Dane Rabe

Extra Credit Assignment I

Peter Graff is the author of a paper titled “Themes, Backgrounds, and Bridges: A New Language for Radio

Drama”. I was lucky to see his presentation of the paper at the Meeting of the Midwest Chapter of the American

Musicological Society hosted at UIC (University of Illinois at Chicago). This presentation is what I draw my ideas

and impressions from for the following discussion.

The main point of the paper was that radio drama responded to the needs of the environment by drawing

from film and opera. From film, radio pulled the idea of using music to set a mood, create dramatic action, or serve a

narrative function. Also, like film, each radio show had a theme song that served as a brand. People would instantly

recognize the show when they heard the distinctive theme playing. From Opera, radio pulled the idea of leitmotif,

defining characters (e.g. sinister, heroic), and using sound effects (horse galloping, train tracks, etc.). The challenge

with radio is that unlike film and opera, everything is conveyed through a sonic medium. This creates the

challenging question “How do I draw the listener’s attention and keep them interested in the broadcast?”

Graff states that there are thousands of volumes containing music for radio. The music generally falls into 3

categories: themes, backgrounds, and bridges. The background pieces are used to define characters or for sound

effects. The themes are the branding for each show. The bridges are musical motives used to transition from one part

of radio broadcast to another and were the most frequently used. The volumes of radio music would contain sections

with each category. The piano and organ were the most common instruments used for this type of music. Individual

scores could be as short as a single chord and were often 7-8 bars in length with timestamps in the header. The

music was written for the house band and they would often pre-record a large library of material that the radio

editors could pull from.

There were many treatises written on the philosophy of music in radio broadcasts. “Music Cuing” by

George Davis is an example of this. He states that the theme should have a highly recognizable melody and be 10-15

seconds long. One thing that he stressed was that the music should not overshadow the story. The music could be

too loud, or the piece could be too beautiful or recognizable and it would detract from the story. What surprised me

was that sometimes pieces were written to sound harmonically dissonant so that it didn’t distract from the narration.
An example of this was Maria Pollock’s Rustic Reval. It was written to not distract from the radio narrative because

of its beauty.

In the end of the presentation, Graff tied it back to modern day by stating “Radio music is returning to its

original context through podcasts becoming more popular”. I think he could have been a bit more effective in

conveying his message. Other presenters handed out flyers that contained supplementary diagrams and scores for

their presentations. He simply used a PowerPoint presentation, but it seemed lacking in information. After the

presentation I feel that I have a very preliminary understanding of his paper, but the finer details were not covered.

He could have explained the structure of his paper in more depth, provided examples of actual radio shows, or

employed any number of other methods to create a more informational presentation.