Lance Belluomini
Emotions of any kind are produced by melody and rhythm; therefore music has the power to form character.
—Aristotle, Politics
In the memorable opening scene of The Mandalorian a lone figure tracks a fugitive on an icy planet. As he steps into a cantina bar, the masked and armored Mandalorian bounty hunter soon draws his blaster during a brawl with alien thugs who have taken an interest in his beskar armor. When one thug attempts to flee, the hunter trips him with a grappling line then fires his blaster at the door controls, causing the door panels to shut, slicing the alien in half. The Mandalorian's bounty fugitive has seen all this, and the hunter unforgettably tells him, “I can either bring you in warm, or I can bring you in cold.” We then cut to the title card logo of the show: The Mandalorian. This is our introduction to the heroic main character: Din Djarin (aka “Mando”).
Many artistic elements contribute to the beauty of this opening sequence. Of course there are the visual effects of the stunning environments as well as the costume design – the standouts being Din's helmet, armor, weapons, and flowing cape. But composer Ludwig Göransson's exotic music makes the greatest contribution to the aesthetics of this opening scene. His choice of primitive instruments to produce almost tribal music perfectly captures the lone aspect of Din's character.1
When Din walks through the cantina door, Göransson delivers Din's first motif to us played by a bass recorder (part of a musical cue titled “Hey Mando”), a flute instrument. Göransson uses the instrument to generate organic sounds of wind whistling through trees and hollows of the earth, contrasting associated intimate and human feelings with the modern visuals on screen. The beautiful rhythm of this motif, reminiscent of Ennio Morricone's spaghetti Western scores, evokes a quintessential Western whistle or the tension‐filled musical motif of a cowboy standoff. We think of a lone man's journey – a man initially, like Clint Eastwood's iconic character, “with no name.” The ancient sounding two‐note interval of the piece has a distinct melancholy howl, and from this melody Göransson weaves a variety of harmonies carrying different emotions and moods throughout the show.
After Din secures his bounty capture, we are introduced to his second motif (part of “The Mandalorian Theme”), starting with the dramatic heartbeat‐like pulse drop “bum‐bummm!” This opening tune uses the interval of a fourth between notes, a dissonant repeating interval creating tension and getting us ready to leap into Din's adventures.2 We hear the next part of the show's theme on top of the pulse sound through instruments played by Göransson: a bass recorder, electric guitar (an animal‐like growl), drums (a rhythmic march), dramatic piano (a counter‐melody with the bass), and electric keyboard (adding a soft magical feeling). This combination evokes feelings of heroism and strength. But Din's two motifs in this track also serve to express Din's thoughts, feelings, and struggles on his missions. This is necessary because, as Göransson says, “For this show you are just following one man and his perspective the whole time. And you do not get his facial expressions because he's wearing a helmet. So I knew there was a lot of ground to cover with different music, which essentially had to convey that.”3
But do we really pay attention to the music when watching The Mandalorian? Most of us aren't consciously aware of its value and impact on us; our attention is usually focused on the action or the dialogue. This chapter looks at how Göransson's motifs emotionally move us, but also how the music “reads the mind” of Din. In conveying meaning musically, Göransson's compositions enhance our aesthetic appreciation of The Mandalorian and further our emotional investment in Din's story.
Throughout history, people have been captured by the extraordinary effects of music. The ancient Greeks included music in education because they believed it perfects our soul or nature. Aristotle (384–322 BCE) discusses the purpose and value of music in the eighth book of his Politics, where he says that music imitates emotion and thus affects our emotions. This is important because learning to govern our emotions is necessary for perfecting our nature and rationality. Aristotle writes, “Rhythm and melody supply imitations of anger and gentleness, and also of courage and temperance, and of the other qualities of character, which hardly fall short of the actual affections, as we know from our own experience, for in listening to such strains our souls undergo a change.”4
Notice how Göransson's music imitates emotions that we feel and recognize. It captures the emotions that Din is experiencing, allowing us to enjoy good emotional dispositions (something that, according to Aristotle, music does for us).5 But how? Consider when Din first encounters Grogu at the end of the first chapter. Here, the music reads Din's mind – it imitates and communicates what he's feeling and thinking. We hear the first of several motifs included in “Grogu's Theme.” When Din tells IG‐11 of their target, “We'll bring it in alive,” a sad melody (“The Asset”) kicks in. The music is like a broken children's tune, played by dramatic piano and the plucking strings of an electric guitar. It then swells and reaches a crescendo with a variation of Din's first motif layered on top.
Clearly, the music informs us that Din has mixed feelings about this mission. It provides Din's unseen facial bewilderment over what he's gotten himself into. It also conveys his conflicted thoughts on whether he should turn the child over to the Imperials to obtain his beskar reward. Yet we also get a sense from this music that Din feels emotionally connected to Grogu. This is because, according to Aristotle, the music imitates Din's feeling of compassion, familiarizing us with this balanced emotional movement. The rhythm and melody of the broken children's tune reveals Din's feelings of empathy and sadness in the face of Grogu's helplessness and innocence. Din then acts on his caring instincts by dispensing with IG‐11, also reflected in the music. We hear Mando's first motif mixed with Grogu's opening melody, expressing their immediate bond – the music corresponding with the chapter's final image of Din standing over the floating crib as the two reach out to one another – evocative of Michelangelo's “The Creation of Adam.”
Grogu's motif repeats throughout The Mandalorian season one, most noticeably in “The Child” where Grogu uses the Force to save Din from the charging mudhorn. When Grogu Force‐lifts the beast into the air, the music expresses Din's puzzled state as to what's going on. To further highlight their emotional connection, this piece ends with a blend of Din's first motif. Another version of this motif is heard in “Redemption” when Grogu uses the Force to deflect the flames of an incinerator trooper to save Din's heroic team. This time the motif plays in a slower tempo using a symphonic orchestra, imitating feelings of heroism and triumph.
Another popular musical motif associated with Grogu involves the use of soft bell‐like tones that sound both old and new. In the final moments of “The Child,” when Din checks on Grogu asleep in his cradle, the camera shifts to Din's mask staring at Grogu and we hear soft bell‐like sounds. This childlike motif represents how Mando perceives Grogu – an innocent child full of mysterious and magical abilities.
Göransson uses a Fender Rhodes piano keyboard to create the soft alternating back‐and‐forth bell‐like sounds, conveying nostalgic and magical feelings that provide a fairy‐tale quality to the piece. Göransson has revealed that he took inspiration from John Williams's Star Wars music, which often features bell‐sounding instruments (the celeste and glockenspiel, among others), to convey powerful feelings associated with the Force. In The Empire Strikes Back, the “Yoda and the Force” cue begins when Yoda says to Luke, “For my ally is the Force and a powerful ally it is.” The bell‐like sounds on top of the familiar “Force Theme” create nostalgic, mysterious, and magical feelings.
In The Mandalorian, Göransson recreates these feelings. Grogu's soft bell‐like motif is a powerful piece showing up in different musical shapes. But it does not only play in scenes featuring Grogu. In “Redemption,” when IG‐11 attempts to remove Din's helmet to heal his head wound, Din says, “It is forbidden. No living thing has seen me without my helmet since I swore the Creed.” We then get IG‐11's captivating response, “I am not a living thing.” When IG‐11 removes Din's helmet, we briefly hear Grogu's soft bell‐like motif, signaling the end to the mystery about Din's true visage. We see he's just a man who's been injured, a man who looks sad, scared, and vulnerable. Aristotle would rightly point out that it's the mysterious bell‐like music that imitates the emotion of compassion which moves us and elevates the power of this scene.
Aristotle mentions that another purpose of music is to provide us with pleasure from the relaxation it provides. And from this delight comes another advantage: music influences our moral character. Aristotle claims that this happens when we are emotionally stirred by certain kinds of music.6 In fact, as previously mentioned, the pleasure we find in music can lead us to the enjoyment of better emotional dispositions: “Since then music is a pleasure and virtue consists in rejoicing and loving and hating aright, there is clearly nothing which we are so much concerned to acquire and to cultivate as the power of forming right judgments and of taking delight in good dispositions and noble actions.”7 Aristotle is telling us that the pleasure of music can lead us to enjoy what he calls well‐ordered emotions (such as joy) that are properly measured or balanced. Since good music familiarizes us with balanced movements of emotions, it fosters virtue. Put another way, because good music moves us emotionally and gets us used to true pleasures, it leads us toward being virtuous.
This is precisely what Göransson's music in The Mandalorian does. Consider the scene in “The Mandalorian” when the Ugnaught Kuiil helps Din learn how to ride a blurrg at his outpost. During Din's second attempt at mounting the blurrg, we hear Din's first motif by strings (in the cue titled “You Are a Mandalorian”), which imitates the feeling of triumph. But the music fades away when the blurrg throws him, signaling to us that Din is not yet ready for the challenge. But Kuiil reminds him of his people's history, saying to Din, “You are a Mandalorian. Your ancestors rode the great Mythosaur.” Inspired, Din faces his fears. As he successfully tames and mounts the blurrg, we hear Din's first motif again but this time with a sweep of symphonic orchestration. Next, as Din and Kuiil set out on their mission riding the blurrgs, The Mandalorian theme plays in full glory – a symphonic march with trumpets carrying most of the melody and harmony along with electric and bass guitars which help drive the orchestra. The instrumentation imitates joyful and triumphant feelings.8
Because Göransson's music in this scene imitates well‐ordered emotions that we enjoy, Aristotle would say his music disposes us toward being virtuous. This coincides with one of the more general appeals of the show: that we should aim to lead a virtuous way of life like Din does. The Mandalorian says, among other things, that living virtuously is what defines us. Sure, Din's adherence to his tribe's Way is critical to him, but the show continually highlights Din's moral character. This is seen through his natural impulse to care for Grogu, an impulse he extends to other communities. Certainly, it's the virtue of care, and other virtues he possesses, that truly define Din. Throughout the series he shows courage, bravery, perseverance, honor, trustworthiness, and gratitude.
In addition to the pleasure we feel from enjoying well‐ordered emotional movements of music, Aristotle mentions another kind of pleasure we can feel from music: intellectual enjoyment.9 This occurs when we find delight in contemplating the appropriateness of the emotions or feelings imitated by the music. Aristotle says that our delight in sensing aesthetic order (between music's imitation of the feeling and the feeling itself) is driven by our natural desire to know.10
Recall that at the start of season two, Göransson's music imitates Din's newfound feelings of confidence and optimism while also expressing his emotional attachments. In effect, the music tells us a story – from Din's lone man's journey to embracing a new quest with an unlikely companion with whom he develops a strong paternal connection: Grogu. But the music does not just transmit important narrative information. It also gives us intellectual enjoyment.
In the opening of “The Marshal,” Din is walking down a darkly lit street in an industrial city with Grogu hovering at his side. Strange beasts are watching them. But in the musical cue “Mando is Back,” instead of the motif playing on a bass recorder as in season one (where it expressed Din's lone man's journey), it is now played by amplified electric guitars and synthesizers – expressing Din's strength, confidence, and his paternal bond with Grogu. The music tells us they are now a team, a “clan of two.”
The electric guitars lend this motif a rock ‘n’ roll and heavy metal feel: this is the strength Din now possesses. Additionally, the layered techno and electronic synth sounds provide us with Din's perceptions of the dangerous and gritty underworld he now faces along his quest. But the synth palette also bolsters Din's confidence and optimism, on display moments later during the fight club scene where he wards off alien assassins interested in his beskar armor. Here the synth sounds play in a faster tempo and are accompanied with big percussion hits that accentuate Din's confidence, signaling that he's reached “invincible warrior” status.
We also experience pleasure in realizing that we are being moved by the music in a way which is in tune with Din's confident and optimistic feelings. We recognize and appreciate the appropriate emotional order created in the musical composition. In other words, we intellectually enjoy seeing the relation that exists between Din's confident feeling and how the musical piece imitates this confident feeling.
In fact, Göransson provided us with intellectual enjoyment when he played the guitar version of Din's first motif at the end of season one, foreshadowing Din's new identity, strength, and confidence in season two. This occurred during the emotional flashback to Din's childhood during the Clone Wars attack when he was saved by Mandalorian forces. In the scene where a Mandalorian lifts young Din from a bunker, Göransson's instrumentation (full of low frequencies from the distortion and reverb on the electric guitars) reveals to us that Din and the Mandalorians are all about confidence, strength, and survival.
Interestingly, because Göransson repeatedly uses the recognizable main character themes in each chapter (played with different harmonies and instrumentation), he musically and thematically makes the episodes of the show feel like one continuous movie. In doing so, Göransson accomplishes something aesthetically unique and musically complex. While he gives each chapter of The Mandalorian its own distinct musical identity, he also gives the show its own distinctive sound.11 Unquestionably, we are emotionally moved by the complex musical structure and style of these beautiful distinct harmonies and counterpoints from the show's main themes – which augment our aesthetic admiration for the show as a whole.
The music in The Mandalorian also arouses our emotions through the sheer beauty of the exotic melodies, rhythms, and harmonies. Peter Kivy and other philosophers who write about music refer to these types of emotional responses as “emotions of appreciation.” They're present when we feel awed or amazed by well‐crafted musical compositions.12
Who can forget the heartbreaking farewell scene between Din and Grogu in the season two finale “The Rescue?”13 There's an emotionally powerful moment when Din takes off his helmet to say goodbye to Grogu, who's off to learn the ways of the Force with Luke Skywalker. Din says to Grogu, “That's who you belong with. He's one of your kind. I'll see you again. I promise.” After Grogu reaches his hand out to touch Din's helmet, and Din starts to remove it, the musical cue “Come with Me” transitions into a dreamy and gentle synthesized version of Grogu's broken children's tune, imitating Din's sadness. But Göransson also includes a few bell‐like sounds when Din says, “All right, pal. It's time to go. Do not be afraid.” This cue also emotionally connects Din and Grogu's final scene together with their first encounter. Then, the same broken children's tune was played by electric guitars to evoke Din's sadness over Grogu's helpless predicament. In effect, this sad tune connects the two characters together.
But things become more complex when the droid R2‐D2 appears. Grogu's main motif evolves into a string‐heavy orchestral suite touching on many of the recognizable pieces of music in the show. By tying the themes together, Göransson not only highlights the closure of Din and Grogu's storyline, he also pays homage to the harmonic language of John Williams's Star Wars music from which most of Göransson's music departs. Like Williams, he skillfully builds emotional tension by changing the tempo of the music. What's more, when Luke carries Grogu away and Din locks eyes with his former charge, we hear a new triumphant and heroic version of Din's first motif. The beauty of the orchestration (led by dramatic violins), the intricate instrumentation, the blended themes, and Din's motif express the joy and sadness that Din and Grogu are feeling, heightening the emotions of the visuals. Göransson's ingenuity and the beauty of his craftsmanship in this musical composition trigger this positive emotional response in us. And being emotionally moved is the primary effect of The Mandalorian's music.
The music of The Mandalorian is a combination of organic and electronic instruments played on top of one another, the distorted synthesizers together with the more traditional sounds of a symphonic orchestra. The music fits with the grittiness of Din's environments; it ties the narrative together; it imitates certain emotions that allow us to enjoy good emotional dispositions. It even steers us toward being virtuous, which supports the show's moral argument. But our discussion has also shown us that the music succeeds in conveying the intimacy of Din's story, his self‐development, and his state of mind beneath the helmet – his facial expressions, feelings, and thoughts. It's refreshing and fun for us to hear music that captures the adventure of Star Wars but uses completely different and unorthodox methods. Göransson gets the feel of Star Wars and is not afraid to give us new sounds that guide us on our journey in a galaxy far, far away. As Din and his tribe would say, “This is the Way.”14