Academy Award for Best Original Score

• 1. Introduction

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  The Academy Award for Best Original Score exists in part because of a film with no credited composer. In 1938, Charles Previn won the scoring prize for One Hundred Men and a Girl, a picture that leaned on pre-existing classical music. The win was controversial, and the Academy answered it with a new category the following year. Today the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presents the award annually for the best substantial body of dramatic underscoring written specifically for a film by the submitting composer. Underscoring is the music that plays beneath the action, as opposed to the songs. That definition sounds simple, but the award's history is not. The category has been renamed again and again, split in two, and joined back together. Why did the Academy once divide scores by genre, and why did it undo that? How much of a score must be new? And what becomes of a category when no film qualifies?

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• 2. Credit Goes to the Department

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  At the seventh ceremony, covering films of 1934, the first entry in the winners table is One Night of Love. It names the Columbia Studio Music Department, with Louis Silvers as head of department. Thematic music by Victor Schertzinger and Gus Kahn appears only in parentheses. The tables use production years, so a reference to 1967 means the Oscars presented in 1968 for films released in 1967.

  The Informer, honored for 1935, shows the same habit. The prize went to the RKO Radio Studio Music Department, with Max Steiner as its head, and the score itself was credited to Steiner. Captain Blood appeared that year as a write-in nominee. Warner Bros. listed Leo F. Forbstein as head of department and Erich Korngold as the composer of the score.

  By 1937 the field had grown to fourteen nominees. In Old Chicago, from 20th Century-Fox, appeared under Louis Silvers with no composer credit at all. Studios, not individual musicians, were still the names on the ballot.

  The first separate Original Score list, for 1938, is led by Erich Korngold for The Adventures of Robin Hood. It has eleven films, each now tied to a named composer. Franz Waxman's The Young in Heart appears on that list and again in the older Scoring list. A year later, Herbert Stothart's score for The Wizard of Oz led a field that also included Gone with the Wind, scored by Steiner.

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• 3. A Maze of Names

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  In 1942 the Academy renamed its two scoring prizes Best Music Score of a Dramatic Picture and Best Scoring of a Musical Picture. From then until 1985, musical scores generally competed in a category of their own. Neither prize kept a stable name for long.

  The dramatic side became Best Music Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture in 1943 and held that title through 1962. For 1963 to 1966 it was Best Music Score, substantially original. It turned into Best Original Music Score for 1967 and 1968. Then came a long title for 1969 and 1970: Best Original Score, for a motion picture that was not a musical. Best Original Dramatic Score arrived in 1972 and ran through 1975.

  The musical side changed even more. From 1963 to 1968 it was Best Scoring of Music, adaptation or treatment, where adaptation means arranging existing songs for the screen. Best Original Song Score appeared in 1971. For 1977 and 1978 the title ran to Best Original Song Score and Its Adaptation or Adaptation Score. Best Adaptation Score followed in 1979.

  The split sometimes put one film in both races. For 1964, Mary Poppins appears in the original list under the Sherman Brothers, and in the adaptation list under Irwin Kostal. The Beatles took the Original Song Score prize for Let It Be in 1970, and Prince won it for Purple Rain in 1984.

  The musical title that survived longest is Best Original Song Score, named for 1985. After that year the tables show a single list, until a new idea for dividing scores arrived in the 1990s.

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• 4. The Disney Split

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  Between 1990 and 1995, four Walt Disney Feature Animation films won in six years: The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King. The stretch is known as the Disney Renaissance. Alan Bergman, chairman of the Academy's music branch, saw a problem in the results. In his words, "People were voting for the songs, not the underscores." He believed voters outside the music branch did not separate the two.

  The matchup that troubled him was real. The Lion King, scored by Hans Zimmer, won for 1994 in a field that included Forrest Gump, scored by Alan Silvestri. Bergman called that contest "apples and oranges", saying the difference lay in the way a score functions in the movie, not in its quality.

  The Academy responded in 1996 by splitting the award into Best Original Dramatic Score and Best Original Musical or Comedy Score. For 1995, The Postman by Luis Bacalov took the dramatic prize, while Pocahontas won the musical or comedy prize for Alan Menken, with lyrics by Stephen Schwartz. Titanic, by James Horner, and The Full Monty, by Anne Dudley, won the two prizes for 1997.

  Other branches disliked the arrangement. Charles Bernstein, chairman of the Academy's rules committee, noted that "no other Oscar category depended on a film's genre." He added that "the job of composing an underscore for a romantic comedy is not substantially different from working on a heavy drama."

  The Academy reverted the split in 2000. Tan Dun's score for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was the first winner of the reunited award.

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• 5. Measuring Originality

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  Fifteen is the number of scores that survive the first round of voting. Music Branch members rank up to 15 pictures in order of preference. The 15 films with the most votes advance to the next round, and nominations come after that. These shortlists are published as lists of finalists.

  The finalists show how wide the field runs. The list for 1977 is far longer than any other year in the table, and it includes Airport '77, A Bridge Too Far and The Rescuers. The lists for 2018 onward are shorter and mix prestige dramas with large franchise films. Avengers: Infinity War and Barbie both appear, as does The Zone of Interest.

  The harder question is how much of a score has to be new. The rules allow some pre-existing music, but a contending film must carry a minimum amount of original music. In 2020, that minimum was set at 60 percent. Franchise films and sequels had to include at least 80 percent new music.

  In 2021 the Academy lowered the general minimum from 60 percent to 35 percent of a film's total music. The 80 percent bar for sequels and franchise films stayed in place. Under those terms, a film with a modest share of original music can compete, while a sequel must prove its score is mostly new.

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• 6. The Musical Left Waiting

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  The Academy Award for Best Original Musical came back in 2000. It has never been awarded in its present form. The reason is a prolonged drought of films meeting its eligibility requirements.

  No fixed schedule decides whether it runs. The Music Branch Executive Committee of the Academy judges each year whether there are enough quality submissions to justify activating it.

  The definition is strict. An original musical needs not fewer than five original songs by the same writer or team of writers. The songs may be used as voiceovers or visually performed. Each must be substantively rendered, clearly audible and intelligible, and each must further the storyline of the motion picture. An arbitrary group of songs unessential to the storyline does not qualify.

  The lists of actual winners carry a different set of complications, starting with the question of whose names appear on the trophy.

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• 7. Credits and Curiosities

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  Nino Rota's name appears in the 1972 list with a note that his nomination for The Godfather was revoked. The prize that year went to Limelight, credited to Charlie Chaplin, Raymond Rasch and Larry Russell. Rota returned two years later, sharing a credit with Carmine Coppola for The Godfather Part II, which led the 1974 list.

  Some credits are crowded. The Color Purple, nominated for 1985, lists twelve people, among them Quincy Jones, Rod Temperton and Andraé Crouch. The Last Emperor won in 1987 for three people: Ryuichi Sakamoto, David Byrne and Cong Su. Soul, for 2020/21, was credited to Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross and Jon Batiste. By contrast, Vangelis stands alone beside Chariots of Fire for 1981.

  In 1977, John Williams appears twice in the same race. Star Wars won, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind was among the other nominees. Marvin Hamlisch's The Spy Who Loved Me was also on that ballot.

  Ludwig Göransson appears at the head of the lists for Black Panther in the 2018 production year and for Oppenheimer in 2023. The most recent list, for 2025 and the 98th ceremony, begins with Göransson's Sinners. It also names Jerskin Fendrix for Bugonia, Alexandre Desplat for Frankenstein, Max Richter for Hamnet and Jonny Greenwood for One Battle After Another.

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