The string entrance is flick with a little suggestion of slash. The brass enters
with a heavy dab leading to punch. A few punches, then some more dab, a
little slash and wring leading to another punch, and we’re back to dab and
punch. More dabs leading to punch followed by press when the melody
smooths out. Then it speeds up into slash and punch and holds as a little bit
of a lighter wring. The main melody that comes in later in the low strings is
press. This melody is (all together now!) heavy, direct, sustained, and bound.
After this we go back to dab and flick till we hit punch again. You can take it
from there.Notice that more than one effort-shape can be happening at the same time.
The strings can play flick and slash or wring while the brass plays a press/
dab melody.Make sure you listen to “Neptune” to hear the contrast to what you heard in
“Jupiter.” “Neptune” has a lot of float and some glide energy mixed with a
little wring here and there.If you want to hear a composition with some obvious slash and punch energy,
listen to Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring.Human moods are expressed through body language, and styles of movement
are defined by effort shapes. Music is expressive of moods through its move-
ments through time and space by way of its rhythms and melodies. The effort
shapes codify movements and give us the tools to translate physical, human
movement and body language into music.When we began this chapter, we suggested that you look at your daily life as
a movie. And when composing for film, it is important to observe the rela-
tionships between movement styles, cultural and socioeconomic frame-
works, and the music you compose. It can be a dangerous stretch to use
contemporary sounds and styles to score a film about, say, Elizabethan
England.Remember that you yourself move with a certain combination of weight,
speed, directness, and so on. This combination might influence your likes
and dislikes and even the style of your compositions. That’s fine, but you
shouldn’t be bound by your own natural combination. If you want to enjoy
sustained success as a music composer, you will need to learn to embrace a
broader variety of movement styles (see Holst’s The Planets). If you are lucky,
you couldbecome successful by virtue of your stylistic limitations — just
realize that if so, it might limit how much variety you can get away with
later on.134 Part III: Harmony and Structure
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