the process of finding a project, its development, and an analysis of the cue’s compositional elements as related to the narrative.
Publication Date
7-1-2021
Campus
Valencia (Spain) Campus
Recommended Citation
Kornick, Julian E. “Song of Achilles: A Cinematic Approach to Scoring Literary Narratives.” Master's thesis, Berklee College of Music, 2021. https://remix.berklee.edu/graduate-studies-scoring/181.