Musical topics, historical styles and narrative in Carl Davis’s score for Pride and Prejudice (1995)

In critical commentary on Jane Austen film adaptations, Carl Davis’s musical score for the British Broadcasting Corporation’s television series Pride and Prejudice has been hailed as ‘historically accurate’. However, its use of ‘period’ instruments actually reflects the modern ‘early music’ movement, and its selections of diegetic music by canonic composers serve to create the cultural prestige associated with heritage productions. The nondiegetic portions of the score, which imitate a century of musical topics, styles and genres, are central to the novel’s adaptation to film. A musico-historical continuum – from Baroque dance to classical sonata form to a Romantic leitmotif – provides its own meanings, and in some instances the musical score becomes the primary transmitter of the film’s narrative. The ‘original’ time period referenced by a musical cue signals information about a character’s class status, personality, and actions, and the musical ‘historicism’ of Davis’s score sometimes provides the ironic commentary characteristic of Austen’s writing.