The Very Essence of Tragic Reality

Abstract

In a 2001 Musical Quarterly article, “Copland’s Music of Wide Open Spaces: Surveying the Pastoral Trope in Hollywood” Neil Lerner suggests that it is the “pastoral” textures in Copland’s concert music that provided a wellspring of material for film scores composed by John Williams, James Horner, and Randy Newman, to name a few, and that the feeling of “wide open spaces” blended well with advertising campaigns aimed at suburbia. Increasingly, more contemporary films have revealed the seamier side of suburbia’s utopian promises. American Beauty, In the Bedroom, Little Children, and Revolutionary Road do not extol the benefits of living in blissful conformity, but rather highlight the isolation and anxiety. These films all share the same composer: Thomas Newman. This chapter builds on Lerner’s work, not by tracing the “pastoral” influence of Copland on Thomas Newman, but in examining how Newman channels the urban loneliness and isolation found in Copland and conveys similar feelings while underscoring suburban narratives.