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

The right of Paul Tonks to be identified as the author of this w ork has been asserted
by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 1-903047-63-3

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

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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 Composers 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 isto 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 recommen 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 concentrated 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 emotions . 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, contradict, 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 people’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 isdain 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 osers 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 ltaneou 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 microph 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 olog 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 graduated 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 mmonly 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 produ 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 sical 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 dience’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 immediately ob viou s influ en ce on how scores were written . Ev ery thing that previou 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 otten. 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 Depression 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 riga 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 inextricably 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 erful 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 influenced, 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 ificance 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 mpo 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 nicians 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 wobble) 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 requiremen 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 ‘Original 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 alaxy 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 elitis 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 utbreak 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 Valia 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 hiladelph 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 sical 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 tackling 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 murder 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 indication 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-BiriBin’. Th e film’s music was largely an exercise in makin g popu lar the rarefied w orld o f opera, so it’s interesting to note how right from the s tart d ramatic 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 ramatic 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 Williams whos e Sco tt Of The Anta rctic (1 948) is far b etter k nown as his ‘Seventh Symphon y’, and Sir William Walto n who se Shakespearian adaptation s

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of Henr y V (1943 ) and Hamlet (1947 ) have often been recorded and p erformed 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 portrait 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 America 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 iscovered 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 Horner’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 mpo 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 ersally 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 buckling 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 odwinds. 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 thers 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 lutionised 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 sychological 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 identification with a time and place. It in spired h im to write his only opera (Wu thering 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

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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 errman 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 erformer 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 combination 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 ifferentiated 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 period 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 diences, the orchestral fo rm w as politely asked to take a sid es tep for o thers to
try their h an d.

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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 differen t from Gold en . The wo rd Age is again mis leadin g, because th e distinction 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 Bogart 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 ustry 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 ectacle.
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 miniscreen 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 awein 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 CinemaScope fo rmat (it won a special award O scar for adv ancement in film techno 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 nadette, was an examp le of th e compos er treating religio us su bjects with ab solu 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 chorus 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 important 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 nscientious 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 anyon 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

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‘Parade Of The Charioteers’ is unmis takeable. George Lucas was specifically 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 anyth ing seen before, and su cceeded in res cu ing M-G-M Studio s from bankruptcy. 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 portrait 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 Charlto 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 Sermon 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 contribution 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

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