The Science of Sci-Fi Music

Andrew May

Springer 2020

Pb, 158pp, £17.99, ISBN 9783030478322

Writing about music may admittedly be like dancing about architecture, but this book makes satisfying reading. Part of Swiss publisher Springer’s Science and Fiction series, the book is elegantly written, thought provoking and entertaining. Film music features largely, along with scientific music, automated composition, SF themes in musical culture, and more. The theremin is in there from page one and there is a section on musicians who have declared themselves to be extraterrestrial, such as Sun Ra from Saturn.

Why does some music lend itself so perfectly to SF themes? Andrew May bravely attempts to answer this difficult question partly by explaining in mathematical terms the concept of dissonance and harmony in music. This may well be useful for some readers, but as a numericallychallenged composer, I was left rather baffled.

Occasionally, music’s SF associations may only exist in a title: Gustav Holst’s best known musical work, which many would regard as archetypal space travel music, has a surprising history. Holst was greatly impressed by Five Pieces for Orchestra by the atonal composer Schoenberg, and obtained the score. Echoes of Schoenberg may be detected in Seven Pieces for Large Orchestra, which Holst composed several years later. Renamed The Planets Suite, with a piece for each planet of the Solar System, the title relates not to astronomy but to astrology! Echoes of Holst may, incidentally, be detected in much of today’s orchestral film music: compare the Lord of the Rings theme with Jupiter, for instance.

Film directors often use well-known “temp tracks” to edit their films to, and sometimes end up preferring these to music that has been specially composed. May relates how hapless composer Alex North composed and recorded a complete (and apparently brilliant) score for 2001 only to have it rejected by Kubrick in favour of the temp tracks.

Desmond Leslie, flying saucer enthusiast and futurist composer of the 1950s, is featured; so is Philip K Dick, a fan of ambient music who apparently based one of his characters on Brian Eno. I thought I knew this subject well, but was surprised and delighted to find lots in the book that was quite new to me. Highly recommended.

Steve Marshall

★★★★