Why does the music of evil always sound so good?

[Xeno.of.athens]

Of course, in films the evil guys almost always lose.

 

[PsaltiChrysostom]

Well, there is the Emperor's March in a major key.

 

[Xeno.of.athens]

Well, there is the Emperor's March in a major key.

That's terrible!

 

[Diamond72]

God causes His rain to fall on the just and the unjust. The gifts of God are irrevocable.

 

[PsaltiChrysostom]

Of course, in films the evil guys almost always lose.

Then there is Disney's final composition on Fantasia, Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria. The transition is fantastic.

 

[The Liturgist]

Of course, in films the evil guys almost always lose.

John Williams excellent Imperial March was, for reasons of the Cold War, clearly and deliberately modeled on the Russo-Ukrainian style of military march as perfected by the Soviet Ukrainian composer Symeon Tchernetsky in marches such as Red Army’s Entry Into Budapest, March of the “Katyusha” Rocket Barrage, Heroes of Stalingrad, et cetera, which in turn were inspired by the 1914 Imperial Russian march “Slavanka” or “Farewell to a Slavic Lady” by Victor Agapkin (I think), and the traditional Imperial Russian march “Hero”, with the most immediate inspiration probably being the 1975 Soviet military march Den Pobedy (“Victory Day”) by the Armenian composer David Tukhmanov, whose ancestors are the legendary Armenian-Georgian Tumanyan family, descended from the Mamikonian princes, who ruled the township of Dsegh, which was renamed Tumanyan between 1938 and 1969 in honor of Hovhannes Tumanyan, the national poet of Armenia.

Now the interesting thing about the Imperial March is that in glorifying the Empire, it stands in contrast to the music of the original Star Wars film, retroactively retitled Episode IV: A New Hope prior to its 1980 rerelease. In that film, aside from a brief section of thrilling music directly ripped off from Holst’s The Planets, specifically the piece Mars: The Bringer of War, during the sequence where the Millenium Falcon is caught in the Death Star’s tractor beam, and also the battle at the very beginning where the Rebel Blockade Runner Tantive IV is captured by the Star Destroyer Devastator and boarded by stormtroopers and a really ticked off Darth Vader, in general the music of the Empire is much less interesting than that of the Rebels. In particular, the heroic music during the raid on the Death Star in the finale, followed by the thrilling Rebel military march when Luke and Han are awarded by Princess Leia, and then we cut to credits, is more dramatic than anything associated with the Empire.

In The Empire Strikes Back, this musical approach, like everything else, was turned on its head, so that the music representing the Empire took on a thrilling, epic dimension, fueled by the minor key, Soviet and Tsarist inspired military music. The Soviet and Tsarist military music in turn was inspired by the partially minor key compositions of composers such as Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky, who were themselves inspired by the minor key Slavic folk music as well as the partially minor key music composed for the Russian Orthodox and Ukrainian Greek Catholic churches starting in the late Baroque period, in the first half of the 18th century, by the Italian trained Ukrainian composer Dmitri Bortniansky, and continued later by composers such as the Russian ecclesiastical composer Pavel Chesnokov.

 

[bbbbbbb]

Of course, in films the evil guys almost always lose.

You mean like this? ride of the valkyries - Bing video

 

[ViaCrucis]

Of course, in films the evil guys almost always lose.

A lot of this is simply enculturation, we associate things with things through contact.

As for why "bad guy music" sounds cool, it probably has a lot to do with the ways in which villains are intentionally designed and intentionally depicted as "cool".

Darth Vader is cool. We don't want him to win because we know he's the baddie and the Empire is bad, that is obvious from a narrative perspective. But it's still supposed to look cool. The good guys are also meant to be cool, and often more cool.

Sure, Thanos is a cool character. But Iron Man, Captain America, and the rest of the Avengers are just so much more fun to be around, they're more cool, and not to mention they're the good guys.

Bad guy music is dark, it's foreboding, it's ominous, and that's cool.
Good guy music is epic, heroic, uplifting, and that's cool.

But what we identify as "bad guy music" and "good guy music", and general aesthetics of "good guys" and "bad guys" are designed that way based on cultural expectations, motifs, and archetypes.

It's the reason why we code colors the way we do, if you see someone wearing black and red, what do you expect? If you see them, instead, wearing gold and blue, what do you expect?

That color-coding has deep roots, sure. In the West we have long established color coding in our artwork. Take, as a random example, Bosch's Haywain Triptych:

Now, it's not really an accident that this color coding and theming has been this way.

We associate the good with heaven, and the heavenly colors--the sky, the sun, clouds etc--well blue, gold, and white. We associate the evil with hell, and what are the concepts associated with hell? Darkness and fire, black, red, etc.

Colors, sounds, all sorts of things are enculturated by us, and we then apply them to our creative works. Minor keys are "negative", major keys are "positive".

Many things are cross-cultural; other things not so much. Some experiences are common across cultures, other things more unique. All those things interact with each other, and inform the way we interpret the symbolic landscape around us.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[bbbbbbb]

How about this?

tarantella - Bing video

www.bing.com