Music in Films on the Middle Ages: Authenticity vs. Fantasy by John Haines (review)

To paraphrase Piers Plowman, the study of medieval film has in the past twenty years indeed become a fair field full of folk, which makes John Haines’ Music in Films on the Middle Ages an all that more remarkable and original contribution to such study. Haines, a gifted scholar in the fields of music and of medieval studies, provides the first detailed catalogue and analysis of the important role that music has played in medieval films since the 1890s. Haines’s monograph discusses some 500 films, some expected and some less than so, to provide what will surely be the definitive work on the important and varied roles that music continues to play in medieval film.

The organization of this study groups discussions of films around iconic tonal and visual symbols (what Haines calls musical ‘idéologèmes’ or stereotypes [44]): the bell, the horn call and the trumpet fanfare, court and dance music, the singing minstrel, chant, and the riding warrior. These icons in turn reflect what Haines identifies as the six moods of the Middle Ages: the chivalric, the supernatural, the primitive, the pastoral, the oriental, and the satirical.

Thanks to Hugo’s novel Notre Dame de Paris, the bell says ‘Middle Ages’ (26), as Haines demonstrates in films as diverse as Joan the Woman, (several versions of) The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Long Ships, First Knight, Andrei Rublev, and Metropolis, an interesting example of a very different kind of medieval film. In each case, the bell has come to define the ‘the Middle Ages as a blissful, idealized place’ (44).

While Haines argues that the bell may ‘be the most important off-screen aural signifier of the Middle Ages in film…the trumpet and the horn are the two most common on-screen musical instruments’ (45). The trumpet suggests the chivalric; the horn, the pastoral. To make his case, Haines examines yet another diverse group of films including The Vikings, The Conqueror, El Cid, and A Knight’s Tale. And again, as with the bell, it is the sound, not the sight, of these two instruments that says the Middle Ages. Much like a bugle call in a film Western, the horn call or trumpet fanfare ‘seizes our attention and prepares us for heroic action to follow’ (66).

While the sound of the bell, horn or trumpet may be fleeting, court and dance music in medieval film allows for extended musical moments as Haines shows in Perceval le gallois, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), Black Knight (2001), and other films. Such music, however, is rather catholic in its inspiration, reflecting as it does late-twentieth century early music traditions, Celtic folk music, opera, vaudeville, jazz, rock, and soul (87).

The singing minstrel may be the most timeless medieval musical icon, and the music and song of the medieval minstrel have as rich a musical pedigree as the horn and trumpet, as well as a clear debt to the blackface songs of American minstrelsy, as King Richard and the Crusaders makes abundantly clear. Haines points out the ubiquity of the minstrel in films ranging from The Flame and the Arrow to Ivanhoe to Snow White and the Huntsman—all of which, as well as any number of other medieval films, are further indebted to the tradition of the singing cowboy.

If chant is the most instantly recognizable sound of medieval song, it is, Haines shows, ‘largely an artificial construct, one honed in the last century or so’ (111). Haines distinguishes among good chant (Brother Sun, Sister Moon), dubious chant (The Crusades), and bad chant (The Masque of the Red Death). Chant is, in short, not only ubiquitous, but also multi-faceted in medieval film.

Inevitably, the riding warrior comes to the rescue, and the medieval knight ‘riding high on his horse is the supreme embodiment of the Middle Ages’ (133). To make...