A Successful Prediction

In two posts from July and August of last year, I recomposed some music from The Hunger Games movie franchise to show various ways in which one could overthrow the "Panem National Anthem" and its I-bVI-I cliché. Furthermore, in the August 2014 post, I predicted that, during the last two Hunger Games movies, which had yet to be released, composer James Newton Howard would use something like one of my recompositions to accompany overthrowing. In short, I was predicting both the kind of music a composer would create in the future, and with what in the narrative the music would be associated.

In the penultimate Hunger Games movie (Mockingjay - Part 1), nothing like my recompositions can be heard. However, in the final Hunger Game movie (Mockingjay - Part 2), which was released three days ago, not only is something like one of my recompositions in Howard's score, but this bit of music appears to be associated with the unseating of the regime of the despotic President Snow, the aristocratic Capitol, and the I-bVI-I-featuring anthem that symbolizes their power.

Below I have transcribed the relevant excerpt, which you can hear here:

This music first occurs toward the end of the movie when (spoiler alert) the rebellion's President Coin has turned the tables on President Snow. The example below stepwise transforms the recomposition from my August 2014 post into much of the music above.

The first change is mostly cosmetic, notating the middle chord as #III instead of bIV. The second change transposes the music by a tritone, which is arguably the farthest away one can get from the original anthem's tonality. The third change replaces duple subdivisions with triple subdivisions, and alters the melody a little, although the important "up minor third, up augmented unison, down augmented unison" remains, as shown by the lines.

From here, things get interesting. Howard puts this FM-AM-FM music in an A-centered context. This would seem to upturn the upturned, promoting the A-major chord back to tonic and subordinating the F-major triad, creating the same clichéd harmonic subjugation that was present before. But it is not quite as it was before. A non-harmonic bass-clef D subverts the A-major harmony, and flips the tables once more: indeed, the I-bVI-I of Panem's former regime has been inverted. But the new authority that subsumes this inversion is essentially the same as the old -- the pitch A -- and the F-major harmonies still ultimately capitulate to its rule. Now in charge, President Coin also plans to assume totalitarian command, withhold elections, and conduct a "Symbolic Hunger Games," where children of the Capitol would suffer the same fate as children of the oppressed Districts had for 75 years.

Whether one thing is like another thing can be a matter of interpretation, and others may contend that my prediction did not come true. I believe it did, but I also believe that my original recomposition and Howard's music are unlike in a crucial way: his is truer to the story. The music shown above both upends the mediant relation of the old regime and nonetheless maintains the old tonal system, but my recompositions never saw Coin's coup coming. But, if you listen to the end of the cue, you will probably notice that the final harmony is rooted on F. Perhaps an end to tyranny is ultimately here, both once and for all.

Oh, and, for the record, my name is not in the credits.