:04:00
As originally recorded, Franz Waxman's
music for the prologue ran 5¾ minutes,
:04:04
indicating that the sequence
has been trimmed by nearly two minutes.
:04:08
Waxman scored the prologue
as salon music of the early 19th century,
:04:12
utilising strings and celeste to create
a delicate minuet in A-B-C-A form:
:04:16
Statement, development,
followed by a scherzo
:04:18
as the original picture's horrors
are relived in flashback.
:04:21
The scherzo is a minor-key
desyncopated variation of the minuet.
:04:25
At each depiction of the monster
:04:27
is sounded a nine-note
ascending/descending chromatic run,
:04:30
patterned on the monster's growl.
:04:32
It will recur as a danger motif
several times in the score,
:04:35
usually in conjunction with a five-tone
third-interval motif for the monster.
:04:39
The motif that we heard in the main title
is saved for Karloff's first entrance.
:04:44
That was Torben Meyer
being throttled by the monster -
:04:47
the only new footage in the flashback.
:04:49
Meyer played the Danish tenant in
Universal's Murders in the Rue Morgue.
:04:53
Some thought the prologue immaterial.
:04:56
Film editor Ted Kent
argued for its complete elimination.
:04:59
As the flashback ends, the demure
'A' section of the minuet returns.
:05:04
The anticipatory mood is reflected
as the violins play the minuet col legno,
:05:08
tapping the wood of their bows
on the strings.
:05:10
The metre slows, the musical phrase
fails to complete,
:05:13
the key changes to minor
with drawn strings.
:05:23
In what period and place
is this story occurring?
:05:26
Post-Tesla generators,
telephonic electrical devices
:05:29
and 1930s marcelled hairstyles
:05:31
will coexist with a peasantry by Brueghel.
:05:34
Burgomasters and serfs
with Teutonic names like Hans and Karl
:05:38
speak in accents hailing from Glasgow,
County Cork and Pasadena.
:05:43
Quote: "I've taken the rest of the story
far into the future
:05:46
and made use of developments
which science will someday know,
:05:49
100 years to come", said Mary Shelley
in dialogue removed from the prologue,
:05:54
rationalising an alternate universe
peppered with anachronisms.
:05:58
Gilbert and Sullivan's
The Mikado takes place in a Japan