Citizen Kane

The music in Citizen Kane served to set the mood for each scene and it joined the scenes together during flashbacks. When the film first started the music was very low, quiet, dark, and foreboding. Instantly the audience knew that the plot would be somber and dramatic. The first real scene then was of Kane uttering his last word "rosebud" and then him dropping the snow globe and dying. The music quickly changed then to almost a fanfare while the headlines from the newspapers discussed his death. This change in musical tone also helped the audience to understand how the newspaper worked in Kane's life. The music was like a fanfare because he was the unloved hero so it was right that the music advertising his death would be dramatic, loud, and almost triumphant.

The film's music was mostly underscoring that ran throughout most scenes. It was not wall to wall music, but the music was very prominent. The use of underscoring when the scenes changed to flashbacks really helped to make the film cohesive. The underscoring in these scene changes also really helped to set the mood for each flash back.

One thing I noticed in this film was a lot of use of piano. The piano was used for diagetic music but the underscoring also seemed to rely heavily on the piano. The romantic scenes used flutes, clarinets, and the piano; as a result very few strings were used.
Overall, the music in Citizen Kane functioned very well in setting the tone of the scenes as the movie progressed and in creating continuity among the flashbacks.