Film Music: Too Much and Not Enough

by Edwin Black

In the late '60s and early '70s in Chicago, I spent many a Saturday morning at Rose Records on Wabash thumbing through the bins of movie music, and trading film score gossip with the clerks. Flipping through album bins was a solitary enjoyment. But once in a while there would be another customer also interested in soundtracks. I could take heart. I was not alone. We film music lovers comprised a small, almost cult-like group that actually went to the movies not to see the film but to listen to the music. We referred to ourselves as film music buffs and soundtracks freaks.

Back then, Rose stocked the most extensive soundtrack selection in Chicago and one of the best in the nation. Its collection was almost single-handedly championed and nurtured by Dennis Peterson, who began as a soundtrack enthusiast, graduated to store volunteer and ultimately became a paid buyer, doing his best to bring every possible film score--whether a Japanese import or a bootleg from who know's where--to the fledgling Chicago market. Film music buffs like myself were desperate and Dennis was our only source of relief.

Soundtrack lovers understood that film music was one of America's most valuable fonts of serious orchestral composition. Europe had yielded virtually all the masters American music lovers cherished. With the known exceptions such as Copeland, Hanson, Barber, Bernstein and Ives, America had given the world of orchestral music comparatively little. The original film music maestros were all classically trained. Alfred Newman, who scored or supervised more than 100 films, and created the famous 20th Century Fox fanfare, studied with Arnold Schoenberg. Elmer Bernstein (Ten Commandments, Hawaii), Henry Mancini (Charade, Days of Wine and Roses) and Bernard Herrmann (Psycho, Vertigo) were all graduates of the Juilliard School of Music. Soundtrack composers recast the orchestral idiom and style set down by the classical romantic and post-romantic masters, and then recast them into distinctive original soundtracks, generally heavy on the theme and development romanticists craved. And they utilized the American pop idiom as Bernstein did in Man with the Golden Arm when he incorporated the first improvisational jazz in a film score. Movie music was the next step in the evolution of serious music.

Movie and TV music eventually gave America many of its most recognizable cultural icons. Think of the short musical cues society takes for granted. Psycho's shrieking violins, Dragnet's dum de-dum-dum , Twilight Zone's far-out guitar flutter, James Bond's swaggering motifs, Chariots of Fire's electronic staccato, and The Magnificent Seven's heroic twang--all instantly define a mood or situation for millions who have never seen those movies or heard more of the soundtrack than the well-known phrase. Soundtracks brought musical inspiration and imagery to the common man and created a continuing need for original composition in America.

But there was a great difference. Classical composers generally wrote only when they had something musical to say, something that would advance the artform. Tschaikovsky only gave us six symphonies. Beethoven gave us nine. Film composers, however, were compelled to make extended musical statements on command often ten or twenty times per year. A few weeks ago, composer Alan Silvestri (Contact, Forrest Gump) told a film music conference in Hollywood that demanding production deadlines inject the "voltage" a film scorer must experience to become creative. Moreover, whereas so-called romantic composers had labored to create musical images and moods to impart vague storylines, sometimes as ambiguous as a fairy tale, cinema offered an exciting new opportunity to marry music to the unmistakable, lifelike actions on a screen. 20th century masters understood film's great challenge. Shostokovich, Prokofiev, Gershwin, Copland, Bernstein, they all scored for the movies. When I interviewed Copland (Of Mice and Men, The Red Pony) on the subject some years ago in Chicago, he complained of something that most movie composers have discovered only too well: that the music must be secondary to the action, adding that any composer unable to accept this "should stay home and write symphonies."

In the early days of soundtrack availability, I knew the names and composers of every published score. That wasn't tough. Very few soundtracks were actually released, and only one or two would be added every month or so. Unfortunately, there was no way to predict what you would find. No advance notice, no advertising, no relation to a film's popularity or quality. Sometimes the movie would be wildly popular, like The Magnificent Seven by Bernstein, and the music would never be released. Sometimes, an obscure title such as John Barry's score for The Chase would crop up. Sometimes I left with a record I was looking for, more often with a determination to just try again next week.

Change began in 1962 with Barry's score for Dr. No. The popularity of the film made its soundtrack--even though musically worthless except for its memorable theme--a valuable commodity. More people became interested in film music. Soon thereafter, the number of published soundtracks increased to several dozen per year. In the late 60s, United Artists Records in one giant release, issued more than a dozen so-called "collector's items," including Burn by Ennio Morricone and The Return of the Magnificent Seven by Bernstein (the original Magnificent Seven music was apparently unretrievable so its rerecording for the sequel had to suffice). By the late-70s, the more popular soundtracks could be purchased at just about any retailer.

Today, movie scores are a phenomenon. Last year, a reported 439 new soundtracks and reissues were published, according to industry sources. In 1998, more than 500 new and reissued and special edition soundtracks will be published. What was once an obscure artform appreciated by a band of diehards has been plastered across the recent covers of Entertainment Weekly and the New Yorker. The reason: Titanic. The emotional (albeit profoundly derivative) score has become a global number one best seller, winner of twin Golden Globes and twin Oscars, and in the process rocketed soundtracks to front stage for the average music lover. Most significantly, the public is beginning to identify the music by its composer, James Horner, and is now flocking to the stores to buy his other recent scores, such as Aliens, Legends of the Fall, Braveheart and Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan.

The movie industry is now demanding more original soundtrack music than ever before--not just twenty minutes or a few cues for dramatic moments, but often more than an hour of music. And the music is generally released not at some mysterious time months after the movie disappears from theatre screens, but beforehand as part and parcel of premiere hype. Wow. Lots more music demanded by Hollywood, lots more soundtracks released and available in the store. So everything is copacetic, right? Well, not really.

While soundtracks have become abundant, quantity should not be confused with quality. Much of the soundtrack realm has been transformed from works of art and passion descended from the classics to just another facet of Hollywood's artificial production machine geared toward superficiality and commercial success. There are of course notable exceptions, but the pressures of film production are making those exceptions notable indeed.

Once upon a time, the composer was given an artistic freehand. His work was honored as art. Television contracts with Henry Mancini specified no voiceovers could be added during the end credits to Mr. Lucky and Peter Gunn. No expense was spared in assembling full orchestras with repeat sessions. Now things are different. Time and money, not tempo and motif, are the deciding factors. The film composer is just part of a production team, too often doing as instructed.

Perhaps the single greatest obstacle a film composer must now overcome is the director's preconceived notion. "I want it to sound like this," says the director. And very often that's what happens--like it or not. For example, James Bond producers wanted Tomorrow Never Dies to reflect the franchised Bond music created by Barry. Barry had scored numerous James Bond flicks, beginning with Dr. No, and gave each their own distinctive identity within the genre he himself established. But when contract negotiations with Barry for Tomorrow Never Dies broke down, reportedly over compensation, the producers turned to David Arnold (Stargate, Independence Day), and simply asked him to recreate the John Barry sound. That's exactly what Arnold did. Arnold's music, with several excellent exceptions, is a caricature of the Barry sound. The same effect occurred after James Cameron heard Braveheart by Horner. Cameron thought it was the best film music he had ever heard. And sure enough, that's what Horner gave him, more Braveheart, which explains the unfathomable Celtic quality of Titanic's score complete with bagpipes. Another even more invasive manifestation of the preconceived notion is the temp track. A temp track is the temporary music selected to accompany the film during focus groups and screen tests. These screen tests have enormous value to the studios. A high viewer rating (by any of various measuring sticks), reassures the studio which may then commit greater postproduction resources and marketing support for the film because it sees something closer to a winner. Conversely, poorly rated flicks can become orphaned. Temp tracks are selected from previously published movie music by a small group of editors and consultants who aren't necessarily trained in music composition or performance but who have an ear for soundtrack cues and a kinetic connection to the dramatic moment. They see a patch of raw footage and say, "I think Backdraft would work."

Daniel Schweiger, a Hollywood music editor who has temp tracked dozens of films, concedes, "When a film tests badly, the temp track is the first thing to be blamed." The question is: how often does the flavor or even the music of a temp track transition into the newly composed original music.

Jerry Goldsmith, one of America's most brilliant and creative composers, was tapped in 1979 for Alien; the film was temp tracked with Jerry Goldsmith's own 1962 score for Freud, and Freud music creeps into Alien. Titanic was reportedly temp tracked with Enya's Book of Days and, lo and behold, themes from Horner's award-winning score bear great resemblance to Enya's Book of Days. Schweiger explains, "Temp tracks go south when the director won't let the composer exercise his creative ability, or when the composer refuses to exercise it." But the pressures are enormous. When one style or genre of music helps garner a high test score, what producer wants to risk going in a different direction? And what composer wants to risk losing what can be upwards of a million dollars to not give the client what he wants? Even the biggest composers are affected. Barry's exquisite music for The Prince of Tides was rejected; the composer later sold it to the 3-D Imax Film Across the Sea of Time.

Schweiger says, "it takes a very confident director to set aside the temp track and allow the composer to create something new. And a very assertive composer. Unfortunately I only see that about fifty percent of the time."

Too often temp tracking works against the musical individuality and innovation that was the hallmark of the soundtrack business when such great, recognizable scores as Magnificent Seven, Psycho, Star Wars, Goldfinger, and Fistful of Dollars were created. New thematic material, new interpretations, new instrumentation and new energy can all suffer. To fight against the temp tracking influence, many composers insist on temp tracking films with their own earlier works. For instance, the forthcoming Mighty Joe Young, for which Horner is writing the score, has been temp tracked with Horner's Legends of the Fall. But some composers refuse to even listen to the temp track. Good Will Hunting was temp tracked with Bernard Herrmann's Fahrenheit 451 and David Newman's Up Close and Personal; but composer Danny Elfman (Batman, Edward Scissorshands) started from scratch and produced an elegant score worthy of an Oscar nomination.

Another pressure on soundtrack innovation is the urge to simply boost the filmmaking by using music as a sound effect, especially in action films. I call this museffex. So instead of thoughtful reflection on violence and action, we get boom-boom. You can hear it in many blockbusters. Speed, a creation of Hans Zimmer's music collective, Media Ventures, is a prime for example. Look at the converse in Peacemaker, where Zimmer created a brilliant showcase of musical independence entitled Sarajevo. Only in this single cue did Zimmer's music take full possession of the serious dramatic themes and conflicts in the film, giving us pain and mystery, obsession and danger, and the quiet rage of a broken heart in war-brutalized Bosnia. Zimmer's expert scoring gave us a cause for weeping, for pity, maybe even understanding of the crazed and disconsolate mind and movement that wants to explode a nuclear bomb at the United Nations. The composer told me that producer Stephen Spielberg called to comment on the beauty of the score, but noted how sympathetic the villain's music was. That was independent musical thought working within a framework of filmmaking creativity. That is the magic of soundtracks.

I discussed museffex vs. music with Zimmer in his Santa Monica studio, and he acknowledged the problem. In fact, Media Ventures is now trying to generate both the sound effects and the musical score in a harmonious fabric. The endeavor pits the sound effects creator against the composer, but Zimmer hopes the final product will be a new breed of soundtrack with both effects and music coming out of one shop. The first such project is Dreamworks' forthcoming Endurance, a film about long distance Ethiopian runners.

If the director's and composer's courage and independence does not prevail, then innovation in film music will evolve into movie muzak. Too much of that has already happened. Unfortunately, with the direction Hollywood seems to be headed in, neither the composer or the film score enthusiast may have much choice.

Edwin Black writes on soundtracks for the Chicago Tribune, Film Score Monthly, Movie Wave, and Times-Mirror Hollywood on Line, and moderates movie.music. He is the author of The Transfer Agreement (Macmillan), winner of the Carl Sandburg Award, and will be recognized for his book at a special ceremony at Spertus Institute April 19.

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