Recently, poking around the iTunes Music Store, I decided to put together an iMix compilation, titled “Greatest Film Scores,” covering the best cinematic scores from 1938 to 2005.
The list is in no particular order of preference, but I did try to arrange it chronologically. I began with Sergei Prokofiev’s “Alexander Nevsky” for a couple of reasons. The music, used in Sergei Eisenstein’s screen adaptation of the same story, is incredibly powerful and is perhaps the earliest, excluding house orchestra accompaniments of silent films, score that defined the art of film scoring. Countless film composers, including the borderline plagiarist James Horner, have recycled themes from Shostakovich and Prokofiev—chiefly “Nevsky.”
I’m not a huge fan of Herrmann, as it could be argued he fathered the concept of bombastic, visual cueing in which the score is used as lead to cue the audience to laugh, scream, cry or what have you… rather than the more subtle workings of say, Nino Rota, whose jibes came at you so subtly and steadily that his music toys with your subconscious. So I included a couple of pieces of Herrman’s that get overlooked in most “best of” lists because everyone goes for his more popular, but not necessarily more creative, works (”Psycho” comes to mind).
It was only logical to include the zither theme from “The Third Man” after Rota’s work on “La Dolce Vita” and “8 1/2″… these are themes you cannot stop whistling once they get inside your head. Later in the chronology, I return to Rota with Fellini’s 1974 masterpiece, “Amarcord.”
Elmer Bernstein’s theme from “To Kill a Mockingbird”… If I close my eyes listening to it, I can see Atticus talking with Scout about the pocketwatch in that most memorable scene at Scout’s bedside. Alex North’s music for “A Streetcar Named Desire”… The big, brassy swagger and the percussive shuffle invoke a thousand images of detective pulp fictions with their requisite, casual voice-overs.
What can be said about the classical selections for Kubrick’s “2001″ that is not said by the music itself? Absolutely nothing, except that once you have seen Kubrick’s masterpiece, you cannot hear these classical pieces in any context without imagining yourself in final approach to the space station (”The Blue Danube”), or overlooking the monolith as the sun emerges behind it (”Also Sprach Zarathustra”), or on the moon’s surface with the survey team encountering the first monolith (”Lux Aeterna”).
Henry Mancini was an obvious choice. However, everyone prefers to cite “The Pink Panther” and “Moon River” out of his massive repertoire. Why not the tantalizing “Charade” and the sublime “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”?
There are perhaps only two or three lyrically-accompanied songs on my list. This is chiefly a list of scores, but it’s important to recognize Harry Nilsson’s “Everybody’s Talkin’” as it is not merely a popular country/folk song, but an inextricable component of the score for “Midnight Cowboy”. All I see in my head when I hear that song is the naive Joe Buck, ambling the streets of New York.
“Patton” is a testament to the evocative genius of Jerry Goldsmith, one of the most prolific film composers of the latter 20th century. How many TV shows and films that parody war have made reference to the echoing trumpets, and how many hero stories have echoed the “Attack” theme?
There’s a certain oddity to the fact that an abbreviated version of “Tubular Bells” by Mike Oldfield, arguably a new age composition, is forever to be associated with William Friedkin’s “The Exorcist”. More importantly, it became the template for psychological thriller/horror film music for an entire generation thereafter
Much too much noise is made about John Williams, a composer who is constantly credited as being one of the greatest. Rarely is it noted how often he attempts to reinvent (and sometimes blatantly plagiarize) Gustav Holst’s “The Planets Suite”, or how often he recycles his own work (the love theme in “Star Wars: Episode II” is the children’s theme from “Hook”; every other chase sequence music in the Indiana Jones films is the Ewok chase music from “Return of the Jedi”)… However, I felt it necessary to recognize his greatest, most original, and perhaps most significant accomplishments in terms of their effect on defining film music for their respective genres. His “Imperial March” will be remembered decades from now as the greatest villain theme of all time. The march from “Raiders of the Lost Ark” is one of the most inspiring, and most fun, pieces ever composed. And, unquestionably, the most awesome and powerful superhero theme music ever devised, for “Superman”… that is, if we’re only counting superheros with super-powers.
John Boorman’s “Excalibur” was not a great fantasy epic, but its most defining instrument would be Carl Orff’s “O Fortuna” from “Carmina Burana”. It is probably the most quoted, most referenced, classical “power” piece… evoking images of vast armies, bloodshed, strife, the workings of swords and sorcery and greater forces beyond imagination.
Next, and finally, we come to Gustav Holst. His “Planets Suite” could be alternatively titled “Film Scoring for Dummies” as it is the most referenced piece in all of cinematic history. Between them, “Mars”, “Neptune” and “Jupiter” bring to mind more images and emotions than all film compositions combined. The pieces I’ve included were used directly in Phil Kaufman’s “The Right Stuff”, along with the themes from “Yeager’s Triumph” by Bill Conti—the greatest conventional hero theme I have ever heard.
I could not find the original score for “Conan: The Barbarian” on the iTunes Music Store. Instead, I’ve included a suite and a re-recording of “Anvil of Crom” as two of my favorite pieces by Basil Poledouris. “Anvil of Crom” is comprised largely of legendary, but appropriately bombastic overtones for its hero. The piece was, in fact, referenced in the title music for “Total Recall”, composed by Jerry Goldsmith. I’ll give Goldsmith a pass on that, because both films featured the larger-than-life Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the music of “Anvil of Crom” is inseparable from the image of Schwarzenegger as the Cimmerian warrior. In other words, the music from “Conan” belongs as much to Schwarzenegger as it does Poledouris.
Peter Gabriel’s combination of synthesizers and acoustic instrumentation for “The Last Temptation of Christ” is surpassed perhaps by only one composer… the progenitor of this genre of film composition, and, by far, the most original composer to ever score for film, Vangelis Papathanassiou. Having rejected formal training, and having performed his first “composition” before an audience by the age of six, Vangelis defined polyphonic synthesis before polyphonic synthesizers existed, and composed, arranged, produced and recorded entirely by himself fusions of electronic and acoustic instruments in a way so unique that various themes from “Chariots of Fire” and “Blade Runner” defined what later became known as the “Vangelis sound” (driven largely by the sawtooth-pulse rhythms from the Oberheim Matrix and Sequential Circuits Prophet-5, among 40-50 other synths in his arsenal). Here in the list are selections from his scores for Koreyoshi Kurahara’s “Antarctica”, Roger Donaldson’s “The Bounty”, Oliver Stone’s “Alexander” (not a great film, but a phenomenal accomplishment for Vangelis). There are two selections excluded only because they were not available on iTunes… Vangelis’ remastered score for “Blade Runner” and his Golden Globe-nominated score for “1492: Conquest of Paradise.” There is an orchestral adaptation of Vangelis’ “Blade Runner” score… but it borders on blasphemy. After numerous complaints that the original Vangelis score had not been released, in the mid-1990s the recording company and the studio persuaded Vangelis to recompile the original elements (reconstructing several compositions entirely from memory). This is the score I would urge you to buy… I greatly regret not being able to include it on the iMix, because it re-defined sci-fi film scores forever. I did not include “Chariots of Fire” because it’s been done too many times, and while it’s a beautiful piece I think it’s misleading to characterize his talent by it… as he has in his repertoire of over 35 solo albums and film scores far greater compositions to share with you.
A couple of selections recorded by David Helfgott himself, the prodigal subject of Scott Hicks’ “Shine”… Rachmaninov’s 3rd, and “Flight of the Bumblebee”, played with such rapid fire precision it is surpassed only by the original recording by Sergei Rachmaninov himself.
Another great hero theme, “Take Us Out” by Jerry Goldsmith, for David Anspaugh’s “Rudy”… about the quintessential underdog, Daniel E. “Rudy” Ruettiger, had to be included. Few pieces become instant classics, but this composition sounds and feels as though it’s been in the American subconscious for a century longer than it has. It has the same effect on our psyche as the characteristically-American compositions of Aaron Copland (”Fanfare for the Common Man” obviously comes to mind).
The greatest epic of the latter 20th century, without question, is Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. While it would be typical to select the main themes, few compositions have stirred so much emotion in so many audiences as Howard Shore’s “The Steward of Gondor” featuring a particularly haunting lyric performed by Billy Boyd, and “Into the West” featuring the valkyrian vocals of Annie Lennox which, sadly, signaled the end of the journey for millions upon millions of Tolkien fans world wide.
Clint Mansell’s “Lux Aeterna”, not to be confused with the original classical composition by Gyorgy Ligeti, is indicative of the simultaneous despondence and accumulating power of drug addiction, a central theme of Darren Aronofsky’s “Reqiuem for a Dream,” a film that Roger Ebert described as playing like a “travelogue of hell.”‘
The selections from “Unbreakable”, score composed by James Newton Howard, are the second selections in a class of “superhero themes” in my list. Howard met with the filmmaker, M. Night Shyamalan, who determined they needed, in this unconventional superhero film, a theme that could evoke an image in five notes or less. With that, this is probably the most efficient composition on the list—conjuring more images with fewer notes than any other. “The Orange Man” is the crescendo, when David Dunn clings to a murderer with all his strength, being tossed about like a rag doll, but refusing to let go until the killer has been taken down.
The most recent selections on the list include the intricate, sad melodies of Gustavo Santaolalla’s guitar work in “Amores Perros” and “Motorcycle Diaries”.
Referencing, appropriately, “The Odd Couple” theme, is Rolfe Kent’s “Asphalt Groovin’”, featured in Alexander Payne’s “Sideways”.
And the list closes with James Newton Howard’s “Molossus” from “Batman Begins”. This is the third superhero theme, ringing in a new kind of caped crusader. The most inspiring moment is a swell in the music perhaps a couple minutes in, where Bruce Wayne rises to his feet, having conquered his childhood fear of bats, to finally embrace them as the symbol he will use to strike fear in the hearts of his enemies.
So that rounds out my list of the Greatest Film Scores. I hope people find this list useful and entertaining, as I think it represents the finest musical arrangements to accompany film since the advent of integrated cinema sound.
