Film score
In 1895, the Lumière brothers screened their first film in Paris while a pianist played live music to mask the mechanical noise of the projector. Early cinema proprietors turned to musicians because sound-absorbent walls did not exist between the projection machine and the audience. This painful noise disturbed visual enjoyment until someone found an agreeable sound to neutralize it. By 1908, Nathaniel D. Mann released The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays, which mixed stage performance with film projections. Camille Saint-Saëns composed music for The Assassination of the Duke of Guise later that same year. Louis F. Gottschalk sent full-length scores by 1914 for films produced by The Oz Film Manufacturing Company. Victor Herbert wrote a score for The Fall of a Nation in 1915. German cinema provided original scores like Fritz Lang's Die Nibelungen in 1924 and Metropolis in 1927. These were accompanied by orchestral leitmotific scores written by Gottfried Huppertz. Friedrich W. Murnau's Nosferatu from 1922 featured music by Hans Erdmann. Erik Satie composed what many consider the first frame-by-frame synchronous score for René Clair's Entr'acte in 1924. American composers Virgil Thomson and Aaron Copland cited Satie's work as a major influence on their own film scoring efforts.
Max Steiner and Erich Korngold immigrated from Vienna bringing musical structures and ideologies of the late Romantic period to Hollywood. Richard Wagner's ideas on Gesamtkunstwerk and leitmotif influenced these prominent film composers. A landmark event in synchronization occurred with Max Steiner's score for David O. Selznick's King Kong in 1933. Each footfall of an aborigine chief approaching Skull Island was reinforced by a background chord. Steiner and his contemporary Erich Korngold established the orchestral scoring tradition that defined the Golden Age. Bernard Herrmann worked with Alfred Hitchcock over ten years, experimenting with ideas in Vertigo released in 1958 and Psycho in 1960. John Williams scored all but five films directed by Steven Spielberg. He also scored every installment of George Lucas's Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises. Danny Elfman created scores for all movies directed by Tim Burton except Ed Wood and Sweeney Todd. Ennio Morricone collaborated with Sergio Leone on The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Henry Mancini worked frequently with Blake Edwards. Georges Delerue partnered with François Truffaut. Alan Silvestri composed music for Robert Zemeckis films. Hans Zimmer has collaborated with Ridley Scott and Christopher Nolan.
The 1950s saw the rise of the modernist film score as directors opened to jazz influences and dissonant scoring. Elia Kazan worked with Alex North on A Streetcar Named Desire in 1951. This score combined dissonance with elements of blues and jazz. Kazan approached Leonard Bernstein to score On the Waterfront in 1954. The result was reminiscent of earlier works by Aaron Copland and Igor Stravinsky with its jazz-based harmonies and exciting additive rhythms. Leonard Rosenman experimented with atonality in East of Eden released in 1955 and Rebel Without a Cause that same year. His work drew inspiration from Arnold Schoenberg. Duke Ellington provided a score for Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder in 1959. This represented another modernist innovation using non-diegetic jazz. Stanley Kubrick opted for existing recordings of classical works including pieces by György Ligeti rather than the original score by Alex North for 2001: A Space Odyssey. He had also hired Frank Cordell to do a score but chose the classical pieces instead. Some films have very little or no music while others feature scores playing almost continuously throughout.
Since the invention of digital technology and audio sampling, many modern films rely on digital samples to imitate acoustic instruments. Some scores are created and performed wholly by composers themselves using music composition software like Digital Performer or Logic Pro. Composers write MIDI-based demos called MIDI mockups for review by filmmakers before final orchestral recording. The actual writing process usually lasts around six weeks from beginning to end depending on post-production schedules. A composer may have as little as two weeks or as much as three months to write a score. Hans Zimmer wrote music for Christopher Nolan's Inception in 2010 without seeing the film itself. Gustavo Santaolalla did the same thing when he wrote his Oscar-winning score for Brokeback Mountain. Many scores written today feature a hybrid of orchestral and electronic instruments. Since the 1950s, a growing number of scores have included electronic elements. Composers use SMPTE timecode for syncing purposes with a leeway of three to four frames late or early being sufficiently accurate. Conductors wear headphones that sound clicks called click-tracks changing with meter and tempo to synchronize music with film.
John Williams won all five of his Oscars in collaborations with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. His professional relationship is one of the most prominent in film history. Jerry Goldsmith worked with Joe Dante and Franklin Schaffner. Ennio Morricone collaborated with Sergio Leone, Mauro Bolognini, and Giuseppe Tornatore. James Newton Howard partnered with M. Night Shyamalan. Éric Serra worked with Luc Besson. Patrick Doyle collaborated with Kenneth Branagh. Dave Grusin worked with Sydney Pollack. Howard Shore scored films for David Cronenberg, Peter Jackson, and Martin Scorsense. Carter Burwell worked with Joel and Ethan Coen. Bill Conti collaborated with John G. Avildsen. Lalo Schifrin worked with Don Siegel, Stuart Rosenberg, and Brett Ratner. Harry Gregson-Williams partnered with Tony Scott and Andrew Adamson. Clint Mansell collaborated with Darren Aronofsky. Dario Marianelli worked with Joe Wright. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross created scores for David Fincher. Steve Jablonsky composed for Michael Bay. Mychael Danna worked with Ang Lee and Atom Egoyan. Terence Blanchard collaborated with Spike Lee. Randy Newman worked with John Lasseter. Thomas Newman scored films for Sam Mendes. David Newman wrote music for Danny Devito, Brian Levant, and Stephen Herek. John Debney collaborated with Jon Favreau and Garry Marshall. Gabriel Yared worked with Anthony Minghella. Joe Kraemer scored Christopher McQuarrie films. Michael Giacchino composed for J.J. Abrams and Brad Bird. James Horner worked with James Cameron and Ron Howard. John Barry collaborated with Bryan Forbes, Anthony Harvey, Terence Young, and Guy Hamilton. Elmer Bernstein worked with John Landis, John Sturges, and Robert Mulligan. Maurice Jarre partnered with David Lean, Peter Weir, and Georges Franju. Philip Glass collaborated with Godfrey Reggio. Cliff Martinez and David Holmes worked with Steven Soderbergh. Akira Ifukube scored Ishirō Honda films. A.R. Rahman worked with Mani Ratnam. George Fenton collaborated with Richard Attenborough, Nicholas Hynter, Ken Loach, and Stephen Frears. Klaus Badelt and Ernst Reijseger worked with Werner Herzog. Randy Edelman scored Ivan Reitman and Rob Cohen films. Marc Shaiman worked with Rob Reiner. Elliot Goldenthal collaborated with Julie Taymor and Neil Jordan. Rachel Portman worked with Beeban Kidron, Lasse Hallström, and Jonathan Demme. Christophe Beck scored Shawn Levy films. Arthur B. Rubinstein and David Shire worked with John Badham. John Powell collaborated with Doug Liman and Paul Greengrass. Trevor Rabin worked with Renny Harlin and Jon Turteltaub. Harald Kloser scored Roland Emmerich films. David Arnold collaborated with Michael Apted and John Singleton. Michael Kamen worked with Richard Donner, John McTiernan, and Terry Gilliam. Jorge Arriagada scored Raúl Ruiz films. Zbigniew Preisner collaborated with Krzysztof Kieślowski. Mark Isham worked with Alan Rudolph and Robert Redford. Basil Poledouris scored John Millius films. Joseph Trapanese collaborated with Joseph Kosinski. Jonny Greenwood and Jon Brion worked with Paul Thomas Anderson. Brian Tyler scored Justin Lin and Sylvester Stallone films. John Ottman collaborated with Bryan Singer. Marco Beltrami worked with Wes Craven and Guillermo del Toro. Tyler Bates scored James Gunn, Zack Snyder, and Rob Zombie films. Pino Donaggio collaborated with Brian De Palma. Alexandre Desplat worked with Wes Anderson, Roman Polanski, Gareth Edwards, and George Clooney.
In 1983, the Society for the Preservation of Film Music formed to preserve music manuscripts and other documents generated during score creation. These materials were often discarded by movie studios decades after production. Written music must be kept to perform scores on concert programs and make new recordings. Sometimes only after decades has an archival recording been released on CD. The artistic merits of film music are frequently debated among critics. Some value it highly pointing to works by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Aaron Copland, and Bernard Herrmann. Others consider much film music derivative borrowing heavily from previous works. Composers typically produce about three or four scores per year. Major orchestras sometimes perform concerts of such music as do pops orchestras. Norwegian contemporary classical composer Marcus Paus considers John Williams one of the great composers of any century. He believes Williams found a satisfying way of embodying dissonance and avant-garde techniques within a larger tonal framework. Some see the bulk of film music as meritless while others view it as a defining genre of classical music in the late twentieth century. Film themes have become accepted into the canon of classical music mostly through noted composers like Sergei Prokofiev with Alexander Nevsky or Vaughan Williams with Scott of the Antarctic.
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Common questions
When did the Lumière brothers screen their first film in Paris with live music?
The Lumière brothers screened their first film in Paris in 1895 while a pianist played live music to mask the mechanical noise of the projector. Early cinema proprietors turned to musicians because sound-absorbent walls did not exist between the projection machine and the audience.
Who composed the first frame-by-frame synchronous score for René Clair's Entr'acte?
Erik Satie composed what many consider the first frame-by-frame synchronous score for René Clair's Entr'acte in 1924. American composers Virgil Thomson and Aaron Copland cited Satie's work as a major influence on their own film scoring efforts.
Which composer established the orchestral scoring tradition that defined the Golden Age alongside Erich Korngold?
Max Steiner and his contemporary Erich Korngold established the orchestral scoring tradition that defined the Golden Age. A landmark event in synchronization occurred with Max Steiner's score for David O. Selznick's King Kong in 1933.
What year did Elia Kazan work with Alex North on A Streetcar Named Desire?
Elia Kazan worked with Alex North on A Streetcar Named Desire in 1951. This score combined dissonance with elements of blues and jazz to create a modernist innovation using non-diegetic jazz.
When was the Society for the Preservation of Film Music formed to preserve music manuscripts?
In 1983, the Society for the Preservation of Film Music formed to preserve music manuscripts and other documents generated during score creation. These materials were often discarded by movie studios decades after production.