Conference Agenda

Ritual signals and modernist dread organize the soundtrack of Mohammad Reza Aslani’s Iranian art film Chess of the Wind (1976). This paper offers a cue-level account of how composer Sheida Gharachedaghi—one of the very few women scoring Iranian cinema in this period—produces narrative and ethical meaning through two interacting sonic “topic-fields”: (1) shrine-associated ritual signals and (2) a modernist punitive idiom that registers as psychophysical pressure. Rather than treating the score as diffuse Persian/Western fusion, I argue that intercultural materials function as recurring signifiers whose interaction generates moments of troping in Robert Hatten’s sense (formally unrelated types brought together in a single functional slot).

Studies of leitmotifs, from Wagner’s operas to modern screen music, reveal narrative development as critical to leitmotivic function. Such development hinges upon leitmotifs’ operation through prototypes and variants (Bribitzer-Stull 2015), the former being associated with diegetic characters and the latter tied to circumstances that characters encounter over a plot’s course. In this paper, I discuss how musical topics shape both aspects of leitmotivic development in Ramin Djawadi’s music for HBO’s Game of Thrones (GoT).

Traditionally, topics have been understood to signify stable aspects of character (Ratner 1980; Allanbrook 1983). This impacts leitmotifs insofar as leitmotifs correlate with diegetic characters who have stable qualities. For example, a leitmotif associated with someone who sustains military power may have a military topic within its prototypical structure, like John Williams’ “Imperial March.” However, other topics, like ombra (McClelland 2012), seem less suited to portray characters, and instead typically depict fleeting narrative circumstances through which characters pass. While analyzing Djawadi’s music for GoT, I embrace the dual consistency and fluidity of topical association, identifying how a leitmotif’s prototypical topic represents its character’s enduring traits, while non-prototypical topics in leitmotivic recurrences represent a character’s temporary experiences.

I begin by analyzing Djawadi’s leitmotif for the Lannisters, a prominent family in GoT. This leitmotif prototypically has a folksong topic signified through its singable melody and reinforced by its imitation of a diegetic folksong. Folksong’s association with storytelling allows this topic to signify the Lannisters’ infamy. When the leitmotif recurs, it incorporates other topics that reflect concurrent narrative circumstances—however, it retains melodic residues of the folksong topic. I analyze two GoT cues that highlight this balance between topical stability and change. In each case, the folksong topic is retained through melodic contour and pitch relationships, while new topics are introduced through non-melodic parameters like harmony, rhythm, timbre, and tempo. Examining other leitmotifs from GoT corroborates this pattern, suggesting that parametric separation plays a key role in allowing topics within leitmotifs to signify both enduring qualities and ephemeral circumstances. Attending to parametric separation, I argue, facilitates leitmotivic analyses that account for topics’ dual signification of stable and fleeting qualities.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons (ACNH) was not the first game to capitalize on player-created content as a means of creating its gameplay loop, nor was it the first to include musical composition. Games like Minecraft, The Sims, and Stardew Valley all use similarly creative elements in their gameplay, providing players with a sense of pride and ownership over their creations. While all of these games remain popular, the allure of ACNH is located not just in the player’s ability to create an accurate in-game avatar, but also in the sense of identity and community fostered through clever use of the game’s villager mechanics. I will explore how player-created melodies from ACNH aid in the construction of players’ individual identities, the identities of resident villagers, and a communal identity associated with each players’ island as a whole.

Released at the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, Chris Comerford argues that ACNH “…aided players as a method of…self-expression during the COVID-19 pandemic. In part, this…self-expression has been accomplished through the emergence of specific player personas…” (2020, p. 101). A game about developing, decorating, and managing a house and town, ACNH tasks players with populating an empty virtual island with villagers of various temperaments and species: pop-star birds, grumpy bears, hungry octopi, etc. During the game players are given the option to compose an original theme for their island. This theme acts as the island’s aural signature: each villager the player recruits sings their own version of the theme in conversation. When performed by a villager, the theme undergoes timbral, scalar, and range manipulation, assigning individual sonic characteristics to each potential villager. Through the combination of critical theories of identity (Butler, Jansz, Vila) with semiotic analysis (Agawu, Atkinson, Tagg), I argue that Philip Tagg’s conception of vocal persona can be likened to Comerford’s player personas, exemplified in each villager’s individualized performance of the player’s island theme. By uncovering any potential commonalities among timbre, scale, and range among the various villager species and/or temperaments, I will explore the semiotic and social ramifications of these performances with regard to player and villager identities.