Film music

Cinema was never silent. From the earliest years of cinema, in the late 19th century, music accompanied the image: to cover the noise of the projector and the audience, and very soon to create emotion. Over more than a century film music has become one of the most listened-to genres in the world, often without the audience noticing.

The "silent" era (1895–1927)

In theatres a pianist, organist or orchestra played live during the screening. They improvised or drew on collections of pieces sorted by mood: chase, tenderness, storm, mystery. These contained plenty of classical music: the William Tell overture for gallops, wedding marches for weddings. In 1908 Camille Saint-Saëns wrote one of the very first original scores, for L'Assassinat du duc de Guise; in 1924 Erik Satie composed the music for Entr'acte, a short film by René Clair. Charlie Chaplin later composed the music for his own films.

Talkies and Hollywood's golden age

In 1927 The Jazz Singer featured synchronised songs and speech: cinema began to talk, and from then on music was recorded on the film itself. In Hollywood, European-trained composers such as Max Steiner (King Kong, 1933) and Erich Wolfgang Korngold (The Adventures of Robin Hood, 1938) invented the grand Hollywood symphonic style. Their model was Wagner's opera, and above all his favourite tool: the leitmotif, a theme tied to a character, place or idea that returns and transforms as the story unfolds.

Wagner himself is often heard in films. The Valkyries motif, from the opera Die Walküre (completed in 1856), which Apocalypse Now (1979) made famous with a new audience, shows the power of a leitmotif: a leaping rhythm, a rising arpeggio, instantly recognisable.

M:9/8
L:1/16
Q:3/8=60
K:Am
A3 E A2 c6 A6 | c3 A c2 e6 c6 | e3 c e2 g6 G6 | c3 G c2 e12 |]

In the Soviet Union Prokofiev worked with the director Eisenstein (Alexander Nevsky, 1938). In the United States Bernard Herrmann invented new sounds, from Citizen Kane (1941) to Psycho (1960), whose score uses strings only.

Styles diversify (after 1950)

After 1950 film music opened up to jazz, song and modern music. In Italy Nino Rota worked with Fellini, then wrote The Godfather (1972); Ennio Morricone renewed Sergio Leone's westerns (A Fistful of Dollars, 1964) with whistling, electric guitar, bells and choirs. In France Michel Legrand wrote The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), a film sung from start to finish. In 1975 and 1977 John Williams (Jaws, Star Wars) revived the large symphony orchestra and the Wagnerian leitmotif. In the 1980s synthesizers came on the scene (Vangelis, Chariots of Fire, 1981); today composers such as Hans Zimmer mix orchestra, electronics and sound design.

How does film music work?

• The leitmotif: a theme for a character or an idea, returning transformed.
• Atmosphere: a pad of strings, a low drone or an unusual instrument is enough to set up fear, nostalgia or mystery.
• Synchronisation: music underlines a gesture, a cut, a look. When it imitates the on-screen movements exactly, as in cartoons, it is called mickey-mousing.
• Inside or outside the picture: music can be heard by the characters (a band in the scene, a radio) or only by the audience.
• Borrowing: films often reuse classical music. In 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Stanley Kubrick set spaceships dancing to Johann Strauss II's The Blue Danube; Disney's Fantasia (1940) put Bach, Dukas and Stravinsky into pictures.

Listening list

• A silent film accompanied live on the piano, at a film-concert near you.
• Korngold, The Adventures of Robin Hood; Herrmann, Psycho; Morricone, Once Upon a Time in the West.
• Williams, Star Wars: spot each character's leitmotif.