Composers Composing Compositions

I’m learning guitar and writing songs. It’s hard. You have to be a certain type of person to do it – you want to make it sound original, true to you and able to stand the test of time. Mind you, I am writing for an audience of One, so I cannot imagine the weight that must come with composing film scores. 

Did you know that the first person ever to win and EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony) was a composer – Richard Rodgers? The film world has always tapped into music magic, even when movies were silent. 

Were you silent, or were you silenCED?

In 1895, cinemas hired pianists to play live music since movies had no recorded sound. Music aided the storytelling of the film, but it was also there to cover up the clattering of the projector when the movie played.  From what I’ve gathered, there were no rules; some pianists used popular classic pieces, some only played between reel changes, some were purely improv.

Around 1910, photoplay music became a thing.

Photoplay music: cue sheets were made to be played for certain emotional categories; pieces for when characters are sad, angry, in love etc, like Hannah Montana scene transition music. 

Some larger theatres had full on orchestras to do photoplay music live.

By 1915, one of the first American films with original music called ‘The Birth of a Nation’ was released – a technical breakthrough sure, but a very racist film most definitely. Europe, particularly France and Germany, were pioneering score work too. The live music system thrived until recorded sound was established, with ‘Don Juan’ (1926) and ‘The Jazz Singer’ (1927); but technically, the sound wasn’t coming from the screen itself. It used a disc system called Vitaphone where pre-recorded sound had to be played in sync with the projected screen images, so the sound could be in time with the movie. I see the vision, but syncing a disc to the film couldn’t – and didn’t – last long. Sound-on-film became the industry standard by the early 30s, with Max Steiner being known as “the father of film music” after his work on iconic works like ‘Gone With the Wind’, ‘King Kong’, ‘Little Women’ and ‘Casablanca’. He, like other popular composers, were classically trained, giving studios the dramatic, operatic sound that they desired. This opened the doors for one of the best times in movie history – the Golden Age of Movie Musicals.

Go Big or Go Home

Hollywood musicals took full advantage of the large orchestras, big ensembles, lyricists and the studio backlot. The big studios like MGM, Fox, Warner Bros etc had Broadway composers and built in-house music departments that took control over many musicals that came out during that time. Composers like George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Arthur Freed, Alfred Newman and more defined the era.

As tastes changed and the studio system collapsed by the late 1950s, people started getting a bit more experimental with the accompaniments because they now had more freedom. Their music became more layered and atmospheric, with directors and composers working as a team to shape the emotional tone of the film. This gave us legendary director/composer collaborations like:

Alfred Hitchcock & Bernard Herrmann (1955-1966)

Sergio Leone & Ennio Morricone (1964-1984)

Steven Spielberg & John Williams (1974-present). 

This is also when some of the most iconic movie themes were made, like ‘Jaws’, ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’, ‘The Pink Panther’, ‘Star Wars’, ’James Bond’ and more (check the links to listen). With this freedom and success, composers started experimenting with sounds, utilising other genres, synths and non-instruments like breathing, street noises or tools to make use of the digital, grittier era.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Back in the late 1930’s, ‘Snow White’ and ‘The Adventures of Robin Hood’ were some of the first films to release movie songs as singles and albums. They became extremely popular and helped to popularise soundtracks as standalone products. By 1952, the movie ‘High-Noon’ was the first to release a song made for the film before the film actually premiered. Through the radio play, hype built up for the movie and music became a marketing tool, even for non-musicals. This set off a ripple of music being released beforehand to drive promotion.

BUT since songs were marketed as pop songs, why not use songs that are already popular and repurposed them for a movie, I hear you ask? 

Welcome to the Needle-Drop era! This is when they used pre-existing songs to convey the movie message instead of just original music. ‘The Graduate’ (1967) pioneered this by reigniting several Simon and Garfunkel songs, most notably, ’The Sound of Silence’.

Giving songs a second wind is still a method used today – I can’t listen to ‘I’m a Believer’ without imagining Donkey on the mic in Shrek’s swamp. Or even ‘All Star’ – that is Shrek’s theme song.

Think:

‘Madagascar’ – ‘I Like to Move It’

‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ – ‘Hooked on a Feeling’

‘Stranger Things’ – ‘Running Up That Hill’

‘Deadpool’ – ‘Like a Prayer’ or ‘Bye Bye Bye’

Who wrote these songs? Irrelevant. They belong to the screen now.

Still, nothing hits like a song written for a film. The difference today? It’s usually not the actors singing, but major recording artists. Songs that have the momentum of the film as well as the singer behind them to thrust the film into a classic. ‘Saturday Night Fever’ (1977) is key in this, The Bee Gees album with ‘Stayin’ Alive’ and ‘How Deep is Your Love’ cemented the power of following the wave of music of the time. After this, everyone became disco divas, twirling their arms like it’s ‘Wind the Bobbin Up’ or something. 

As power ballads grew popular in culture, so did film soundtrack ballad, with these classics being popular in the film and in their own right:

Céline Dion – ‘My Heart Will Go On’ – ‘Titanic’

Whitney Houston – ‘I Will Always Love You’ – ‘The Bodyguard’

Simple Minds – ‘Don’t You (Forget About Me) – ‘The Breakfast Club’

Prince – ‘Purple Rain’ – ‘Purple Rain’

The Disney Renaissance is a cornerstone in movie music as well and will be dealt with in another blog – but I felt an honourable mention was necessary.

Clap Along If You Feel Like a Room Without a Roof

Artists still make songs for movies but they don’t reference the film at all! Can you guess what film the song ‘Footloose’ was written for? Exactly. But even when movie titles weren’t in the song title, at least the music video was linked to the film. What does Justin Timberlake eating pie have to do with ‘Trolls’?

Anyway, all of the pieces of movie music is incorporated today, and I love the variety – director/composer collabs, popular soundtracks, experimentation, musicals etc. Now all we have to do is address why only 3 women have won an Oscar for Best Original Score in its nearly 90-year history and the lack of opportunity and recognition for non-white composers – but that is for another day!!