The Sea Hawk

The opening music helps create the mood of the movie. The music has an adventurous air to it. It also has elements of romance with the harp sound that is repeated throughout the movie as a leitmotif of Captain Thorpe and his ship. The harp is also prevalent during the romantic scenes between Thorpe and Dona Marie. The horn in the opening music sounded royal and heroic, foreshadowing the presence of royalty in the movie (Queen Elizabeth in this case) and Thorpe heroic actions.

Like in King Kong, underscoring is mixed with diagetic music in the scene where the slave rowers are rowing to the beat of the drum. During this scene, underscoring comes into the scene and fits in rhythm to the drum beats. While the drum beats can be heard to the people on the ship, the background music along with the drum beats can be heard by the viewer, creating a musical score that incorporates the two elements. This idea is also seen later on in the movie when Thorpe's crew is signing after they escape and capture the Spanish ship. The signing is clearly diagetic music, but in the background there are instruments playing that fits in with the saliors song (however the saliors cannot hear the intrusments). The intruments are underscoring, but they still are played in tune with the singing.

Compared to the Spanish ship, the underscoring that takes place when Captain Thorpe's ship is in the scene is exciting, light, heroic, and slightly fantastical. This music really fits the mood of the people on board his ship while the drum beats of the Spanish ship create an air of repetitive, boring, rigorious, and slightly cruel nature. On top of that, Captain Thorpe and his ship have a kind of leitmotif associated with them. While many times, the same victorious, heroic song is played in the underscoring, Thorpe is typically accompanied by a harp cresendo, where the musical notes rise. This creates an almost fantasy atmosphere that portrays Thorpe as heroic, romantic, and well loved.

During the fight scence between the Spanish ship and Thorpe's ship, there is alot of underscoring taking place which helps increase the intensity of the scene. To me, however, the lack of underscoring after the scene was more distant and created a contrast with the loud, hectic music of the battle. Also, as the Spanish ship sank, there was mickey mousing. As the ship slowly sank, the notes in the score slowly decreased, corresponding a 1-1 ratio of the music to what was happening on the screen. Mickey Mousing was also used other times in the movie, such as when Dona Marie was running down the hall way of the castle. The music corresponded to her running. In the scene where one of Thrope's crew falls over and dies when they are abroad the Spanish ship, the music desends as he slowly falls over.

Also, when there are romantic scenes between Thorpe and Dona Marie, the underscoring is soft and light, which intruments that typically portray love, like the violin or harp. Both of these intruments can be heard in the underscoring when Dona and Thrope are in the garden together and other times when they are together.