Mermaids, Frogs and Weird Sisters: "Harry Potter", Worldbuilding and the Diegetic Music of the Wizarding World

While the lion’s share of the musical worldbuilding in the Harry Potter films (2001–2011) is undertaken by the composers’ non-diegetic scores, there exists nonetheless a significant amount of diegetic music within the wizarding world. This chapter takes instances of varyingly diegetic music as its basis to track the ways in which the cultures of the wizarding world are musically depicted. Some examples use music to distance the magical world from the primary one, depicting it as enchanted, exotic or ‘other’ in some way, as articulated by Isabella van Elferen (such as the Hogwarts ‘Frog’ Choir, a group of schoolchildren accompanied by a number of musically gifted croaking toads), while others tie the wizarding world more closely to our own (such as Harry and Hermione dancing awkwardly to ‘O Children’ by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds). Similarly, although some instances are more clearly demarcated as entirely diegetic, many can be heard as moving between the diegetic/non-diegetic spaces or existing in the ‘fantastical gap’ between them. The blurring of this diegetic divide is identified not only as a narrative device but an agent of worldbuilding, with the resulting hesitation helping to position the world as ‘fantastic’. On the whole, most instances of diegetic music work to render the depicted characters or cultures more familiar, tying them more closely to our own and thus making the wizarding world seem more recognisable and thus more accessible.