Paul Tonks

The Pocket Essential

FILM MUSIC

www.pocketessentials.com
 First published in Great Britain 2001, revised 2003 by
Pocket Essentials, P O Box 394, Harpenden, Herts, AL5 1XJ, UK

Distributed in the USA by Trafalgar Square Publishing,

PO Box 257, Howe Hill Road, N orth Pomfret, Vermont 05053

Copyright © Paul Tonks 2001, 2003

Series Editor: David Mathew

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by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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ISBN 1-903047-63-3

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 For Rebecca, my ‘confoundedly attractive woman’

Acknowledgements

Glen Aitken, Steve Bartek, Jonathan Broxton, James Cox, Paul

Duncan, Keiron Earnshaw, Robin Esterhammer, Michael
Giacchino, Rudy Koppl, Ian Lace, Geoff Leonard, Paul Lewis,
Dick Lewzey, Carl Ogawa, Matthew Peerless, Steve Race,
Deanne Scott, Elliot Thorpe, Robert Townson, Michael Voigt,
Mark Walker, Debbie Wiseman, the British Academy Of Com-
posers And Songwriters, Garrett Axford Public Relations And
Marketing, Mum, Dad, and all the directors/composers who
have inspired my writing.

‘As much to the crew of the Enterprise, I owe you my thanks.’

 CONTENTS

1. You Ain’t Heard Nothing Yet......................................7

2. The Golden Age........................................................11

3. Anything Goes.......................................................... 21

4. Commercial Instincts ...............................................36

5. Romance Ain’t Dead ................................................ 53

6. Millennium Falcons ..................................................75

7. Hitting The Right Note ............................................. 88

8. Reference.................................................................. 92
 1. You Ain’t Heard Nothing Yet

Wheth er yo u’re someone who has just d iscovered film mu sic, someone
ob lig ed to learn more for educational p urpos es , or a lo ng-stan din g geek fan,
th is book is res pectfully y ours. Compiled h ere is an intro duction to the film
compos er’s craft in chro nolo gical order. E ach chapter tak es a perio d in h is-
to ry and namechecks the writers who made a d ifference, and observes what
was happening in th e in dustry to make differences warranted and po ssible.
Th e names go by fast, but ho pefully with cro ss-referencin g and albu m rec-
ommen datio ns at the end, the most important ones stay in the memory.
Whenever music is w ritten to s uppo rt so meth ing else it is called
‘applied’ as oppo sed to ‘p ure’. So its categorization as ‘applied music’ help s
give a literal answer. For ou r purpos es , a more specific d efinition is that it’s
music applied to su pport th e actio n of a theatrically released film. New
so ngs are written, old ones are re-us ed , classical pieces are qu oted from, and
so metimes the so und effects th emselv es are deemed mu sic. All of these will
be mention ed in context, but it’s the wo rk of the film compo ser th at’s con-
centrated o n.
Beg in b y as kin g you rs elf the following ques tio ns: w hat makes the title
scroll o f a Star War s movie exciting? Wh y is th e tin y d ot o f a camel in v as t
desert sand s s o beau tiful in La wrence O f A rabia ? Wh at’s so frig htening
abou t a deliv ery van appearing on the horizon at the en d o f Se7en ? Wh y is
Scarlett O ’Hara’s sun set s ilh ouette so heartbreak ing in Gone With The
Wind? Wh y do we ju mp at Syd ney opening an empty clo set do or in Scream?
In Ver tig o, h ow d o we kn ow that M adelin e is goin g to th row herself out the
to wer wind ow and that Scotty wo n’t be able to sav e h er?
The ans wer to each is the music. The composers manip ulate ou r emo-
tions . By whatever method it is realised, film music is th e uns een narrative
vo ice communicating everyth ing we need to feel. It can dup licate, contra-
dict, or even act regardless of the actio n and dialogu e. Take it away, and it is
miss ed .
That said, it’s a curious fact that mos t audiences are n ev er aware of a
film’s mus ic. L ight may trav el faster than sou nd, but do es th at excus e peo-
ple’s general reaction o f n ot recallin g any music? Th is is the main reas on for
an ongo ing dis reg ard for the film comp oser’s art. To th is can be ad ded d is-
dain fro m the clas sical realm fo r it no t bein g ‘pure’. Also a refusal to

7
acknow ledge its unchang ing orchestral form by the ever-changin g p op
music world . With s o much combined ignorance, it’s a wo nder it s tayed
po pular in the ind ustry. Yet there are more orchestral scores being written
and b eing released today than ever.
Ano ther curiou s fact about co ntemporary audien ces is that 90 % leave the
cinema (or stop the vid eo/DVD ) as soo n as the end credits beg in to roll.
Unless there’s a rare con tin uatio n o f footage or so me b loo pers , no on e’s
in teres ted in a list of names w ith mus ical backin g. It us ed to be th at comp os-
ers w ere g iven this time for a score su ite. This time is now generally given
to s ong placemen t. Fo r Titan ic (19 97), the big gest ever cin ematic and film
music s ucces s story, that time went to ‘M y Heart Will Go On’. Its album
so ld over 25 million co pies world wide, an d th e son g s tayed at Number 1 in
US charts for sixteen week s. T he dis crepancies here are, how could a score
be so popu lar if it wasn ’t generally no ticed, and h ow could a song do so w ell
if few stayed in their seats to hear Celine Dion? Sin ce a larg e propo rtion of
sales accrued prior to the film’s releas e, the an swer comes down to how the
mark eting -o riented indus try wo rk s to day. To understan d that properly, we
have to jo urney back b efore th e real-life ocean lin er s et sail.

The Rest Is Silents

Uncertain ty abo ut app lying so und to film dates back to th e beginn ing s of
cinema, b efore the technology was availab le to make use o f it. Mus ical
acco mp an imen t p receded the first ‘talk ie’ by a number of years thoug h.
After the Lumière broth ers set th e wheels o f this new indus try in motion
with footage of a s team engine (1 895), fickle au diences wanted more and
more sp ectacle. Long er pieces o f film begat an entire sto rylin e, first in The
Great Tra in R obbery (19 03). Arou nd that time it b ecame common to have a
pian o improv ising to what was on screen (and neatly h iding the clanking
projector n oise). Thou gh classicist Camille Sain t-Saëns was commissioned
to pro vide a score fo r L’As sass ina t du Duc de Guis e (190 8), it was the 20 s
before a music-pu blishin g clerk n amed Max Winkler devised a s hort-lived
sy stem of providing pian ists w ith cue sh eets of ex isting pieces. Simu lta-
neou s to th at taking effect, the major Hollywo od s tud ios began s pending
vast sums of mo ney experimenting with s ound techno logies.
Warner Broth ers us ed th e Vitapho ne s ystem to s ynchronise a soun d d isc
of rudimentary effects to their p remiere of Don Juan (19 26). History

8
reco rds an au dience reaction that w as cas ually ind ifferent to the experience.
Th e followin g y ear the studios sig ned the Big Five Agreement to delay the
in trodu ction of synchro nised so und until they agreed on one sys tem and
were confid en t o f its us efu lness . Fortu nately they were almo st immediately
reas sured o n all counts. M ere mon ths later, Warner again made histo ry with
th e words ‘Yo u ain’t h eard n oth ing y et’ bursting fro m Al Joh nson in The
Jazz Sin ger (192 7). It was a s traightforward demo nstration o f simple micro-
ph one placemen t, bu t it laid the gaun tlet fo r the in dustry. Wh ile d irectors
like Alfred Hitchcock langu ish ed in attempts to h ide reco rding eq uipment in
flo werp ots fo r Blackmail (19 29), the idea of a fully s ynchron ised ‘talkie’
was s uddenly po ssible and d es irable. It s eems inconceivable today that
Leon ardo DiCaprio and Kate Win slet might have b een left mo uthing sweet
no things w hile a screencard interrupted to ann ounce: ‘Iceberg , roigh t
ahead!’
Classical pieces were the easies t musical ap plication with sou nd techn ol-
og y in p lace. At th e s tart of Un iversal’s reign o f h orror greats, Bela Lugo si’s
Dr acula (19 31) benefited from the s oulfu l strain s of Tchaik ovsk y’s ‘Swan
Lake’. Some studio s went a step furth er and asked con temp orary class ical
compos ers to write pieces to be ad ded later. Stravinsky an d Hols t both
work ed o n s cores that never s aw the ligh t of d ay, but Sho stako vich gradu-
ated from years as an improvisin g pian ist to being as ked to write something
to perfo rm alo ngside New Ba bylon (1 929). T hen he scored A lone (19 30),
which was h is n ative Russ ia’s first soun d film.
The real turnin g point came co urtesy of Austrian-born Max Stein er,
affectionately dub bed the ‘Father of Film Mu sic’. He arriv ed in Hollywo od
at the end o f a s treak of M usicals , which were one way the ind ustry had
emb raced the use of s ound . At the start of th e 3 0s there w as still a co m-
monly held con cern that cinema au diences wou ldn’t u nderstan d where a full
musical underscore wou ld b e comin g from. It to ok the bravery of RKO pro-
du cer David O. Selznick to get past that and instru ct Steiner to co mpo se one
for Symph ony Of Six M illion (19 32). Th e result sh ook those no tio ns apart
and almos t immediately led to th e creation of mus ical departments within
th e majo r stu dio s. As res ident musical director o f RKO for several years
(before moving onto Warn ers ), he had his pick of projects . It was his King
Kong (1 933) that s ign ified the dawn o f a n ew era. Wh en ev er thanked by
admirers fo r in venting film mus ic, Steiner wo uld brus h co mpliments away
and point them in the direction of late German roman tic co mp oser Richard

9
Wagn er (whos e work had ap peared in film as early as 19 15 with The Birth
Of A Nation). In his op inion Wag ner would hav e been the fo remost film
compos er. All of which is in referen ce to the leitmotif – th e idea o f linking
th e appearan ces of a p ers on, place, or thin g togeth er with a recurring mu si-
cal p hras e. It may seem commonplace an d commo n s en se to day, but for
film it began with Kon g. T he ape’s th ree-note motif is as simple an idea as
Jo hn Williams wou ld later create for Jaws . We feel and fear h is p resen ce
when not actually on screen becau se of this mo tif. We su spend dis belief for
th e sto p-motion pup pet because of its p ower an d no bility. Its importance for
th is film, an d the craft from then on cann ot be s tressed en ough . It gave
licen ce for the opening of a film to featu re a mus ical overture introducing
principal themes. It also meant a brief repris e cou ld accompany the au di-
ence’s exit, b ack in a Go lden Ag e when th ere were no long lis ts o f names to
read .

10
 2. The Golden Age

‘The G olden Age’ is on e of several terms bandied about witho ut an yone

really bothered with defining what it mean s, w hen it started , when it en ded,
or why. Where film mu sic is concerned, it roman tically means a p eriod
when its craft matched the artistry of the films themselves, uns ullied by
commercialism or committee decisio n-making. Th at p eriod arg uably starts
at Steiner’s King Kong with its in tellectu alised methods . It had an immedi-
ately ob viou s influ en ce on how scores were written . Ev ery thing that previ-
ou sly falls in to the Silent film category sho uld be s ep arated fro m the
defin ition, bu t chrono logically this igno res much that sho uldn ’t be fo rg ot-
ten. Worth ies include the previo usly mention ed Mu sicals, the wo rk s of
Ed mun d M eisel on Th e Battles hip Potemkin (19 25) and Octo ber (19 27),
and even the en caps ulation o f American goo d humour desp ite its Depres-
sion Era in Charlie Chaplin’s sketched and h ummed tu nes for the likes of
City Lights (193 1). Th es e all co ntrib uted to the s tyles and app roach es of
later wo rk s. If Ko ng is to be taken as th e starting po int however, then it’s the
richly dramatic style th at distinguishes its elf fro m wh at came before.
Steiner went on to produce some o f the most memorab le film s cores in
histo ry. He p ut th under under the hoov es o f The Cha rge Of The Light B ri-
ga de (1 936), and a go lden glow of emo tio nal beauty an d fortitude behind
Tara’s life story in Go ne With The Wind (193 9). L ater he became inextrica-
bly linked to the b es t o f Humphrey Bog art’s career durin g th e popu larity of
film noir. Virgin ia City (1 940), Th e Big S leep (1 946), Th e Treas ure Of The
Sier ra Ma dre (19 48), and Key Largo (1 948) are all scores that s ustain the
class ic imag e of Bogart as everybo dy’s favo urite gang ster/gu ms hoe.
Steiner’s co ntrib ution to Casab lan ca (194 2) d emon strates jus t how pow er-
ful mus ic can be. ‘As Time Goes By’ was actually w ritten b y Herman
Hup feld fo r a Broadway sho w a decade earlier, but Steiner’s integ ration of
th e melody into his underscore makes it inseparable fro m the film. The
result is a son g th at acts as a s napsh ot o f a time, place, character, mood , and
range of emotions that are in stantly recognisable and endles sly spoo fab le.
He was n ot averse to being influ en ced himself of cours e. With The
Ad ventures Of Don Ju an (1949 ) we find the real core of what’s con sidered
Golden Ag e mus ic. In Errol Flynn, Hollywoo d discovered and developed
on e of th e first Su pers tars. One word su ms u p the mu sic and th e man :
sw as hbuckle. You’ll often hear abou t ‘Golden Age film compos ers ’ an d this

11
refers to u p to a dozen names. Where Steiner is seen to have been influ-
enced, co urtesy of Flynn’s career, is in th e style ins tig ated b y fellow
Viennese compos er, Erich Wolfgang Ko rn gold.
Captain Blo od (19 35) lau nched Ko rngold’s and Flynn’s careers and als o
in itiated a new generation o f adventure epics . His style is characterised by
furio usly fast action music domin ated b y b rass , and aching ly bittersweet
lo ve themes domin ated by strings . It’s a robu st statement of regal grandeur
combin ed w ith p as sio nate ro mance (in both senses ). The Adventu res Of
Ro bin Hoo d (1938 ), The Private Lives Of Eliza beth And E ssex (19 39) and
The Sea Ha wk (194 0) all carry the style. Wh en John Williams was asked for
a particular s ound in the 70s , it w ould be to these that d irector George Lucas
wou ld tu rn fo r inspiration . Place the main titles of Korngo ld’s King’s Row
(194 2) next to Sta r Wars (197 7), and you have o ne of the most ob viou s
examples o f stylis tic inheritance. When y ou con sid er h ow much the Sta r
Wa rs trilogy has in tu rn influenced cinematic trend s, Korngo ld’s s ign ifi-
cance sho uld be very apparent. The amazing th ing is he o nly scored a to tal
of 1 6 films, yet these core swashb ucklers affected the careers o f ev ery co m-
po ser who follow ed suit.
Alfred Newman w orked on man y co stume ep ics in an enormous career
sp an nin g almost 2 50 s co res . In the immediate wake of the adv en ture epic’s
po pularity he prod uced Th e Ma rk Of Zorro (1 940), S ong Of Fur y (19 42),
The Black Swa n (19 42), Captain From Cas tile (1947 ), and Pr ince Of Foxes
(194 9) to name only a few. Apart fro m s ustainin g the sy mph onic soun d,
Newman is also respo nsible for so meth ing else Star War s owes a d eb t of
th an ks to. His 20 th Centu ry Fox fanfare h as never seemed more at ho me
th an in p recedin g the s pace trilog y. It was co mp osed du ring h is p erio d as
Head of th e s tudio’s mus ic departmen t. Like Steiner at RKO, the position
in volved collating co mp osers, instru mentalists, orchestrators and tech ni-
cians togeth er u nder one roof. All this was in ad dition to writing his o wn
scores, where something in the string writing often s ugges ted a religiou s
sp irituality (altho ugh h e w as in fact a non-practicing Jew). In cond uctin g, he
wou ld encourage a great d eal of ex pression an d v ibrato (exaggerated wob-
ble) in the string performan ces. His score to The So ng Of Berna dette (19 43)
came after a long line of s ucces sful work s where th is particu lar s ound can
be h eard, such as : The Pr iso ner of Zenda (1 937), Th e Hurr icane (19 37),
Wuth er ing H eights (1939 ), The Hun ch back Of Notre Dame (193 9), and

12
How Green Was My Valley (19 41). With Ber nad ette however came a turning
po int that touched many things simultaneously.
Res earching th e imp ortant scen e o f a v ision of the Virg in M ary, N ewman
hit upon wh at epitomises his imp res sio nistic s tyle. As op posed to Steiner’s
more specific leitmotifs, Newman instead drew fro m the mood an d require-
men ts of scenes. The res ult o f th e impress ions comin g together for this
score was an Academy Award, and so meth ing almos t completely unheard of
even as late as the 4 0s: an albu m of th e dramatic underscore. Up to this
po int, it wasn ’t p oss ible for anyon e to be a s ound track collector. So me
vagu e no tio n of usin g popu lar s ongs in unison w ith a mo vie had begun in
th e Silent era. Th e n otion g rew w ith the su ccess of Dis ney’s Snow Wh ite
An d The Seven Dwar ves (193 8), which deman ded there be an album o f its
sing-alon g s ongs . Disney w ould also be the first to call an album an ‘Origi-
nal So undtrack’ w ith Pin occh io (19 40). Yet no thin g un til th is p oin t actually
deserved that title, becaus e they were all new recordings and no t taken from
what was used in th e film its elf. The S ong Of Berna dette was an importan t
in dication that th ere was a p ublic demand for film music on record.
Ano ther o f Newman ’s legacies is the family he left to carry o n the go od
work . Brothers Emil and Lionel became Hollywo od compo sers , with the
latter taking o ver as Head of Fox Mu sic when Alfred moved on . Working
to day are h is two so ns David (Bill And Ted’s E xcellen t Adventure an d G al-
axy Q uest) an d T homas (The S hawsha nk Redemption and American
Beau ty), and his neph ew Rand y (The Na tur al and Toy Stor y).

Others Who Polished The Gold

Althou gh stylistically it’s o ften tho ught Victor You ng only periph erally
belo nged among the Golden Age greats, that’s at the co st o f igno ring a great
gift for melody and an understan din g of commercial po tential. He was
another to pioneer the po ssibilities o f sou ndtracks on vinyl by re-recording
his dramatic un ders co re to Fo r Whom The Bell Tolls (1 943). His career
lifted off after recording pieces fo r s ilen t movies an d bein g snapp ed up for a
lifetime of as sociation with Paramou nt Studios. Melo dic high lig hts th ere
in cluded Th e U ninvited (194 4) and S amso n And Delilah (1 949). Elsewh ere,
Rio Gr ande (19 50) and especially Sh ane (195 2) were at the forefron t o f the
Wes tern genre of th e day.

13
 In slightly high er reg ard is Hu go Fried hofer. His technical excellen ce
was often sou ght ou t by Alfred N ewman to score p ictures at Fo x, an d als o
by Korngo ld and Steiner to as sis t orchestrating their wo rk. He th an kfully
foun d time to app ly his wo nderful ab ility for h armonic in vention an d stark
colo uratio n to scores of his o wn. Starting in 193 7 with The Adventu res Of
Marco Po lo (another sw as hbuckler), no tables include: The Lodger (19 44),
Bro ken Arro w (1950 ), Seven Cities Of Gold (1 955), The Su n A lso Rises
(195 7), and Th is Earth Is Mine (1 959). Th e Best Year s O f Ou r Lives (19 46)
is Friedhofer’s greatest achiev ement. Apart from pub lic favo ur and winning
an Oscar, it’s to b e acknowledged for b eing the first time a film s co re was
well received b y general mu sic critics. That’s no t to say it ch an ged their elit-
is t o pinions forev er, b ut it’s another ind ication that the G olden Age style
had the po wer to affect much arou nd it.
Like Korngo ld b efo re h im, German compo ser Franz Waxman fou nd
hims elf persuaded to fin d safer haven in Ho lly wood with th e imminent o ut-
break of World War II. Almo st immed iately he had an eno rmou s effect on
th e in dustry with his g rand ios e score to The Brid e Of Fra nken stein (19 35).
Us ing th e ond es martenot in strument (similar to th e theremin - see b elow),
he gave an orig inal and p eculiar atmo sphere to th e d oomed ro mance. The
orchestra performed in an impress ionistic way to doub le the soun ds of the
stran ge lab oratory equip ment. T here had been s eq uel mo vies and scores
before (Stein er was ru shed into d oin g S on Of Ko ng in 193 3), b ut none had
th e s ame degree of su ccess an d res pect. Univ ers al too k its mon ster mo vie
series into ov erdrive. U niversal als o rewarded Waxman with a two -y ear
contract as music d irector. He then skipped to M GM fo r an other s ev en -y ear
contract (and later Warner Bro thers) as o ne of several resid ent compos ers .
The Waxman sou nd is fu ll of brass fan fares; it has a languo rous softn es s
to his romantic themes . He had tremendou s succes s with Su nset Bou levard
(195 0), A Place In The Sun (1 951), d elvin g in to d errin g-do w ith Prin ce Val-
ia nt (1954 ), and in to sexual rep res sio n with Peyton Place (1957 ). A stro ng
in dication of the man’s ability is that the clas sics Rebecca and Th e P hiladel-
ph ia Story were written in tand em d uring 194 0. T he former was th e first of
four p ictures fo r Alfred Hitchcock. With Su spicion (1 941), The P arad ine
Case (1 947), and R ea r Win dow (19 54) all follow ing, Waxman enjoyed one
of th e d irector’s numero us doo r-op en ing w orkin g relation ships. Hitchcock
demons trated tremendo us musical s av vy thro ugho ut his career, selecting
compos ers who were almost always p erfect for the job .

14
 Rózsa beat both Newman’s So ng O f B er nadette and You ng’s Fo r Wh om
The Bell Tolls to viny l w ith The Jungle Boo k, which was re-recorded for an
experimental commercial sales ventu re in 194 2. It may n ot have had its
original tracks, b ut w ith out that ex perimen t others wo uld have been slow to
follow. He go t to make h is mark at the oth er end of th e decade any way with
th e world ’s first complete underscore alb um releas e for Ma dame Bovary
(194 9). In and arou nd these land marks, he develop ed a preference fo r mu si-
cal research and a bo ld op ulent sty le with: The Th ief Of Bagh dad (19 40),
That Hamilto n Wo man (19 41), Do uble In demnity (1 944), The Los t Weekend
(194 5), and The Red H ouse (1947 ). Th es e were two decades of prodigiou s
achievemen t, but wo uld be eclipsed by his historical and religious epics of
th e next ten years . T he Os car award ed to the mu sic for S pellb ound (19 45)
do es n’t begin to acknowledge th e achievement of Hun garian composer
M iklós Rózsa. It mus t have been an eno rmou s ch allenge bein g given a
Hitchcock, Gregory Peck, and In grid Berg man h eadliner with material tack-
ling Freudian ps ychology and incorporating dream sequ ences d esign ed by
Salvador D ali. Neverth eless, h e proved h is w orth b y test scorin g a sequen ce
us ing the theremin to depict Peck ’s parano iac tend en cies . Th e eerie wailing
so und of the electronic in strument was s ubsequ en tly asso ciated with any
form of cinematic p sychos is. Integrated in to a score that also featured a
beautiful lov e theme, Rózsa later adapted the material in to the ‘Spellbou nd
Concerto’, which has b een a concert hall favou rite and had many album
reco rding s.
There was a more popu lar mo ment of record indu stry history in 194 4.
Fox Stu dios were inun dated with requests for th e mus ic to their s tylish mur-
der mys tery Lau ra. The follow ing year, five vers ion s o f a so ng with n ewly
commissioned lyrics w ere in th e US Top 10. Co mp oser David Rak sin made
a g reat impression o n the way things were going. It w as a welco me indica-
tion that audien ces could n otice an d app reciate a score, but th e unw elco me
result was a co ntinuation o f corporate th ink ing that the material w ould only
sell in so ng format. T he g reater shame is that the frequently ou tsp oken
Raksin was completely again st applying lyrics to his theme. One infamou s
tale that illus trates his philos ophical an d ethical n ature is from the same y ear
for H itchcock’s Lifeboat. Originally co ntracted to s co re, his work was
stopp ed before it started when a message from Hitch anno unced th ere
wou ld be no mu sic. The director felt th at for a film s et entirely on a small
bo at no one wo uld un derstand w here th e music w as co ming from. Raksin

15
sent back a reply to say h e’d ans wer that when s omeon e exp lained wh ere
th e cameras were. As a resu lt, th e scoring duties went to Hug o Friedh ofer.
His style mig ht not neces sarily accord with the swash buckling definition of
bein g G olden Age, yet La ura , The Ad ventures Of Sherlock Holmes (19 39),
Fo rever Amb er (1947 ) and Th e B ad And Th e B ea utiful (1 952) all poss es s
so me of the mo st pleasin gly memorab le melodies of th eir time.
Among st thes e essential years of career composers defining th e Golden
Age with their prolific o utpu t, there were several in dividual co ntrib utions to
be con sid ered. Since so much sto ck is placed in the Academy Awards these
days , it’s worth mentioning that the first Oscar ceremo ny too k place in
19 35. The Best M usic Sco re categ ory was wo n by Victor Schertzing er and
Gus Kahn for O ne Nigh t Of Love. Schertzing er was also the film’s director
and his so ng-writing talent mad e a star o ut of Grace Moo re with ‘Ciri-Biri-
Bin’. Th e film’s music was largely an exercise in makin g popu lar the rar-
efied w orld o f opera, so it’s interesting to note how right from the s tart d ra-
matic und ers co re went ign ored by th e Academy. M ax Steiner was
no minated for Th e Lost Patrol over a lis t o f nearly thirty o ther films he
work ed on in th e s ame year, and also over a similarly bus y Alfred Newman.
Perh ap s fin ding its feet for a few years, th e Acad emy g radu ally made
amen ds ack nowled gin g Steiner in 193 6 (Th e Informer ), Ko rn gold in 19 37
(Anthony Ad vers e), and Newman in 1939 (A lexander ’s Ragtime Ban d) when
th e category was opened out in to three for Original Score, Scoring, and
Song .
Being a Hollywo od v en ture, the Os cars at th at time co uld n’t help bu t
ov erlook what was happening els ewhere in the world. In E nglan d, Sir
Arth ur Bliss wrote what is cons idered a major lan dmark in film scorin g with
Thin gs To Come (193 6). For this first fu lly realised cinematic science fiction
(based on H.G. Wells’ no vel), th e ambitiou s piece was largely written b efore
th e film was made. As such, th e th ree 7 8-rpm reco rds can’t qu alify as d ra-
matic und ers co re to be the first of its kin d releas ed . The cen tral ‘March’ was
almost immediately divorced from th e film anyw ay and became a concert
hall favourite.
A similar fate often befell the s co res of con temp orary class icists w ho
were cajoled, if only briefly, in to the cinematic limelight. Two more En glis h
compos ers to make fleetin g Go lden Ag e cameos were Ralph Vau ghan Will-
iams whos e Sco tt Of The Anta rctic (1 948) is far b etter k nown as his ‘Sev-
enth Symphon y’, and Sir William Walto n who se Shakespearian adaptation s

16
of Henr y V (1943 ) and Hamlet (1947 ) have often been recorded and p er-
formed as concert s uites . In America, Aaron Copland ’s directn es s an d folk
tu ne s en sibility led to a handful o f film s cores that made s en se of the word
American a mo re than an y other. Our Town (194 0) is th e quintess en tial por-
trait of small-town USA, and has been emu lated ever sin ce. Brassy fanfares,
simp le harmonics, and p atriotic prid e were the s taples of his music for both
concert stag e and s creen, and were the perfect fuel for th e nation entering
WWII (especially his non -filmic piece ‘Fan fare For The Commo n Man ’).
Sergei Pro kofiev’s as tonishingly po werful Alexa nder Nevsky (1938 ) was
another example of war propaganda in spiring great cinema. L ike comrade
Shos takov ich’s earlier w orks, the Russian epic wasn ’t wid ely seen in Amer-
ica at the time. The music b ecame far mo re internatio nally familiar in edited
form as a cantata (larg ely vo cal work) for perfo rmance, as op posed to
again st d irector Serg ei Eisenstein’s awe-insp irin g visuals . Th e 2 visionaries
re-united in 194 2 for the only s lig htly less breathtaking Ivan The Terrible.
Prokofiev ’s en ergetic tempos coupled with affecting use o f wordles s v oices
may h av e been u nappreciated in its time. It has mo st definitely been red is-
covered and paid homag e to in the work of contemporary A-list Hollywo od
compos ers h owever. For example, several of Dann y Elfman and J ames Hor-
ner’s works are rich er thanks to the pairin g of Prokofiev with Eisenstein.
Th ey have had their o wn g reat comp oser/director relationsh ips , as we sh all
see later. This rare working metho d has always produ ced the very best in
film mu sic, an d with no more g littering ly obvious res ults than in the career
of o ne of th e g reatest arch itects of cinema’s Go lden Ag e.
The name Bernard Herrmann today comes almost inseparable from
Alfred Hitchcock’s. T here was well over a decade of cinema from th e co m-
po ser before th ey got together thoug h. A t the very start w as a collaboration
th at had just as pro fo und an effect on the ind ustry. Herrmann had been
work ing w ith Orson Welles for so me time already in radio (think War Of
The World s), w hen Ho lly wood beckoned . Togeth er they crafted the univ er-
sally accep ted masterpiece that is Citizen Kan e (1 941). Above all others,
Herrmann was the on e compo ser w ho trans cend ed the Ages . No genre of
film was closed to him. He wo uld later tack le a new form o f the swash buck-
ling adventure epic when the fantasy genre was re-invented for mo nster
flick s featuring Ray Harry hausen’s s top -motion animation such as Jas on
An d Th e A rgona uts (1 963). Yet when faced w ith an indu stry almos t
entrenched in a unifo rm approach to film scoring at th e s tart of the 40s, H er-

17
rman n typically chose to fly in the face o f conv en tio n. The mus ic o f Kane
covers n ew sreel pastiche, an op eratic ex tract, a homely dialo gue scene sp un
acro ss a montag e o f years, an d plen ty of the brooding turmo il characterising
Charles Foster Kane. T he film opens with an explo rative jo urney around the
Xanadu man sion . Th ough darkly lit, it co uld jus t b e a For Sale promo were
it n ot fo r th e guttural brass co mbinin g w ith sighin g and moanin g wo od-
winds. In o ne fell swoop , Herrmann to ok the Go lden Age style and applied
it in a shocking n ew way. This was a score for atmosp here.
From the very beginn ing s of h is career, a dark co lour s haded his w ritin g.
In many o f the films he is more pop ularly know n for, th is colour h elped
with the setting an d pre-empting of atmo sph eres. A superb example is Cape
Fear (196 2), w hich was more vis cerally interpreted fo r a modern audien ce
in 19 91 by M artin Sco rsese. Elmer Bernstein adapted the orig inal score for
th e new version. In both it makes fo r a ch illing ride o f terror in the ‘M ain
Titles’ alo ne. Dark colours were particular to H errman n, b ut co pied by o th-
ers in ch aracterising s omeon e’s un spok en psycho log ical state (coining the
term ‘Herrmann es que’). Simplicity and economy were evid en t in his score
pages, an d as David Rak sin o nce put it, ‘Benny w as a g enius with the repeat
sign.’ Man y o f h is score pages had the appearance of small cells of mu sic
endlessly falling back on themselves. Non e of this is to say that he revo lu-
tionised music, but he rev olu tio nised its relation ship to the s creen.
Thro ugh the rest of th e decade, H errman n wo rk ed on films that indulged
his musical an d priv ate personality. His 194 2 Os car for All That Money Can
Bu y (a.k.a. The Devil And Daniel Webster) was th e o nly time he’d be
ho noured by the Academy, an d w as really in apo logy for not being ab le to
acknow ledge th e politically incorrect Ka ne. The p ro ject was a 1 9th Century
tellin g of the tale o f Faus t’s pact with the dev il, and this combination o f p sy-
chological complexity in a his torical settin g suited the co mpo ser p erfectly.
The Ma gnificent Ambers ons (1942 ), Jane Eyre (1943 ), Han gover S quare
(194 5), An na And Th e King Of Sia m (19 46), and Po rtra it Of Jen nie (19 48)
all followed w ith similarly imp res sive resu lts . The Gh ost And Mrs . Muir
(194 7) was his favourite score h owever, summing up every thing Herrmann
wanted to s ay. With th e earlier Jane Eyre, he’d fou nd a very person al identi-
fication with a time and place. It in spired h im to write his only opera (Wu th-
ering H eights), and it thrilled him to further apply his g othic extravagances
and poetic morbid ities to wh at was really a co mp an ion piece in the gh ostly
tale of Muir’s Gull Cottag e. T here are legend ary s tories abo ut Herrmann’s

18
gruff irascible manner, but non e surroun d this project. His preoccupation
with solitu de and death are all realis ed in a lyrical b acking fo r th e roman ce
betw een G en e Tierney an d Rex H arris on’s gho stly sea cap tain. M ore than in
any oth er of his s cores , Herrmann mak es us e of the leitmotif. Galloping
woo dwin ds pull the tides, clarinets offer nautical whimsy for Captain
Gregg, and s tring s defin e the d oomed lo ve affair. He p layfully referred to it
as his ‘Max Steiner score’, thereby acknowledgin g the Golden A ge style in
us e arou nd h im.

From Gold To Silver

In exp an ding th e definition of th e term Gold en Age to und ers tand w hy it
is con sid ered to h av e ended and been rep laced by s omethin g else, H er-
rman n’s role is es sential. He tran slated his personality into an artform that
otherwise capitulated to an entrenched s tudio sy stem. It w as enoug h of a
change in th ink ing to allow bigger changes to follow.
In 194 9 Co lumbia Record s intro duced the 33 &1/3-rpm format onto the
mark et, followed by the 45-rpm s ing le fro m RCA Victor. Releasing fu ller
leng ths of a mo vie s co re was o f course h ampered b y the smaller format
before th is. The single was the mo re influ en tial fo rmat with th e new branch
of p op ch arts it created . An ton Karas ’ ‘H arry Lime Theme’ from The Third
Man (1949 ) stayed at Number 1 for elev en week s the followin g year. It was
an immediate indication o f ch an ge in popu lar an d studio th inking toward
film mus ic. Mo re p ertinently, being a score fro m an u nkno wn Viennes e p er-
former play ed entirely on an equally unkn own ins trument (the zith er), this
was a big ger ind icatio n th at studios (British Lio n/Lo ndon Films) were
changing their th ink ing ab out the applicatio n of music. It’s a coinciden ce
th at Orson Welles is in the film, but is it a coin cidence that su ch a radical
departu re in sty le followed a decade of u nconvention al ins trumen t combina-
tion and application fro m H errman n?
No sin gle s co re marks the end of one A ge and the beginning o f the n ex t.
What I’m su ggesting is that th e w ord Age is a little redu ndant or misleading
in the w ay it’s us ed. At the end of the 4 0s and begin ning of th e 50s, mus ical
id eas expand ed rapidly and we b as ically have a trans itional period . As k
so meon e to wh ich era Mikló s Ró zs a's Ben-Hur o r Alex N orth’s Cleo patr a
belo ngs and inv ariab ly it’ll b e to th e Golden Ag e, yet th e former w as 19 59
and the latter 1 963. From th e o ther perspective, ask abou t Karas’ Third M an

19
or even Herrmann’s th eremin-rich The D ay The Ear th Stood Still (19 51),
and the w aters get mud dy b ecaus e their sty le leans toward what is d ifferen-
tiated as being Silver A ge. Wh at are being referred to , therefore, are sty les
of music as opp osed to strict timeframes.
The Gold en Ag e style h as never gone away. It has enjo yed s everal peri-
od s of renewed favou r. Yet in the 5 0s, record indu stry chang es, th e loo ming
advent of rock ‘n’ roll, and es pecially w ith television mo nopo lis ing au di-
ences, the orchestral fo rm w as politely asked to take a sid es tep for o thers to
try their h an d.

20
 3. Anything Goes

If Gold en Age was tough to d es cribe, Silv er Ag e is even more so. No

later Bronze Age has been id en tified , so p erhaps this second era never really
ended. Silver is a descrip tio n of a particular area of musical sty le clearly dif-
feren t from Gold en . The wo rd Age is again mis leadin g, because th e distinc-
tion between the tw o is no thing to d o with an y start or stop in time. Fo r the
pu rp oses of chapter break down ho wever, it’s a happy fact this changeover
happ en ed over a measu rable number of years.
M ovin g in to the 50 s, s ev eral cinematic trends en joy ed a period of fav our
th at encouraged compo sers to find new means of express ion. Film Noir had
appeared in the 4 0s, and as previously mentioned, M ax Steiner helped Bog-
art immens ely. Th ere were also s ome in ventively dark humoured scores
coming out of Lond on’s Ealing Stud ios : Pas spo rt To Pimlico (Georges
Auric) and Kin d Hearts And Coron ets (adapting M ozart for murder) in
19 49, and later for Auric’s The La vend er Hill Mob (195 1) and Tristram
Cary ’s The Ladykillers (1 955). An y trend originatin g from with in the ind us-
try could only ho pe to affect s mall chang e at this time. Cin ema as a wh ole
was reeling far hard er fro m an ou tside attack – the increasing popu larity of
telev ision.
Exp eriments had been cond ucted all o ver the world , notably in the 20s by
Jo hn Lo gie Baird in Lon don an d Charles Fran cis J en kins in North America.
It took u ntil the 30 s for the pu blic to cau tio usly show interest. While 4 00
sets in th e New York area were receiving broadcasts from the Natio nal
Broadcas tin g Company (NBC) in 1 939, there were many tens of th ousand s
more in Eng land receiving from the British Broadcasting Comp an y (BBC).
All o f which h ad an enormo us impact o n cinema attendance. The o utbreak
of World War II had an even bigger impact for d ifferent reas ons of course,
and resu lted in television p ro duction in America s top ping alto gether. It only
allowed for a temp orary resu rgence of interest in the big screen thou gh. A
po st-war economic b oom 6 y ears later meant th at sales of telev ision s ets
su ddenly soared. T he US figures goin g in to the 50s are truly as tou ndin g.
Th e n umb er o f h ome s ets went fro m aroun d 700 0 sets in 19 46, to 10 million
in 195 0, to 22 millio n in 1952 , then half of all American ho mes just one
year later. Cinema attendance figures drop ped in almos t direct prop ortio n.
Add the fact th at b oth CBS and NBC anno unced they were d ev eloping
colo ur television at the end of the 40 s, Hollywoo d cons idered itself in seri-

21
ou s trouble. Stud ios therefore racked their brains for ways to encourage
audiences back into movie th eatres. Their overall answer remains the same
to this day, and that’s to spend obs cene amounts of money on bigger sp ecta-
cle.
It didn ’t take long to rush the technology into place, an d s o in 19 52 This
Is Cineram a app eared with a cu rved s creen six times no rmal size. It w as a
travelo gue o f the w onders of th e ag e, opening with a black and w hite mini-
screen reminder of TV d imen sion s, and th en exploding into colo ur for a
po int of view ro llercoaster ride. Th e mu sic was des igned to be just as awe-
in spiring to remin d v iewers h ow their televis ion s’ so litary sp eaker paled in
compariso n. Original music was credited to Howard Jack son, Pau l Sawtell,
and Ro y Web b. M usical Director Louis Forbes had M ax Stein er secretly
compos e th e great majority o f th e grand orchestral w ork however. He was
un der con tract to Warner Brothers at the time, but didn ’t w an t to mis s the
op portu nity to wo rk on yet another hig hly in fluential p ro ject. That same
year, Un iversal unv eiled 3-D with Bwana Devil. Victo r Yo ung had to w ait
for a b roader can vas for Cecil B. DeMille’s Os car-win ning The Greates t
Sh ow O n Ear th, wh ich was a year early for Paramoun t’s VistaVision. He did
kn ock ‘em d ead later with the introd uctio n of TOD D-AO 7 0mm and
Aro und The World In Eighty D ays th ough .

Golden Remnants
In 19 53 th e real prize for in novation wen t to 2 0th Century Fox’s Cinema-
Scope fo rmat (it won a special award O scar for adv ancement in film tech-
no logy ). Fo x mad e the decision to apply it only to films th at would truly
benefit from it. Premiering the garg an tuan screen ratio was The Ro be, a
su mp tuou sly s caled tellin g of Christ’s life fro m the perspective o f Richard
Burton ’s Roman trib une. Alfred Newman’s score, lik e The So ng O f B er na-
dette, was an examp le of th e compos er treating religio us su bjects with ab so-
lu te res pect. The result is among his g ran dest acco mp lis hments, with a
principal th eme for the cru cifixion bursting with heavenly g lory fro m cho-
rus an d orchestra. It also benefited from the new 7-track s tereo phon ic sou nd
sy stem that expand ed wh at an aud ience cou ld hear o f an orchestra’s make
up co nsiderab ly.
The religio us/s word and sandal/his torical cos tume epic was the impor-
tant genre as far as continuation o f the Golden Age s ymp honic sty le was

22
concerned. Other styles w ere encroaching , but with The Ro be Newman was
again res pons ible for so meth ing for others to follow. The indu stry’s
respo nse was swift and ov erp owering, leav ing us with enou gh afternoon TV
class ics to literally fill a mon th o f Sun days.
All o f th e Golden Age film compos ers wou ld tackle at leas t one p icture
from the genre after this point, bu t for M ik lós Rózsa it b ecame an area of
career definitio n. Quo Vadis (195 1) preceded the big ger s creen ratios, bu t
followed several sp ates o f his torical/adventu re films. The difference was in
a composer puttin g everything into historical accuracy. Newman would take
pain s th e fo llow ing y ear to res earch ancient Heb raic mus ic for Th e R obe,
bu t for Vadis Rózs a ob tained every pos sible s crap of reference material
from all ov er th e w orld. Th e Roman Empire had never been so co nscien-
tious ly investigated fo r its mu sic. In d oin g so, he effectiv ely created a brand
new so und which 50 years later d efines a time and place, as believ ab ly as
any that is lo st to us. Full of h ymns an d fanfares , it was a blueprint for
method carried through all that fo llo wed o f his o wn (and many others’)
work .
He continu ed practicing the metho dolo gy with Ivan hoe (195 2). 12th
Century sources were eq ually hard to come by, yet h e managed to perform a
similar miracle in definin g the Sax ons an d No rmans in thrillin g battle
scenes. Then it w as b ack to the Senate fo r Julius Caesar (19 53), which he
chos e to in terpret in Elizabethan terms like a co ntemporary stage pro duction
of Sh ak es peare’s p lay. Th en back-to -b ack in 19 56 came 16 th Century
romance for Kin g Hen ry II in Dia ne, and eas ier to research back groun d for
th e 19th Century life of Vincent Van Gogh in Lus t Fo r Life. A ll o f these
applied Ró zs a’s Golden Age thin kin g, but in the eyes of enth usias ts of the
craft th ey merely pav ed th e way for what is inarguably o ne of the mos t
impo rtant s co res of all time – Ben-Hu r (195 9).
It is the best repres ented o f all film scores o n record (in all fo rmats ), and
th at has aided its reputation en ormo usly. Its influ en ce is to b e admired with
so me awe too. Sev eral extracts w ere ad ap ted into hymns for church choir,
and there are endles s examples of d erivativ e fanfares an d march es us ed for
sp ortin g events and processional o ccasions . With in the in dus try, it stand s
alon gside the heroic s co res of Korngo ld as being most influ en tial when any-
on e wan ts to elicit regal splend our or military mig ht. Once ag ain we can
sk ip ahead to Star Wa rs and s ee stylistic compariso ns. With Th e P hantom
Menace (199 9), the compariso n of Williams’s ‘Flag Parade’ w ith Ró zs a’s

23
‘Parade Of The Charioteers’ is unmis takeable. George Lucas was specifi-
cally emulatin g one o f his fav ourite mov ies after all. Fo r nearly a decad e the
in dus try had been building toward stag ing something on the s cale of this
Tale Of The Christ. Jus t shy of 4 ho urs long , the film employed 50,0 00
actors, constructed an eighteen-acre set, ap peared in a ratio w ider th an any-
th ing seen before, and su cceeded in res cu ing M-G-M Studio s from bank-
ruptcy. Ró zs a laboured fo r an incredib le year and a h alf on the score, wh ich
is ev ery b it as epic as the movie. Th ere are half a dozen marches, endles s
fanfares for stages of the ch ariot race, a magnificent Christ theme utilising
pipe org an , powerfully strident music for Ro man might, and softer Jewis h
material for J udah Ben-Hur’s love story w ith Esther. So many sequences
illus trate the v ery best that mu sic can do for a film. There’s an ex ample of
‘Mickey-Mo usin g’ (caricatu ring s omethin g in mu sic) with a musical por-
trait of a galley sh ip accelerating to ramming s peed. Th e Christ theme is
us ed to remind u s of him w hen he is n’t th ere, draw compariso ns with Charl-
to n Hes ton when h e offers him water (mirrorin g an earlier ev en t), and even
act as his vo ice w hen distance prevents us from hearing h im g ive the Ser-
mon from the M ount. For all these reasons and many more, Rózsa fully
deserved h is O scar among the un precedented eleven wo n by the film.
The 5 0s w ere a decade of luxury fo r Ró zs a in allowing h im to ind ulge in
histo rical research. So it’s no t s urprising he su bsequ en tly cons idered it a
mistake to immed iately follow Ben-Hur with King Of Kings (196 1), wh ich
covered extremely s imilar territory. The score is nevertheles s a rich wo rk of
Greco-Ro man melo dies, with fou rteen th emes co mpo sed in just a few
weeks! It w orks almo st in tand em with h is oth er popu lar Heston epic from
th e s ame year – El Cid. Culminating in Th e Las t Days Of S odom A nd
Gom orra h (1 962), th is was a perio d of eno rmous o utp ut for the compos er.
Th e h istorical epic h as never attained su ch heigh ts s ince.
Rózsa’s tale has tak en us beyo nd the Silver Age starting poin t, b ut we
can return to it by pausing at o ne mo re s word and sandal ex travaganza from
th e end of the decade. Spa rta cu s (1960 ) w as director Stanley K ubrick’s con-
tribution to th e genre and was ev ery bit as sp ectacularly o versized as th ose
th at preceded it. The sch izophrenic score from Alex North is con sidered
another of the finest ever written fo r film (in fan opinio n, a close cousin to
his Cleopatra of 1963 ), and happ ens to be the all-time favourite o f Steven
Spielberg . Altern ating betw een metallic and staccato (s hort separate burs ts)
rhythmic march es and a bittersweet three-note lov e theme, it’s a wo rk that

24
collides in tricate complex ity with delicate simplicity. Depicting the barb ar-
is m of th e glad iatorial ring, No rth uses percuss ion to show the s ame emo-
tional detachment as the aren a’s on loo kers . It d emon strates the so rt of
in tellectu al process th at had attracted him to K ubrick, an d by which we can
travel back a d ecade to pinpoint on e of the clear in dications of film mu sic
enterin g its Silver Age.

The Sound Of Silver

At th e start of the 50s , studios felt larg e screen cos tume dramas weren’t
gu aranteed to make their money b ack, so they also went for s maller d ramas.
Stage play ad ap tations were a more viable financial v en ture, and a d es irable
contras t in brin gin g the theatre’s edge of realism and s ocial themes to cin-
ema. Sometimes bu dget was kept right down by th e s elf-con tained format of
so meth ing like Twelve Angr y M en (1 957), wh ich didn’t need expans ive sets,
or music cues. Where po ssible, studios wanted to replicate the subs tantial
su ccess of Arth ur Miller’s Death of a S alesma n (195 1), which North scored
for both stage and screen . Wh en director Elia Kazan decided to ad ap t Ten-
ness ee Williams’ A Streetcar Named D es ire th at same y ear, th ere was no
on e better qualified to figure o ut how to in terpret the exp losive lives of
Kow alski, Stella, and Blanche. Jazz was North ’s answer. New O rlean s jazz
was a who lly American ised meth od co mp letely alien to cinemagoers’ ears.
Composer Jerry Goldsmith (who later b efrien ded North ) had this to say: ‘To
me wh en I first heard it, it w as the p ivotal poin t in film mu sic where it all
changed. Mus ic had been totally Europ ean . Late 19th Cen tury, early 20th
Century Eu ro pean . French an d German in sty le. All of a su dden it became
very American. What A lex w ro te was very o rigin al and his ow n s tyle, suc-
cessfully fusing elemen ts of jazz and s ymphon ic writing. There was no
qu es tio n th at it p ushed the envelo pe harmon ically an d sty lis tically. It was
revolutionary. In the mid-5 0's film mu sic d efinitely came of age stylisti-
cally.’
Yo unger co mpo sers called h im ‘Th e Boss ’, th eir respect foun ded o n far
more than Streetcar saying it was okay to us e jazz if you wanted. It made
everyone realise anything was p ossible. North co ntinued to prov e it by cap-
tu ring the morbid sense of fatality in th e 1952 ad ap tation of Les Miserables,
his M exican rhy thms for Viva Za pata ! the s ame year, an d depictin g chilling
ho micidal ten dencies in a yo ung boy fo r Th e Bad Seed (1956 ). None o f this

25
sh ould ignore his more melod ic achievements of course. Ch ief o f which is
Unch ained (195 5), w hose theme went o n to be a hit for The Righteou s
Brothers a d ecade later, and ag ain for the sup ern atural romance of Ghos t
(199 0).
One o f the y oung er compo sers happily lib erated by the examp le of
Streetcar was Leonard Rosenman. In 19 55, th e firs t year of his career, he
prod uced three scores o f significan t imp act. Th e first was East o f E den,
which came abo ut when Ros en man’s p iano s tud en t, J ames Dean , reco m-
men ded him to director Kazan. To ch aracterise adoles cent an gst, the co m-
po ser emplo yed disson an ce (play ing n otes that don ’t quite harmon ise
to gether) and ato nality (off key notes). It became a mark o f his g en eral writ-
in g style, but here in its first full use in a film s co re th e effect is strikin g.
Followed up with very similar story lin e co ncern s b y Rebel With out A
Caus e, h e added a bluesy folk element to play u p the tragedy. Then came
The Cobweb, a tale of patients in a p rivate mental clinic seeming s an er than
th eir docto rs . Ro senman opted to play by a similar rev ersal of the no rm with
a 12-to ne atonal score. This co mp lex meth od of pre-determining a limited
range o f ton e and p itch was q uite a sho ck to th e Hollywoo d s ystem. By the
end of the d ecade w hen D uke Ellingto n laced American jazz in to Ana tomy
Of A Murd er (1959 ), au diences were welcomin g th es e n ew sou nds openly.
Elmer Bernstein was an other comp oser to have their career kick s tarted
by these years of increas ing o pen-mindednes s. The M an With The Golden
Ar m (195 5) is regarded as a landmark in jazz s co ring. Althoug h the su bject
matter concern s a jazz d ru mmer, it begs the ques tio n of wheth er the film (let
alon e the s co re) would have come abo ut without Streetca r. Th e previously
tabo o su bject o f d rug addictio n had no preceden t in mu sic, bu t the spare use
of ly rical jazz rhy thms (coup led with Frank Sinatra being the jun kie) was
enou gh of a soften ing effect to b e n ot to o offen siv e for the time. The follow-
in g year, Bernstein found himself in as polar o ppos ite a direction as po ssible
when pas sed an oth er genre baton to carry for Cecil B. DeM ille’s religiou s
epic – Th e Ten Co mmand ments .

26
 Silver On Record
Bern stein ’s Go lden Ar m receiv ed a full albu m and s tayed in the charts for
several w eeks . Th e idea th at cin ema could s upport, promote, and b en efit
from popu lar mu sic was extremely d es irable for the stu dios . Still feeling the
effect of television, they were k een to try any meth od of reco upin g costs.
Es pecially since bigger screen fo rmats w ere potentially o nly o f short-lasting
in teres t to v iewers cons tantly awaitin g the next techno logical develo pmen t.
One thin g prick ing up theirs’ and every one els e’s ears was the advent of
rock ‘n’ roll. Ch ro niclers even cite its b eg innings in so me part to cinema.
When Bill Haley And The Comets released ‘(We’re Go nna) Rock Arou nd
Th e Clock’ in 1954 it hardly made an imp act. When it app eared in th e titles
of The Blackboa rd Jungle the fo llo wing y ear how ev er, there were riots of
enth usias m. It hit th e Number 1 pos ition immediately, s pawned a mo vie
named after the so ng and a whole sub-genre devo ted to teens. This was als o
th e year the RCA label in trodu ced stereo to vin yl recordin gs.
Hollyw ood h ad been payin g atten tio n thro ugh all th e p hases of p op
music and its commercial pos sib ilities. Since the Silen t era there’d been
on e-off ex amples o f a film so ng find ing an ex tra leas e of life on rad io and
reco rd. As far back as 1 928 people were caugh t u nawares by the su ccess of
Ra mona, whos e title song (a w altz for th e tale of racial prejud ice) wo und up
with fou r co ver vers ion s simu ltaneou sly in American charts. J ust prior to
th e rock ‘n’ ro ll explosio n, United Artis ts had a tas te o f the larger ex ploit-
ative poten tial with Russ ian compos er D imitri Tiomkin ’s H igh No on
(195 2). Thanks to a delay in openin g the film, his b allad completed its
reco rd negotiations and was released in ad vance. A pair of v ersions retained
th e film title, bu t throu ghou t the picture it’s b etter k nown as ‘Do Not For-
sake M e, Oh My D arling’. This was the first succes sful ex ample of a mo vie
bein g p ro mo ted b y s ong. It w as als o the first time one was used so fre-
qu en tly and p ro minently in a film. Almost every time Gary Coo per s trolls
alon g th e street it seems to be filtering o ut o f someone’s wind ow. The lyrics
and mo urnful ton e are a constant remind er that th e 90-minu te runn ing time
is all he has befo re a sho oto ut to the death . Tiomkin worked within the time-
frame an d general s tyle o f a Gold en A ge compo ser, but his p hilo sop hy
belo nged v ery much to the Silv er Ag e.
After winnin g tw o Oscars for High Noo n (So ng and Score), he s ubse-
qu en tly won tw o years later for the character stu dy on a doomed p lane that

27
was The H igh And The Mighty. At the Award ceremony, he b oldly
anno unced, ‘I wou ld lik e to thank Beeth oven, Brahms, Wagn er, Straus s,
Rimsky -K orsakov… ’ Anyo ne else on that lis t was los t to the sou nd of
up ro arious laugh ter from th e au dience. T his was a co nsid erable fau x p as as
far as h is co ntemporaries were concerned. Clas sical p urists w ere o ffered an
in dication they were right all along an d film music merely plun dered the
class ics. It was just p lain sp eaking, not arrogance on Tiomkin ’s part. In all
aspects of his career h e demo nstrated it by being a cann y s elf-p ro mo ter and
bu sin es sman . Earlier s ucces ses includ ed romantic an d wh imsical scores for
Fran k Kapra’s films Lost Horizon (1 937), M r. Smith G oes To Washington
(193 9), and It’s A Won derfu l Life (19 46). He als o scored four o f H itchcock’s
films , namely: Sh adow O f A Do ubt (1943 ), Strang er s O n A Tr ain (195 1), I
Confes s (1 953), and Dial M For Mu rder (1 954). Later s till, he wo uld have
th e dubious hono ur of scorin g what would be th e last o f the Sword and San-
dal epics with the appropriately named The F all Of The Roman E mpire
(196 4). The others were too early fo r marketing by son g, as was h is firs t
epically s caled Western, Duel In Th e Sun (1 946). Fo r that, he endu red more
th an his peers wo uld by waiting o ut an audition process fo r produ cer David
O. Selznick to find the perfect composer. Unable to turn d own a p ro ject,
Tio mkin ins tig ated a lasting asso ciation with th e Western gen re. Red River
(194 8) follo wed, th en H igh Noo n, The Big S ky (195 2), Gunfigh t At The O.K.
Corr al (1 957), Rio Bravo (1959 ), The Ala mo (19 60), an d th e immens ely
po pular Rawhide TV series th eme. Throug h all th es e, his catchy melod ies
with unexpected rhythms (and cro ss-rhythms) s hine throu gh, an d w herever
a single o r album was p ossible h e’d pursue it ten acio usly.
High No on really ch an ged H ollywood pro ducer’s id eas and motiv ation s
abou t the co mmercial v iability o f movie related mu sic. They began asking
compos ers to craft marketable s ongs regardles s of wh ether o r n ot one was
su itable for the film. A s ong on radio b efo re a film’s releas e was great pro-
motion. It only co st a little mo ney to mak e a lot back, so wh o cared if the
so ng had little to do with the film? It would take a few mo re years for this
new p hiloso phy to tak e hold. Th an kfully there w as plen ty more go ing on in
th e mid-50s fo r co mp osers no t to be overly concern ed jus t y et.
Big screen adaptatio ns of Broadw ay M usicals were pop ular ag ain, hav-
in g had on ly marg inal s ucces s since the untoppable Th e Wiz ard Of Oz
(193 9). The new wave was ano ther way the stu dio s tried th e sp ecu late-to-
accu mu late approach to w in back view ers lost to TV. T his was a reassu ran ce

28
th at mus ic was an imp ortant part of at least one genre of film. O ften yo u’d
fin d one of the comp osers alread y mention ed h idd en away in the arrange-
men t cred its of a M usical, such as David Rak sin on The Harvey Girls
(194 6) and A lfred Newman on S outh Pacific. Th e big record album suc-
cesses o f the decade were Oklaho ma! and The King And I in 1 956, an d Gig i
alon gside Sou th P acific in 1958 . Incidentally, this ch apter’s title tak es its
name from the 1956 Bing Crosb y film of Cole Porter ’s earlier Broadway
sh ow.

Silver From Outer Space

Ano ther genre to take off in th e mid-50 s was th e sci-fi mon ster mo vie.
Nothin g better demonstrated American paran oia about a Red menace than
th e su dden ap pearance of malevo lent alien bein gs. Before independent s tu-
dios began churning ou t micro-b udgeted flicks using stock mu sic (such as
Ed Wood ’s ultra-kits ch Pla n 9 From Ou ter Sp ace in 195 8), there were
plen ty o f inn ovative sto ry lin es and s co res . No movie better d emons trated
th e g en re th an In va sion Of The B ody Snatchers (195 5). It pres ented its
imagin ative renditio n of the M cCarthy Witch hun ts with s ubtlety and intelli-
gence. A few s imilarly themed films preceded it like Th e Th ing F rom
An other Wo rld (19 51) with an eerie score from D imitri Tio mk in, th en The
Beas t From 20 ,000 Fa tho ms (1953 ), Them! and Crea ture From The Bla ck
Lago on (both 195 4), Taran tula and It Came From B en ea th The Sea (both
19 55). Asid e from captivatin g titles and a g en eral th eme o f constant attack
from space, sea, or ato mic laboratories , th es e shared a sens e of adventu re in
th eir scoring wherev er they weren ’t comp iled from exis tin g material. The
names Herman Stein , Irving Gertz, and Henry Mancin i wou ld crop up
repeatedly in credits, and they were among several pio neers of ex perimen tal
otherworldliness in film mus ic. The theremin was an easy way of creating
an un settling atmo sphere, and th e trio’s score for It Ca me F rom Outer Spa ce
(195 3) is a terrific examp le. It was Un iversal Stud ios’ firs t sci-fi invasion
picture, an d the composers were recruited to do more than merely jolt the
audience at every 3 -D effect. Th eir u se o f it w as abo ut as far as electro nic
enhancemen t could go at th at point.
19 56 was the watersh ed for non -orch es tral s co ring, when American cou-
ple Louis and Bebe Barron ap plied cy bernetic techn olog y to provide a co m-
pletely electron ic score for Fo rbid den Planet. Called ‘Electron ic To nalities’

29
in th e credits, it w as for all inten ts an d pu rp oses a replacemen t of orch es tral
leitmotivs w ith sou nd effect ones . Lov eable Robby The Rob ot h as his o wn,
and so d oes the inv isible id monster. The soun ds came from unp redictable
no ise emissions fro m p urpos e-bu ilt experimen tal circuit bo ards . Althou gh
argumen ts aboun ded as to w hether it truly con stituted music, no o ne could
deny there’d never b een any thing like it befo re. Wh at made it a more impor-
tant step w as that any one who wan ted to develop the id ea furth er had almos t
a full d ecade to w ait before Rob ert Moo g would produ ce the firs t sy nthe-
siser.
While Hollywoo d ex plo red mons ters of the futu re, th e British Hammer
studio revived interest in s upernatural terrors of the p as t. Sp ecifically, they
exhu med the ch aracters U niversal Studios had enjoyed success with two
decades earlier. Fo llo wing in the lu mb ering foo tstep s of Bela Lug osi and
Boris Karloff came Christoph er L ee, usually with Peter Cus hing in hot pur-
su it. Hammer had b een arou nd in o ne form or another fro m the 30 s, bu t
th eir colour d eb ut The Qua terma ss Experiment in 1 954 truly made their
name. Joh n Ho llings worth was recru ited as music supervisor for the studio,
a role akin to th ose at the Hollywoo d music departments . He in turn
laun ched the career of gentleman compos er James Bern ard, who s tayed on
bo ard for an astonishin g 25 y ears, p ro vid ing d ozen s of scores and alway s
seeming to g et th e best o f the class ic monsters and their man y sequ els. T hat
first Qua terma ss was followed b y X The U nknown (19 56) and the u nimagi-
natively entitled Quatermas s 2 (195 7). These th ree scores are an amazing
display of wh at we n ow lab el modernis m, with sp are u se of a s mall percus-
sion and s tring en semb le. It was a sou nd th at perfectly co mp lemented the
cold scientific paranoia on display.
Turning every thing aro und for all inv olved was The Cur se Of F ranken-
stein (19 57). It was a h uge intern ation al success for Hammer, pos itioning
th e studio ’s name among st the major p layers. For Bernard it w as a momen t
of sty lis tic definitio n. His predilection for thematic title music created a
melody lin e that’s a sing-alon g of th e film’s name. As the s tudio became
kn own as ‘Hammer Horror’, he became th e ‘Hammer Horror Comp oser’.
Th is was s ettled for go od the follow ing year with their adaptatio n o f Drac-
ula. Co ntinuin g the idea o f musical no tes as s yllab les of the title, his main
th eme is as id en tifiab le a s ign ature motif as an y in cinema. Bernard carved
his dis tinctive style into th e minds o f horror fan s w ith a seemin gly endles s
su pply of dizzyingly fas t string s cherzos an d tend er love th emes. Follow-

30
up s to Dra cula an d Fr ankenstein con tin ued in to the 60 s, d uring which time
he als o brou ght to life The Gorg on (19 64), Sh e (1 965) w ith a trance-like
ethereal th eme, The Plague Of Th e Zo mbies (1 966), and The Devil Rides
Out (196 8) with so me genu inely unnerving b acking for Satanic worship.
At Hammer’s entry p oin t in th e mid-50s , it was q uite a novelty fo r inter-
national films to be s o h ap pily chang ing hands acro ss the ocean. Britis h
prod uct o ccasio nally foun d favour in America, but Hollywo od s tudios were
still jealous ly gu arded o f th eir territory. Thos e that did find dis trib ution
began to ch ange that. RKO managed to piq ue curios ity abou t J ap an es e cin-
ema by dis trib uting Akira K urosawa’s Ra shomo n in 1952 , with a g en tle
score by Fu mio H ay as ak a full o f ethn ic instrumentatio n that fas cinated the
Wes tern ear. In many ways it was ‘T he King Of T he M ons ters’ w ho made
enou gh noise fo r cult fan dom to deman d mo re in tern ation al fare. Godz illa
(195 4) was insp ired by The B ea st From 2 0,000 F ath oms from the y ear
before, bu t was unlike any mon ster seen b efore. T he guy -in-a-s uit approach
mad e fo r a cheesy cin ema experience, but you cou ldn ’t help bu t take a lo t of
it s erio usly d ue to th e straig ht-faced mu sic from A kira Ifuku be. Later
du bbed ‘Th e J ohn Williams Of The J ap an es e Film World’, his imperiou s
‘God zilla M arch ’ b ecame the th eme for th e s till o ngoing s eries of films .
At the end o f the d ecade, an oth er examp le o f cin ematic immigration
began fillin g U S theatres with the begin ning s of the French N ew Wave. In
19 59, th e release of Francois Truffaut’s Les Quatre Cents Co ups (Fou r
Hun dred Blo ws) and Jean-Lu c God ard ’s A Bou t De S ouffle (Breathless )
tu rned eyes and ears toward Europe. Poss es sed of a cas ual, detached man-
ner in their character o bservatio n, th e genre s at perfectly alon gside the
rebellion o f James Dean an d rock ‘n’ roll.
It’s important to note th e beginnings of the genre here in the con text of
changes contributing to th e birth of th e Silv er Age. We’ll return to interna-
tional film and the great directo r/co mp oser relationsh ips that formed and
cemented in the 60s in Chapter 4. Now, courtes y of mentionin g Truffau t,
with wh om Bernard Herrmann w ould scorch won ders for Fahren heit 4 51
(196 6), we can tu rn to the most important collab oration in film mu sic.

31
 Silver Psycho
Alfred Hitch co ck had been fligh ty in associating with co mp osers
th rough out his career. We’ve cov ered lots o f th ose n ames b efo re Herrmann
already, but it’s worth s tressing at th is halfway p oint in th e chron olo gy of
film mus ic that these tw o men jointly influenced th e ind ustry far more than
is generally realised. Th eir firs t collab oration w as for The Troub le With
Har ry (19 55), a jet black co medy about Shirley M acL aine and friends des-
perately trying to dispos e of a corpse. Fo r his o ne and on ly co medic score,
Herrmann had fun mimickin g th e p ratfalls and macab re sh enanigans . The
sens e of humour fit bo th th eir perso nalities perfectly, cementing their rela-
tions hip. Hitchcock w as un ab le to thin k of working with another composer
for the next decade. T hey to tted up ano ther seven films in th eir 11 years
to gether.
With Vertigo (195 8), the directo r and co mp oser made us e of many simi-
lar tricks, an d even invented so me n ew ones. It’s th e mo st pers onal film for
th em b oth. Themes of ob session an d death were app ealing, and fou nd
romantic expression in wh at is regard ed as on e of the greatest motion pic-
tu res o f all time (des pite bein g mildly maligned in its day). Scottie Fergu-
so n’s ph obia, lon elines s, an d infatuation are ex plain ed to u s almos t
exclu sively th rough mu sic s ince there are long sequences w itho ut dialo gue.
At the climax of th e thrilling roo ftop ch as e that opens the film, the firs t d is-
play of J ames Stewart’s v ertigo is illustrated with o verlappin g harp glissan-
do s (rap id s lid ing up and down scales). In th e ex tended s eq uence trailing
M ad eline (Kim Nov ak ) aroun d San Francisco, it’s en tirely d own to the
music that we’re drawn into th e my stery of what’s happening instead of
bein g bored b y a silen t car tour of the city. The art gallery scene is a brillian t
sh owcase of Herrmann man ipulatin g ou r understan din g of w hat’s going o n.
Th e portrait o f Carlotta bears ph ysical resemb lance to M ad eleine, so is she
su pernaturally pos sessed o r jus t in sane? The score prov ides b oth an swers
simu ltaneou sly. The mo st famo us cue from the score, en titled ‘Scene
d’Amour ’, has in spired coun tless references and spo ofs, such as a great
visual gag in co rp orated in to Twelve Mon keys (1 995). N ovak reappears as
Ju dy, and th en magically tran sforms back into M ad eline. T he magic is
evok ed as much throug h s urreal co lou r saturation an d imagery as by o ne of
Herrmann ’s mo st heartfelt compositio ns cap turing the very ess ence of
yearnin g and desire. Nex t came a remake of th e d irector’s own w ork with

32
The M an Who Kn ew Too Much (1956 ), with James Stewart an d D oris Day
emb roiled in th e wo rld of kidnapp ing and es pion ag e. Alth ough Herrmann
wrote a comp aratively sho rt score, h e was g iven one of the most promin en t
on -s creen cameo s any film comp oser has had. Du ring an as sassination
attempt at The Royal Albert Hall, the camera lin gers on a p oster adv ertising
his name, befo re cuttin g to show him autho ritatively con ducting the Lond on
Symphon y Orchestra. His appearan ce is a vis ual cue fo r the film’s finale to
begin an d the stage/screen music becomes n arrato r for the action . It was a
strong indication Hitch co ck appreciated the contribution of Herrmann’s
music. Use of the s ong ‘Qu e Sera, Sera’ w as an in dication that even the
great d irector was subject to th e beginn ing s of stud io pressure to plug co m-
mercial song s. Th e same year they released The Wrong Man , with Henry
Fond a reliv ing a true s tory of mistaken id en tity. Taking the character’s job
as a jazz b as sis t to beg in w ith , th e score is co ld an d claus troph obic, manag-
in g to infer the co nfines of impriso nmen t. Although the film may b e ov er-
sh ad owed by what follo wed, it has many scenes illustrating the way mu sic
can pre-empt danger and tell an au dience what a ch aracter is thinkin g.
Paramount Stu dio s d idn ’t s ucceed in persuading Hitchcock to make use
of a son g fo r Vertigo than kfully. Althoug h h e wanted to su stain that p rinci-
pal fo r Nor th B y Nor thwest (19 59), th e interlu de mu sic (a rep rise of th e love
th eme) became a reaso nably popu lar tune. It was certainly a better idea than
a song called ‘The Man On Lincoln ’s Nos e’. The film is cons tantly on the
move, either literally or b y p lot twists carry ing audien ces dizzyingly alon g.
What Herrman n did for the chase movie w as have fun with it. Th e fand an go
of th e main titles is an u npredictab le piece built on rh ythms that swirl
around one an other witho ut reso lution, and are th e fo undation to a motif
equally elus ive and ton gue-in-cheek. There are two s cenes within the film
performing o ppos ite functions to o ne an other. Scrabbling o ver the face of
M ount Ru shmore fo r the finale, the action con tin ues withou t dialogue for
so me time. It’s left to the score to mak e this interesting (in the same way as
Scottie’s pursuit o f Maddy in Vertigo ), and this is where the title’s fand an go
pays o ff as a mu sical device. Hand-in -hand, Cary Grant and Eva Marie
Saint skip an d climb the ro ck face, and the ed iting maintains a rhythm to
which the furious dance is perfectly s uited . T he other in famous s cene is of
Grant being ch as ed down by a crop du ster, which is d ev oid of mu sic. Direc-
to r an d composer agreed a heigh tened reality was achieved b y allowin g nat-
ural s ound effects to guide the ear. Only when the plane cras hes do es the

33
music strik e up. Knowing wh en to tell the mus ic to shu t up later led to their
big experiment in us ing none at all for The Birds (19 63).
So we come to Psycho (19 60), a film that perhaps more than an y other
sh ows how film music can live outsid e th e film. Reg ard less of whether
th ey ’ve seen the film or not, kid s of all ages k now wh at soun d to make when
th ey tease abo ut stabbing one ano ther. TV adv erts, movie spo ofs, an d ho m-
ages hav e k ep t th e s hower murder mus ic aliv e in po pular culture. What a lo t
of p eo ple do n’t kn ow is that Hitch co ck did n’t want mu sic for th e scene, and
th at Herrmann wrote and record ed the p iece in s ecret. W hen th e director
mad e the cho ice to sho ot in b lack-an d-white (despite studios by then insist-
in g on co lou r to make subs idiary sales to telev ision easier), Herrmann made
an intellectual leap to compos ing ‘a black-and-white score’ by restricting
hims elf to on ly using the s trin g s ection of an orchestra. Fo r the mu rd er,
which required w hat he adroitly called ‘terror’, the sh rieking effect came
from part of a v iolinist’s tuning-up routine. So simple a dev ice has beco me
th e most mimick ed mus ical effect in cin ema his tory. The res t of the score
work s to the picture’s benefit just as well however. Herrmann’s unn erv ingly
chaotic op en ing title mus ic actually insp ired the animation from Saul Bas s.
M uch more importantly, the script left long sequences witho ut d ialog ue and
on ce ag ain the directo r/comp oser in tended the mus ic to act as an emo tio nal
and psycho log ical narrator. Mario n’s anxio us d rive having stolen so me
money is a s eq uence often cited by mus icologis ts fo r this technique. Switch
off the vo lume, and th e s hots of Janet L eigh at the wheel could be taking her
anyw here. Tu rn the v olu me back u p, and the u rgen t score makes it qu ite
clear that the movie title is goin g to pay o ff so on.
The film was re-made in 1997 by G us Van Sant, an d that allowed for a
brand n ew digital recordin g of the s co re. It w as affection ately adapted by
Herrmann ’s b igg es t fan w orkin g to day, Danny Elfman, to who m we’ll
return in detail in later chapters w hen loo kin g at influences in contemporary
scoring.
There are several factors to blame for the eventu al sp lit between H er-
rman n and H itchcock, an d un fortunately music had a lo t to do with it. After
th e experimen t o f Th e Bird s, and th e all-round failu re of Mar nie (19 64),
everyth ing came to a head with Torn Curta in (1966 ). The stu dio s h ad been
nibbling away at Hitch to get him to stick commercial song s s omewh ere in
his films. On top o f th at, he’d g one from being respectfully grateful of the
exten t to which Herrman n’s music improv ed h is work, to being do wnrigh t

34
resentful. It all ex plod ed at th e Curtain reco rding s es sio ns when the mu sic
tu rned out to be as far away fro m the pop s tyle reques ted as pos sib le. Every-
on e thou ght they were ind ivid ually right, and for s uch a mediocre movie it’s
a sh ame non e o f them were.
Thro ugh this transition al Silver Age perio d, Herrmann h ad contributed to
th e start o f the alien invasion genre w ith on e of its b est films and scores –
The Day The Ea rth Stood Still (19 51). He’d also contribu ted to the religiou s
epic genre with The Egyptian (195 4), sp littin g cues b etween hims elf and
music d ep artment ch ief Alfred Newman. It proved to be his mos t prolific
perio d, and was ro unded out by boisterou s fun for a b rief flirtation with
mons ter movies in the su b-categ ory of the fantasy genre. Th e Seventh Voy-
ag e Of S inb ad (19 58), Jou rney To Th e Centre Of Th e Earth (19 59), The
Three Wo rld s O f Gulliver (1 960), Mysterious Island (1961 ) and Jaso n A nd
The Argo nauts (1963 ) mus ically defined on e mons ter or anoth er, su ch as the
xy loph one for the skeleto n warriors in S inba d.
When y ou add together rock ‘n’ roll, new technologies in s ight and
so und, the influ en ce of in ternatio nal mus ical styles , flavou r-of-th e-month
exploitation g en res , the start and end of Hitch co ck and H errman n, an d the
fact th at 195 5 was the year v ideo tape was in trodu ced, what yo u get is a
perio d of ch an ging styles that’s clearly differen t from the more self-con-
tained so und of the Golden Ag e. Enterin g the 60s , the Silv er A ge gradually
pu shed away what s omeo ne like Herrmann could offer. Th e seeds h ad been
so wn, largely o ut of financial necess ity with the stu dio s, and now they
wanted as commercial a prod uct as p oss ible.

35
 4. Commercial Instincts

One of the b etter things to come from 50s ’ tech nolo gical advan cemen t
was bring ing intern ation al film into greater focus outsid e its coun try o f ori-
gin. The previously men tio ned French N ew Wav e w as one of the bes t exam-
ples since it was con sid ered a tren dsetter in its reb ellious nature toward s
so cial and filmmaking attitu des. D uring th e course o f the 60s, whenever
Hollyw ood couldn’t en co urage new mu sical sou nds it h eard fro m overseas
in to its o wn films, it encouraged the co mp osers to cros s ov er themselves.
Georges Delerue was on e émigré from France. A fter a coup le of years w ork,
his career was lau nched with S hoot The Pian o Player (1960 ) fo r director
Fran ço is Truffau t. It began a ten-picture collaboration. Th eir secon d, Ju les
An d Jim (19 61), has remained their most admired an d well known with its
collis ion of carefree meets catas troph e. D eleru e’s carnivalesqu e ‘M ain
Title’ wo uld go on to help define the co medic writing sty le b oth in its o wn
decade, and again in the 8 0s (see Dann y Elfman, Chapter 6 ). Their relation-
sh ip continued with Love A t 2 0: An toine And Colette (19 62), The Soft S kin
(196 4), Such A Gorgeou s Kid Like Me (1971 ), Two English Gir ls (19 71),
and o n to their oth er most affection ately revered p iece, D ay F or Nigh t
(197 3), with its stunning chorale (h ymn-lik e tu ne) for an aerial view mon-
tage o f the set fo r fictio nal film ‘M eet Pamela’.
Ano ther ho me tu rf s ucces s th at similarly p layed the film-within-a-film
id ea was director Jean-Luc G odard’s Contemp t (1 963). Deleru e provided
stormy emotional turmoil fo r strings as we watch the disso lution of a mar-
riage o n set. Jus t b efore Ho lly wood en ticed h im away completely, the
decade also heard some delig htful period E nglish mus ic for th e h istorical
tales A Man Fo r All Season s (196 6) an d Anne Of The Thou sand Days
(196 9). Th ro ugh all these works , he display ed not ju st an ear for instru men-
tation and locale, but that h e was o ne of the finest melo dy writers film mu sic
ever knew. It was this he’d be called upo n repeatedly for in th e 70s an d 80 s
on American pictures like Oliver Sto ne’s S alvado r and Plato on (both 19 86),
and Steel Magn olias, B ea ch es, and B ilo xi Blu es (all 1 988).
As a French ambassado r, h e was sligh tly beaten to it by the charming
antics o f comic genius Jacques Tati. Mon sieur Hu lot’s Holida y found an
in ternatio nal aud ience in 19 53, an d with it seemed cemented forev er the
asso ciatio n of pian o, accordion, and guitar w ith the French . This was care of
compos er Alain Romans wh o went on to co -s core Tati’s My Un cle (19 58)

36
with Fran ck Barcellin i. A decade later, Francis L emarque remin ded the
in dus try of the comedy stereoty pe with Playtim e (1 967).
The Cannes Film Festival b ecame the place to make foreign territory d is-
coveries. It took abo ut 20 years for Ho lly wood to pay seriou s attention to
th e event, but when A Ma n And A Woman won the Palme d’or in 1 966 it
changed th e careers of d irector Claud e Lelo uch and compos er Fran cis Lai.
Th ey too would carve out a lasting working relations hip, with Live For Life
(196 7), And No w My Love (1974 ), Bolero (1 981), and two s equels to A M an
An d A Woman. Its extremely popu lar score album las ted in US charts fo r 93
weeks! Clearly s omething in the combination of ‘d a-b a-da-ba-da’ lyrics and
acco rd ion fell righ t in to p lace with the new wave of po p music listen ers . Lai
was an other to end up w orking on American films, with his big gest succes s
bein g Love Story (1970 ), w hich sp awn ed several vers ion s of ‘Wh ere Do I
Begin?’ and won h im his only Academy Award.
Eclipsing the award s in Hollywo od and France, the ch art s uccess es, the
leng th of ten ure with a d irector, and p opularity with pu blic and critics alike
is Nino Ro ta. Th e Italian compos er began wo rking with Federico Fellin i in
19 52 on Th e White S heik, an d led to six teen films o f which at least six are
cons idered mas terpieces of cinema an d its mu sic. Th e brightest jew el has
always been La Do lce Vita (196 0), wh ich fo llo ws a jo urnalis t observing
Rome high life. Ro ta offers an enormous mu sical rang e fo r scenes of a b us-
tling metropo lis contras tin g with decadence behind closed doo rs . Th e jazz/
po p fusion foun d immed iate fav our with th e s ocial type it portrayed, and the
audience who asp ired to th at lifes tyle. Next came 8½ (19 63), autobiograph-
ically depositin g the life o f a film director into an un predictable dream-
world. Of all th e co mp oser’s circus-styled march es , th ose here have
remain ed th e mos t admired and influential. Along with Delerue’s Ju les A nd
Jim, it wou ld co ntribute much to the co medies of the mid -80s. Going on to
th e variable su ccess es of Juliet Of Th e S pir its (1965 ), Satyr icon (19 69), The
Clowns (197 0), R oma (1972 ), Am arcord (1 973), and Ca sano va (19 76), the
compos er and d irector wou ld end u p having sh ared n early 30 years of
screen time.
His work in Europ e con tin ued elsewhere too of co urse. For director
Lu ch ino Viscon ti he provided grand his torical po rtraits for Rocco And His
Bro thers (1 960) and The Leo pard (19 63). For Sergei Bond archuk there were
waltzes on and off th e battlefield in depicting Napoleo n’s Wa terlo o (19 70).
For Franco Zeffirelli, two Shakespearian adaptations led to him in ev itably

37
bein g whis ked away to the States. The Ta ming Of The Shrew (19 67) w as a
sp irited comedic turn to his g ift fo r melody, but with Romeo And Juliet
(196 8) th e ab ility to con jure time an d place (here mock-mediev al) foun d its
fin es t v oice with w hat may well be the defin itive romantic lov e theme. The
albu m s pent 74 weeks in US charts. A ‘Lo ve Theme’ single was a Number 1
hit as ad ap ted by Henry Mancin i (who we’ll meet b elow). It has also seen
man y spoo fs in film, as well as found many new h omes in adv ertising and
med ia (e.g. endles s play on UK radio). Director Francis Ford Cop pola was
much enamoured with the piece, and bolstered with their sh ared Italian h er-
itage, mad e Ro ta th e perfect ch oice for The Go dfather (19 72). It los t o ut on
an Acad emy Award o ver a s mall controversy that th e th eme had been u sed
before in ano ther gu ise on an earlier sco re. Developing the infamo us mafia
family’s th emes for the sequ el, The God father Par t II (197 4), he wo n an
Os car th en ins tead, wh ich is a unique achievemen t in sequel scoring .

Riding The Sixties Side-Saddle

The Western was on e of cin ema’s original genres and has o nly truly d is-
appeared from s creens over the las t few decades. As Tiomkin ’s o utpu t
sh owed in Chapter 3 (esp ecially with High Noo n), aud iences s till loved the
pretence of Cowb oys and Indian s as the 50s became the 60 s. Compos er J er-
ome Moro ss scored les s th an twenty films, wo rk ing instead behind the
scenes as an orchestrato r. An asso ciation with Aaron Cop land led to him
creating his own brand of American a which is nowh ere b etter illus trated
th an in The Big Coun try (19 58). T he rolling melody of its main theme is as
perfect a d es cription of the o pen sk ies and sp rawling deserts of the Old Wes t
as th e film title itself. The same y ear he also produ ced The Prou d Rebel, The
Jayhawkers! (1 959), and the theme to TV’s Wago n Train. His Big Coun try
music w as to be the definin g work of h is film and co ncert hall career
th ough . In a pu blic p opularity contes t for the most memo rable Western
th eme th ere are o nly two o ther conten ders . Elmer Berns tein’s hero theme
for The Mag nificen t Seven (19 60) became an instan t template fo r an yone
wanting to musically conjure n oble team spirit. With hin dsight, its re-use for
a long-runn ing series o f Marlb oro cig arette ads w as n’t all th at flattering!
Th e other immortal Wes tern theme belongs to How Th e Wes t Was Won
(196 2) by Alfred Newman. There’s an u nparalleled op timis m in the piece
th at canno t help but make the listen er smile. Years later, its all-ro und go od

38
cheer pleased director Robert Zemeckis so mu ch th at desp ite R omancing
The Sto ne (1984 ) being his first collaboration w ith comp oser Alan Silvestri,
he wo uld settle for nothing else to open the movie o n.
The other Italian compos er to make their international mark durin g the
60 s was E nnio Mo rrico ne. His work for d irector Sergio Leon e w as ins tantly
declared to be its own gen re. Th eir Dollars trilogy turned man y conven tion s
on their head s, and remain w holly indiv idu al from some four hu ndred mov-
ies th at tried cop yin g them. Hollywo od dubb ed them ‘Sp ag hetti Wes terns’,
which is lacking as a description . Starting with A Fis tfu l Of Dollar s (19 64),
th e films were desig ned to dazzle, with Mo rrico ne creating music to act as a
character. Ou r intro duction to Clint Eastwo od as the M an With No Name is
via so lo whistler, whip crack s, bells , animalistic cho ral gru nts, and electric
gu itar. This co mbinatio n o f layered elements is so abstract fro m the v isu als
yo u have to pay attention to it.
Since the experiment worked, it was taken further for the s eq uels. For A
Few Do lla rs More (19 65) keep s the w histler, adds the tw an ging o f a Jew’s
Harp (a strip of steel yo u bite and strum), then fires u p snare drums to mimic
ho rs eback ed riders at full gallo p. On e ex traordin ary set p iece fo r the cue
‘Pay ing Off Scores ’ has a mus ic box , unp recedented lev els of hard gu itar
tw an ging , castan ets, Mexican ho rns, and church o rg an . T he qu irky orches-
trations go fu rther still for The Go od, The Bad, And Th e Ugly (19 66) wh ich
has always been the real cu lt clas sic. Here some of th e elements seem to
fuse and talk to o ne an oth er. The whistles work in tandem and the crazed
coyo te-howl motif is answered by w hat s eems lik e a su ck er-pun ch reply of
‘wah wah-wah’. It all builds u p to a balletic fin ale w hen the go lds eeking trio
sq uare o ff at a g rav ey ard an d th e mus ic takes o ver co mp letely.
One more collab oratio n from the 60 s has main tained a cult s tatus , thank s
to M orricon e lo ad ing natural s ound and o bscure stylistic co llisio ns with
omin ous meanin g. Once Upo n A Time In The Wes t (196 9) is a fo nd farew ell
to th e Co wboy ’s West. The g hostly female so prano v oice given to illu strate
th is impendin g loss is one of the most emotion al respon ses to a film’s ov er-
all th eme a compo ser ever mad e. There’s also th e most prominent example
of his method of grow ing s omething org an ically from the fabric of the
movie. Charles Bron son’s shocking revenge motive isn ’t revealed u ntil the
very end. O nce s een, repeat viewing s make every no te of his ‘Harmonica
Th eme’ all the mo re chilling.

39
 M orricone’s daring juxtapo sition of soun ds and lay ers of rh yth m had a
wide effect on contemporary mus ic. Record ing technology wasn’t available
to do what’s p ossible today, b ut by looping the layered elements he was for
all intents and purp oses applying the principles of sampling. In later
decades, it w ould b e rare to find th es e p rinciples in his work. Instead h e’s
become mo re app reciated for th e ro mantic highs of The Mis sion (1986 ) and
Cinema Pa radiso (1989 ) or the action/thriller s uspens e of Th e Untouch-
ab les (198 7) and In Th e Line Of Fire (1993 ).
A cou ple o f addition al in fluential compos ers deserve mention h ere. Firs t
is M ikis Theo dorakis fro m Greece, who se political activities led to a p eriod
in pris on and a ban on his music b efo re release and exile. Durin g th is p eriod
he no netheless produ ced h ighly memorable wo rks for Elektr a (196 2), Phae-
dr a (1962 ), Zor ba The G reek (1964 ), and Z (196 9). The last of th ese w on
several Os cars, bu t ig nored the exciting s core for bo uzouki an d orchestra.
Of real in fluence to chart music was Bla ck Or pheus in 19 59. Brazilian co m-
po ser Luiz Bonfa to gether with Anto nio Carlos J obim intro duced jazz
samba to a wo rldwide audien ce, an d in so do ing made the bo ssa n ova a
musical trademark for the next decade.

Making The Sixties Swing

With the es sential you th market caugh t up in a world of mu sic they’d
emb raced as their own, Hollywo od w as keen to pu rsue every financial ave-
nu e. Giv ing pop stars th eir own movies was one way of d rawing au diences
in and gettin g su bsid iary reco rd sales. Elvis Presley h ad been th e b igg es t
proo f with the alb ums to G.I. Blu es (1 960), Blue H awa ii (19 61), Gir ls!
Girls ! Gir ls! (1 962), Fun In Acap ulco (1 963) an d R oustabou t (1 964). Then
Th e Beatles did th e same th ing for both the UK and America with A H ard
Day’s Nigh t (1964 ), Help! (1965 ) and Yellow Subma rin e (19 69). The only
prob lem th e studio s had with encouraging more of these was th e spiralling
costs o f the stars an d th eir music. Inevitab ly, they turned to film co mp osers
to pull rab bits fro m hats. Fortun ately th ere were s ev eral n ew talents more
th an up to the challeng e.
As a res ult of th es e feelings , his po st-60 s career divers ified far more into
other genres. Prio r to the decade of swing, he’d wo rk ed on a lo t of mo nster
pictures and th e odd excursio n into dark p sychological territo ry (e.g. Touch
Of Evil in 195 8). All too s uddenly the comed ic lab el he’d b ecome stuck

40
with proved hard to shake. Especially when more s erious 70 s fare failed at
th e b ox office. H e’d alw ay s had a terrific s en se o f d rama and imagination
for instru mentation , but applying it to Th e Molly Maguires (197 0), or Silver
Streak (1976 ) d id him little favours . A lot of his wo rk in the 70s therefore
returned him to his roo ts in T V, prov idin g themes. A way of killing two
birds w ith one s tone was to poach co mpo sers from th e realms of televisio n.
By 1 965 TV p osed an oth er threat with the ad vent of continu ous co lou r and
in ternatio nal trans missions. A n eas y target was the au tho r o f the Peter Gu nn
series theme, wh ich had a Grammy-win nin g LP. Henry M an cini s ubse-
qu en tly b ecame one of the mos t importan t names in music du ring th e 60 s.
Th is sparse economy of orchestration in Gunn meant he w as encouraged to
differ noticeab ly from the Gold en Age so und. His hip, swingin g, Hammo nd
organ and flu te combo is a q uintessentially d efining s oun d fo r the d ecade.
He w on h is first pair o f Oscars with Breakfas t A t Tiffany’s in 1 961. The
enormous popu larity o f the song ‘M oon River’ en sured th at fo r almos t
every sub sequent pictu re he scored, the s tud ios exp ected an other hit.
Th ro ugh his prolific as sociation with directo r Blake Edwards (you ’ll be
gath ering b y n ow that these relationsh ips are rath er important!), Mancin i
man aged to keep stu dios reg ularly happy. The Pin k P anth er (1963 ) is ample
proo f. Its saxo phon e tune is one of the mos t celebrated motifs in film mus ic.
As an alb um it spent 88 weeks in U S ch arts, and has ap peared on cou ntles s
compilation s from the p eriod. Seven sequel films followed, all still with
Ed ward s. His other doub le Oscar win came with Ha tari! (1962 ) fo r director
How ard Hawks. The so ng ‘Baby Elephant Walk’ was a boog ie-woog ie sen-
sation d es pite the film’s fairly serio us tone for an African safari. Mancin i
was a great prop onent of his belief th at music s hould be heard in film. It
contrad icted a lo t of what co mp osers who came before b elieved, b ut it’s one
of th e thin gs th at sin gles h im out as at the forefron t of a new way of thinking
abou t th e indu stry. He deplored the fact th at jazz w as applied inapp ropri-
ately in film an d T V after his P eter Gu nn stint, and liked it even less when
th e s tudios tried to squeeze every drop of commerciality out o f p op mu sic
applied to film.
Almos t pas sing one ano ther th e baton in the 60 s, th e next name lifted
from TV credits was Lalo Schifrin wh ose jazz-laced w ork s potligh ted
so meon e with a gift for rh ythm and percuss ion . Co min g from a class ical and
jazz backgroun d in his nativ e Bueno s Aires , he was th e perfect choice to
apply both to the Steve McQueen pok er mo vie Th e Cincin nati Kid (19 65).

41
Indu stry ears really p rick ed up the fo llo wing y ear with his TV theme to M is-
sion: Imp ossible. It’s as well kno wn to day as then b y virtue of its often-
mimicked b eat, and als o two recen t big b udget featu res with Dann y Elfman
adapting the theme in 19 96 and Hans Zimmer in 20 00. His ab ility to effort-
les sly create authentic s ound ing geo grap hical backgrou nds in co mbination
with any number of mu sical styles made him highly sou ght after. In 196 7 he
pu t southern blu eg rass b en eath the feet of Pau l Newman as Cool Ha nd
Luke. Then w ith a minute ens emble of ten instru ments he implied s ex ual
tens ion betw een two ladies’ lives interrup ted b y The Fox (19 68). T hat y ear
als o saw the releas e o f the seco nd of Sch ifrin’s cult s ucces ses (ag ain with
M cQ ueen ) fo r Bullitt. It’s th e mos t well kno wn us e of jazz in film. Its po pu-
larity was resurrected by a car co mmercial in the late 90 s, which prompted a
premiere CD releas e of th e score and chart sin gle. Its laid-back cool for big
band jazz ensemble, dramatic cou nterpoint, and hand fu l of rad io sou rce
pieces (th e term for mus ic playing so mewhere within a film) is a brillian t
example of s co ring a film from every intellectual angle.
The third o f the high pro file projects that Schifrin is famou s for is the
Dirty Ha rry series, for which he scored four o ut o f the fiv e starting in 197 1.
Electric piano gave Harry Callahan a tough edge to match Clint Eastw ood’s
sn eer, an d w ordless female vo ices echo ed the madness ragin g ins ide serial
killer Scorpio’s head. Both mad e for an eerie atmosp here, keepin g the o ut-
come of th e film open. The jazz/rock element made it very contempo rary to
th e 60s (an d fashionable ag ain today), and along sid e Bullitt th e mu sic
mak es San Francisco seem lik e the most happening place on Earth!
Bruce Lee’s ex plo sive introd uctio n to mains tream Western au diences
was E nter The Dra gon (1 973). Schifrin used trad itional Chinese scales
alon gside his trad emark fu nky b ackb eats to keep th ings au thentic yet pur-
po sefully tongu e-in-cheek , as Lee d isp atches whole armies o f goo ns. Con-
trasting style, b ut n ot his preference for research, was The Fo ur Mu sketeer s
(197 4). The air of high adventure via late-Renaiss an ce perio d mu sic sh owed
th at Go lden Age th ink ing still had its place. Th at said, he did also comp ose
th e Plan et Of Th e A pes and Stars ky A nd Hu tch TV themes the s ame year…

42
 Making The Sixties Sing
Studios loved any one who cou ld combine sty les in the ways M ancini and
Schifrin d id. With tho se financial p ro blems foremos t on their minds how-
ever, they really lov ed anyon e who cou ld o verlap with the pop mus ic scene.
From this p ers pective, the indis putab le king of son gwriting throu gh the 60 s
was Bu rt Bach arach. H is work as musical director fo r Marlene D ietrich led
to teaming with lyricis t Hal D av id. Tog ether they’d already p enned in nu-
merable clas sic tunes wh en Hollywo od gave them Wh at’s New Puss ycat?
and A fter The Fo x to play with in 1 965. Puss ycat has a waltz-like und er-
score, which throws a k azoo into its unpredictable mix. The title so ng was
cleverly giv en to Tom Jon es , who ’d on ly just hit the big time with ‘It’s No t
Unu sual’. A Dionn e Warwick track (‘Here I Am’) secured Bacharach’s
work ing relationsh ip with her for many years. Fox was less o f a son g-ori-
ented film, with on ly The Ho llies ’ title tune to back th e upb eat yet melo dic
un ders core.
Bacharach’s next demons tratio n o f what mad e th e 60s sw ing was the
James Bond spoo f Ca sin o Royale (1967 ). With Dav id N iven, Wood y Allen,
and Peter Sellers playing for laughs , the music is made surreal in atmo-
sp here by Mickey-M ous ing th e madcap antics. Due to the film’s b ox o ffice
misfire, its title track remained an in strumental in stead of being ad ap ted
with lyrics . ‘T he Lo ok Of L ove’ s ung in sen sual fas hio n b y Dusty Sp ring-
field has remained one o f th e co mp oser’s many w ell k nown tu nes n onethe-
les s. Far ou tweig hing these others (an d all that followed) was B utch Cass idy
An d Th e S unda nce Kid (1 969). ‘Raindrop s Keep Fallin ’ O n My H ead’ was a
Number 1 hit, and wo n Bacharach two Os cars in conjunction with his jaunty
original s co re. Th e u se o f con temp orary metho d scoring an d track ing a
scene by son g was s een as inap propriate in so me qu arters for a mo vie abou t
19 th cen tury cowb oy bandits. It was exactly the s ort of thing Mancin i had
ob served o ccu rring in film scorin g, and knew it wo uld on ly take a few
money-mak ers to start making the traditional film composer’s role loo k ou t
of p lace. As recognitio n for Bach arach’s contribution to the sou nd o f the
60 s, cou ld there be an y h igher p raise than cameoing as h ims elf in the th ree
Au stin Powers mov ies with s poo f s cores from Geo rg e S. Clinto n?
There were three other s ign ificant con tribu tio ns to the mo ney-grabbing
ph ilo soph y ad opted by major stu dio s d uring the d ecade. First was the way
The Gr adua te (19 67) was desig ned to b e scored b y acquiring the license to

43
re-use existing p op s ong s. Th is meant lyrics and rh yth ms had n othing to do
with the film. In stead they were chos en for th e ton e of a scene and as a part
of w hat was hoped w ould be a best-selling album. Directo r Mike Nicho ls is
cred ited with the idea. Th e fact th at the albu m, its o ne original so ng (‘M rs.
Robinson ’), and Simo n An d G arfunk el’s next albu m (‘Boo kends’) all wen t
straight to Number 1 seems to indicate that some p art of that idea was spo t
on .
Dave Gru sin provided an original s core, but it’s the last thing an yone
remembers fro m th e film. T his s ore p oin t extends to th e s econ d of the
decade’s fin an cial oversig hts . ‘Th e Win dmills Of Your Mind’ eclipsed no t
on ly the fin e jazz/classic influ en ced score within The Thoma s Crown Affair
(196 8), b ut also mo st of the rest of co mpo ser M ichel Legran d’s career o ut-
side his native France.
Tak ing things one step further was Easy Rider (1969 ), which cobb led
to gether its soun dtrack from actor/director D en nis Ho pper’s record collec-
tion. It was on e o f the year’s big gest movies. Producers were convinced this
was the way to go to encourage the d ispo sable income y outh group into cin-
emas . A slew of s imilar ph ilo sop hically disenchanted films followed, all
with s ong playlists made up of chart s uccess es from recent years . It’s las ted
th rough to p resent day as the bon e o f co ntention behind a co llecto r’s market
ov errun with CDs th at have n oth ing to do with the films they promote
(about which there’ll be mo re in Chapter 6).
Now let’s loo k at th e decade from anoth er p ersp ective. Th at of a co ntinu-
ation of the Silver Age’s combination o f mus ical styles an d experimen tation
by compo sers whose commercial in stincts were s eco ndary to th e d ramatic
pu rp ose by which they s erv ed a film.

Shaking And Stirring The Sixties

‘My approach to scoring a film is to look at the w hole thing at on ce,’
reveals J ohn Barry. ‘I id en tify an o verall mes sage or emo tio n and s co re that.
I alw ay s go for a melod y first, b ecause it’s the most direct fo rm o f co mmu-
nication dramatically. It has to be v ers atile tho ugh. It’s on e th eme being
us ed in many differen t ways . Shos takovich said about music keep ing the
emo tio n intact. Once yo u captu re that essence everyth ing else sprin gs from
th at master file. Yo u g row with o ther h armonic material. Mayb e tak e frac-
tions of the melo dy. Th at s tarts to dictate th e res t of the score fo r you . I do

44
lo ve having a theme that wo rk s through out, alth ough it’s n ot p oss ible on
every s ingle film of cou rse.’ This in sig ht from the Britis h compos er defines
a 40-year career in film scoring that’s h ad o ne of th e largest in fluential
impacts on the ind ustry. A combin ation of h ap py co incid en ces led to dove-
tailin g from h is jazzy b eat band Th e John Barry Seven in to Beat Gir l
(196 0). His ear for arran gement of material an d fin ger-on -the-pulse of p op-
ular s tyle w as exactly w hat studios wanted . In 196 2, the production team
ov ers eein g the adaptatio n o f Ian Flemin g’s James Bon d character to big
screen were very keen to ap ply some of Barry’s commercial s tyle.
For 4 0 y ears th ere’s been a contentious is sue ab out own ers hip of the
‘James Bond Theme’. O nly some of the ind ividual mov ie albu ms and
coun tless Bond compilation s o n sh elves credit M onty N orman, who scored
th e whole of Sean Co nnery’s debu t in th e ro le for Dr. No (19 62). Barry was
asked to w ork his arran ging wizardry o n material th at didn’t s uit produ cers’
ears . A M arch 2001 co urt case determined N orman w as unfairly dis credited
in a newspaper article that implicitly identified Barry as th e sole writer.
Rather predictably, the libel case was mistak en by th e p res s for a decisio n of
own ers hip . Suffice to say, th e fan commun ity debate co ntinues. In many
ways , the issu e is rather immaterial since it was Barry wh o went on to score
th e bulk of th e rest of the series. From Rus sia With Love followed in 196 3.
Althou gh it in trodu ced his ‘0 07 Th eme’ an d his id ea o f an overall theme
bein g used within a credit sequence song , its s ucces s was comp letely o ut-
do ne by G oldfing er the follow ing year. Shirley Bass ey’s knocko ut v ocals
for the title s ong contributed to making it a Number 1 hit album s tayin g in
US charts far long er than in the UK. What w as clearly established w ith this
second in stalment fro m Barry w as th at as well as his melod ic sens e and
kn ack for jazzy arrangin g, he w as als o cap ab le o f rhythmically charged
actio n mu sic. All to gether it formed a template for an yone wanting a hit film
so ng, o r to s co re o ne of th e numerou s sp y movie w an nabes th at so on
appeared.
Thro ugh Thun derball (1965 ), Yo u Only Live Twice (196 7), an d On Her
Majesty’s S ecret Service (196 9), his s tyle develop ed to the p oin t o f fo rming
its own genre. With Diamon ds Are Forever (1 971) there was a sub tle gear-
sh ift in ton e to reflect changing attitudes, mak ing the mu sic more commer-
cial than ever. The film’s score ackno wledged that po p was read y to go
disco in a few years time, and early 70s fu nk was the s tylistic transitio n.
Some of the lyrics penned by regu lar collaborator Don Black caused Barry

45
mino r co ntrov ersy (‘touch it, stro ke it, and u ndress it’). Ev en if the so ng
wasn ’t as big a hit as Goldfinger, it’s still one of the mo st w ell kn own o f the
Bond son gs an d of Sh irley Bass ey ’s rep erto ire. Barry sub sequently skipped
Live And Let Die (197 3) where th e fun k was laid o n in s pades by George
M artin an d Paul McCartney’s so ng. T he Bond series has alway s been inex-
tricably lin ked with Barry’s n ame regardless of oth er co mp osers’ entries
th ough . T hrough the 9 0s this flatterin gly came down to the w ork of David
Arno ld on Tomorro w Never Dies (1 997), The Wo rld Is No t E noug h (19 99),
his concept alb um ‘Shaken An d Stirred’ (see Chapter 6) and D ie Another
Day (20 02). Th is isn’t all there was fro m Barry in the 60 s how ev er.
An on -s creen asso ciation w ith M ichael Caine b eg an in 196 4 w ith Zulu.
M ore th an most of h is scores, this sh ows Barry’s economy with material to
great effect in o nly 1 6 minutes o f o rigin al mu sic. Its central theme does a
tw o-for-on e job, depictin g the bravery of both the Britis h infantry an d the
native warriors. It was th e firs t op portu nity for Barry to prop erly flex his
dramatic muscles, since he considered th e Bon d movies to be ess en tially
cartoon -like. Then his jazz roots shon e th rough the s co re for y outh culture
sens ation The Kna ck… An d Ho w To Get It (1965 ). For The Ip cres s F ile
(196 5), h e sh owed off a H ungarian in strument almost no o ne kn ew of (the
cimbalom) for the memo rable ‘A M an Alone’ theme characterising anti-
hero Harry Palmer (Caine again ).
His firs t two O scars came s ide-by-s ide in 1 967 for th e true story of E lsa
th e lio n cub in Born Free (196 6). Both score and song (lyrics again by D on
Black) were award ed and became enormous world wide h its as an album
and s ing le. In fact, the song was covered by mo re than six hu ndred artis ts in
a matter of months after in itial release, and even wound up as a natio nal
anth em for o ne African state. H ere at the v ery height of his popu larity,
Barry co mp osed w hat remains a p erso nal favou rite o f his. The Lion In Win-
ter (1968 ) was an illustration of 1 2th cen tury English royalty clas hing poli-
cies w ith the Church of Rome. It’s a rare examp le of us ing ch orus in his
career, and in writing two perio d-specific song s it show ed an alternate s ide
significan t enou gh to win his other A cademy Award fo r the decade.
That same year he go t to w ork in a s imilar w ay as H errman n did o n The
Man Who Knew Too Mu ch by cond uctin g a concerto on screen for the finale
of Deadfall. Barry w ro te his piece however, an d it was a mark o f indus try
tru st he d id so in adv an ce of the film being sho t, which was then edited to
th e music. There was an other s ong for Shirley Bassey (‘M y Love H as Two

46
Faces’), bu t reg rettably the film failed to live up to its p romise an d so his
‘Romance Fo r Gu itar And Orchestra’ has remained unh eard beyon d the
so undtrack. Ro unding o ut the decade was another of his favou rites, Mid-
night Cowbo y (19 69). As a conceptualis ed project it was a produ ct of the
commercially orien ted times . By Barry’s input, it’s a very different beas t
from the son g-track ed films men tio ned alread y. ‘It’s still sho wn at UCLA
Film Sch ool as the b es t examp le o f s ong in film,’ s ays th e compos er with
un ders tandable p ride. ‘We did n’t go o ut and just b uy a bun ch o f s ong s. It
was all written es pecially fo r the scenes. It was literally a case of scoring
with s ong s, and I to ok a lot of care w ith it. The s cen e where he steals bread
and is s potted and s hamed jus t kills yo u. T he loneliness of that so ng (‘Old
M an Willo w’ by E lephant’s M emory ) d riftin g dow n over it had an atmo-
sp here I co uldn ’t h av e go t with a score. If it’s d one right it can b e terribly
effective.’ Sadly it seld om is don e rig ht. Barry has avo ided accu satio ns of
bein g one to do it wrong by never working on a film in th e s ame way as
Cowboy again. A lth ough th e Bond pictures continu ed , each requiring an
acknow ledgemen t of th e p op s tyle o f the day in their title song , he gradually
became drawn to mo re romantically th emed projects. Escaping th e typecast-
in g o f being a teen/spy /pop culture composer, Barry ’s mu sic o f the 80s and
90 s is dis tin guis hed for its blend of flo wing melo dy, cleverly wro ught co un-
terpo int (s eco ndary melody ), an d tend er exp res siv en es s.

At War In The Sixties

Althou gh th e d ecade’s real-life war was the Vietn am conflict, it was to

Wo rld War II th at Hollywo od repeatedly tu rn ed for the b ig s creen. Th ere
had been newsreel propagand a exercises aplenty durin g the period of con-
flict. A few resp ectfu l adv en ture tales ap peared in the 50s to o, such as The
Br idge On The R iver Kwai (19 57), with Sir M alcolm Arnold ’s Oscar-w in-
ning s co re famous ly u sin g th e whis tle-alon g ‘Colon el Bogey M arch ’. No
on e th ough t to glorify in th ings s pecifically from an American p ers pective
un til the 60s thoug h. Since only so much his torical accu racy can be shoe-
ho rn ed into 120 minutes, it would o ften fall by th e wayside. Th e most suc-
cessful template to follow b ecame havin g a stellar cas t o f crack troop s s en t
on so me d o-or-d ie miss ion . For compos ers , the miss ion was to characterise
th e N azis in su itably villain ous fashion and the Allies as contemporary
Roun d Table Knig hts of hon our. Scores to typify the g en re’s sudd en po pu-

47
larity in cluded Sink The Bismar k! (19 60) from Clifto n Parker, th e G reek-
tinged anthems fo r Gregory Peck defeating the w hole German army in The
Gun s Of Navarone (19 62) from Dimitri Tiomkin, Ba ttle Of The Bu lge
(196 5) from Benjamin Frank el, Attack On Th e Iro n Coast (196 7) fro m G er-
ard Sch urmann , and th e o ther whistle-alo ng camaraderie-in-crisis anth em of
The Great Escape (19 63) from Elmer Bernstein.
If there’s o ne mus ical cons tant in war mo vies, it’s that the military mo ves
to a b eat. It’s therefore n ot surprising that the compos er who came to score
more WWII flicks th an anyon e else in the decad e was a percuss ion ist at
heart. M aurice Jarre (father of Jean-M ichel) was o ne mo re international d is-
covery wh o benefited from th e Silver Age’s open do or policy to ideas. After
a d ecade of local fare, the French co mpo ser’s first exp los ive battle acco m-
paniment was for The Longes t Day (19 62). Th at extremely noisy accoun t of
th e Normandy land ings w as followed by Weeken d A t Dunkir k (196 4), then
The Tr ain an d Is Paris Bu rning? (b oth 1965 ). A waltzing tone p oem fo r the
latter hon oured the liberation of the Fren ch capital. Two y ears on he scored
a reasonably fo rg ettable piece for The Twenty-Fifth Ho ur b efo re crafting
on e o f h is most celeb rated works for The Night Of The Generals. With sin is-
ter marches and a b ouncing waltz, Jarre conjured distinct un ease ov er wh ich
of several Nazi generals mig ht be th e murderer o f a pro stitute. Cap ping his
contribution to the 6 0s cinematic war effort was The Dam ned (196 9), an
un settling p ortrait of a family falling apart und er Nazi influ en ce. All these
scores sho wed off his p ercus siv e skills and h is pio neering of ethnic ins tru-
men tation, which audien ces wou ld be reminded of wh en h e returned to the
war a decad e later for The Tin Drum (1 979).
Althou gh this arsenal of bombast kept his profile high , it had initially
been fired into the stratos phere b y workin g with d irector Dav id Lean. The
leading co mp oser names o f th e day had been linked at one time or an other
to Lawren ce O f Ar abia (19 62), s uch as M alcolm A rn old , Ben jamin Britten,
Aram Kh achatu rian, Rich ard Rodg ers , and William Walto n. Jarre was
brou ght in when Lean h eard his ex otic score for Sun days And Cybele
(196 2). Wh at came abo ut was another of cinema’s great identifyin g motifs.
Th e end uring desert th eme won h im his first Os car and co nsid erable record-
in g ind ustry clout with a sou ndtrack albu m remaining in US ch arts for 86
weeks. Remark ab ly, th e director and co mp oser man ag ed to top the achieve-
men t with Doctor Zhivag o a year later. If the Lawrence th eme is the p erfect
desert mus ic in the way that Psycho is the perfect mu rd er music, or Ja ws the

48
perfect sh ark mu sic, then ‘Lara’s Theme’ from Zhivago mus t b e the p erfect
tragic romance music. It won him another Os car an d spent ov er 3 years in
th e charts ! Th ey later reunited for Ryan’s Daug hter (19 69) an d A Pass age
To Ind ia (1 984).

Genre Gold (And Silver)

Back at th e fro ntline, wh en it came to the British perspectiv e on the Sec-
on d World War, Ro n Good win w as the composer who defined stiff upper lip
better than anyon e else. His mu sic fo r 633 Squ adron (196 4) is a p erfect
encapsulatio n of aerial militaria. For the soarin g and s woop ing of a German
munitio ns factory air raid, h e used French ho rn s to literally play the title (in
6-8 time, th e theme is six short notes followed b y th ree long ones). T he fol-
lo wing year he scored th e aerial comed y Th ose Magn ificen t Men In Th eir
Flying Ma ch ines as if it w ere an actio n mo vie, and cemen ted a style th at has
been paid homage to ev er since. Hollywo od was n ev er averse to bending
histo rical rules b y way o f best-selling autho rs w ho’d don e so first. Alis tair
M acLean’s leanin g to ward es pion ag e an d paran oia su ited b ig s creen adapta-
tion tremendou sly. With Where E agles D are (1 969), Go odwin produ ced a
fabulously memo rab le ten sion theme fo r Richard Burto n’s raid on a mo un-
taintop Nazi cas tle. Then he w en t b ack in to the air for a replacement score
(more ab out which in Chapter 6 ) o n The Battle O f Br ita in (19 69), wh ere his
mimickin g rat-a-tat effect s erv ed the Royal Airforce superbly.
The leg acy of Silver Age freed om originatin g in the 50s was th at new
careers o f the 60 s (and onwards) were free to s kip, create, and define wh ole
genres o f film and mu sic. If any on e compos er can lay claim to bein g a mas-
ter of all genres, it is Jerry Goldsmith. In 40 years , he has h ad a mus ical
hand in jus t abo ut every con ceivable type of film th ere is . Progressing from
years w orking in telev ision (writin g th e themes for The Man F rom
U.N.C.L.E. and Dr. Kildare among st many others), it w as in the 60 s that his
film career d emons trated it was poss ible to b e a J ack -o f-all-trades. Th ere
were Westerns of varying quality, like R io Conchos (1 964), Sta gecoach
(196 6), Hou r Of The Gu n (1967 ), Band olero! (196 8), and 10 0 Rifles (19 69).
All feature a d ev elopment of his powerhous e action writing combin ed with
folksy h omeliness . Later with Take A Hard R ide (197 5) some clear refer-
ences to th e s paghetti western lick s of Ennio Mo rrico ne w ere ap paren t.
Abo ut the only other time he was obv ious ly asked to emulate another style

49
was for the Bond wann ab es w ith J ames Coburn as Our Man Flint (19 65).
Both this and its seq uel In Like Flint (196 7) feature w inks an d tips of the hat
with electric g uitar and keybo ards .
He was far more draw n to seriou sly natu red pro jects tho ugh, frequently
leading to go od critical notice. When y ou’re dealin g with racial issu es for A
Pa tch Of Blu e (1 965) or the turbulent 1 920’s po litics o f America and Ch ina
for The San d Pebbles (196 6), sub tlety is key. A small ens emble of mu si-
cians p lays o n each instead of full orchestra, and for Pebb les th e Orien tal
colo urs and memorab le love theme led to the p opular son g ‘An d We Were
Lo vers ’. Throug hout the 60s he was an oth er of th e compo sers who fou nd
th emselves repeatedly immers ed in WWII. Th e only exception being his
bo mbas tic yet balletic accompaniment for the aerial d ogfig hts of The B lue
Max (196 6), which w as a rare glimpse of WWI. For the mo re po pular
exploratio n o f WWII on screen, he prop elled the es cape fro m an Italian
POW camp aboard Vo n Ryan ’s Express (1965 ). The same year two back-to-
back p rojects meant he amu sin gly worked on the aftermath of the attack on
Pearl Harbou r before the ev en t its elf. In Har m’s Way (1 965) dealt with the
US Navy’s retaliatio n, an d then Tora ! Tor a! Tor a! (1 970) sho wed an un bi-
ased account of how they’d let it h ap pen. In th e s eco nd score, Go ldsmith
work ed in as much J ap an es e patrio tis m (v ia approp riate Asian in strumenta-
tion) as h e did American flag waving .
His mo st lastingly famou s war drama score is Patton (19 70). Go ld-
smith’s ability with pared do wn instru mentation is at its b es t in th is accoun t
of the legendary general. D ecid ing on a mere 30 minutes of mu sic in the
cours e of 3 hours, he s plit the material betw een three aspects of the charac-
ter: the religiou s (signified by org an), th e military (a s trong but sprightly
march), an d the sp iritu al (trumpets th at echo away into s ilence). Th e last of
th es e aspects was achieved with an echop lex, a device v ery much in v ogue
in th e pop music world at the time. Its intellectual in tent was to reflect Pat-
to n’s belief in reincarnation. Over th e years it’s been endlessly parodied for
th e military, which of co urse miss es the point Goldsmith made with it. The
film w as one of s ev en with directo r Franklin J. Schaffner.
Perh ap s th eir bigg es t achievemen t (in ev ery cinematic sense, no t ju st b ox
office) was Pla net Of Th e A pes (1968 ). As we saw in Chapter 3, s cien ce fic-
tion mos tly kept itself to mu tant mo nsters an d alien in vasion s du ring the
50 s. On ly o ccasio nally did someone look to craft a social allegory or offer a
warnin g about the fu ture. The 60s w ere a d ry p eriod for science fiction in

50
any fo rm, with o nly the Fren ch seeming to have anything to s ay with La
Jetée (1 963), Alphaville (1965 ), an d Fahrenh eit 451 (1 966). Ex perimen tal
scoring approaches were ap plied to each fro m Trevor Dun can, Paul M is rak i,
and Bern ard Herrmann respectively. Apes also came from a French sou rce
(th e novel by Pierre Boulle) and gave Goldsmith an o pportunity to b e more
experimental th an anyo ne had yet dared . Th e music is full o f harsh and
complex rhy thms, moans, un iqu e percuss ion (e.g. kitchen mixing bow ls!),
blas ts of air, echoes, and grind ing string work . It all su pports the b ackd rop
of an arid alien landscape p erfectly, boun cing off cany on walls and drifting
in terminably in to an uncertain horizo n. For the all-imp ortant ape revelation
with the cu e ‘The Hunt’, Go ldsmith helped create one o f th e most visually
sh ockin g moments in cinema. The clue was in the title, b ut a s lam-zoom
acro ss a field to pick out a go rilla ridin g a h orse was an enormous su rp rise.
Th e s urprise o wes mu ch to the build u p of percussion that leads to the bleat-
in g o f a ram’s ho rn backed b y a cuika (an instrument wh ich mimics the
‘ooh -ooh-oo h’ o f an ap e). One of the mo st remarkable things abou t the
score is th at every effect is ach ieved acou stically and not electron ically.
With p op mu sic increasing ly domin ating the music s cene, th is was a score
to remin d th e indu stry it w as still poss ible to b e o riginal.
The modernis t (aton al yet stru ctured) ap proach to sci-fi that Go ldsmith
to ok w ith Apes an d later The Illustrated Man (1969 ) also ap peared in
Leon ard Rosenman’s F anta stic Vo ya ge (1 968), and Lalo Schifrin ’s THX
1138 (1 970). Co llectively they sh owed s cience fiction to be a genre with
in tellectu al po tential. 1 968 became th e his torical marker wh en it directly
in fluenced the recording indu stry with Stan ley Kubrick’s 2001 : A Spa ce
Odys sey. A lo ng-los t score by Alex North was resu rrected in the 9 0s by
Goldsmith, b ut the mu sic everyon e knows only to o well from the film is
Richard Strauss ’s ‘Also Sp rach Z arath ustra’. Th e piece has b ecome an
anth em for cou ntles s spo rting events, stag e sh ows, and comedic spo ofs.
North’s work w as los t to on e o f the firs t ov ert examples of a d irector falling
in lov e w ith their temp track (a comp osite of exis tin g pieces to sup port a
film while bein g edited). T he fact that the clas sical pieces chos en fou nd
enormous favo ur w ith the record buy ing p ublic w ould s eem to indicate
Kub rick made the commercially co rrect decisio n. The resu ltant alb um suc-
cessfully cro ssed b oth pop and classical charts. It als o sp aw ned a s eq uel
albu m with th e awful mon iker ‘in spired by’ that had no thing to d o with the
film at all.

51
 When yo u ad d togeth er th e similar thin kin g on Th e Gr adua te an d Easy
Rider, you ’ll understan d th at th e co nventional Golden Age compo ser felt
so mewhat threatened moving into th e 7 0s. The Silv er A ge meant being free
to try new things , bu t h ow long wo uld it be before they ran d ry and Holly-
woo d won its finan cially-motivated s trugg le to turn film mu sic into best-
sellin g chart music?

52
 5. Romance Ain’t Dead

The 70 s began without an y clear sens e o f identity or belo nging. Studio

music d ep artments had b een d iss olved fo r s ome time, so compos ers were
roving freelancers. Youn g blo od was welcome. There w ould be careers to
mak e a s tand in th e midd le of the free-for-all, an d w e’ll look at Joh n Will-
iams, J erry Goldsmith, and J ames Horner sho rtly. As w e enter the d ecade
ho wever, and determine what were th e no teworth y soun dtracks, yo u’ll s ee
th at th ere’s never been a mo re w retch ed time for humdrum and miscellany.
Let’s lo ok at some of the s tandou t cult highlights. In 1 971, Stan ley
Kub rick ad ap ted the clas sics again for A Clockwo rk Or ange. The works of
Beethoven, Ross ini, and Elgar fou nd nowh ere near the level of favo ur that
20 01 had on record thoug h, and th e film famous ly died a d eath of moral o ut-
rage. A noth er expression of social dissatisfaction came in M ichael Cain e’s
gritties t character role in Get Carter. The jazzy, h arp sicho rd -laced mu sic
from British comp oser Roy Budd made th e veng eful thug seem even
to ugher. It was a s co re that fou nd renewed appeal in th e late 90s when a
series o f Bud d’s w ork appeared o n CD . Shaft was another co ol cat patrolling
th e s treets that year, b acked by a tun e that was finger-clickin g good . Is aac
Hayes won a Best So ng Oscar for the single and album that topp ed US
charts.
Jo hn Carpenter made h is sit-up-and -take-n otice debut as director and
compos er in 1 973 with Dar k Star. His s implistic sy nth es iser scores would
have tremend ous impact on a film mu sic scene rapid ly fallin g in lov e with
electronic ov erlay s. The fo llo wing y ear Dav id Shire app lied th e 12 -tone
method of compos ition (s ee The Cob web in Chapter 3) to the n ois y su bway
heis t th riller Th e Taking Of Pelh am 123 . T hen in 197 5 came a surreal and
kinky remind er th at the M usical co uld s till wo rk on big screen, with th e o ut-
rageous R ocky Hor ror Picture S how. Vis ually (and o ften mus ically ) it fol-
lo wed in the fo ots teps of th e mon ster flicks o f the 50s , but its real legacy
was in encouragin g audien ce participation to an unprecedented lev el. The
decade’s other Ro cky came a year later, an d intro duced beefcake Sylvester
Stallone as a box ing champ fro m the Philadelp hia s lums. Bill Co nti’s train-
in g montag e fanfare is o ne mo re instan tly recogn isable motif to perfectly
captu re an activity (ring fighting) and an emo tion (the loser triu mph s). 19 76
was also th e year of Bernard Herrmann’s final score. He’d been on e of the
compos ers hit h ardest b y the move away fro m earlier mu sical sty les. Sadly

53
he died jus t as he’d fo und a comfo rtable go-between of jazz-fused pop and
orchestra fo r Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. The tortured saxoph one that
po rtray s Ro bert DeNiro’s inner pain is a p oign an t trib ute. Not o nly d id he
die befo re h earin g his mu sic to film and mis s the univ ers al acclaim it
received, but if he’d lived on a few years h e’d h av e seen a retu rn o f th ose
musical sty les and values h e deplored the lo ss o f.
Bey ond th es e, th e few abou t to fo llo w, and w hat’s already been covered
in scattered fash ion in Chapter 4, there really is n’t much more to talk abou t
for th e firs t half of the 70s. Of far more interest w as a s eries of re-recording s
th at ap peared on viny l as of 1972 u nder the baton of con ducto r, prod ucer,
and film music aficio nado Charles Gerhard t. ‘The Sea Hawk: T he Clas sic
Film Scores Of Erich Wolfg an g Korn gold ’ was a pheno menal s ucces s,
peaking class ical charts rapidly. Clearly the record-b uyin g pu blic w ere keen
to hear more than the general wash o f p op so ng collection s around at the
time. Th e RCA label followed it with similar collectio ns for Max Stein er,
Alfred Newman, Bernard Herrmann , Franz Waxman, M iklós Rózsa, Dimitri
Tio mkin, a second Ko rn gold v olume, an d a few celebrity themed comp ila-
tions (e.g . Errol Fly nn). Other record lab els jump ed ab oard th e revival of
in teres t, and film music collectors sudd en ly found th emselv es able to actu-
ally have a co llection! It was a much-needed reminder o f the q uality o utpu t
from the Go lden Ag e, an d most certain ly h elped th e career o f o ne you ng
compos er...

The Force Is Strong With This One

Directo r Stev en Spielb erg fo und himself makin g a temp track for Sug ar-
la nd Exp ress (1 974) from two s co res by ‘John ny’ Williams. The Reiver s
(196 9) and The Cowboys (1 972) were th e s cores in question; a pair eschew-
in g p op for an orchestra. They w ere in o bvio us co ntrast to Williams ’s more
high pro file flirtation with dis co and disaster for The Pos eidon A dven ture
(197 2), The Towerin g Infern o (197 4), and Earthqua ke (19 74), wh ich
acco rd ed to the general sty le of the day. After their fruitful collaboration on
Su garland, there was n o on e better su ited to p lumb s ubmerged depths of
fear for the film th at forev er chang ed the way s ummer mo vies w ere con-
ceived. Ja ws (1975 ) was more than jus t the hit of the year. It made s o much
money that Hollyw ood w as frantic to learn the secret of its s uccess . This
was where concept was first cons idered, an d wo uld rap idly lead to the n ow

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pain fully p rev alen t concept movie. Its other s uccess the indu stry so ught to
replicate was the album and single w hich prov ed an orch estral score (and
on e ostensib ly for a h orro r movie) co uld scale charts desp ite stron g p op
op positio n.
Record sales, repeat viewing fig ures, and the Oscar that Williams won all
say s omethin g to the powerful effect h is music h ad . Fro m th e o penin g point-
of-view shot mo vin g thro ugh d eep w aters , we’re made to u nderstand this
is n’t s ome holiday d iving fo otage o r aquatic documentary. Tho se lo w th ud-
ding notes leave us in no un certain ty that danger lurks. Britain’s Deb bie
Wiseman told me that ‘as a film compo ser you kno w to avoid that repeated
semitone p hras e since it is now forever asso ciated with s hark s.’ Several
compos ers have made s imilar remark s, goin g to s how how large an impact
it h as made if mu sician s con sciou sly steer clear of s omething in their writ-
in g process .
Two years later, Spielberg intro duced Williams to his friend George
Lu cas who wanted h is new scien ce fiction film to h av e an emo tio nal famil-
iarity s ince th e back drop o f creatures an d lo cales loo ked so alien. Star War s
(197 7) is rightly hailed as th e Secon d Comin g o f film music. Every aspect
of the film’s release was a genuine p henomenon, coining the w ord ‘b lock-
bu ster’ to d es cribe th e unprecedented level of queuing that cinemas experi-
enced for tickets. The two disc album immediately became the b igg es t
sellin g non-p op reco rd in histo ry (at that time), and s aw more cover version s
and con cert performan ces than anyth ing else in film music’s history. Fan s
who complain ed about the con cert suite presentation of the album would
have to w ait until the Special Ed ition re-release of the film in 1997 . Will-
iams h as always been perfectly clear about his practice of re-sequencin g his
albu ms thou gh. ‘What I usu ally try to do, w hich may co me fro m years of
mak ing concert programmes, is to mak e a musical prog ramme based on
material I've g ot from th e film that will make the mo st rewarding lis tening
experience in terms of entr’acte, ov erture, s oft, lo ud, fas t, slow, etc. So
th ere's a gestalt o r con tou r to k eep the listener in teres ted.’
This level of succes s and adoration (and anoth er Oscar) d oesn’t co me
withou t go od reason. Very simply, the wall-to-wall mu sic is flawless in s up-
po rting the o n-screen ad ventu re, an d in commun icating emotion s that could
easily get lost in th e s pectacle o f v isu al effects. Th ere is the endles sly cop ied
op en ing of th e en ormou s Star Destro yer passing o verh ead. Witho ut Will-
iams’s bo ld march you wouldn’t know that the little sh ip is the go od g uy. A

55
few min utes later, witho ut the delicate ‘Prin ces s L eia Theme’ for flute, the
scene o f her slotting the D eath Star plans in to R2 -D 2 could s eem like so me
lady making to as t. Withou t the adagio (slow) v ers ion of the ‘Force Theme’
as Luke g azes at Tatooine’s setting twin s uns , he mig ht as well be bird-
watching. With out the up beat, goofy ho mage to a 1 930’s Benn y Goodman
sw ing band, th e Can tin a sequ en ce co uld seem pretty s illy w ith so many
papier mâché pupp ets and ru bber masks . T he list go es o n w ay beyo nd this
first th ird of the film of cou rs e.
Apart from its jaw-d ropping record sales and textb ook demo nstration of
every conceiv ab le way a score can benefit a film, the real success o f the
music was in con vin cing stud ios th e late Romantic style w as n’t completely
dead. T his was th e Gold en Age style at its very best, heark en ing back to the
work o f Ko rn gold, Steiner, and Rózsa from the 30s and 40 s. Roman tic
mean s large-scale orchestral mus ic ins pired for o ther th an purely mus ical
reas ons . It refers to a 19th century of rich harmo ny, melody, an d p oetry
which was exactly what Georg e Lucas wan ted, to be light years away from
th e Disco craze swamp ing ev ery thing els e.
There’s only ev er been o ne thing wrong with Star War s, and that’s the
fact it has always comp letely overshado wed Close En co unter s Of Th e Third
Kind, which came out the same year. Everyon e who’s seen it rememb ers the
significan ce of the spaceship’s five-note mus ical mes sage (which took more
th an tw o h undred an d fifty attempts to g et rig ht fo r Spielb erg). With only a
partial relian ce on th e roman tic form, audien ces have never emb raced it as
op en ly. It may b e atonal (not belon gin g to any k ey ) in places, y et it p erforms
ju st as importan t a role in the film as in Star Wars. The film is larg ely abou t
commu nicatio n via mu sic, so it wo uld be un thin kable to tak e aw ay the tuba
and syn thesiser conversation of the fin ale fro m the blinkin g ligh t s how. All
in all, there may never have been a more intellectualised cons ideration of
th e use of music as an in tegral part o f a film.
Williams’s next major pro ject broug ht s cience fiction down to E arth with
th e arrival o f the g reatest superhero, and greatest s uperhero theme. S uper-
man : The Movie (19 78) features a ‘M arch’ o f such patriotic po mp it has
remain ed the warm-u p of choice fo r s porting teams the world over. Will-
iams doesn ’t put a fo ot wron g in characteris ing the alien politics o f p lanet
Kryp ton with b ells, percuss ion, and synthesiser. Nor the folk sy farm life of
th e Kent family in Smallville, th e bustle of city life in Metro polis, the bu m-
bling villainous life of L ex Lu thor an d O tis , or the lov e affair w ith modern

56
gal Lois Lane. Th en the compos er shot back in to s pace to that far away gal-
axy for the sequel ado red by all film mus ic fans , Th e Emp ire Strikes Ba ck
(198 0). M uch sp eculatio n su rro unds why this sh ould ho ld more appeal than
its b racketing ch ap ters of the trilogy, an d even o ver these o ther scores men-
tioned h ere preceding or following. On e ans wer is th at it end s unresolved
with s everal plo t threads in peril. Mus ically that’s tran slated into a much
darker o verall moo d, w ith th e grand ‘Imperial M arch’ being at the h eart of
all that’s su ddenly dis co vered to be wrong with the Skyw alker family. Th ere
are lo ts of g rey areas in th e score, such as the brass rumble puttin g a ques-
tion mark ov er the head o f bo unty h unter Bo ba Fett, the insin uatio n by
strings o f pu re evil in the swamp cave when Luk e confronts his fears, and
th e consistently sub tle tricks (such as no ticeable rare absences o f music)
creating an air of something amis s at turncoat Lando Calriss ian’s Clo ud
City. It’s temp tin g to ign ore Retur n Of The Jed i, wh ich followed 3 years
later, s ince it devolved into a regu rg itation of material (some literally re-
us ed fro m Sta r War s) for a d isp lay of Mu ppets an d teddy bears. Luke’s emo-
tional arc sto ry sh ould have remained at the forefro nt of thin gs, but does at
least g et a satisfying pay-off s co red with th e firs t use of cho rus in the tril-
og y, g iving th e final light s ab re d uel a quasi-religio us feel. Mu sically and
visually it’s an anti-climax to wh at was built u p, b ut as the o riginator o f the
ph ras e ‘s pace o pera’, it do es make for n early 6 ho urs of the very best of
Williams’s career.

Look At The Size Of These Things

In several circles of fando m, a line of dialo gue from Star Wars has been
cheerily adapted to sum up th e co mp oser’s in fluence as the 70 s b ecame the
80 s: ‘Do not und erestimate the p ower of Jo hn Williams.’ Incredib ly, having
men tio ned all these enormously p opular successes so far, there are s till two
more. M ore incred ible is that in between he still had time to kno ck o ff
acco mp an imen t to Alfred Hitchcock’s final mov ie Fa mily Plo t (1 976), and
a march that o ften finds itself in co ncert repertoires for Midway (19 76).
Jaws 2 (1 978) expand ed all the terror of th e o rigin al, while The Fur y (19 78)
had an over-the-top ps ycholo gical waltz. He w as the firs t to sugg es t Drac-
ula (19 79) was a misund ers tood roman tic, and th en gave Spielberg a come-
dic spark in his only real mis fire w ith 1941 (1 979). It is to Spielb erg w e turn

57
again fo r the last two b lockb usters that rou nd ou t Williams’s decade-lo ng
reign of sup remacy and influence.
The final 80s treasure (an d Os car) with Spielberg was E.T. The E xtra-
Terrestrial (1982 ). It was another mass ive albu m seller, again conforming to
Williams’s preference fo r con cert arrangemen ts of the princip al themes (one
of which w as a sin gles chart success to o). Like each of th es e blockbus ters
highlighted, it was reiss ued on an expanded CD. M ore than any of the o th-
ers it s plits fan opinio n as to whether s uites or chron olo gical o rder best suit
his albums. Sentimentality is E.T.’s general moo d, playing on the heart-
strings of every ch ild who h ad an imag inary friend, alien or otherw ise. On ce
familiar w ith th e film, an yone fo llo wing th e music can’t help bu t b e drawn
to ward the astoun ding 1 5-minute bik e chase finale, which brims ov er with
up -tempo cheer. E. T. by no means b ro ught any kind of an end to this p eriod
of grand eu r, bu t no ne of what follow ed in the 80s ev er attained the same
heig hts of popu larity. Wh ile some wou ld prove d ownrig ht forg ettable, at
least th ere was Th e River (1 984), SpaceCamp (1 986), Th e Witches Of Ea st-
wick (19 87), Empire Of The Sun (198 7), The Accidental Tour ist (19 88),
Bo rn On The Fou rth Of July (198 9), an d Always (19 89). Shifting records o ff
sh elves, encouragin g repeat cinema viewings , and persuading the roman tic
id iom back into film mu sic makes Williams a prin cipal architect in this
perio d of big s creen his tory. If Su perman is th e ultimate sup erhero theme,
th en Raiders Of The Lost Ar k (1 981) is the ultimate adventurer theme. In di-
ana J ones ins tantly became a box office smash, and anoth er best-s elling
albu m. Th rough out the film, there are examples o f music w orking ex actly
th e w ay it s hould. Pizzicato (plu cked) strin gs give you the creeps as h un-
dreds of tarantulas drop onto th e archaeolo gis t’s sho ulders. The orchestra
M ickey-Mo uses his mad dash fro m the temple w hen everythin g s tarts fall-
in g apart, culmin ating in b ras s into nements o f doo m as a giant rock chases
him b efore everyth ing comes to a d eafening cras h of silence. The crowd-
pleas ing fanfare serves as a musical pun ch lin e to rein fo rce a jo ke about him
bein g s cared of a s nake after everything that’s just h ap pened. A gain, this is
on ly a demonstration co vering the early part of the film. Later comes the
awe-filled Ark theme, a love th eme fo r Marion , an d one of cin ema’s b es t
actio n cues for o ne o f its b es t action scenes as J ones sin gle-handedly takes
ou t a tru ck convo y of Nazis. Th ere’s no dialo gue for almos t 1 0 minutes,
mak ing it a gift for the compos er to act as narrato r, telling us where every-
on e is at any given mo ment, an d reassu ring us that the hero will co me

58
th rough in the end. A pair of s eq uels follow ed : Temple O f Doo m (198 4) and
The La st Crus ade (1 989), bu t by a s hift in ton e neither fu lly recap ture the
exub erance of th e original.
It took a decad e from 2 001: A Space Od ys sey to Star War s for the ind us-
try to tru st scien ce fiction as a genre of legitimate financial worth . As
always wh en Ho lly wood latch ed up on something, it was then rapidly done
to exces s. T V rush ed out several projects, of w hich the most successful pair
featured stron g orch es tral backing from Stu Philip s. In 1 979, b oth Bu ck
Ro gers In The 25th Century and Battlestar Ga lactica fo und thems elves
bein g to uched up for th eatrical release. Jo hn Barry aided Dis ney’s b id for
sci-fi glo ry with The Black Hole (1 979), an d Elmer Bern stein experimen ted
serio usly for Satu rn 3 (19 80), in an imated fashion fo r Heavy Metal (19 81),
th en with tongu e firmly in ch eek fo r the hijin ks o f Spacehun ter: Ad ventures
In Th e For bid den Zon e (1983 ). Other big n ames asked to work sympho nic
mag ic in to s emi-s erious sci-fi includ ed Mikló s Rózsa for H. G. Wells’
romance in 7 0s San Fran cisco in Time After Tim e (1 979), L au ren ce
Rosenthal fo r a late bid in the disas ter genre with Meteor (1 979), Ennio
M orricone inexplicab ly rep licated director J ohn Carpenter ’s style for s hock
mas terpiece Th e Th ing (1 982), and Henry M an cini d id h is b es t to res cue the
limp hyb rid of s pace v ampires in Lifeforce (1985 ).
The Star Wars-insp ired backing carried acro ss to most genres that s olidi-
fied into catego risation at the start of the 80s. Science fiction was the main
on e to explore fus ing with the burgeoning capab ilities of electro nics. Rock
and New A ge therefore tran smitted themselves into s pace co urtesy of
Queen for the camp glitz of F lash Gordo n (1980 ), an d Jo hn Carp en ter ag ain
with a hard -as -n ails anthem for Snake Pliss ken in Es ca pe F rom New York
(198 1). Vangelis sug gested tranqu il in igno ran ce for the bleak futu re of
Blade Run ner (1982 ), an d Wend y Carlo s eas ed us into the digital realm with
Tro n (19 82). Brad Fiedel p ound ed metallic footfalls beneath Sch warzeneg-
ger’s b reakthroug h as The Terminato r (1 984), and Toto (and Brian Eno)
mad e interiorised tho ughts and emotion s as openly app arent as the v as t
deserts of Dun e (1 984). Maurice Jarre sho wed off being one o f the main
sy nth es iser compos ers of the time for En emy Mine (1 985), an d Harold Fal-
termey er p ut a b eat into step aerob ics with ‘Captain Freedom’s Worko ut’
when Schwarzen eg ger sw itched in to goo d guy mode as The Run nin g M an
(198 7).

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 There Is Another
Like Williams, Jerry Gold smith was one of the few exceptions to the rule
who did excel for a clear p eriod of time. Th e J ack-of-all-trad es we identified
him to be in Ch ap ter 4 w as enormously p ro lific durin g the 70s in to the 80 s.
He applied imp res sion istic techniques to the scores for Log an's R un (19 76),
Dam nation Alley (1977 ), and Caprico rn One (1 978), which is to s ay theirs
was mu sic that never really b elonged to any one character o r emo tio nal
story arc, but ins tead followed the drama itself. 1 979 w as the year of his
main co ntrib ution to the s cience fiction g enre tho ugh. First came Rid ley
Scott’s Alien , for which every con ceiv ab le asp ect of production lived u p to
th e title. From the nightmarish organic loo k o f the aliens an d their env iron-
men t design ed by Swis s artist H. R. Giger throug h to the heavily indu stria-
lised visio n of Earth’s future habitat, it was a spectacle jus t as orig inal on the
eye as Sta r Wa rs. O n to p of th at sits p ossibly the coldest o f s cores ever writ-
ten for a film. As a stan dalon e lis ten on albu m, it is b ackg ro und mus ic for a
haun ted hous e. It breathes and it sighs (an ech oing fou r-no te p hras e for
woo dwin ds p inched for coun tless sub sequent scores ), then s creams and
beats the walls with in novative percuss ion effects (e.g. lo g drums). No t only
did it s et a template for the three mov ies that fo llo wed, b ut also for endles s
rip -o ffs an d pastiches. Even more pop ular from the same year is w hat many
cons ider to b e G olds mith’s finest work – Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The
Star Trek franchise had b een mothballed a decad e earlier, bu t new p oss ibili-
ties in special effects were too promising for Paramou nt to ig nore.
Any one who thou ght the elaborate v isuals overstay ed their w elco me
nick named it ‘The Slow M otion Picture’. Paradoxically, the tw o key
sequ en ces this complaint is attrib uted to, are also the musical highlights.
Number one occu rs as A dmiral K irk is ferried to th e newly refitted Enter-
prise. It’s mo st certain ly a case of s howing off th e FX, but the 6 minutes are
mad e into a majestic ballet of movemen t by Goldsmith ’s glorious mus ic.
Number Two is the far longer s equence of entering the V ’g er cloud ; o ne of
man y sci-fi jo urneys remin iscent o f 20 01’s h allucinogenic fin ale. H ere the
compos er seems to ad ap t Herrmann’s emo tio nal vo rtex from Ver tig o with
an unresolvin g cy clic motif, perfectly capturing the op en-mou thed crew.
Lo ts of creative effects are dropp ed on top of this sens e of awe. Of particu-
lar importance is the Blaster Beam, a s eventeen-foot metal bar strung with
bridge cables and s panked, wh ich is th e clou d’s u niqu e leitmotivic device.

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Th ere’s o nly th e vagu es t of referen ces to the original 60s TV s eries theme
by Alexand er Cou rage, w ho ass isted orchestrating (s ee Chapter 7 ) the score
in cidentally. Goldsmith’s own theme has gone o n to be ev en mo re recogn is-
able, h av ing b een ad ap ted for the Next Generation T V series th eme, th en re-
us ed in The Fin al Fron tier (198 9), F irst Con tact (199 6), Ins urrection
(199 8) an d Nem es is (20 02). He also co mpo sed th e main title theme for TV’s
Vo ya ger. In total, it’s a b ody of work that makes h im more prominent in the
genre than an y other compos er. Es pecially with what else we can add from
th is timeframe.
He scored rug ged men ace for th e Wes tern-in-s pace of Ou tla nd (19 81),
his own bid fo r s uperhero success w ith a s oaring fanfare for S upergir l
(198 4), an experiment in electronics for the killer robo ts of R unaway
(198 4), music capturing the d ay dreamin g o f every scho olb oy fo r Explo rer s
(198 5), and kinetic comedy for th e bio logy les son of Inner space (19 87).
Th es e last two were for directo r Jo e Dante, with whom G olds mith has had
another lo ng-stan din g wo rking relationsh ip. It began in 1983 with the
anth olo gy of stories fo r Twilight Zone: The M ovie, to wh ich D an te contrib-
uted a s eg ment. As a genre cro ssov er, it fu lly utilis ed Gold smith’s versatility
as th e compo ser wh o also led the field in the w orld of ho rro r. Dante immedi-
ately secured him for his b reakthrough mo vie Gremlins (1 984). It was
another case of blu rring the lin es between film categ ories: part chiller, part
comedy, but mo stly cute.
What h ad really changed th e h orro r g en re perman en tly (w inning Go ld-
smith h is only Oscar to date) was Th e Omen (19 76). In stead o f glo ssing
ov er or cutting away from grueso me d eath s the film w as graphically direct,
raising censo rs hip iss ues lasting to the present d ay. M usically it was a
watersh ed in sty lis tic as sociation. The cho ral black mass (‘Ave Satani’) has
become a template fo r anyon e loo kin g to depict d emonic activity. It’s often
been mistak en fo r Carl Orff ’s ‘Carmin a Burana’ (thanks in the UK to TV
sh ows like On ly Foo ls An d Hor ses), yet here in its original setting the effect
is genuinely un nerv ing fo r the Antichrist’s tale. Gold smith adapted and
occasio nally bettered the material in the two sequels D amien: Omen II
(197 8) and The Final Con flict (198 1). Mo re than any other compos er, he
seems comfo rtable to stick aro und as stud ios try re-bottling bo x office lig ht-
ning. Finis hing th e Omen s eries he moved straigh t o n to Poltergeis t (19 82),
which is ano ther of his mos t respected work s. It’s a s co re o f frig htening con-
tradiction s. A fragile b eau ty pervades the lullaby for Carol An ne, the little

61
girl kidnapp ed by gho sts, and it speaks to the tragedy tearing apart a s ubur-
banite family. Then th ere are sho ck ing bu rs ts of dis son an ce and harsh tex-
tu ral elements for the su pernatural p yrotechnics, s uch as w henever the
clow n to y appears. Th e dis mal P olterg eist II: The Other Side (198 6) fol-
lo wed. Roun din g ou t his wo rk in the 8 0s hous e of horror w as th e inevitable
Ps ycho II (19 83) for which he wis ely avoided any p ossible compariso n with
Herrmann ’s s emin al score.
Outsid e the two princip al fan tasy g en res, Gold smith excelled in every-
th ing else jus t as memorably. Chinato wn (1 974) remains his person al fav ou-
rite, p erhaps as a mark o f prou d accomplishment hav ing been written in a
rid iculo usly sh ort 1 0 day s. Th e roman tic trump et so los defined film n oir
better th an any thing in th e genre’s 50 s heyday, and is a su bject of s tud y in
man y film music clas ses. The Wind An d The Lion (197 5) is the best example
of the co mpo ser’s trademark brand of p owerhous e action writing , here len t
Arabic rh ythmic structu re. ‘Rais uli Attack s’ is one of th e mos t ferociou s
pieces of music ever written fo r film, and makes th e s eq uence o f a horse-
back s word du el th underous ly exh ilarating. To these can be added: saucy
hu mou r fo r The First Great Tr ain Robb er y (1 979), flu tterin g brass s tin gs for
another late disaster en try with The Swa rm (1978 ), Wagn erian high adven-
tu re fo r th e In diana J ones wannabe Kin g So lomo n's Mines (1 985), an d a
sign that th ere might be a sense of hu mo ur at work with n umerou s self paro-
dies for Jo e D an te’s The 'Bu rbs (1 989).
Thro ugho ut the 80s, audiences were h ammered over the h ead with
attempts to create Su perstar perso nas, and no one h elped Sylvester Stallone
achieve that mo re than Goldsmith with his scores for the tes tostero ne-drip-
ping Ram bo trilogy. The mu sic goes from plain tiv e melancholy (w ith o ut-
bu rs ts of muscular b ras s) in Fir st Bloo d (198 2), to grizzled patrio tis m in
Ra mbo: Firs t Bloo d P art II (198 5), to all-out orchestral war in tutti (all
play ing s imultan eo usly) fash ion for Ramb o III (1988 ). N ev er let it be s aid
Hollyw ood wo n’t squ eeze something for all its w orth (Rambo /Goldsmith,
yo u decide… ).

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 He Was But A Learner
James Ho rn er was th e big early 8 0s discov ery for genre mov ies. Pro-
du cer/d irector Rog er Corman diverted him fro m aspiring toward a concert
hall career, and dro pped Battle B eyon d The Stars (19 80) in his lap. Clearly
designed to cas h-in on Star War s, and also clearly temp tracked with mu sic
from Gold smith ’s Star Trek, it was noneth eless a massiv e feath er in Hor-
ner’s cap. To prove it, director Nicholas M ey er igno red th e borrowings and
signed him up to do better o n Star Trek II: The Wra th Of Kha n (19 82). Full
of n au tical allusions to creator Gene Rodd enberry ’s v ision o f Horatio Horn-
blower in space, this is robus t mu sic of epic p ro portions. Th e antith es is of
his own beautiful new Enterprise theme is th e chaotic motif for Khan’s
wrath, a whiplash ing series o f cracks and b ras s wails. T here’s s ubtle und er-
score for the death of Sp ock, eerie p ercus siv e and electro nic effect for
‘Khan’s Pets ’, and no n-sto p high -spirited inv en tio n for th e taut s trategic
game of hide and seek at the ‘Battle In T he Mutara Nebu la’. Leonard
Nimoy retained Horner for his directorial debut o n the next ins talment in the
series, Star Trek III: The Search For Spo ck (1984 ), wh ich ton ed the action
do wn in fav our of a character stud y on ag eing and pseud o sp iritualis m.
Elsewhere in the g enre, Ho rn er prov ed equ ally capable. Kr ull (19 83)
didn’t kno w wh ether it was science fiction , Tolkien fan tasy, o r swash buck-
ler. A ssumin g it wanted to be all of the abo ve, the score masterfully wove
each appro priate s tyle to gether. With tips of the hat to the clas sics of Hols t
and Prok ofiev, it’s an early example of how H orner happily deco nstru cts
exis ting works for th e cons truction of his own (the one factor of the co m-
po ser’s career fans arg ue stren uous ly about). Talkin g o f which , B rain sto rm
from the same year has proven to b e a fav ourite of his ow n for re-using
th emes later on. Cocoon (1 985) didn’t actually requ ire an y fantastical ele-
men ts, but h e d id g et to indulge in a pass ion fo r big b an d writing (als o in the
19 88 sequel, Cocoon : The R eturn). M ore th an his oth er work in th e genre,
Aliens (1 986) became the o ne to set trends. Despite sh ad es of Kh achaturian
and Goldsmith, Horner’s b rand o f militaria h as end ed u p w orkin g for any-
th ing to depict U S Marines filmed sin ce. The cue ‘Reso lution’ was u sed in
do zens of mo vie trailers, as well as inexp licably re-ap pearing fo r the finale
of Die Hard two y ears later.
In the ho rro r realm he su ggested a native histo ry to the ly canthropic tale
of Wolfen (1981 ), made the sheer d aftness of Mich ael Caine’s d ismemb er-

63
men t vaguely believable fo r The Han d (1 981), and brough t h eartfelt magic
to the dark fantasy ride of Som ethin g Wicked This Way Comes (19 83).
Th ro ugho ut the res t of th e 8 0s, Ho rner managed to accompany the brigh t
start of several actors ’ careers. H e kept th ings nice and fu nky for Ed die
M urphy in 48 Hrs . (1 982), and th udded electron ic foo tfalls b eneath the
weig ht o f Schwarzen egger for Co mmand o (198 5) then R ed Heat (19 88). He
ig nored the anachronism of s ynth esisers underlinin g Chris tian Slater’s 14th
Century loss of virginity in The Name Of The Ro se (1 986), and scored the
ultimate tearjerker motif for Hollywo od’s infatu ation with the line ‘I love
yo u Dad’ in Field Of Dreams (1 989). He also patriotically p aved the way
for ev ery black male actor s ubsequ en tly accep ted in the 9 0s by Hollywo od
in the late racial apolo gy movie Glor y (1 989).
Keepin g the kids h ap py on Satu rd ay mornin gs, Horner was instrumen tal
in on e of the firs t n on-Dis ney animated ventures with An American Tail
(198 6), especially w ith the h igh ly p opular son g ‘Somewh ere Ou t Th ere’.
Willow (1988 ) wasn’t the start of his relationsh ip w ith director Ron Howard
(Cocoon w as ), but the op ulent wall-to -wall s was hbu ck le he provided
ensu red he’d be the co mp oser Howard w ould return to more than an y other.
Subs eq uently they’ve collaborated on Apo llo 13 (199 5), R anso m (19 96),
How Th e Grinch Stole Ch ris tmas (20 00) and A Beautifu l Mind (200 1). His
las t children ’s film in th e 8 0s wo uld p ro vid e g rist to th e mill of all naysayers
who d isagree with his tech niqu e of re-us ing material. Honey, I Shru nk The
Kids (1989 ) landed Disney with a laws uit claiming one of Horner’s main
th emes bo re u ncan ny resemb lance to a tu ne by Raymond Scott (the great
Warner Brothers cartoo n maestro).

A Million Voices Cried Out In Terror

M ost co mpo sers agree that all music is decon struction, an d by turning
no w to the b oom of the horror g en re fro m the 70s in to the 80s, th at s hould
be very apparent. We’v e touched on the A-list s co res from th e triumvirate of
Williams, Go ldsmith, and Horner. L ittle of their work s temmed from Holly-
woo d’s exploitative agend a however. Th e Omen was cited as the firs t main-
stream s howcase of g ore, bu t the und ergrou nd circu it natu rally beat it. For
in stance, George A. Romero’s original Nigh t Of Th e Living Dead was 196 8.
Th e gru es ome zombie comic appeared from nowh ere during a period that
Chapter 4 identified as mostly concern ed with commercial efforts and teen

64
fodd er. Ho lly wood soon sank its teeth into h orro r mo vies fo r all their
exploitative wo rth, b ut no where near as d eeply as independent studio s.
Early miles ton es inclu de director Wes Crav en ’s debu t Last H ouse On The
Left (1 972), faith-tes tin g sh ocker The Exorcis t (19 73) w hich famous ly u sed
M ike Oldfield ’s ‘Tu bular Bells’, and Th e Texas Chainsaw Ma ssa cre (19 74)
with teeth-gratin g electronic soun d design.
Horror mo vies req uire musical s leigh t-of-hand mo re than any other. For
th es e 2 d ecades, electronic howls, s queals, icicle drips , and screams d id the
jo b becaus e key boards and anyth ing electron ically off-the-wall were in. In
Italy, d irector Dario Argento work ed with rock band Goblin for a screaming
so undtrack to Deep R ed a.k.a. Profo ndo Ros so (1 975) and S usp iria (19 76).
Th e mains tream proliferation o f sequencers and sy nth s came with Joh n Car-
penter’s run away s ucces s on Ha llo ween (197 8). The score came fast and
cheap, b ecause he was the composer too. His extremely simp le main theme
(based on a b ongo warm-up exercise) has b een one o f the mos t imitated
ph ras es of all time. For an early examp le, s eek out Fred Myrow ’s mus ic for
Ph anta sm from the follow ing year.
There were man y keyb oard contribu tion s to con troversial projects o f the
day: Dawn Of The Dead (G oblin again), I Sp it On Your G rave, The Hills
Have E yes (all 1978 ), and The Driller Killer (1979 ). An occas ion al orches-
tral effort fo und its way in to the genre s uch as Elmer Bern stein’s ton gue-in-
cheek work o n An A merican Werewolf In Lond on (198 1). The 80 s otherw ise
happ ily circumn av igated hig her bud gets w ith you ng, k een , and inexpens ive
compos ers look ing for a break. Director Sam Raimi g av e one to as piring
musician Jos ep h LoDu ca on Th e E vil Dead (1 983). Th e atmos pheres cre-
ated on and off screen betw een th em has kept th em working tog ether ever
since in film (s equels Evil Dead 2 in 1987 and Army Of Darkness in 19 93)
and TV (H ercules, Xena , and American G othic). Dario Argento k ep t th e cult
circuit undead by letting British composer Simon Boswell co ntrib ute cues
to Demons (198 5) and D emo ns 2 (198 7) before tackling the who le of
Deliria (1987 ). Guitarist Richard Ban d mad e his presence felt in cult horror
with The House On So rority Row (19 83) and Re-Anim ator (198 5) where he
laced a beat into Herrmann’s Ps ycho title music to allow the film’s exces ses
to be perceived as b lack comed y.
The 80s were a b reeding g round for h orror franchis es , wh ich in mus ical
terms almost never meant development of thematic material. Chainsaw
Mas sacre was th e first s platter movie to s pawn a sequel fo r its dubiously

65
icon ic villain. Th en Halloween kept Mich ael Myers alive indefinitely via
Carp en ter. Harry Manfredin i had the task o f resu rrectin g Jason Vo rhees in
seven o f the eigh t Friday The 13th movies that b eg an in 1 980. T here was no
su ch con sis tency for Freddy Krueger however, w ho after bein g introduced
via Ch arles Berns tein’s tink lin g lu llaby in A Nigh tmare On Elm Street
(198 4), wo uld be pass ed between Christo pher You ng, Angelo Bad alamenti,
Craig Safan, J ay Ferg uson , Brian May, and J. Peter Ro bins on. You ng
redeemed himself fo r Fredd y’s Dead however with the tw o 8 0s Pinhead
movies Hellr ais er (1987 ) and Hellb ound : Hellr aiser II (19 88). Both are full
of goth ic romanticism, b ut the s eco nd b reaks all man ner of g round with
sn arling en ergy an d an orchestra bleatin g ou t G-O-D in M orse Co de!

We’re Caught In A Tractor Beam

One o f the b igges t su ccess stories was Step hen King, fro m w hom Holly-
woo d couldn’t ob tain b ook rig hts fas t enoug h after Brian DePalma’s adapta-
tion of Carrie (1976 ). It was a box office smas h th an ks to that most famou s
of do uble-wh ammy endin gs, and the crafty misdirection of Italian composer
Pino Don ag gio’s d elicate flu te th eme ripp ed apart by brass an d bells fo r the
su rp rise. Then came Kub rick to once again sh ak e th ing s up with an amal-
gam o f musical sou rces for the s low-bu rning fus e of Jack Nich ols on’s p er-
forman ce in The S hin ing (198 0). T he anthology collection Creep show
(198 2) allow ed John Harrison to play horror for laugh s, while Ch arles Bern-
stein accentuated every snarl and h owl o f b ad dog Cujo (1 983). David
Cronenberg had to work witho ut his regular collaborator Ho ward Sh ore (s ee
belo w) for s tud io reason s o n The Dead Zone (1 983), but in doing s o
laun ched the career of Mich ael Kamen with his so rrow fu l music for haun ted
ps ychic Jo hnny. J ohn Carpenter us ed keyboards an d guitar to keep killer car
Christine (198 3) alive, and Jon athan E lias used ch ild ren’s cho ir to k eep the
sp irit of th e field s dead in Ch ildren Of The Co rn (1984 ). T he d ecade wen t
on with lots more electro nic terror for Fires tar ter (198 4) by Tangerine
Dream, Cat’s Eye (198 5) by Alan Silvestri, Silver Bullet (198 5) by Jay Chat-
taway, and th e one and only time Kin g wo uld try his hand at d irecting with
Maximum Overdrive (1 986) b y AC/DC.
In 19 77, Paramoun t Pictures k ep t cash regis ters ring ing b y cap italising
on the d isco craze w ith Saturday Nig ht F ever. It h ad come abo ut b y entru st-
in g a mu sic indu stry execu tiv e (Ro bert Stigwoo d) to p ro duce the film. The

66
assu mp tio n was h e’d k now how to tap into contemporary culture. It was the
biggest selling album of all time with 25 million sales internationally. It had
been a case of mass marketing, includ ing co-ordin ated trailers before the
film’s release, and mad e the Bee Gees an ev en bigger ph en omen on than
th ey alread y were. It also catapu lted J ohn Travo lta into s tardom. When it
was s een that a Star could draw th e p ublic into cinemas an d record s tores for
disco, fo llo wed b y 5 0s ro ck with Grease (1 978), and then Co untry with
Ur ban Cowboy (198 0), televisio n reared its head again . If the Mu sical could
be p opular once more on big screen, th en it was p ossible on the smaller
screen too. Th e ans wer was th e M TV ch an nel, laun ch ed in the summer of
19 81. It was a meltin g p ot for artistic creativity. Firs tly for mu sic, but als o
for directing and editin g on video. M ovie s tudios therefore sou ght to take
so meth ing back , and b eg an to p oach video and commercials directors .
The world of dance h ad been represented by the d isco mo vies ab ove.
Th en in 1980 th ere was a do-it-for-fun followin g for The B lues Broth er s
contras ted by a do -it-for-art fo llo wing fo r F ame (which w en t to T V between
19 82 and 1987 ). Co mmercials directo r Adrian Lyne then raised the bar with
Flashd ance (1 983). Ev ery one ag reed it was one lo ng rock vid eo , an d fea-
tu red o ne o f the first credits fo r a music su perviso r, wh o oversaw Gio rgio
M oroder’s score and so ngs. Dance s tayed in every one’s mind with Kevin
Baco n’s tu rn th e same year in Footloo se, and a few y ears later with the
sleep er hit Dirty Da ncing (1 987). T heir albums were mas siv e chart h its , and
in itiated a public taste fo r son g co mpilations th at has lasted far longer than
th e period of pop ularity in the late 60s . One major factor influen cing record
bu ying an d marketing trend s was th e emergence of compact dis c techn ol-
og y. The first player debu ted in 19 80, and then the Philips and Son y Corpo-
ratio ns began to mak e th em co mmercially available in 1 985. Viny l
su ccess es on th e cusp of the CD mark et and born out of the M TV era were
generally sold on th e basis of one or two song s going to N umb er 1 in the
charts. Fo r the years in question, these su ccess es were: Th e B ig Chill (19 83)
with M arvin Gaye’s ‘I Heard It Throug h The Grapevin e’, Gh ostb uster s
(198 4) with Ray Park er Jr.’s title s ong , Against A ll Odd s (1984 ) w ith Phil
Collins ’s ‘Take A Look At M e N ow’, The Woma n In Red (19 84) with Stevie
Wo nder’s ‘I J ust Called To Say I L ove You ’, P urple R ain (19 84) with
Prince’s Os car-win ning title song , an d White Nig hts (19 85) with Lio nel
Richie’s ‘Say You , Say Me’.

67
 Diggin g into the po ck ets carryin g teen ag ers ’ dispos ab le income was the
order of the day. There was the charitable ro ute, wh ich h ad the wh ole wo rld
rocking to the feel-goo d factor o f Liv e Aid . Th en th ere w as th e Hollywo od
way o f not only creating its own meg a-bu dget megastars , but also poaching
po p Superstars like Prince, w ho w as followed into the cinema by M ad onna
with Desperately Seeking Sus an . Teen flicks were never more po pular than
when co ncep tualised and marketed b y so meone wh o could tap into pop cul-
tu re with ease. Fo remost among thos e makin g the attempt was writer/pro-
du cer/d irector Jo hn Hu ghes. His films o f the mid 80s are a p erfect s napsho t
of fas hio n, language, and mus ical tastes . Titles were ins pired by son gs and
vice v ers a. Their compilation son g albu ms co mp letely igno red scores by Ira
Newbo rn . Th is was exactly what the indu stry had b een mo ving to ward s,
hence the sizeable box office of Sixteen Ca ndles in 19 84, Th e Breakfas t
Club and Weird Science (w hich gave Danny Elfman’s band Oin go Boin go
th eir only Number 1 hit) in 198 5, and F er ris Bueller 's Day Off and P retty In
Pink (both 198 6).
The multi-tas k role of Hu ghes across th is series of films is illu strative of
a sh ift in power behind the scenes th at came out of th e disco mov ie pro-
du cer’s s ucces s. Stu dio s w ere look ing for b lockbu sters, not artistic vis ion s.
So stan d up Steven Sp ielberg for show ing the w ay w ith the s tart of a s ec-
on dary p ro ducer role th at put his name before th e directo r’s in a film title.
19 85 was th e key y ear where it was a case of ‘Steven Sp ielberg Pres en ts’
Ba ck To The Future, The Goo nies, and Yo ung Sherlock Holmes. Part of that
role was to ens ure sub sid iary income in soun dtrack s ales, and so th e scores
by Alan Silvestri, Dave Grusin, and Bruce Brou ghto n respectiv ely to ok a
backseat to s ongs from Huey Lewis A nd The News and Cindy L au per for
th e first two, b ut n o so undtrack at all for the third.
As corporations began bu ying each o ther out (e.g. So ny bou ght Colu m-
bia), th e sh ift fro m director to prod ucer on designer b lockbu ster mov ies
so on became apparent. Wearing similar (but o nly slightly smaller) sh oes
was Joel Silver, who sin ce the mid-80s has b een res pons ible for two Preda-
to rs, th ree Die Hards, fo ur Letha l Wea pons, Comma ndo (1985 ), Ro ad
Hou se (1989 ), D emo lition Man (199 3), and The Matr ix (1999 ). T he other
pair of names to facilitate the elev ation of the produ cer, the develop ment of
th e co ncep t movie, an d help generate the Planet Ho lly wood -s tyled Star icon
was J erry Bruckh eimer and D on Simpso n.

68
 They gave us th e aforementioned Fla shda nce and Beverly Hills Co p,
th en s tuck a p air of cool sh ad es o n Tom Cruise for Top Gun in 1 986 (Bes t
Song O scar for Georgio M oroder’s ‘Take M y Breath Aw ay ’) and later for
Days Of Th under (1 990). Bruckh eimer went on to produce a s eries of mov-
ies that all featu re s co res stemming fro m the direction electro nic music was
taking in the 80s (B ad Boys in 199 5, The R ock in 1996 , Co n Air in 199 7,
Ar magedd on an d E nemy Of The State both in 1 998 and Gone In S ixty S ec-
on ds in 200 0). Outsid e the horror g en re, there w as the occasio nal su ccess fu l
us e of sy nthes isers and sequen cers in u nexpected p laces , such as Vang elis’s
Os car-winn ing Char iots O f Fire (1 981), Japanese comp oser Ryuich i Saka-
moto ’s melod ic Merry Christm as Mr. Lawren ce (19 83), and M aurice Jarre’s
most po pular w ork away fro m an orchestra for Witn es s (1 985). The real
sp otlight was o n an ything action -oriented. On e of the flash-in -the-pan
names of the time was Harold Faltermeyer with Bever ly Hills Cop (198 4,
and II in 198 7), F letch (198 5, an d Fletch Lives in 19 89), Top Gun (19 86),
The R unning Man (1 987), and Tango An d Cas h (19 89). T here was also the
German co llective Tang erine Dream applyin g th eir dis tinctiv e b ran d of
amb ient electronics to Risky Bus iness and Th e Keep in 1983 , Fires tar ter
(198 4), Fr ight Nigh t (19 85), the American vers ion of Legend in 1 985 (it
featured a lu sh Jerry Gold smith score every where els e), and Nea r Dark
(198 7).
Righ t at the end of th e decade came Bla ck Rain (19 89), a s co re to have
more impact on the increas ing number of high con cept actio n movies in the
90 s than is generally recog nis ed . ‘It was pretty out there fo r its time, ’ admits
German compo ser H an s Zimmer. ‘Bu t it really sh ap ed the action genre from
th ere on. It s udden ly became th e temp s core for everybo dy else's action
movies . Th at became really to ugh on me because the next time I was given
an action movie I literally had to try to re-invent the lan guage. Everybo dy
had been followin g it, so what w as new th en sud denly became a cliché.’
Th e blend of orch es tral an d made-to-order s ynthesis er perfo rmances wo rk s
at a very surface level in the film, and has become one of few way s a film
compos er can h ope to be h eard in a mod ern soun d mix. This was where the
M ed ia Ventu res action s tyle b eg an , which w e’ll return to in the next chapter.
Zimmer had lobbied hard fo r the chance to wo rk with Rid ley Scott, and the
hard-hitting fusion sou nd that resulted imp res sed Scott en ough for them to
form the mos t recu rring mus ical relationsh ip in the director’s career. Subse-
qu en tly th ey’ve collaborated on Th elma And Louise (19 91), Glad iato r

69
(200 0), Ha nnib al (2 001), Black Ha wk Do wn (2001 ) and Ma tchstick Men
(200 3).

Their Energy Surrounds Us And Binds Us

This b rings us to something rep eatedly touched upon in th is book so far,
and th at’s o f great importan ce in the indus try tod ay. Lo ng-lasting d irector/
compos er relations hips are quite simply on e of the last p laces for artis tic
express ion and develop ment. With the takeover of a produ cer’s role, it
requires a director ’s frien dship with a comp oser to ensu re mus ical con cepts
end up on the s creen as originally en vis ioned. So it’s well wo rth noting the
significan t friends hip s forged in th e 8 0s.
David Cronenb erg’s films are who lly self-con tained; yet seem to belo ng
to gether in a v ery private un iverse. Keepin g th em stylistically indiv idu al yet
in tellectu ally un ified is th e directo r’s musical other half, Ho ward Shore.
‘When w e started, we did n’t have a lot of pre-co nceptions,’ Sho re ex plain s.
‘He was th e first director I h ad worked with, an d I was the firs t composer he
had worked with. David d oesn’t try to steer you or co rru pt you in an y way.
He just wants y ou to be able to write to the max. That’s ho w we’ve alway s
work ed . It’s actually a rare kind of situation to b e in . His stuff h as alway s
been my most forward thinking.’ Th eir projects have been some of th e mos t
controversial and stimulating cinematic exp erien ces of the last 20 years,
beginning w ith The Broo d (19 80). Sho re w orked with a dozen s trin gs to
in voke uncertain ty and unease fo r a tale of h omicidal mutant babies.
M utants then pop ulated Scann ers (1981 ), th is time dabbling in p re-sy nthe-
siser electronics . Two y ears on, the compos er was ready to go wild with
electronic ex perimen tatio n, disto rting voices an d building u niqu e effects for
Videod rome, a strange reaction to the MTV generatio n. Their bigg es t co m-
mercial success together was a remak e o f Th e F ly (1986 ) starring Jeff Go ld-
blum. Grand operatic tragedy musically s urround s the doo med scientist’s
disin tegratio n. Along side the following Dead R inger s in 19 88, with its p oi-
gn an t expression of being d ep res sed, thes e tw o are the most melod ic their
music’s ever been.
M ichael N yman is often credited with being the first compo ser to apply
minimalism to mainstream film scoring . Th is is a technique largely con-
cern ed w ith repetitio n, whereb y the speed of cy cling material shifts, wh ile
th e pitch generally d oesn’t. Wh ereas Philip Glass seemed to be merely writ-

70
in g his con cert works for others to film aroun d (as with the h ypno tic
Koyaan isqa tsi in 198 3), minimalism’s greates t p ro minence, and Ny man’s
ris ing star was in th e films of fellow Brit Peter Green aw ay. Th e Dr augh ts-
man 's Co ntra ct (1 982) featured a dry, clin ical portrait o f characters lost in
po rtrait painting. Almos t exacting ap proach es followed for bo th A Zed A nd
Two Noug hts (1 985) and Th e B elly Of A n Architect (1987 ), befo re a su rprise
mutu al appreciation of M ozart offered something gracefully different for
Drowning By Nu mbers (198 8). Their culmination of the 80s was w ith The
Cook The Thief His Wife An d Her Lover (198 9), which both vis ually and
musically s plit aud iences between absolute love o r hate o f its sens ory
assau lt.
Also from th e U K came Kenneth Branag h and Patrick Doyle with Henry
V (19 89). Th is brav e debut offered itself up for comp arison with that of Sirs
Laurence Oliv ier and William Walton, and came away with a d ignified
amo unt of res pect. For Sco ttish compos er Do yle, it was a cinematic baptism
of fire with th e larg e-s cale s ymp honic score. ‘It’s a very relaxed relation-
sh ip,’ he main tains . ‘G en erally speakin g, once he’s talk ed ab out what h e’s
after in terms of style, we’re set. Ken likes a tune an d that’s really the
barometer for the rest o f a film for h im. He’s h ap py for the rest to develop
on ce w e’ve s et a main co re. There’s b een a stro ng s horth an d from th e word
go . We’ve g ot on very well as pers onalities go. The main prio rity is having
fun. Otherwis e what’s the p oint?’ T heir fun con tin ued by b reaking into H ol-
ly wood an d plu ngin g the depths o f No ir for Dead Aga in (19 91), then g etting
a tan on the set of Much A do A bout Nothing (1 993) with Doyle’s h earty on-
screen singin g bu ild ing the cast u p for a jo yous choral fin ale.
The mos t sing ular p airing to have come from France in the las t 30 years
is director L uc Bess on and co mp oser Eric Serra. The Last Battle (198 3) was
th eir firs t big s creen effort, and bo re all the hallmarks o f wo rk ing together
on student films, with saxo phon e and s ynth rock back ing a samurai warrior
cleanin g up after a n uclear apo calypse. T hen came the home turf hit of S ub-
way (198 5), lau nching th e career of Chris toph er Lambert as an eccen tric
hero hiding in the Paris Metro from a criminal und erwo rld. Serra’s u pbeat
po p s core tapp ed directly into the co ntemporary y outh s en sib ility reb elling
again st Ho lly wood con fo rmity. A gentle ch an ge of pace for The Big B lue
(198 8) was exactly what the d irector wanted for h is very perso nal d eep-s ea
divin g story, but on this on e Hollywoo d go t its w ay by replacing Serra’s

71
su bterran ean samp les with a mo re trad itional score by Bill Con ti fo r the US
mark et.
M ak ing bigg er cross -cu ltu ral waves was the main stream d eb ut o f co ntro-
versial Du tch director Paul Verho ev en . Like any one else breathing, he’d
been enormously impressed with th e s co re for Co nan The Barb arian
(198 2), with its pagan op eratic extremes an d bo tto mles s su pply of memo ra-
ble melod y. Compos er Basil Po ledou ris was bo rn in America o f Greek
descent, and that West Eu ro pean s en sib ility shines throu gh many rhy thmic
licks in his w ork as w ell as a bottomless supp ly of beautifu l romantic mate-
rial (e.g. the tend erness exp res sed in The Blue Lag oon from 1 980). Verho-
even wanted roman ce to acco mp an y his decadent mediaeval w allow in rape
and rab ies with Fles h A nd B loo d (19 85). H e got th at and more, and the
friends hip took them on to th e big b udget hit Robo co p (198 7), where the
in dus trialised to ne of the music s uits th e co ld characters an d cold er s ardo nic
wit of the plot perfectly. Later they reunited for wry military exercises and
satire in Stars hip Troop er s (199 7).
Of all modern directo rs, David Lynch is resp ected as th e mo st aurally
attuned. He n ot only acts as sou nd desig ner and mixer, bu t frequently con-
tributes to the score as well. ‘What mak es it d ifferent with D av id is that he
lo ves music s o much,’ claims compos er An gelo Badalamen ti. ‘He fin ds that
th e pace an d mood of it so metimes dictates th e pace o f the s cen e he's going
to shoo t. I write a lo t of music before he even sho ots. T his is very interesting
because in film 99% o f the time a composer is broug ht in at th e las t momen t
on ce there's a director's cu t. That gives en ough to start composing themes,
and befo re you know it there's a lo ck ed picture. Then the compos er marries
th ing s to gether. Part of David's genius is that h e sees th ro ugh mu sic. Wh ich
is kin d of cool, and yo u can't say th at about many people.’ T heir memorable
first collab oration was for Blue Velvet (198 6). It integrated the 50s title so ng
in to the fabric o f the n arrative, demons tratin g Lynch’s p erso nalis ed tech-
nique of us ing music as an emotional n arrato r to brid ge scen es an d character
relationsh ips togeth er. Their o wn son g ‘Mys teries Of Lov e’ features th ree
times in d ifferent forms h igh lig hting the matu ration of Kyle MacLachlan’s
bo y-to-man journey. Both ‘In Dreams ’ by Roy Orbis on and ‘Love Letters’
by Victo r Young (yes, the Young from Ch ap ter 2 ) and performed b y Kitty
Lester take on nightmarish significance app lied to Den nis Hop per’s role.
Tyin g the director’s 50s s ensib ilities together is Badalamenti’s sympho nic
score, which began their almost telepath ically intuitive w orking meth od

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with o ne another. The Twin Peaks TV Series , su per sexy/vio lent Wild A t
Hear t (19 90), an d u napolo getically s urreal Twin Peaks: Fire Wa lk With Me
(199 2) all fo llo wed , crowning them as a rare cinematic musical fo rce for
cinema of th e 9 0s.
The real su pers tar of working relations hips that originated in the mid-80 s
was that of Tim Burto n and Dann y Elfman. Pee Wee’s Big Adventu re (19 85)
was a d izzy ing splas h of colour and s tyle with a mu sical accomp an imen t
th at’s part G eo rges Delerue, part Nin o Rota, part Bern ard Herrmann, but as
we’d soo n dis co ver, all Elfman. ‘I used to see him in clu bs when I was n’t
even in th e film in dustry, ’ remembers the directo r. ‘Th ey (Elfman ’s band
Oingo Boin go) were very theatrical and fun , and they had a s ubtex t under
th em being so rt o f narrative. Not like film music exactly, but there was
so meth ing in them that seemed very filmic. So wh en I had the o pportunity
to make a mov ie there was no qu es tio n that it wou ld be great to as k him.
He’d b een s ucces sful in a b an d, bu t wh en we went to the film we were both
starting o ut at th e s ame time. It felt very contemporary to hav e so mebo dy
who was like me in the sens e that we knew wh at we were doin g bu t we
didn’t know what we were do ing. It was new and w e were stu pid and arro-
gant to thin k that w e could do it. It was funny to see h im in clu bs an d then
dealing with a b ig orch es tra for th e firs t time. ’ Pee Wee’s in fluence on co m-
edy scoring was instan taneous, and is still felt today. Distancing thems elves
completely they returned with the sup ernaturally screwball Beetlejuice
(198 8), where Elfman mixed Harry Belafon te into his offbeat take on the
afterlife. Th en every thing chang ed with Batman (1 989).
The mark eting machine set in mo tio n for the Caped Cru sader's ad venture
was at an unp recedented level. It inclu ded Warner Bro thers s ecuring Prince,
on e of Warner M usic’s biggest selling artis ts, to w rite sev eral song s. His
albu m was labelled ‘Original Sou ndtrack’; it preced ed the release of the
film, and sent one of many song s n ot actually in the movie (‘Batd an ce’) to
Number 1. Film studio /reco rd label hands hakes in spired by the success of
th is has led to the current state o f affairs, where the wo rd sou ndtrack mean s
any of a number of things to th e pub lic. What hasn’t helped is the scenario
Elfman faced, whereb y his score albu m was s uppress ed un til a month after
th e film opened so as n ot to in terfere with Prince’s sales. He faced it ag ain
th e followin g year on Dick Tra cy, and has do ne several times since, as have
all too many of his fellow compo sers . The g reat s hame of this is that his

73
go thic mas terpiece s old in lesser numbers and contributed to being p as sed
ov er for Os car con sideration.
Burton and Elfman learn ed their lesso n in corporate commercialism, and
play ed a hand o uts ide of the ind ustry game with their nex t project. It is with
Ed ward Scis sorha nds (1 990) that we n ow tu rn to the 90 s…

74
 6. Millennium Falcons

… where attention spans are assumed to b e so fleeting th at trend s las t

mere months. Sciss orha nds is ab out as person al as any director has allowed
th emselves to get, being the tale of a misu ndersto od artist wh o fears
destroyin g what they to uch. Elfman’s resp onse has s ent in fluential ripp les
th rough the music ind ustry ev er s ince. Its use of a w ordless chorus seems to
have charmed the pants o ff anyon e making a fairytale on big screen or
small, anyth ing sug gesting p urity of love, and numero us commercials rang-
in g from cars to cos metics. It’s su bsequ en tly beco me a staple of h is o wn
work too. T he immediate follow -u p with Bu rton was an attemp t to b eat H ol-
ly wood at its own g ame with B atma n Returns (1992 ). Not only d id they
avoid deman ds for marketable p op tu nes (Elfman co -wrote one so ng with
Siou xsie An d The Bansh ees ), b ut in bo th to ne an d mus ic they ig nored the
yo uth mark et completely. L ater th ey brok e genre barriers with th e stop-
motion animated Mu sical The Nig htma re Befo re Christmas (199 3), to
which the compos er’s so ng-writing s kills were of the most imp ortant type of
narrativ e function. The k ooky style o f th e son gs an d s co re have featured in
man y trailers an d children ’s films sin ce. 5 0s-styled s ci-fi heyday ho kum fol-
lo wed with Mars Attacks! (199 6), and then 50s-styled Hammer horror
ho kum with Sleepy H ollo w (1 999).
Outsid e of bein g kn own fo r the Cronenb erg co llabo ration s, Shore
became the leading light for on e of the few d ubious trends th at did fo rm in
th e 90s . Qu ite why there have been s o many serial k illers movies is a trou-
bling mystery. Ho wev er, w ith Silence Of The La mbs (1 991) a genre was
bo rn . Mu ltiple Os car no minatio ns (althoug h inexp licably not the s co re)
sh owed this was h eld in higher regard th an th e 70s and 8 0s s tyle of schlock
ho rro r. Shore’s music h as been clo ned to a death of cliché in s ubsequ en t
movies conjuring foreb oding and terror. In its origin al setting it’s genuin ely
respo nsib le for wh at was touted on its releas e to be the mos t frig htening
movie o f all time. Take the poun din g heartbeat o f mus ic away when ‘L ecter
Es capes’ and the rap id cutting of people runn ing ab out mean s nothin g.
Amazingly, Sho re matched th e d ramatic in tensity 4 years later with the mer-
ciles sly negativ e S e7 en. After its en ormou sly influ en tial o penin g title
sequ en ce, the score is relentles sly oppress ive. Cold and insinuating, it po ses
a cons tant threat from the killer’s man ipu latin g hand , and the d ark, wet city
th at created him. Fo r the des ert fin ale, s tabbing ch ords mak e th e arrival of

75
an in nocuou s delivery van seem lik e the mo st frigh tenin g event in th e wh ole
movie. Only one break occurred in Bu rton’s relation ship with Elfman, and
th at w as for Ed Wo od (1 994). For this , the 50s-bas ed B-mo vie hoku m was
pass ed to compos er Howard Sh ore. Bongo s, theremin, and a touching
extract o f ‘Swan L ak e’ remind u s of Bela Lug osi’s era of stard om, when his
19 31 D racula was a little early for a s co re of its o wn. Sho re kept up just as
diverse a track record as Burton and Elfman in the 90s by his ong oing part-
nersh ip with David Cronenb erg. Their Na ked Lu nch (19 91) w as a s urreally
accu rate adaptation of William Burrough s’s n ovel. A great deal o f its self-
contained un iverse comes from the unique musical ap plication o f Ornette
Coleman blowin g bebop jazz acros s Mo roccan percus sio n rhythms. M. B ut-
ter fly (19 93) indulged their sh ared p as sio n for o pera. Then Cra sh (19 96)
was s cored for six electric guitars, three h arp s, th ree winds , and two percus-
sionists . It’s an ideal reactio n to the auto erotic and fetishistic s tory of car
cras h survivors. eXistenZ (1999 ) s imilarly played with instrumen tal make-
up , thou gh th is time on a full o rches tra’s scale. It also p layed with the
dy namics and acous tics of th e reco rd ing roo m to musically reflect the fact
yo u’re n ev er actu ally s eeing wh at’s really happen ing in the film until the
very end .
Befo re Shore returned to the genre in ex plos ive style b y utilisin g the d ra-
matically non-Wes tern sou nd of th e M aster Mu sicians Of Jajou ka fo r The
Cell (2 000), and b efo re D r. L ecter returned cou rtes y o f Hans Zimmer in
Han nib al (2001 ), the d ecade w as filled with glo ssy glorifications of the
serial killer’s craft. On ly a s mall lis t is needed to illustrate this : Ba sic
Instinct, Kn igh t Moves, Dr. Gig gles (all 1992 ), Yo ung P ois oner’s Handb ook,
Copycat (b oth 1 995), Kis s The Gir ls (19 97), In Dreams, Fallen (both 19 98),
and Th e Bone Collector (1999 ). Director J ohn Waters is abou t the only p er-
so n wh ose s ense o f humour co uld be fo rgiven fo r stretch ing to Serial Mom
(199 4), but humou r did find its w ay into th e horror genre with I Know Wha t
You Did La st S ummer (1 997) and Urb an Legend (1 998). Respo nsible for
th is shift was on e o f the 90 s’ biggest success s tories, Screa m (199 6).
Post-mod ern iron y is a term applied to a lot o f film an d TV in Scream’s
wake. T he first part of the idea is that characters are well vers ed in pop cul-
tu re world s and po ke fun at them. The seco nd part (th e iron y) is they d on’t
kn ow they’re in a film or TV sh ow s traigh t o ut of on e of thos e world s.
M arco Beltrami was th e co mp oser hired fo r a score to fuse o ld and new
styles and acco mp an y a grou p o f kids retread ing Ha llo ween territo ry. It

76
came about in several uniq ue w ay s. ‘There was this radio s how that inter-
view ed me on the Intern et, and (director) Wes Crav en 's as sis tant ask ed if
th ey kn ew an y compos ers they could reco mmend. I then had a meeting and
th ey g av e me the opening Drew Barrymore s cen e to score o n spec.’ It was
als o a fairly un ique situation in that Beltrami had never seen a horror film
before! ‘Wes taug ht me a lot about h ow to max imize th e scare po tential in
ho rro r mov ies. O ne common rule is if n obod y's th ere yo u sting it, and if the
killer's th ere y ou g o silent.’ Hence the musical red herring when Sy dney
op en s an empty clos et’s doo r. Th is techniq ue sits in among st his co ntempo-
rary electron ic mus ic and so ng placement. It carries through the rest of the
trilog y, an d also in his scores for Mim ic (1997 ), The Faculty (1998 ), and
Halloween H20 (19 98) for which he p rovid ed ad ditional mus ic. Fusing
estab lis hed sty les with dance rhyth ms h as been prev alent in horror and
related g en re movies ever sin ce.
The oth er mainstream discoveries of the 90s came out of genre pictures
to o. Elliot Goldenth al h ad wo rk ed o n a few earlier movies , b ut it was with
Alien³ (1992 ) that au dience and indu stry ears p ricked up with discomfort
and intrigue. Before the film even s tarts, the co mp oser messes with y ou
th rough a to rturous ly tailored re-recordin g of A lfred N ew man’s 20th Cen-
tu ry Fo x Fan fare. ‘That was almost lik e k nockin g over Lenin ’s s tatue,’
Goldenth al recalls amus ed ly. ‘Dig ital record ing came alon g, and we had 40
minu tes of mus icians’ time at the end of th e recording s es sio n. So rather
th an tell th em to go plu s pay them, Fo x said th ey wanted a digital recording
of the logo . Th en I s aid: ‘It’s Alien. You th ink I can mess with it? Can I be
su bversiv e with it? So you ’re lulled into a s tate o f non -comprehension. We
didn’t have an y score, s o I just g ot up on the s tand and to ld th e musician s
what to d o on what no te.’ Within a sh ort sp ace of time, many more eyes
were po inted his w ay, once his g rinding, shriek ing, yet often bittersweet
style began getting Oscar n ominations with Interview With Th e Va mpire
(199 4). It’s a s tyle that’s influ en ced plenty o f scores in the same way as the
fusion method . In fact, h e was a pio neer of fusing styles p re-Scream him-
self, es pecially with th e h igh profile B atma n Fo rever (19 95).
It was a case of b eing plucked fro m obs cu rity for Lon don composer
David Arno ld wh o was gifted the sci-fi blo ck bus ter Starg ate (199 4). Full of
th e ro mance rejuvenated by J ohn Williams fo r Star Wars and s ly n ods to
other p opular so undtracks (listen fo r 63 3 Squa dron in the final battle), the
score s howed what happens when a sou ndtrack enthus iast is giv en a big

77
break. It led to th e eno rmou s spo of an d noise score of Independence Day
(199 6), which was as b ig as mov ies could be in th e mid -90s. His n ext major
project allowed him to reach b ack into his childh ood and the reas on he was
in the in dustry at all. ‘W hen I saw You On ly Live Twice (196 7) as a lad, Jo hn
Barry’s mus ic ju st too k my h ead off comp letely. T hat was it. Bond to me is
try ing to keep it cool. It’s metal-tip win klepick ers . Lo afers with s teel
to ecaps . So when I did Tomor row Never Dies (1997 ), it had to be do ne with
all that in min d. I did talk to John upfron t abou t it, as s omeon e I resp ect and
admire. I did n’t want to piss h im off really. H e s aid he thoug ht I was the one
perso n w ho co uld d o it. That from the G uvno r! Then we wen t out and go t
drun k.’ The film an d score resurrected the flagging sp y series after a limp
in trodu ction fo r Pierce Bros nan in G oldeneye (1995 ), w hich had a decidedly
no n-Bo ndian mu sical accompaniment fro m E ric Serra. Arno ld mo re than
mad e amends w ith his h omag e to Barry cross ed with drum and bass , and
to ok things furth er fo r th e rockin g, samp le-laced The Wo rld Is No t Enou gh
(199 9).

Could You Turn It Up?

If action mov ies and sample-d riven s co ring h ad a n ursin g ho me in the
90 s, it was named M edia Ventures Entertainment Group, L LC. In its infancy
it was a one-room arrangement for Hans Zimmer and pro ducer J ay Rifkin to
work on Rain Man (1988 ). With the s ubsequ en t s uccess es of B lack Rain
(see Chapter 3), Da ys Of Thun der (19 90), Pacific Heig hts (199 0), and spe-
cifically Backdraft (1991 ), h e expand ed the operation w ith a purpo se-b uilt
facility in Santa M onica, w here he in vited other composers to hous e their
studios. Zimmer ’s style o f ov erlay ing a massive o rches tra with syn thesizer
effects (es pecially percussive) quickly spread to those w orking un der the
same ro of. Many co llabo rative effo rts resulted in multiple names credited
on a s co re. M ark Mancin a was o ne to sp read h is wings and go els ewh ere
after his S peed (199 4) most definitely help ed define the action mov ie score
of the 90s . He then app lied the style to the h its Bad B oys (199 5) and Twis ter
(199 6). Other high-octane action extravaganzas p ro duced w ith in the M V
complex includ e: White S quall (199 6) by J eff Ro na for director Ridley Scott
while Zimmer was bus y on other thing s, Face/Off (1997 ) by J ohn Powell,
Ar magedd on (199 8) by Trevor Rab in, and Enemy Of The Sta te (1998 ) by
Rabin an d Harry Gregson -Williams.

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 Aside from the mas siv e collaboratio n that resulted in multiple award
glory fo r Dis ney’s The Lion King (1 994), th eir other po pular p ooling of
resou rces was on The Rock (1996 ), which credits Nick Glenn ie-Smith, Zim-
mer, and Harry Gregs on-Williams . Zimmer himself has continu ed to carry
th e action torch for Crimson Tid e (1 995), Broken Arro w (1 996), Th e P ea ce-
maker (19 97), Missio n: Impos sible 2 (2000 ), an d Gla diator (20 00). He
explained his think ing behind the latter: ‘All the action sequences, the bat-
tles, came from s itting up to my ankles in mu d in th is tent which was like a
palace with all these beau tifu l sculptures aroun d me in gold. Ridley Scott
explained th at M arcu s Aureliu s fo ught this battle for something like 17
years and he wou ld actually have these bu sts and artwork all aroun d him.
Th e th ing th at we lo ve abo ut th e Roman civ ilization is the eleg an ce of the
arch itectu re an d the art. All of it w as at my feet, plus this b lood -s oaked
earth. I had this crazy idea to find th e mos t formal and b eautiful mus ical
form that I cou ld thin k of which would reflect this beauty. I s uddenly
th ough t of Vienn es e waltzes, wh ich are so happy and gay with a veneer of
culture attached to th em. So I made waltzes for the b attle scenes w hich are
in credibly savage.’ Th e cros s-pollin ation of ideas and mus ical forms like
th es e res ulted in Z immer’s appointment as Head of Mu sic when the Dream-
work s SKG studio was fou nded in th e mid-90s.
Several in dustry factors have influenced, affected, an d resulted fro m the
M V s cenario . M ost pertinent is the final sou nd mix . ‘It's not hard to do
rig ht,’ claims Danny Elfman. ‘It's just h ard th e way th ings are d one today.
Films now are so nically su ch clu ttered mess es . M usic and sou nd effects
peop le are all doin g the same things for th e same moments of film. The
directo rs do n't un derstand how to separate th e two after the fact, so you get
a little of bo th all th e time. Yo u get these cluttered mons ters, wh ich is abou t
85 % to 90% o f Ho lly wood movies today. The big ger the budg et, it'll b e a
so nic catastrophe.’ A case in po int wou ld be Ar magedd on, where nearly
every review made men tion of th e sheer volume o f n ois e.
There are sadly many other examples o f tamp ering o r stud io interferen ce
th at have h ind ered the film compo ser’s craft at th e tail en d of the 20 th Cen-
tu ry. The sys tem is now highly relian t on the results of test screening s,
where a rand om grou ping of cinemag oers is empowered to tickb ox as pects
of a film into being chang ed . This o ften leads to re-sh ooting fo otage, wh ich
of cou rs e means mus ical edits o r comp lete re-scoring of scenes. Worse still,
it can lead to w hat’s kn own as a ‘toss ed s co re’ if too many voters con sider

79
th e mus ic uns uppo rtive. Replacement scores, nearly always by a differen t
compos er, are s omething collecto rs increasing ly d es pair at. Th ere have been
scattered instances of th is in years g one by. Sir William Walton’s rep lace-
men t by Ro n Good win o n Battle Of Britain was mentioned in Ch ap ter 4.
Goo dwin also replaced H en ry Mancini o n Hitch cock’s Frenzy (197 2). Yet it
go t to th e poin t d uring the 9 0s that withd rawing b ig name compos ers ’ work
was co mmonp lace. For ex ample in 1 998, Ennio M orricone was replaced by
M ichael Kamen for W hat Dreams May Come, and Jo hn Barry by Jo hn Ott-
man on G oodb ye Lover.
One tech nolo gical ad vancement that’s p ro ved damaging on many film
scores is d igital editin g. Altho ugh a b lessing for filmmakers to wo rk fas t
and meet releas e d ead lines , it h as played h av oc with scores having to stay in
cons tant flux u p to th e last min ute as scen es change in leng th and sequence.
One of the b iggest v ictims of this was Jo hn Williams’s Th e Pha ntom Men-
ace in 19 99. As h inted at in Chapter 5 , in combin ation with the composer’s
preference for res eq uencing material o n album, it caus ed mo numental fan
ou trage. Two separate CDs were the ans wer, a y ear ap art. E ven that didn’t
pacify aficionad os however, and neither ackno wledged the extent to wh ich
th e mus ic had b een cu t and pasted in th e film.
Find ing more th an on e albu m rep resenting a mov ie is s omethin g b uyers
have had to mud dle throug h for some time now. A fter Batman in 198 9,
Dann y E lfman regularly s uffered the ind ignity of havin g h is music tempo-
rarily forgotten w hile son g compilatio ns filled sh elves. There were th ree
albu ms for Dick Tra cy, then two for Mission: Impos sib le, Men In Black, and
even for the in ex plicable Psycho re-make! Others already mentioned
in clude: the Screa m trilogy, Batm an F orever , Arma geddon , Sp eed , and
Twis ter. Th ose last two also carried the ‘Insp ired b y’ heading that’s p roven
so mis leadin g to collectors and casual b uyers alik e. T he p rogression of
th ing s h as h ap pened over a very s hort space o f time. In 1994 , b uyers were
perfectly h ap py w ith Pulp Fiction mixing up dialo gue and s ongs heard only
fleetingly in th e film. Also with the two-CD s et for F orrest Gum p of song s
heard even more fleetin gly. Labels beg an to avoid indicating wh ich track s
were to b e fo und in a film, leading to th e ‘From and Ins pired by ’ albums for
Ba tman A nd Ro bin (19 97) and The Matr ix (1999 ) w here yo u’re left to
gu es s. Coun tless more examples s wamped the market in th e latter half of
th e 90s , mean ing film compos ers ’ work en ded u p being represented in sev-
eral equally uns atis facto ry ways: a token g es ture of on e o r two tracks after a

80
list of son gs, on a separate albu m held b ack so as not to impede s ales of a
preced ing s ong compilation, or ju st no t at all. T he resu lt o f this is a co m-
plete los s of p ublic understan din g of wh at a So undtrack Albu m is.
The o nly technological bright sp ot within th e same timeframe was the
emergence of Laser Disc and DVD, which allows for is olated music track s
and d ocumen tary explan ation s of a sco re.

Who’s The Man?

The 90 s started o ut well enoug h for the big gest o f the names cov ered. For
in stance, John Barry bou nced back fro m a bou t o f serio us illness to win an
Os car for Dances With Wolves (1990 ). At that po int it was still pos sib le for
him to conceive a score in his trad itional way. ‘Kevin sh owed me abo ut 20
minu tes of the opening, s o I got a feeling o f the texture of the movie. Then I
went away and wrote 20 minu tes of th emes, kn owin g th ere had to be a ‘Jo hn
Dun bar Theme’, kn owin g th ere had to be a journ ey theme w hen he takes o ff
acro ss this lan dscape. I never viewed Dances as a Wes tern bu t this very
heroic sto ry of a man getting on a ho rs e and riding across America. Every-
th ing I wrote in that movie was throu gh his eyes. I had to dramatically get
in sid e h im an d put my self on that ho rs e. I h ate writing music wh ere I’m o ut-
side like the camera.’ Barry got to ap ply h is metho dology to Chaplin (19 92)
and a couple more, but by the time of The Sp ecia lis t (1994 ) h e was being
affected by market trends with his score album d elayed so as not to affect
sales of the son g collection . Later in th e decad e there were numerou s
in stances o f Barry being replaced o n a scorin g assignmen t, including The
Hor se Whisperer (19 98), and the aforementioned G oodb ye Lover.
The triumvirate of A-list co mpo sers from Chapter 5 had an interesting
decade to say th e leas t, each in their o wn way d emon strating the state o f the
in dus try. Joh n Williams remain ed the mos t Os car-nominated person alive
largely th an ks to the continued collab oration with Stev en Spielberg . S ch in-
dler 's List w as the aw ard winner over Ju ras sic Par k wh en both arriv ed in
19 93. Aside from multiple no minatio ns for des erving works like JFK
(199 1) and Sa ving Pr ivate Ryan (1 998), it was otherwis e a pretty lean
decade for the compos er after the mass ive s uccess es of the 70s an d 80s .
Jerry Gold smith began th e 90s in true s tyle with what many cons ider to
be h is last great action s core for Total Reca ll (1990 ). At the time he
anno unced it would b e the last of its ty pe he would d o, referring to the

81
dens ely complex orch es tratio ns for the large number of actio n set pieces.
Th e s co re is full o f rapidly overlapping rhythms to k eep u p with Pau l Verho-
even’s breathless directorial sty le. They reunited for Bas ic Instinct (19 92)
with a main title that ebb s and flows with sensu ality, and was on e o f the
most emulated pieces for s everal years . He managed to k eep up the promise
of avoiding action material for the early p art o f the d ecade with a few
romances and comedies like Th e Ru ssia H ouse (1990 ), Love Field (19 92),
Ru dy (199 3), and Ang ie (199 4). Th en so meth ing else took ov er an d that
promis e seemed to be comp letely fo rg otten . There followed: The Sh adow
(199 4), Firs t Kn igh t (1 995), Chain Reactio n an d E xecutive Decis ion (both
19 96), Air Force O ne (199 7), U. S. M arsh als (199 8), The Haunting, The
13 th Warr ior, and The Mummy (all 199 9), and a reunion w ith Verhoeven
on ce more fo r Hollow Ma n (2 000). With many similar in b etween (e.g. the
tw o Sta r Treks), it seemed Gold smith was enslav ed to the Hollywo od action
mach ine. His o wn personality pervades these p owerhous e pieces, b ut at
no where n ear th e inventive lev el of th e d ecades b efo re. It is merely a reflec-
tion of the films thems elves of co urse. Yet even th e one critical highlight of
th e perio d, L.A. Co nfidential (1997 ), is little more than an amalgam o f his
earlier China town and the action material developed in th es e others.
It sto od no chance in th e Oscar race th at y ear o f cours e. The jug gern au t
of Titanic could not b e stopped , and J ames Horner’s unpreced en ted album
sales had to be ackn owledg ed . Critical op inion ab out period anachronisms,
startlin g similarities to Enya’s son g ‘Bo ok Of Days ’, an d lo ve/hate for
Celin e Dion’s voice are ultimately rather immaterial. ‘I wanted to write a
score that was d eeply emotional,’ he exp lained. ‘I h ad to ch oose a palette of
colo urs th at would do that for me. My Iris h guy s and Sis sel Kyrkjebø
because th ey ’re so intimate. J im (Cameron – director) wanted d es perately
no t to have a b ig Hollywoo d extravaganza s co re that they’ve pu t o n a th ou-
sand o ther films. Th ey all sou nd the same n o matter wh o writes them. By
th e same token, alth ough th e film takes place in 191 2 I d idn ’t want to write
so me p recio us little E nglish ch amber piece that would narrate th e period. It
had to be s ome timeless fusion. I was look ing for colours that weren ’t con-
vention al ways to sell a perio d film. I wanted to feel what I migh t h av e felt
had I been on board and lo st somethin g very dear to me. Th e sin king didn’t
really matter. It takes care of itself in the watchin g. It didn’t really matter
what mus ic I put to it, it’s already so s pectacu lar. Wh at I felt need ed my h elp
more was the depth o f pass ion between them. T he p ro fo und lo ss that Rose

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feels. The way the story turns itself around at the end and go es fu ll circle.
All those s ort o f wis tful mys tical feelings I wanted to co nvey in the mu sic.’
Horn er’s th ink ing ans wers many criticis ms . The influence o n the indus try
whereby compo sers now either aim s traigh t for or run far away fro m uil-
leann p ipes, ans wers many more. To p ut Titan ic into co ntext fo r the co m-
po ser’s own decade, it shou ld b e noted that the ‘Iris h gu ys’ (whistle and
bh odrán drums) followed in the foots teps of his Patriot Games (1 992), Leg-
ends O f Th e Fa ll (199 4), B raveheart (19 95), and The Devil’s O wn (19 97).
Th ematically the material o wed much to his Thun derheart (1 992), Bop ha!
(199 3), Coura ge Under F ire (1996 ), an d oth ers . Lik e Go lds mith, it’s felt his
las t truly insp ired works came at the begin ning o f the 9 0s. Namely the
charm of The R ocketeer (1991 ) with its 30s in nocence and serial ad venture
conv ey ed in a joyo us flyin g theme, and S neakers (1 992) with its blu es y
motif an d su btle s usp en se und erscore.

There’s Too Many Of Them

Outsid e the security of the compos er A-list and working partnersh ips , the
90 s were s prink led w ith in dividual highlights. There were mo re co mp osers
work ing an d more albums b eing released than ever before. In chron olo gical
order, here are s ome o f the momen ts o f note: Of th e d irector/compos er rela-
tions hips planted last chapter, several bore in fluential fru it. E ric Serra’s
Leon (19 94) for Luc Besson solidified an electronic p alette o f sou nds an d a
style that won him the next J ames Bond mo vie (Goldeneye). Other comp os-
ers have often attempted to replicate that so und. L ater with The Fifth Ele-
ment (1 997), they to ok that style much further, memorably fo r a d azzling
display of electro nically manip ulated opera singing. Angelo Badalamenti
work ed with David Lynch for a coup le more au rally su mptuou s pieces.
Firstly with fellow comp oser Barry Adams on on Los t Highway (199 6) with
its un iquely ap propriate s election o f n eed le-d ropped s ongs (meaning frag-
men tary extracts). T hen The Straight Story (19 99) was a surpris e departure
from dark s urrealism. Instead the life-affirming tale featu res a blend of
Coun try an d Americana g uaran teed to res ult in n ot a d ry eye in th e ho use.
At the opp osite en d of the emotional scale was Patrick Do yle’s goth ic horror
for Ma ry Sh elley’s Fr ankenstein (1 994) with Kenneth Branagh. Away from
th e Sh ak es pearian adaptations , Doyle let rip with a blisteringly furiou s

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orchestra, esp ecially for ‘Th e Creation ’ s cen e and its 2 minutes of all-ou t
sens ory ass au lt.
Gho st (199 0) remains on e of th e best ex amples o f a son g selling an
albu m. A lex North ’s ‘Unch ained Melody’ as in terpreted by the Righteou s
Brothers, kept the alb um in US charts for over a year. The record label
Varèse Saraband e was b y th is point es tablishing itself as th e foremos t
so undtrack producer, and the success o f their s core album for M au rice Jarre
mean t they stay ed lead er of th e pack. Directo r Nich olas M ey er tried to
repeat his trick o f a decade earlier (wh en he launched J ames Ho rn er ’s career
on Star Trek II) by g iving Cliff E idelman his b ig b reak o n Sta r Trek VI: The
Und iscovered Country (199 1). Meyer’s class ical roots sh one th rough in ele-
men ts fas hio ned after Holst and Stravinsky, but the y oung composer’s
Golden Age tak e o n the fran ch ise un fo rtunately did n’t carv e h im as b ig a
name as Horner’s.
An element of confus ion s urround ed the names o n Th e Las t Of The
Moh icans (199 2) with a s creen card p utting a dou ble s pace between Trevor
Jo nes and Ran dy E delman . Only record b uyers wo uld dis co ver who was
respo nsib le for the majes tically s oaring hero mu sic, and who for the ambi-
ent syn thesiser ins erts. T hat s ame year, there was n o un certainty that Polis h
compos er Wojciech Kilar was solely resp ons ible for the hy pnotic g rimn es s
of B ram Stoker ’s Dr acula. His middle-Eu ropean style clash ed welcomely
with Hollyw ood’s. No on e els e wo uld h av e s co red the h earse chase finale
with an insanely repetitive scherzo (vigorou s movement of music).
In 1994 , M ichael Nyman ’s The Piano so ld over 3 million copies w orld-
wide, and remains his most pop ular wo rk . The Us ual Sus pects (19 95)
remain s n ewco mer J ohn Ottman’s mos t popu lar to o, w ith its film no ir tone
and rhyth mic perfection derived from the fact h e was also the film’s ed ito r.
It too k a trio of comp osers to keep up with the editin g and romance of
Ro meo + Ju liet (19 96), but th e orchestral/contempo rary electronics /so ng
fusion fro m Craig Armstrong, Nelle Hooper, and Marius De Vries h as been
much emulated (particu larly Arms trong ’s choral elements ). Far su btler and
tend er express iveness was required for roman ce and th e lo ve that dare no t
sp eak its name in Wilde (1 997). The emo tiv e score fro m Debbie Wis eman
declared bo th the scribe’s geniu s and its own.
Righ t at the dawn of th e new M illenniu m came three potentially trend-
settin g scores in an oth erwise lacklu stre 199 9. First were Jo n Brion’s unu su-

84
ally long cues linking the many d isparate threads of Magno lia . T hen in
amo ngs t so urced drum an d bass (e.g . The Propellerh eads ' ‘Spyb reak’ wh ich
was p romp tly re-us ed or mimicked to death) for The Matrix is a sass y blend
of ato nal b rass and tech no from Don Davis . Lastly there was Fig ht Club
with a k itchen sin k collection of every conceiv ab le method of scoring
applied by The Dust Brothers . Into the new century, Crouching Tiger H id-
den Drag on by Chinese compos er Tan Dun would prove to b e the mos t
memorable new sou ndtrack experience. In an even more lack lus tre y ear, it
was w ith out doub t th e mos t des erving o f Oscar gold .
The ex tended N ewman family (see Ch ap ter 2) warrant mention. Thomas
seems to have a s plit mu sical person ality, divid ing h imself between the
up lifting symph onic sty le of Th e Sha ws hank Redemption (1994 ) and the
po ts an d pans electronics of American Beauty (1999 ). Ran dy excels as a
so ngwriter, y et is just as at h ome warming ev ery sportingly patriotic Ameri-
can’s heart for The Na tur al (19 84) or recalling the child in every one for Toy
Sto ry (19 95). David is a well-respected co nductor wh o alway s seems to be
most at home with slap stick comedy like Bill And Ted ’s Excellent A dven ture
(198 8) o r Galaxy Quest (19 99). A noth er name to gain promin en ce throu gh
th e 90s was James Newton Ho ward . His su btly su pportive wo rk with direc-
to r M. Nigh t Shy amalan o n the my steries of The Sixth Sen se (1999 ) and
Unb rea kable (20 00) lo oks set to forge anoth er g reat director/compos er rela-
tions hip.
Yo u’ll h av e n oted repeat men tio n of the Ho lly wood A -list tow ard the end
of this chrono logy. A part from financially motivated lis ts in p laces like The
Hollyw ood Rep orter, it’s rare any one cares to name names. Su ffice to say,
th is last chapter just has.

A Final Thought
What d oes all this wind ing d own and mis cellany mean ? Wh ere film scor-
in g is concern ed , to o man y cooks have most definitely s poiled th e b roth. As
of th e 9 0s there have been enormous numbers of composers wo rk ing , yet
few can claim to have in fluenced th e indu stry. Having po stu lated that direc-
to r/composer relationsh ips have led to s ome o f the best and mos t in fluential
music, it’s only right that I sho uld acknow ledge s ome others that are in
exis tence tod ay.

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 Atom Egoyan first co llabo rated with fello w Can ad ian M ychael Danna in
19 87 on F amily Viewing. Fro m the s tart their w ork h as been defined by
un pred ictability. Every one of their mov ies features a score that d efies con-
vention , yet perfo rms all the magical tricks this b ook has s potlig hted. Exot-
ica (1 994) cov ers jumps b ackw ard an d forward in time with an all-inclus ive
sedu ctive motif. Th e S weet Hereafter (199 8) has a Persian ney flu te ex pand-
in g Egoyan ’s Pied Piper allego ry in the tale. Arar at (2002 ) in co rporates
ancient Armenian folk tu nes into Go lden Age pastich e for a film-within -a-
film s tructu re.
Carter Burwell has w orked on all o f the Coen Brothers films since Blo od
Simple (19 84). Ran gin g fro m zany comedy for Raisin g Arizon a (1987 ) to
Nord ic folks iness for Farg o (1996 ) to No ir genre homage for The Man W ho
Wa sn’t Th ere (20 01), theirs has been ano ther partn ersh ip defined by con-
stant u npredictable ch an ge.
There are only 3 films so far to talk of betw een M. Night Shyamalan and
compos er J ames Newto n How ard, but each have merited commen t in the
so undtrack community. The Sixth Sense (19 99) sub tly worked its w ay under
th e audience’s skin with layers of vocal effects . Un breakable (2 000) p layed
with ideas of mus ical d uality an d reflectin g echo es . Signs (20 02) d eligh ted
so undtrack fan s with a quintes sential demons tration of what’s ‘Herrman-
nesq ue’ ab out sus taining s uspens e.
The first 2 sco res Elliot Goldenth al compos ed for Neil Jo rd an were both
no minated for Academy Awards . Interview With The Vamp ire (199 4) and
Mich ael Collins (19 96) remain the pin nacle of the comp oser’s ach ievements
in many op inions (desp ite his eventual Oscar win for Frida in 20 03). Fre-
qu en tly d ipping in to nig htmarish realms v ia d ark orchestral colours, Go ld-
enth al’s sing ular style continued into Th e B utcher B oy (1 997), In D rea ms
(199 9) and The Go od Thief (2002 ).
One more partnersh ip to men tio n as highly significan t in the new millen-
nium is that between Pau l T homas A nderson and Jo n Brio n. Since scoring
And ers on’s debu t with H ard Eight (1996 ), he’s receiv ed numerous offers to
work on A-list projects. He has tu rn ed every one dow n, refu sin g to work
with anyo ne else. Th at means a very s low rate of ou t pu t, bu t both Mag nolia
(199 9) and Punch-Dr unk Love (200 2) have p ro ven to be w orth the wait.
Both featu re extrao rd inarily prominent uses o f mus ic, often drowning ou t
dialogu e co mpletely.

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 Loo kin g ah ead from h ere isn ’t d oom and g loom by any means . History
repeats itself now ad ay s mo re th an it ever used to . The ind ustry ’s future is
su re to enjo y an unexp ected s urprise or two. With more confid en ce and
money being directed tow ard th e Internet an d the gaming in dus tries, filmic
orchestral mu sic h as alread y begu n so me interesting d ev elopments in the
21 st centu ry. Sho rt movies pop u p in all so rts o f p laces in the web, with v ar-
io us co mp osers con tribu tin g excellen t min i s co res (e.g. M ychael Dan na for
Chos en in 20 01 and Elia Cmiral for S on of Satan in 2002 ). In the world of
game-p lay, names like Michael Giacchino (the Medal o f Hon or s eries ), In on
Zu r (Icewind D ale II), Richard Jacques ( Head hunter) and Peter Connelly
with M artin Iv es on (Tomb Raid er : Angel of Da rkness ) hav e all been prov id-
in g su mp tuou s film-styled o rch es tral scores.
Wheth er y ou were a film music geek fan before reading this book or no t,
rest as sured there’ll always be plenty to make listen ing to screens big or
small well w orth y our while.
As promised at th e start of th e book , th e names have gon e by pretty fas t,
th erefore many h av e had to slip th ro ugh the cracks. From the 90s, s ome I
wish there’d b een ro om fo r inclu de: Carter Burwell, Bruce Broug hto n, Jo hn
Debn ey, Rand y E delman , G eo rge Fen ton, M ark Isham, Joel McNeely,
Rach el Po rtman, Graeme Revell, M arc Shaiman, Step hen Warbeck, and
Gabriel Yared. Also, man y whos e careers orig inated earlier: Luis Bacalov,
Richard Ro dney Benn ett, Joh n Coriglian o, Carl Davis , Brad Fiedel, E rn es t
Gold, John Green, Q uincy Jon es , Stanley M yers, M ario Nas cimbene, Jean-
Claude Petit, Nicola Piov an i, Zbigniew Preisn er, And re Prev in, Richard
Robb ins, Philipp e Sarde, an d Jo hn Scott. To them and their fan s, as well as
to many oth ers (particularly international composers), this book apologises
for th eir absence.

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 7. Hitting The Right Note

This final chapter is a con densed s tage-by-stag e loo k at the craft of scor-
in g a modern film.
1) The po int at wh ich a co mpo ser comes aboard is dependent on many fac-
to rs highligh ted in Chapter 6. If they have a w orking relationsh ip with a
directo r, it’s no t uncommo n to visit the set. In general, a composer will
be approached toward the end o f s hooting . Co ncurren t to this, a mu sic
editor comp iles a temp track o f existing mus ic to wo rk with early edits of
th e film.
2) T he first thing a co mpo ser is giv en is eith er a s cript or rough -cu t of fo ot-
age to view. Dann y Elfman exp lains his preference: ‘I n eed an assembly.
A scrip t does n’t do any thin g for me at all. Any time I’ve tried to jump the
gu n an d get musical ideas from a scrip t, I’ve en ded up scrapping th em
all. Yo u can s hoot a s cript a hund red differen t w ay s. Wh at wo rk s for me
best is to come in to the first rough assembly with an abso lutely blank
slate, no pre-con ceived ideas at all. First impressions are very importan t,
which is wh y I need my tape recorder to h an d. In fact, very often I tell the
directo r not to be alarmed if I run ou t. I’ll get ideas and literally take my
reco rd er and charg e d own to the lob by.’
3) Next co mes a repeat viewing with the d irector (and often the produ cers)
to ‘sp ot’ the film. This is a proces s of identifyin g w here music cues
sh ould begin and end . Here th e mus ic ed ito r helps th e compos er deter-
mine cue leng ths and keep abreast of ch anges.
4) With a number of ‘starts ’ in min d, it all comes down to the blank score
page an d being sat at the piano /keybo ard . ‘Insp iratio n is a very difficult
th ing to talk about,’ states J ohn Williams . ‘Sometimes you feel the flow,
and s ometimes you don 't. The results d on't always corres pond to the way
we feel. The thin gs we do that w e think are the high es t from an in spira-
tional p oint of view are not. The things w e d as h off on th e way to work in
a tax i mig ht dig deeper or reach h igh er.’ Insp iratio n is o ne thing , bu t
where do you s tart?
‘Perso nally, finding the mu sical hook th at will be the central core of the
th eme is the mos t impo rtant p art of th e initial co mpo sition process,’ s ay s
Debbie Wiseman. ‘Someh ow, when th e key theme is in place, all else fol-
lo ws quite naturally. Th is key musical id ea can happen almost immedi-
ately, or else it can take an age to materialise. It's a cas e of keep ing going
un til it happens. ’
Composers like Williams and Wiseman are from the s ch ool of putting
pencil to p ap er in sketch ing out ideas . With so mu ch techno log y to p lay

88
 with, th ere’s also the app ro ach o f s omeo ne like Hans Zimmer. ‘Having
had no mu sical education whatsoever oth er th an piano lesson s for 2
weeks, which if anythin g d amaged my way forward b ecaus e th ey never
taug ht me anythin g, I u se a Macin tos h. I us e s eq uencing s oftware, then
so me samplers w hich b as ically have a fak e o rch es tra in them. ’
5) Once th e id eas are flowing, it’s usu al for a series of electron ic d emos or
‘mo ck -ups’ to be requested to accomp an y the s cenes bein g edited. Then
it becomes a race ag ainst time to meet a pre-boo ked record ing s ession
date. ‘J ust to g et two minutes of orchestral mus ic a day o n paper is really
hard,’ rev eals D an ny Elfman . ‘Ev ery one h as their own sys tem of work-
in g. I pu t it up o n a big board. I b reak d own the number of cues into their
minutes and second s. I to tal it know ing I can write rou ghly two min utes a
day. I have a coun tdo wn o f days at the top, an d there’s a certain po int, a
D-Day, where I mu st write two minu tes a d ay to mak e it to the end on
time. I’m always watch ing that p oint coming, and I’ll try to d o my devel-
op ment k nowing th at freight train is comin g. But it’s inconceiv ab le to no t
be fin ish ed in time.’
6) Time b eing of th e es sence, a composer will often work with one or more
orchestrator to lessen the lo ad . Elfman’s been working with Steve Bartek
since playing in the ban d Oingo Bo ingo to gether (see Chapter 5 ). Here’s
Bartek ’s defin ition of the job: ‘T he ro le of the orchestrato r is multifac-
eted, inv olving some creativity, tech niqu e, and organization. First and
foremo st I’m resp onsible for translating a compos er’s s ketch into an
orchestral (ensemble) piece of music that sou nds ju st as they envisioned
it. I make sure it is as easily p layable by the mus icians as poss ible so as
no t to waste any time on the s coring s tage. I often make sure it fits the
dramatic and sty lis tic con cerns of the scene, th at th e mu sic is large
enou gh for the action or small enoug h fo r th e dialogu e, and that the
in strument cho ices are ap propriate for the scene. I’m als o in volved in the
man ag ement of res ources to p ro duce the music. Acting as the liais on
betw een compos er and the orchestra contracto r I ens ure the need ed mu si-
cians are at th e rig ht s es sio n at th e rig ht time for the mo st efficient way to
get the music recorded. This involves h av ing an organized recording
order that will save money o n musician s and make it easier for them and
th e eng ineer to move qu ickly fro m on e cu e to th e n ex t by keep ing s imilar
reco rd ing set up s and music styles next to each oth er. I’m o ften called
up on by the mus ic ed itor to facilitate any las t minute mo vie ch an ges by
editing the music to fit any n ew version of the s cene. I’m usu ally at the
sess ion s mak ing s ure it all happens as smooth ly as p oss ible, helping
mak e any correction s or chang es called for by th e compos er or director

89
 while musician s are on the stan d. Of cours e when so meth ing goes wro ng
it’s always the orchestrato r’s fault, as it s hould be.’
7) Bartek’s intermediate adminis trativ e decis ions ens ure a recording venue
is settled on, and the n umber o f s es sio ns needed are determined b y the
amo unt of mus ic. T he play ers th emselv es are bo oked b y an orchestra
contracto r dependent on ho w many have been orchestrated fo r and who’s
availab le. In Los An geles there are a large selection of sess ion p layers,
whereas the UK o ften makes u se of several lon g-stand ing orch es tras (e.g.
th e LSO ).
With everything in place, th e last minute stage is to create the individ ual
pages for p layers to fo llo w. The fu ll score is given to a cop yis t either in
hand -w ritten A 3 format o r as a computer file. They th en transcribe for
each ins trumentalist bearing several points in mind. The p arts have to
sh ow the number of bars to rest, otherwise a player is look ing at empty
sp ace and rustling un necess ary pages. The page tu rns need to be when
th e p layer h as a free hand . Fo r n eatness and sp eed, this is generally all
fed in to a piece o f software.
8) The set-up of a reco rding s tudio is extremely imp ortant given the
amo unts of mo ney often in volved. D ick L ewzey worked fo r many years
at Lo ndon ’s CTS Stud ios . He broke d own the stages of set-up and his
role as record ing en gin eer like this: ‘A compos er calls to ask you aboard
first of all. A venue is co nsidered based on th e size of orchestra and the
so rt of sou nd th ey wan t. Is it to b e an acous tic reco rding or something
really in-you r-face? You ’re us ually book ed fo r the room a d ay in advan ce
of the sess ion . T he mus ic ed ito r comes in with click track machines
(which play in strumentalists’ beats for them to follow in their head-
ph ones) and they test the video machines and talk back (a simple two-
way communication from control roo m to con ductor p odium). Then
th ere may be a two-man team p utting out microph ones, cables , and head-
ph ones. Sometimes it’s just me. The time this all takes d ep en ds on the
room and n umb ers of players. A recent on e hund red and fifty-piece
orchestra with cho ir took nearly 6 hou rs to s et-up. It was 7 :00 PM to
2:00AM . Usually it’s around 3 to 4 hours. I never d elegate microp hone
placemen t to an yone els e thou gh. I allocate mikes to certain tracks on the
tape machine. So metimes they w an t to separate so loists to giv e the
op tion of cu tting them out later. When we start th e sess ion, I have to
achieve a h eadp hone balance for the players, and then tweak as we g o.
One o f the hardest things is mon ito ring click track n oise d oesn’t s pill ou t
of headpho nes during quiet passages. A noth er jo b durin g the sess ion is
go ing into th e stu dio an d talkin g to players. With percus sio n yo u have to
talk abo ut where to stan d to catch every thing fo r th e way y ou’ve set u p.

90
 During the actual takes I try to catch ev ery cue o n their o wn merits.
Bey ond this I have to ensure the people who are mix ing at th e du bbing
sess ion kn ow what they’re g etting on the tapes. Then afterwards there’s
th e clean up. An eighty -piece orchestra can d ev as tate a roo m. There’s
sp illed tea on cables and cup s everywhere!’
9) Of all th e aspects o f p utting a mo dern score together, co nducting is the
on e where opinion ’s most d ivided. The A-list triumvirate of John Will-
iams, Jerry Goldsmith , and James Horner all cond uct their ow n work , as
do John Barry and Debbie Wis eman. Others su ch as David Arnold,
Danny Elfman, an d Hans Zimmer do not, feeling it is more importan t to
be in the recording bo oth to be hands -o n for an y changes requested by
th e director or prod ucers. For th e cas e in fav our, here’s what Howard
Shore has to say: ‘I th ink that condu cting is a way to fully realise y our
music. It’s the final s tage in a way. Fro m the podium you can offer s o
much exp ress ion and advice to the players , wh ich y ou can’t do fro m the
contro l ro om. There are man y thin gs you can quickly do fro m the
po dium with y our players, from marking score parts to talk ing abou t
ph rasing, dy namics , interpretation, to changing a melody line slightly
with g race no tes. Film music is done quickly. It’s no t like y ou can finis h
a score and h av e a month to go o ver ev ery s mall detail. From the po dium
yo u can work with the orchestration and hear these b alances and ass es s
th e performance of the p layers first hand. It’s all abo ut g ettin g a great
performance on tape es sentially. Th e ess en ce o f it is really abou t
rehears al, because the players have never seen it. You want to take th em
th ro ugh the reh earsal p ro cess as quick ly as po ssible. Then wh en the
energ y is correct, do th e best take. Quite often th e best film takes are
early o nes. So there’s a fantastic immed iacy of being on the p odium and
feeling the energ y of th e p layers when y ou’re goin g to get th at great take.
Yo u can see if they’re g etting a little tired, or may be it’s getting a little
near lun ch . It’s somewhat ab out co ntrol. There’s n o chain of command.’
10 ) T here are two stages of mixin g what’s been record ed . Each cu e can have
in strument vo lumes tin kered with to achieve desired effects . A full bal-
ance is achiev ed , and it’s also the time an albu m is pu t to gether. Then
comes the final ‘dub ’, where comp osers fear to tread. The final sou nd
mix for th e film is where the music’s function in the film is set. M any
modern s co res are thoug ht lost in hig h vo lumes o f dialo gue and fo ley
(rep lacement s ound effects). For film mus ic, this is where the bu ck either
stops or is made.

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 8. Reference

Books On Composers
There’s a s hockingly small library on the lives of film compo sers . Nearly
everyth ing releas ed has g one o ut o f print (but try throu gh the magazines
listed below), h ence this paltry list:
A Hea rt At Fire’s Centre (The Life And Music Of Bern ard Herr mann ) by
Steven C. Smith. Hardback - 41 5 pages, 1991 , U niversity Of California
Pres s, ISBN 0-52 0-0712 3-9. A truly masterful work o n th e life o f the
composer. Covers h is p rivate life, film career, and co ncert works with
equal resp ect and detail.
John Ba rry: A Life In Music by Geo ff Leonard, Pete Walk er, & Gareth
Bramley. Hardback - 243 pages, 1998 , Sansom & Company, ISBN 1-
90 0178 -8 6-9. If ever there was a labour of love, th is is it. Bulging with
in fo rmation and colo ur p hoto graphs, this is the way all great film co m-
po sers deserve to be rep res en ted.

General Books On Film Music

Again there’s not much available, and what there is can often g et aca-
demic. I’ve left out tho se aimed to ward the mus icians themselves. These
offer a n ice cro ss-section o f areas of the ind ustry :
Mus ic Fo r The Mo vies by Tony Thomas. Paperback - 3 30 pages, 1 997, Sil-
man -J ames Press , ISBN 1-87 9505 -37-1. Originally printed in 1971 , it
focuses o n the Gold en and Silver Ages. This was the first (and still the
best) book to tack le th e s ubject.
The Score by M ichael Schelle. Paperb ack - 427 pages, 199 9, Silman-J ames
Pres s, ISBN 1-879 505-40 -1 . Fifteen compos er interv iews by a fellow
composer. L ots of in teres tin g an ecdo tes, but inevitably gets tech nical at
times.
Screencraft: Film Mu sic b y M ark Ru ssell & James You ng. Paperback - 1 92
pages, 2 000, RotoVision, ISBN 2-880 46-441 -2 . Similar to The Score, bu t
its thirteen interv iews are far sh orter and less ins igh tful. Don ’t be foo led
by the large format; there’s no t much in it.
So und An d Visio n by J on Burlingame. Paperback - 2 44 pages, 2 000, Bill-
bo ard Boo ks, ISBN 0823 0842 72. A fact-filled his tory o f film mu sic
reco rd ing s and an informative s potligh t on the mos t importan t alb ums .

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 Specialist Magazines
Printing advancements h av e allo wed fanzines to move away fro m the
ph otocop ier. While th ere is plenty o f fan nis h d eb ate and opinion abou t, the
on es with th e mos t to say are listed b elow.
Film Score Mo nthly – http://www.films co remonthly.com – Poss es sed of a
singular s ard onic wit, it may not be as regular as its title sug gests , but it’s
glossily attractive and informative. Th e Lo s Ang eles editorial team are
also res pons ible for a terrific ong oin g series of class ic sou ndtrack
albu ms .
Mus ic Fro m The M ovies – http://w ww.mus icfro mthemov ies.com – With an
enormous albu m rev iews section , and feature articles of biblical propor-
tions , this U.K . based magazine has g one from streng th to stren gth.

Internet Resources

The so undtrack commu nity is no where more alive than on the In ternet.
Newsg roups and private lists ch ro nicle excitement and dis may at new titles
with either alarming or amu sin g degrees o f fervo ur. So me of the s ites lis ted
here con tain their own chat forums, but lo g into rec. mus ic.movies so me
time and enjoy the n oise!

News and Review

Album rev iew sites are plentiful on the Web. Th e better ones also feature
articles and interviews :
Cinemusic – http://ww w.cin emus ic.net
Film M usic On Th e Web – h ttp ://www.mu sicweb.u k.net/film/index.htm
Film Tracks – http://www.filmtracks.co m
M ovie Poo p Shoot – h ttp ://www.mo viepoo psho ot.com/s core/ind ex .html
Score Review s – h ttp ://www.scorereviews.com
Soun dtrackNet – http://www.sou ndtrack.n et
Track soun ds – http://www.trackso unds .com

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 Appreciation
Fan sites app ear and dis ap pear regu larly. Here’s a mixture of official and
un au thorised sites that s eem to be aro und to stay:
Jo hn Barry – http://w ww.john barry.org.u k
Elmer Bern stein – http://w ww.elmerbernstein.com
Don Davis – http://d ondav is.filmmus ic.com/home.html
Dann y Elfman – h ttp ://elfman.filmmus ic.com
Jerry Go lds mith – http://www.jerrygoldsmithonline.com
Bern ard Herrmann – http://www.uib .no/herrmann
James Horner – www. hornershrin e. co m
Erich Wolfg an g Korn gold – http://k orngo ld.freey ellow.com
Eric Serra – http://www.ericserra.co m
How ard Sh ore – http://ho me.s wipn et.se/~w-672 69
M ax Steiner – http://hometown. ao l.com/steinerlib /in dex.htm
Jo hn Williams – http://www.jwfan.com
Fran z Waxman – http://w ww.franzwaxman .com/main .html
Debb ie Wiseman – http://ww w.d eb biewis eman.co.u k
Hans Zimmer – http://www.hanszimmer.in fo

Retail
Amazo n (.com or .co.uk ) is always a go od b et for soun dtracks. Bu t h ere
are a co uple o f s pecialis ts:
Intrada (San Fran cisco) – h ttp ://www.intrada.com
Footlig ht Records (New York) – h ttp ://www. fo otligh t.com
M ovie Bou levard (UK) – h ttp ://www.mo viebou levard.co.uk

Movie Collections
The Alien Tr ilo gy, Go lds mith/Horner/Goldenth al, Varèse Sarabande VSD-
57 53
The B atma n Trilogy, Elfman/Gold en thal/Hefti, Varèse Sarab an de VSD-
57 66
Bo nd Ba ck In A ction and 2 (2 000), Various, Silva Screen FILM CD 317 /340
Fellini/Ro ta: La Do lce Vita, Silva Screen FILM CD 720
The Godfath er Trilog y, Rota/Copp ola/M ascagni, Silva Screen FILM CD 3 44
The Ha mmer F ilm Mus ic Collection Volume O ne, Vario us, GDI Reco rd s
GDICD002

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 Composer Collections
John Barr y: Th e Collectio n, Silva Screen FIL MXCD 3 49
Mus ic For A D arkened Theatre Volumes One and Two (19 96), Elfman,
M CA MCAD-100 65/M CAD2-1155 0
The Omen: The Ess en tia l Jerr y Go ldsm ith Film Mus ic Collectio n, Silva
Screen FILM XCD 199
The E ssential Mau rice Jar re Film Music Collection, Silv a Screen
FILMXCD 3 24
Er ich Wolfgan g Kor ngold: The Warn er Bro thers Years, Premiere
Sound track s 72 43 8 38118 2 3
Man of Galilee: Th e E ssential Alfred Newman Film Mus ic Collection, Silva
Screen FILM XCD 352
Ben-Hu r: The Essential Miklós Róz sa Film M usic Co llection, Silv a Screen
FILMXCD 3 34

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 The Essential Library: Currently Available
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S tock M arket E ss ent ia ls Ho w To S ucceed A s A Sp orts Ag ent D octo r W ho

Available at bookstores or send a cheque (paya ble to ‘Oldc astle Books’) to: Pocket
Essentials (Dept FM2), P O Box 394, Har pe nden, Her ts, AL5 1XJ, UK. £3.99 eac h
(£2.99 if marked with an *). For each book add 50p (UK)/£1 (elsewhere) postage & packing.

96