Film Music

I

Introduction

Film Music, music incorporated into the soundtrack of a film or performed as accompaniment to a silent film. Most commonly, film music underscores the main title and credits of a picture, while incidental music is used throughout the film for dramatic purposes. Soundtracks may also contain “source music” emanating from such things as radios, jukeboxes, or live musicians visible on the screen. Film music is usually composed subsequent to the final cut of a film so that exact synchronization may be achieved between the music and the screen action. The composer attends a screening of a film in the company of the director with whom the placing and nature of each music cue is discussed. The composer is then presented either with a time-coded videotape of the film or sheets of timings from which to work. The final result is recorded in a studio with the film running at the same time. The resultant tapes are then edited, mixed, transferred to magnetic film, and combined with all the other elements of the soundtrack in a dubbing theatre. In the case of musicals or opera, the song and dance numbers are recorded first and these scenes are then shot to playback with the actors miming to the pre-recorded tracks. With animation films the music is normally recorded first and the film cut to the music. Many composers today use computers to help them score films and often possess their own electronic studios.

II

History of Film Music

The earliest public screenings of films had musical accompaniment, and in 1908 the French composer Camille Saint-Saëns wrote what was probably the first original film score (for Charles le Bargy’s The Assassination of the Duc de Guise). During the silent era all cinemas possessed some form of live musical accompaniment, from a simple piano to an entire orchestra, and the music played was generally drawn from the popular classics. With the advent of the sound film, however, live musical accompaniment disappeared altogether from cinemas.

From the 1930s onward all the major studios possessed full-time music departments, complete with a staff of composers, orchestrators, and conductors. Initially, film music was comparatively roughly fitted to the screen action and films were often “stocked” from pre-recorded music libraries. However, in 1933 the composer Max Steiner showed what could be achieved with a tightly synchronized original score in the film King Kong (1933).

As the 1930s gave way to the 1940s, composers were drafted into films from various areas of music. Broadway, for instance, yielded Alfred Newman, Herbert Stothart, and Roy Webb. From the concert hall and the opera came Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Dimitri Tiomkin, Nino Rota, Miklos Rozsa, and Franz Waxman, while Bernard Herrmann and Victor Young came from a background of radio work. A number of distinguished classical composers, including William Alwyn, Malcolm Arnold, Arthur Bliss, Arnold Bax, Aaron Copland, Benjamin Frankel, Jacques Ibert, Sergei Prokofiev, Alan Rawsthorne, Dmitri Shostakovich, Virgil Thomson, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and William Walton, also made important contributions to film.

Although by the advent of World War II films were covering all manner of subjects, the music composed for the majority was firmly rooted in the world of late 19th-century romantic classics, often featuring lush orchestration and sentimentality. Occasionally, miniature concertos, operas, and ballets were written for films, typical examples being Richard Addinsell’s Warsaw Concerto for Dangerous Moonlight (1941), Korngold’s Cello Concerto in C for Deception (1946), Brian Easdale’s Red Shoes ballet (1948), and Nino Rota’s Glass Mountain opera (1949).

During the post-war period, film music began to move away from the heavy symphonic score, and a host of new composers emerged, some of whom had light music and jazz backgrounds. Among these may be mentioned Elmer Bernstein, Georges Delerue, Ernest Gold, Maurice Jarre, Henry Mancini, Mario Nascimbene, Alex North, Leonard Rosenmann, Lawrence Rosenthal, and Lalo Schifrin, while other colleagues such as John Barry, Richard Rodney Bennett, Jerry Goldsmith, and John Williams waited in the wings—some engaged in writing music for television, by now a major threat to the film industry.

By the mid-1950s the general public was becoming increasingly aware of film music, and the studios capitalized on this by encouraging their composers to write marketable theme tunes and songs that could then be issued on record. The song “Moon River”, written by Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini for Blake Edwards’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), for instance, sold over a million copies. The studios were also quick to recognize the power of popular music, and artists such as Elvis Presley, Cliff Richard, and The Beatles each made a number of films. Advantage was taken of technical improvements in sound recording, and this became especially noticeable in epic films of the 1950s and 1960s such as The Robe (1953), Ben-Hur (1959), and Barabbas (1962). The 1960s brought the James Bond films with Monty Norman’s brassy theme and John Barry’s effective underscoring, as well as the “spaghetti Westerns” of Sergio Leone, with their distinctive Ennio Morricone music tracks. Stanley Kubrick also made a great impression with his use of Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss, Requiem and Lux Aeterna by György Ligeti, and the Blue Danube waltz of Johann Strauss in his film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

Over the years, films have proved effective vehicles for music, and classic musicals include Singin’ in the Rain (1952), Carmen Jones (1954), The King and I (1956), West Side Story (1961), My Fair Lady (1964), Mary Poppins (1964), The Sound of Music (1965), Oliver! (1968), and Fiddler on the Roof (1971). These all played their part at the time in helping to lure audiences away from their television sets.

Operas that have received cinematic treatment include Carmen by Bizet, A Village Romeo and Juliet by Delius, Pagliacci by Leoncavallo, The Medium by Menotti, Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute by Mozart, The Tales of Hoffmann by Offenbach, Eugene Onegin by Tchaikovsky, La Traviata and Otello by Verdi, and Parsifal by Wagner.

Jazz musicians have in recent years made significant contributions to film scoring; among them, Dave Grusin, Mike Figgis, and Mark Isham have produced notable scores.

III

Recent Trends

The 1970s and 1980s were dominated by the escapist fantasies of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, whose phenomenal success brought worldwide renown for their composer John Williams. This period also saw the increasing use of the synthesizer and an increasing number of film-makers turned to electronic scores (perhaps sometimes for financial rather than artistic reasons); composers such as Vangelis, Wendy Carlos, and Hans Zimmer enjoyed great success. However, the orchestral score was not quite dead and composers such as Michael Kamen and Alan Silvestri effectively combined electronics with live instruments.

The 1990s brought a plethora of “special effects“ films, and these begot a number of highly imaginative scores from younger composers such as Danny Elfman, David Arnold, Brad Fiedel, and Elliott Goldenthal. The late 20th century also saw the entry of a number of female composers, such as Anne Dudley, Rachel Portman, and Debbie Wiseman, into an area hitherto dominated by males.