No pictures needed — film music
When we talk about film music, we mean music from films, which can mean almost anything. What exactly is film music?
Films increasingly use existing music because audiences recognise it easily. When a film succeeds and the selections work well, a successful CD of ‘music from’ or ‘music inspired by’ the film follows. When I discuss film music, however, I mean music composed specifically for a particular film.
Music has always accompanied film, and film music is much older than sound cinema itself. The first work composed specifically for a film was Camille Saint-Saëns’s music for The Assassination of the Duke of Guise in 1908. Films then had live accompaniment, usually piano. Even the young Shostakovich earned his first pocket money playing in a cinema. It evidently left a strong impression, since he later composed for films frequently.
Although many famous film composers specialise in music tied to the screen, for others film is simply another field of work. Film music is often unfairly undervalued, yet many respected composers gladly wrote it: Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Khachaturian, Schnittke, Korngold and Kilar from classical music, and Ellington, Legrand, Monk and Hancock from jazz, among others.
The best-known film themes have been written in roughly equal measure by film specialists and composers of established concert reputations. Perhaps the specialists’ works are the most interesting.
Film music cannot really be considered a distinct musical style. Apart from film ambience, it encompasses every style from classical to pop.
What distinguishes it is its task of strengthening a film emotionally. Without the film, the music, like a film without its music, is often poorer and sometimes uninteresting. The best scores, however, live without pictures. Many themes have become evergreens and undoubtedly could have done so without a film’s support. Unfortunately, these circumstances hide an extraordinary quantity of excellent music from wider recognition beneath its supposedly unambitious genre label.
Almost anyone interested in music knows Ennio Morricone or John Williams, and even more people recognise at least one of their themes. But how many know François de Roubaix or Roy Budd?
I do not imagine this article can change film music’s status. I hope, however, that some readers interested in good sound will give this unfairly neglected area more attention. Here are some soundtracks outside the usual ‘best of’ lists that are especially dear to me and should appeal to most music lovers, whatever their tastes.
Franz Waxman was a film-music pioneer. Sunset Boulevard, Peyton Place, Rebecca and many other scores helped define Hollywood’s golden age. This is an excellent compilation, although one CD is definitely too short.
Vaughan Williams is much better known as a classical composer, quite unfairly in this context. He wrote more soundtracks than symphonies, and his entire Seventh Symphony, Sinfonia antartica, is based on his music for Scott of the Antarctic.
Unlike Vaughan Williams, Hungarian prodigy Miklós Rózsa is better known for film scores than concert music, although equally successful in both. Double Indemnity is an excellent introduction to his complex but appealing compositions.
Bernard Herrmann was among the most imaginative, versatile and successful composers, not only of film music. Many of Hollywood’s finest golden-age scores are his. This is an excellent compilation to begin with.
More Herrmann. His music is responsible for many of the shivers Hitchcock’s films send down our spines. Psycho’s shower scene became unforgettable precisely because of Herrmann.
A Streetcar Named Desire and Viva Zapata! are only two of the many scores through which Alex North modernised film music in the 1950s. An excellent compilation provides a broad overview of his work.
Max Steiner’s King Kong is an excellent introduction to the Austrian composer often called the father of film music.
Herrmann and Goldsmith are among the composers represented in four CDs of music from The Twilight Zone. This is a superb example of music creating the intended emotions without a visual story: dark and tense, just like the series.
Elmer Bernstein’s The Man with the Golden Arm is an excellent jazz soundtrack that works perfectly even if you have never seen the film. Shorty Rogers and Shelly Manne certainly contribute.
Warner Bros. cartoons are part of everyone’s childhood, making this music part of it too. Without composition in the conventional sense, it is a firework display of contrasts and wild orchestration.
France’s Georges Delerue wrote his finest soundtracks for François Truffaut. An extraordinary gift for melody and imaginative arrangements characterise his enormous output. This compilation is an ideal starting point.
Éric Demarsan is another excellent French composer. His scores for Melville’s crime films are unforgettable. An excellent compilation.
The jazzy score for the neo-noir Chinatown was written by Jerry Goldsmith, one of the best-known and most prolific film composers. At the time of the original article, this out-of-print CD was selling on Amazon for $80. Listen and discover why. Almost everything by Goldsmith is worth hearing.
John Barry is best known for his James Bond music, but wrote for many other films. The Ipcress File is an ideal example of his style: imaginative, witty and entertaining.
François de Roubaix may be film music’s most underrated composer. Among his many scores, the CD featuring Le Samouraï and Les Aventuriers is an ideal introduction. Despite being an electronic-music pioneer, he never neglects melody or innovative arrangements, so his music remains appealing and interesting.
Vigilante! collects themes by English musical prodigy Roy Budd, who began playing piano at three. His accessible themes and witty orchestrations have acquired cult status, like many of the films he scored.
Taxi Driver is a cult film with an unforgettable Robert De Niro performance, but Bernard Herrmann’s musical masterpiece deserves much of the credit for its atmosphere.
Philip Glass is one of the most significant contemporary composers. His repetitive minimalism also works superbly with film, as he has demonstrated almost a hundred times. Although he has written many more famous and award-winning scores, my favourite is his music for the 1931 Dracula, performed by the Kronos Quartet.
Cobb is an excellent example of Elliot Goldenthal’s exceptional versatility and talent. His dark, atonal orchestral writing often contrasts within the same film with playful jazz. Interestingly, these seemingly incompatible styles complement one another perfectly. Another insufficiently recognised composer.
Miles Davis, John Lee Hooker and Taj Mahal together! Jack Nitzsche assembled a stellar band for The Hot Spot without falling into the emptiness that so often afflicts superstar groups. Quite the opposite: the music deservedly achieved cult status.
The experienced jazz master Herbie Hancock wrote an excellent jazzy, funky, atmospheric and dark score for this cult thriller. It might have attracted more attention had it appeared as an independent album rather than a soundtrack.
David Shire is not the best-known composer, but you would never guess that from his film music. In the cult film The Conversation, the music is mainly melancholic, depressive jazz piano that perfectly matches the protagonist’s state of mind.