I cannot remember a time when music was not a part of my life. I took piano lessons until I was 10 years old, and band from middle school through high school. Music has always drawn me in whenever I listen to it. The Looney Tune’s cartoons that used real classical music as the score. Disney’s “Fantasia” films that used music as a catalyst to create beautiful imagery. The band teacher who had my class listen to “Die Maldau” by Bedrich Smetana. A piece about the river Maldau that actually makes you feel the flow of the water, as though you are being swept along its course to the Sea. Seriously listen to it and you will understand. The “Peter and the Wolf” cartoon that used different instruments as the voices of the characters. All of this fueled a love for music that I still have to this day. Even as I was going through he craziness of being a teenager, I had music to keep me going.
As for my love of film we have to go back to the music. My mom was very conscious of what I watched and how old I was when I watched it. Myself and the other kids were sent to play in a different room when the grown ups watched what they termed at the time “adult” films. i.e. Films that were not yet appropriate for us to watch. So I grew up listening to the films from the other room and falling in love with the music. I also got really annoyed when the characters or the adults started talking over the music. When I discovered soundtracks later in life I was overjoyed. No one talked over the music. My first cassette when my Mom bought me a walk-man was the soundtrack to Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast.” My first two CD’s when I got a CD player for Christmas were the soundtracks to “Jurassic Park,” and “Gettysburg.”
When I was old enough to start watching “adult” films, I was enthralled. I could finally see how the music fit into the story just like in the cartoons I grew up watching. I was no longer as upset when characters started talking over the music. But I was still annoyed when other viewers started to talk though. And do not even get me started with the cell phones out at the theater. This was also the time that my love for film began to grow in earnest. As a kid a film was just this fun thing I got to watch at the theater, or when my Mom rented a VHS player at the video store. But as a teenager I saw the art in the story telling. I understood why all those names came after the film was over. I found out that someone composed the music for them just like classical music. It was not just magic. It took all these people working together to tell the story. And the guy in charge of the music was the composer.
This is when I learned about this guy called John Williams, who seemed to be the composer on a lot of these films I was discovering. “Jurassic Park,” “E.T.,” “Hook,” “Star Wars,” “Jaws,” “Superman,” “Indiana Jones,” etc. etc. etc. The way the music served the story and accompanied the beats was awesome. I would always, and I still can, hum all the themes from the films he composed for. This connection to films that stayed with me even after I left the theater or stopped the VHS sent me on a personal quest to find the composers who worked on the other films I was discovering. As my film experience grew from the teenager phase to a more rounded repertoire, I began to learn the names of others. Basically my Dad finally got tired of me only picking comedies and action flicks. He started making me watch all different types of films.
Soon John Williams name was just the first of a long list of composers I would discover.
- John Williams
- Howard Shore
- Hans Zimmer
- Danny Elfman
- Bernard Herrmann
- Ennio Morricone
- Danny Boyle
- James Horner
- Carlo Savina
The list can continue but you get the picture. Just as the music of the day was part of my collection, so were the soundtracks to films. As I begun to learn more about the film making process the more I understood how music worked in the context of the story. Lifting us up with the hopes and triumphs of the hero. Taking us down into the darkness as they fail. The themes of individual characters helping us attach ourselves to them. The music queues that drive the story home.
I also began to learn the history of how music became so intertwined with film making. And for that we have to go back to the silent era. A time when the dialogue was conveyed through the use of cue cards on-screen. To help get the emotions across to audience, film makers realized something was needed. So they started showing their films with a piano or organ accompanying them. This added a new layer to the story that allowed the audience to connect with the characters and cheer the heroes on and boo the villains as they twirled their mustaches. soon however a new technology would come and change film making forever. SOUND!
The addition of sound into film was a gigantic shift in the process. It introduced dialogue and ambient noise. Music was no longer the forefront of connection for the audience accompanying the film. But as luck would have it, there was a composer who would help shape how music would come to be used in the majority of films and saved music from being an after thought. His name was Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Using his knowledge from his classical upbringing in music, Korngold set the tone for film music by using the Opera technique of leitmotif. The use of a particular piece of music or musical phrase to represent a character or event. He used this technique when composing the music for “The Adventures of Robin Hood,”in 1938. A film for which he won the Oscar in 1939. Using a theme for each main character and an overall theme for the film he showed that music still had a place in film.
As sound and film technology progressed, the use of music expanded. The age of the film musical was upon us. The musicals of Broadway and originals written for the big screen became audience favorites at the theater. “The King and I,” “Guys and Dolls,” “On the Town,” “Irving Berlin’s White Christmas,” and “Singing in the Rain,” just to name a few. It would not last forever though, and the time of the big budget studio musical came to end. Luckily though we still get those awesome musicals popping up in the theater every now and then.
As the twentieth century continued to grow and change, so too did the role of music in film. Soon directors began to used already existing music from bands to accompany their films. Something that I didn’t understand or like at first when I started to realize this was a thing. I was kind of a snob. We all go through this phase at some point with film. Weather we become picky about the genres we will watch or the actors we like, we all go through it. For me it was music related. Which meant I missed out on a lot of films that I am still trying to catch up on now. I felt that the music of the film should be original and only for the purpose of the story. Why did you need to use other music? Of course I matured and understood that film composers weren’t going to suddenly lose their jobs. And that the use of already existing music helped set the tone and scene of a film just as well when done right.
In the later part of the twentieth century the role of music in film was pretty set. And the film going audience was ready for something different. A new sound was needed for film. Luckily a new crop of composers, raised watching film and TV were ready to come into their own. So when the studios were looking for a new set of talented individuals to take the reins from the old guard of classically trained composers, the younger generation was ready to go. This generation was raised on TV, Film, Jazz, Rock and Roll, and were ready to find their own sound in film.
And this new generation of composers would be led by John Williams. Like many film watchers I was introduced to his work with the film “Star Wars.” This space opera would need an epic musical soundtrack to accompany it and the man who got the job and still has it today was Williams. With his tracks that ranged from sweeping melodic woodwinds and soft soothing strings, all the way to other end of the spectrum with his beating percussive sound and bombastic marches, swept audience out of there seats and into a galaxy far far away. Taking inspiration from some of the great composers before him like Sousa and Holst, Williams gave the audience a truly awesome musical soundscapes to accompany them as they followed our favorite space heroes in their quest to bring down the evil empire.
And though he is known for his march style of music which you can clearly hear in films like “Superman” and “Indiana Jones.” He also brought us one the most memorable pieces of film music with just two notes. Duh—–Duh, Duh—-Duh, Duh—Duh, Duh–Duh, Duh-Duh, DuhDuhDuhDuh. Just like everything else this man has composed, you can recognize the film the music is from, even if you have never seen “Jaws.”
John Williams has won the Oscar five times, and has been nominated more than any other living composer. And though some may argue the point, I feel he deserves more than he has won. More than any other film composer his music has become apart of us and culture more than any other. He is truly a great composer and I cannot wait to hear what he comes up with next.
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