“Remembering Petticoat Lane,” Revisited: Themes, Topics, and Codes in the Music of Jurassic Park

While Jurassic Park’s musical legacy is dominated by its iconic “Main” and “Adventure” themes, much of the soundtrack is more atmospheric, dealing with subtler emotions and trading in more sophisticated, less overtly melodic compositional techniques. This article redirects attention to a brief but revealing stretch of quiet underscore: the celesta-inflected pairing of “A Tree for My Bed” and “Remembering Petticoat Lane” midway through the film. Through topical, harmonic, and motivic analysis, I show how these cues form a reflective interlude that negotiates wonder, nostalgia, illusion, and the film’s self-critical stance toward spectacle. Channeling on the berceuse, bagatelle, and music-box topics, Williams shapes a delicate musical oasis, one whose apparent athematicism proves deceptive: “Petticoat Lane” is shot through with subtle permutations of the score’s “Carnivore” Motif, linking Hammond’s reverie to the film’s underlying anxieties about control and creation. I close by considering what this scene reveals about the limits of motivicist analysis and the value of treating non-thematic underscore as analytically and interpretively central.