The background music on a film can make or break the audience experience. Imagine the shower scene in Psycho without the shrieking violins or Jaws without the ominous notes thatportend the shark’s attack! Musical accompaniment helps create atmosphere for the viewer, from subtle undertones to compositions that heighten the drama. In 100 Greatest Film Scores, authors Matt Lawson and Laurence E. MacDonald consider the finest music produced for cinema since the development of motion picture sound. Each entry includes background details about the film, biographical information about the composer, a concise analysis of the score, and a summary of the score’s impact both within the film and on cinematic history. Among the many films cited here are iconic scores for The Adventures of Robin Hood, A Beautiful Mind,The Big Country, Chariots of Fire, Citizen Kane, Edward Scissorhands, Fargo, Gonewith the Wind, The Great Escape, Jurassic Park, King Kong, Lawrence of Arabia, The Lion in Winter, North by Northwest, On the Waterfront, Out of Africa, The Pink Panther, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Vertigo, and Up. Arranged alphabetically and featuring a photo of each movies, the entries in this volume give the reader insight into how music functions across a wide spectrum of film genres. Representing some of the greatest composers in the history of cinema including Elmer Bernstein, Bernard Herrmann, Alfred Newman, John Williams, and Hans Zimmer, 100 Greatest Film Scores will be of interest to fans of movie music everywhere.

This book considers the greatest film scores produced over a span of more than 80 years. Each entry includes background information about the film, biographical information about the composer, a concise analysis of the score, and a summary of the score's impact both within the...

(Berklee Guide). Essential for anyone interested in the business, process and procedures of writing music for film or television, this book teaches the Berklee approach to the art, covering topics such as: preparing and recording a score, contracts and fees, publishing, royalties, copyrights and much more. Features interviews with 21 top film-scoring professionals, including Michael Kamen, Alf Clausen, Alan Silvestri, Marc Shaiman, Mark Snow, Harry Gregson-Williams and Elmer Bernstein. Now updated with info on today's latest technology, and invaluable insights into finding work in the industry.

From the neighborhood pianist of silent movie days to the synthesized effects and music video sequences of the 1980s: the great and not-so-great moments in film scoring. Scores from countless films, from Birth of a Nation (1915) through Top Gun (1986), are painstakingly analyzed: how does the score relate to onscreen activity? How does it follow or depart from tradition? How does it represent the strengths and foibles of its composer? The book includes discussion of trend-setting work such as Max Steiner's King Kong (1933--an early instance of music carrying a significant portion of onscreen action), Bernard Herrmann's Psycho (1960, with its unusual, high, scraping strings-only support of the famous shower scene), and Alex North's A Streetcar Named Desire (1951--the first essentially jazz-oriented score), as well as remarks on the work that followed within the resulting trends. Discussions are enhanced by musical reproductions of significant themes and motives. Chapters on 14 individual composers working largely within the United States are given perspective by summary chapters on the silent and early sound years, the decades 1930-1980, and the work of composers outside the United States.

This book provides a comprehensive and lively introduction to the major trends in film scoring from the silent era to the present day, focussing not only on dominant Hollywood practices but also offering an international perspective by including case studies of the national cinemas of the UK, France, India, Italy, Japan and the early Soviet Union. The book balances wide-ranging overviews of film genres, modes of production and critical reception with detailed non-technical descriptions of the interaction between image track and soundtrack in representative individual films. In addition to the central focus on narrative cinema, separate sections are also devoted to music in documentary and animated films, film musicals and the uses of popular and classical music in the cinema. The author analyses the varying technological and aesthetic issues that have shaped the history of film music, and concludes with an account of the modern film composer's working practices.

A film is finished and almost ready to make its way into theaters, but one or more of its prime movers (producer, director, studio brass) contends that it doesn't feel right. What can be almost instantaneously changed to give it a new "feel"? The last element that was added--its music! So, often regardless of whether a film actually needs a new score, a new composer is hired at the last minute to quickly replace a previous composer's often-heartfelt work. In Hollywood and around the world, scores have been rejected and replaced for every conceivable reason--style, quality, composer's name recognition, test-audience's reaction, a picture's reediting, etc. Sometimes new music improves a film; sometimes it doesn't. Such score replacements, which are more common than one might imagine, affect the work of the most famous and respected composers in the business as much as they do novice and unknown composers. In Torn Music (which takes its title from one of the most famous score replacements, the film Torn Curtain, which put an end to the long and fruitful collaboration of director Alfred Hitchcock and composer Bernard Herrmann), author Gergely Hubai presents the often strange, and sometimes wild, stories behind 300 rejected and replaced film scores from the 1930s through the 2000s. In these pages are behind-the-scenes tales about the music for popular films and forgotten films, high cinema art and lowbrow exploitation movies, as well as television programs and even a video game.

In 1925, MGM produced a screen version of Lew Wallace's best-selling novel, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, which became a classic of silent cinema. Nearly 25 years later, the biblical epic was remade by William Wyler and received an unprecedented 11 Academy Awards, including one for Miklós Rózsa's music. Indeed, the score for Ben-Hur is one of the greatest achievements in Hollywood film music. In this book, Roger Hickman focuses on the confluence of traditions, trends, and innovations that shaped Rózsa's score. Hickman provides an overview of Rózsa's music into the 1960s, looks at the composer's musical influences and the development of his distinctive style, and examines how Rózsa applied these compositional techniques to film scoring. The author then explores the Ben-Hur phenomenon and traces the development of the story and its musical traditions from the original novel into the 21st century. Hickman also examines the conventions of epic films and ties these influences together with a detailed analysis of the score. Miklós Rózsa's Ben-Hur pays tribute to not only one of the great film scores but also to one of Hollywood's most influential composers.

Beginning with the era of synchronized sound in the 1920s, music has been an integral part of motion pictures. Whether used to heighten the tension of a scene or evoke a subtle emotional response, scores have played a significant—if often unrealized—role in the viewer’s enjoyment. In The Invisible Art of Film Music, Laurence MacDonald provides a comprehensive introduction for the general student, film historian, and aspiring cinematographer. Arranged chronologically from the silent era to the present day, this volume provides insight into the evolution of music in cinema and analyzes the vital contributions of scores to hundreds of films. MacDonald reviews key developments in film music and discusses many of the most important and influential scores of the last nine decades, including those from Modern Times, Gone with the Wind, Citizen Kane, Laura, A Streetcar Named Desire, Ben-Hur, Lawrence of Arabia, The Godfather, Jaws, Ragtime, The Mission, Titanic, Gladiator, The Lord of the Rings, Brokeback Mountain,and Slumdog Millionaire. MacDonald also provides biographical sketches of such great composers as Max Steiner, Alfred Newman, Franz Waxman, Bernard Herrmann, Elmer Bernstein, Henry Mancini, Maurice Jarre, John Barry, John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, Dave Grusin, Ennio Morricone, Randy Newman, Hans Zimmer, and Danny Elfman. Updated and expanded to include scores produced well into the twenty-first century, this new edition of The Invisible Art of Film Music will appeal not only to scholars of cinema and musicologists but also any fan of film scores.

Accompanying audio CD has music segments from film soundtracks.