# Most effective use of music to illustrate a scene **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 15, 2003, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-effective-use-of-music-to-illustrate-a-scene/188705 "2003-07-15T17:48:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Katisha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bcef8e/32.png) [@Katisha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Katisha)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2003, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-effective-use-of-music-to-illustrate-a-scene/188705/21 "2003-07-16T21:15:28Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by aleong \* > **Hans Zimmer’s battle theme in “Gladiator”, which was based on a waltz, as a means to illustrate both the sophistication and barbarity of the Roman empire.** Hey, cool! It is rather waltzlike, isn’t it? 😃 A couple more – The _Non nobis_ sequence from Branagh’s _Henry V_ (score by Patrick Doyle) as the camera pans over the battlefield. That gets me every time, and I’ve seen this movie how many times now? 😉 And one from _Fellowship of the Ring_ (score by Howard Shore): The slow, ethereal choir and the soprano solo after Gandalf’s fall in Moria. Beautiful. ---
**Author:** ![cher3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/da6949/32.png) [@cher3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cher3)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2003, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-effective-use-of-music-to-illustrate-a-scene/188705/22 "2003-07-16T21:36:12Z")
This isn’t exactly background music, but I love the scene in _Amadeus_ where Constanza brings a stack of Wolfgang’s “scribblings” to Salieri to find out if they are any good. The music switches from piece to piece as he flips through the stack, each one more magnificent than the last. It really conveys Salieri’s frustration: He can hear them perfectly in his head, but he knows he’ll never produce anything like them. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Mad\_Hermit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b5ac83/32.png) [@The\_Mad\_Hermit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Mad_Hermit)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2003, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-effective-use-of-music-to-illustrate-a-scene/188705/23 "2003-07-16T21:52:07Z")
> [@](#): > > Classic Trek had some, uh, “classics”: The “fight theme”, which played whenever the cast started throwing puches and/or karate kicks, the “chase music”, whenever one starship was chasing another, and of course, that descending glissando which meant that Kirk had just taken notice of a pretty girl wandering through the scene. There are different pieces of music from Trek that I feel made the show “be there” for me. The fanfare used in some of the first season episode title scenes (just as the show starts, the title of the episode is onscreen), like in _Balance of Terror_ and _What are Little Girls Made Of?_, gives me chills. The mysterious effect music, used first in the second pilot- listen to the scene where the Enterprise is approaching the energy barrier at the edge of the galaxy. The flute(?) piece played when something alien is being introduced, like the scene where Clint Howard offers Kirk the alien drink Tranya in _The Corbomite Maneuver._ (It’s funny, Tranya tastes just like a screwdriver, maybe with a little passion fruit. Go to the Las Vegas Hilton and try it yourself.) On a slightly different note: I also liked the theme music used in the first two or three episodes, where there is no “Space, the final frontier” voiceover and the music is more “spacey”- it’s the only word that comes to mind. It doesn’t have the funky 60’s percussion found in the 2nd and 3rd season eps, and it sounds like a synthesizer, not the classical instruments used for the rest of the season. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-effective-use-of-music-to-illustrate-a-scene/188705.md?page=1)