by Paul Tonks
score -- n. / Pron. “skôr”
1. The notation of a musical work.
2. The written form of a composition for orchestral or vocal parts.
3. The music written for a film, play, or other viewed entertainment.
4. The resounding cheer of “high-fiving” Producers getting music that’s close enough to the Temp Track, without being sued.
STATING THE OBVIOUS
The professional theory is that we’ve created broad enough definitions to accommodate practically any film ever made. And that by categorizing them in Genres, it is possible to make meaningful comparisons and judge their greatness.
To that, I say tish and fipsy.
I’ve always thought that was a daft theory, especially since films were not really subjected to genre analysis by film historians until the 1970s.
“Genre,” like “soundtrack,” is a word that’s lost some of its meaning thanks to today’s need for endless labelling and re-labelling of a product. Originally it simply came from the French for “kind.” We mean for it to mean a category of artistic composition, but there are so many sub-genres and micro-genres. Worse still, an increasing number of films now straddle multiple genres. So frankly, keeping track of these broad definitions with which to make easy reference and comparison, I get lost.
To illustrate, first I’ll tell you which genres I’m not covering in this Column:
Comedy / Epic or Historical / Film Noir / Teen Comedy / Musical / Animation / Blaxploitation / Sport / Documentary / Mockumentary / Drama or Melodrama / Biopic / Gangster Crime / Detective Mysteries / Martial Arts / Fantasy / Supernatural / War Movies / Superhero or Comic Books / Disaster / Thrillers and Suspense. Sure – go ahead and tell me all the ones I’ve forgotten.
I’d allocated one of these Columns to talking about Genres over a year ago, but lots of other rants and far more exciting topics have come along in between. The more I’ve thought about film and film music Genres, the more I’ve realised how peculiar our attitude is towards re-enforcing stereotypes. The word “cliché” rings with terrible association for us. Romantic strings? Double-whammy endings? Synthesizers in space? The corporate boss is the big criminal? Been there, done that, right?
The trouble is, there are only so many stories to tell / tricks up the composer’s sleeve / words or notes the writer or composer can work with. Personally, I’m more forgiving toward the composer than the screenwriter. But I do hate the way the same critics who insist on genre categorisation, seem to spit out an accusation of cliché or stereotype. Surely without these things a film or score can’t be slotted into a genre category?
The extended complication is that today’s marketing of all pop culture thrives on promising originality or at least being a crossbreed of original ideas. Just being a “Horror flick” isn’t good enough for any press release or poster campaign. It’s got to be a “Craven-esque post-modern teen slasher flick - with heart!” So when marketing departments insist on challenging all us armchair critics to find fault with their cod genre-isation of everything, we cannot help but find the root unoriginality.
And that leads me to the big obvious Genres, and why I champion each and every cliché and stereotype inherent to them. So park your brain in neutral as we journey through a personalised statement of the obvious.
HORROR
Horror films intend to frighten. They mean to invoke our worst fears, while still entertaining us. And from the earliest silent NOSFERATU classic, to today's endless parade of badly conceived CGI monsters, all have required musical characterisation.
STEREOTYPES
PSYCHO’s stabbing strings / JAWS’ thudding heartbeat / an insinuating lullaby or nursery rhyme / Satanic chorus.
MILESTONE SCORES:
NOSFERATU (1922) Hans Erdmann – a classic score (later replaced by James Bernard) that set the bar for Romantic association with the monster figure.
BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935) Franz Waxman – in comes impressionistic scoring, and with it a whole new way of getting under the audiences’ skin.
DRACULA (1958) James Bernard – with a theme that spells out the titular spook, Bernard got to Hammer home (see what I did there?) the idea of motivic personification.
PSYCHO (1960) Bernard Herrmann – it’s not just those strings. It’s also the subtleties of suggestion, and the horror of a Horror about a human monster.
JAWS (1975) John Williams – see above.
THE OMEN (1976) Jerry Goldsmith – also see above!
HALLOWEEN (1978) John Carpenter - that simple repetitive title theme became a model for 80s’ low-budget horror. Hello PHANTASM!
POLTERGEIST (1982) Jerry Goldsmith – some similar territory to THE OMEN, but there’s that mis-directing lullaby.
HELLRAISER (1987) Christopher Young – in many ways I admire the sequel HELLBOUND far more, but I appreciate what a great job Young did in this movie more. Walking Clive Barker’s fine line between blasphemy and sado-masochistic eroticism in the 80s required some inspired orchestral solutions.
SCREAM (1997) Marco Beltrami - influenced a lot of what’s followed. When directors / producers want a something they can’t fully articulate, but know they mean something to do with both orchestra and electronics.
HOW DO THEY MAKE YOU FEEL LIKE THAT?
The special place of music in horror movies is its role as manipulator, subtly setting up unease, playing against expectations, and building up for a shock that doesn’t happen.
WESTERN
Westerns were once known as the major defining genre of the American film industry. With the track record of 1 or 2 we get today, you wouldn’t know it. What always endures however are the very recognizable plots, elements, and characters. And composers have always seemed to have a blast scoring them.
STEREOTYPES
Hero themes per THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN / Morricone’s Spaghetti style / the Square Dance / Aaron Copland-esque grand depiction of landscape.
MILESTONE SCORES:
HIGH NOON (1952) Dimitri Tiomkin – popular song = awards and albums.
THE BIG COUNTRY (1958) Jerome Moross– typifying grandeur in landscape.
THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1960) Elmer Bernstein – typifying the hero theme approach, and Aaron Copland’s balletic Western language.
HOW THE WEST WAS WON (1962) Alfred Newman – a man theme so good, Robert Zemeckis couldn’t imagine Alan Silvestri doing anything better for the opening of ROMANCING THE STONE.
The DOLLARS Trilogy (Sixties) Ennio Morricone – this either creates a sound in your head populated by cracks and whistles, coyote howls and harmonica, or trumpets and grunts. It’s one of the most singular self-contained Genres of film music there is. There were hundreds of European made Westerns that employed dozens of other composers to emulate Morricone.
And then what? Seriously – what are the great identifiable Western scores to have impacted the Genre from the 70s onwards? You’d like to point out Bruce Broughton’s SILVERADO (1985), and of course John Barry’s DANCES WITH WOLVES (1990). But the truth of it is the Western has been mostly dead for the last 40 years. These scores and a scattered few other worthies didn’t influence a great many others in their wake, because almost none followed. Sad.
HOW DO THEY MAKE YOU FEEL LIKE THAT?
Certain scales and tonalities makes up that characteristic Wild West Sound. Brass instruments and sweeping strings define the open air Aaron Copland voice. Contrasting motifs for black and white Stetson hats. Loping rhythms for fiddles and banjos. Galloping percussive rhythms for sunset-bound horses.
ROMANCE
To my mind, Romance Films have become a sub-genre. It’s an easy one to rattle off in a top 10 list of obvious genres, without pausing to think when you last saw a movie that was purely a tale of boy meets girl with a happy ending. As sad as the demise of the Western, this type of film has also disappeared without trace. What we have had for some time are Romantic Dramas, or even more often, Romantic Comedies. Love stories, or passionate affairs of the heart would be perfect material for the sentimentally minded composer. It’s always tempered with something else however. For example, when was the last time you saw a wartime movie that didn’t involve a love story? There apparently, is where the Romance must belong – in the one place we all know the cliché will mean it’s doomed to tragedy!
STEREOTYPES
Tinkling piano for kisses, reunions and separations / surge of strings as the bedroom scene merges to waves on the beach / songs – see below…
MILESTONE SCORES:
BRIEF ENCOUNTER (1945) Rachmaninov – I don’t squarely blame The Rach’s “2nd Piano Concerto” for the use of songs in the Romance Genre, but it’s a well known early example of appropriated source music buying in existing romantic associations for an audience.
THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR (1947) Bernard Herrmann – what Herrmann referred to as his “Max Steiner score.” In other words, something evocative of Romance in every sense, with strings used as the sea itself in its metaphor of the impossible love story.
ROMEO AND JULIET (1968) Nino Rota – the greatest Romance tale of all time has been filmed many times. Rota’s theme for the star-crossed lovers has endured as a near-cliché in countless promotional capacities for anything romantically or Valentine’s Day inclined.
ROMEO + JULIET (1997) Craig Armstrong – 2 decades later, we can do it oh so much better with an army-sized musical team, right? Armstrong’s powerhouse choral cues became overused and over-emulated in a very short space of time in trailers and commercials. But it was this year, partly down to this film’s use of songs in which finally nailed my theory – often espoused here as a general dissatisfaction with the whole film music industry – but as of the mid-90s very specifically in the use for teens and Romance.
1997 was season 3 of FRIENDS (1997). I realised songs had completely taken over as the musical tool with which to illustrate Romance. MOULIN ROUGE made me laugh out loud at the duet between Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman which strung together every high profile chorus lyric with the word ‘love’ in it. Because that’s the device I’m talking about. Need to cover the fact the dialogue and sound effects are absent while a couple kiss? Quick – license a song (cheaply if possible) that is well known enough and has a vaguely relevant lyric. I think it’s insulting to us as the audience frankly. A couple kissing is pretty obviously about love, without an incongruous fade in and out to the chorus of a song.
And God help me – the whole Romantic Comedy Genre is even worse. You’ve got Music Producers playing with needle-dropping into dozens of songs to over-narrate a given moment with lyrics. Want to avoid paying to see LOVE ACTUALLY and learn the plot for free? Just look at titles and tone of the album’s tracklisting:
1. Kelly Clarkson - The Trouble With Love Is
2. Dido - Here With Me
3. Maroon 5 - Sweetest Goodbye/Sunday Morning
4. Norah Jones - Turn Me On
5. Wyclef Jean - Take Me As I Am (feat. Sharissa)
6. Eva Cassidy – Songbird
7. The Calling - Wherever You Will Go
8. The Pointer Sisters - Jump (For My Love)
9. Joni Mitchell - Both Sides Now
10. Lynden David Hall - All You Need Is Love
11. The Beach Boys - God Only Knows
12. Texas - I’ll See It Through
13. Sugababes - Too Lost In You
14. Craig Armstrong - Glasgow Love Theme
HOW DO THEY MAKE YOU FEEL LIKE THAT?
They don’t anymore.
ACTION
High energy, physical stunts and chases, rescues, battles, fistfights and escapes. Non-stop motion, spectacular rhythm and pacing. There are all sorts of films lumped together as action flicks. Lots of sub-genre crossovers. So here I’m looking at scores that contributed to the palette of action scoring wherever they were.
STEREOTYPES
Agitato strings / Korngold hero horns / sneaking about a la James Bond / tortured saxophone laments / the Media Ventures approach (see below)
MILESTONE SCORES:
THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (1938) Erich Wolfgang Korngold – it started here folks. Swashbuckle = action. See previous Column in Archives for more!
The James Bond Series (Sixties to Present) John Barry and many wannabe disciples – can anything lay higher claim to influencing the scoring of Action? Bond IS action!
RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981) John Williams – a re-definition of the action hero.
LETHAL WEAPON and DIE HARD Trilogies (Eighties to Nineties) Michael Kamen – guitars and saxophones. Kamen trod many a fine line in 7 movies, and always stayed upright.
THE ROCK (1996) Hans Zimmer – Zimmer attributes BLACK RAIN (1989) with starting his trademark fusion style. For me, THE ROCK was the point of no return. From here the whole Michael Bay / Jerry Bruckheimer was cemented for good. Zimmer’s Media Ventures facility, allowing for multiple composers to work on a movie simultaneously, has meant a uniformity of style across a great many action scores this past decade or so. Love it or loathe it, at the volume it’s mixed at, you can’t ignore it.
HOW DO THEY MAKE YOU FEEL LIKE THAT?
The music creates pace and pumps the adrenalin. Whether it’s traditional, ethnic or electronic percussion matching the tempo of the edit, it’s whatever a composer can do to cut through the gunshots, squealing tyres and exploding buildings.
SCIENCE FICTION
You’d think it’s the simplest Genre to identify, but sci-fi covers so many bases. From JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH to STAR WARS and from MAD MAX to FLESH GORDON, sci-fi takes allsorts. Which is probably why composers seem to have the most fun playing in this arena.
STEREOTYPES
Dabbling with the electronics of the day / in-your-face STAR WARS-style / dreadful alien bar music.
MILESTONE SCORES:
THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951) Bernard Herrmann – it all changed with the sustained eeriness of Herrmann's multiple theremins for Klaatu’s “we come in peace” address.
FORBIDDEN PLANET(1956) Louis and Bebe Barron – then it really changed with the world’s first electronic score.
PLANET OF THE APES (1968) Jerry Goldsmith – the innovative instrumentation remains one of the greatest unpredictable depictions of all things not of this Earth. Except they were!
STAR WARS (1977) John Williams – hmmm. This may already have been covered elsewhere…
BLADERUNNER (1981) Vangelis – actually, I don’t think this changed anything in the genre so much as cemented the idea (clichéd or not) of synths for the future.
And since then? Take your pick. John Williams seems to push the envelope every time he scores sci-fi. But in terms of what’s influenced who – I think I’ll return to this Genre another time…
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