Program Notes: Cinematic Soundscapes

Music has been an integral part of cinema since the beginning of moving pictures. From the very early days around the turn of the century, music has helped audiences become immersed in the world around them. Film music has advanced so much in the roughly 100 years of its existence. Early scores were performed live on pianos or theatre organs, accompanying silent pictures in real time. When The Jazz Singer changed everything by syncing recorded sound to picture, film music took off like a rocket.

Tonight’s program begins with some familiarity. With two simple notes, John Williams’ opening to the theme from Jurassic Park is immediately recognizable. The subtle nature of the opening statement provides a sense of wonder before the theme is fleshed out with thicker orchestration in the brass and strings, creating an entire ecosystem of imagination. The Suite from Jaws also employs two simple notes as its baseline, but in a very different way. The closeness of the pitches—only a half-step apart—has come to mean danger and impending doom. For the remainder of the first half, we’ll look back on Hollywood’s beginnings with a suite from Erich Korngold’s The Adventures of Robin Hood. Korngold was one of several composers, recently emigrated from Europe, who led music departments at major studios in Hollywood. More importantly, Korngold and his colleagues (including Max Steiner) stood for a new music style in Hollywood, in which music intervened in the story of the film by expressing atmosphere and using themes (called leitmotifs or light motives in musical vernacular) the represented characters or settings. The use of leitmotifs is also ever present in Steiner’s score for Gone with the Wind where musical cues give the audience insight in a character’s thoughts and feelings. These cues let us know the Scarlett isn’t really hateful of Rhett and that Rhett frankly doesn’t give a damn.

In the second half of tonight’s program, we explore the genius of three legends in mid-century and contemporary cinema: Bernard Herrmann, Ennio Morricone, and John Williams. Herrmann is most famously associated with the films of Alfred Hitchcock, having provided the eerily haunting scores to Psycho, Marnie, North by Northwest, Vertigo, and others. Perhaps as a predecessor to themes like Jurassic Park and Jaws, Herrmann’s theme for Vertigo opens with a two-note motif meant to solicit a feeling of falling. His score from Psycho was unusual for a thriller at the time, using only strings throughout the score and juxtaposing sharp, rapid motifs (think of the shower scene) and long flowing melodies that seem to wander here and there, symbolizing Marion’s psychological unrest based on her nefarious activities.

Italian composer Ennio Morricone is likely best known to American cinephiles for Cinema Paradiso, The Hateful Eight, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, and Once Upon a Time in the West, among others. His career as a composer began in the realm of Italian cinema where he started in light comedies and musicals before moving on to deeper, more serious films. His score for Cinema Paradiso, while not an instant success in Italy, has become synonymous with delicate, lush writing for emotional dramas. Morricone would compose scores and contribute to 547 films of all genres, lengths, and distribution markets—a prolific output, to be sure.

Finally, we circle back to the man whose music has been inevery movie house and living room in this country at one point or another, the great American film composer John Williams. In the 50’s and 60’s, Williams mostly wrote for TV shows like “Bachelor Father,” “Checkmate,” and “Lost in Space.” He did have some film scores during that time, too—who could forget the iconic score to Daddy-O or Gidget Goes to Rome—but his big break into the modern American vocabulary arguably came with The Cowboys in 1972. Williams then steadily worked in films, with titles like The Poseidon Adventure, The Long Goodbye, and The Towering Inferno. The mid- and late-1970s saw the defining films of John Williams’ early career: Jaws, Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Superman. Following these successes, Williams became even more in demand and has left his legacy on Hollywood with films from Jurassic Park and Home Alone to Memoirs of a Geisha and the Harry Potter franchise.

Film music has provided audiences with depth of understanding, well-rounded characters, and subtle clues as to how films should be interpreted in the greater context of the world. The next time you’re at the movie theatre or streaming your favorite film at home, take a special listen to the score—you’ll hear the movie in a whole new way.