One musical technique that Korngold used in The Sea Hawk was foreshadowing. Near the beginning of the movie, Queen Elizabeth looked at a picture of the Spanish King James and the music became very dissonant and menacing. Later the audience learns the reason for this shift in music, when King James demands that Queen Elizabeth arrest all English sailors. At that point in the movie, Elizabeth was very mad at James for his assumption that he could control her and the music definitely mimicked these feelings. James's picture was actually removed from the wall so that Queen Elizabeth did not have to look at him anymore. The musical shift in tone when Elizabeth first looked at the painting really did not make sense until King James tried to use his power to control the Queen. I thought this use of music for foreshadowing purposes was very creative and well executed.
Another technique that Korngold used in The Sea Hawk was underscoring that became diagetic music. In the scenes where Capitan Thorp comes to court to see the Queen after he sinks the Spanish ship, the music starts out as underscoring, but as trumpeters and buglers are seen trumpets become much more prominent in the music and it is understood that the characters can hear the trumpets. The one problem though is that there is still a full orchestra accompaniment that the audience can hear, but we assume that the characters cannot. This happens several times because trumpets are used to announce people to the Queen. On the ship Korngold made the diagetic music more obvious because he added the rest of the orchestra after the diagetic music was finished. However, in court the music was never just trumpets, it was always a full orchestra the trumpets just became louder to symbolize that they were diagetic.
I also really liked when the underscoring portrayed Captain Thorp's thoughts. When he first started falling in love with Maria the underscoring was gentle and romantic whenever he thought of her or talked to her, but when his crew was teasing him his glare was accompanied with a harsh change in melody and tone to show his irritation at their jokes. The music quickly resumed its gentle melody though because his thoughts did not stray long from Maria.
Overall, the music made The Sea Hawk a very powerful and engaging movie.
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The music certainly aided in increasing the viewers' connection to the story. The love between Captain Thorpe and Dona Maria was shown through music that drew viewers into the story more fully than the motion picture alone. The vast difference between the light melodies of the strings and woodwinds and the heavy fanfare of brass and percussion show the two equal sides to the characters and plot points in the movie.
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