An Ode to the Score
We’ve all had a song stuck in our heads for an embarrassingly long time, such is the beauteous bane of great music and insidious jingles. Towards the end of my time at university, where days turned into nights and the very passage of time became little more than a fond memory, I could often be heard singing for my sanity in the kitchen. In reality, it was less singing and more a kind of manic mumbling, but the longwinded point I am trying to convey is that, whether it’s Elton, Lil Nas, or a bit of Dean Martin at Christmas, music comes with hooks, and the same is true for cinematic scores.
The silver screen and its accompanying audial experience has walked a long road on its journey from the 1890s. Gone are the days of the tinny piano tunes that would warble throughout the theatre, providing some remote semblance of tone to the silent dramas unfolding on screen. Here to stay are the conscientiously cultivated fruits of a craft that existed long before the moving picture. With a plethora of cinematic music at our fingertips, it can seem traumatic to envisage a cinema scene before the likes of Hans Zimmer or Ennio Morricone left their acoustic chronicles to flow and ebb about our psyches; but to appreciate the good times, we must acknowledge the dire.
A write up on cinema scores would be remiss were it to not mention John Williams. Like Zeus to the Olympians, Williams was not the first, but is without a doubt the most renowned of his cinema composing compatriots. Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Harry Potter, E.T., Indiana Jones, Saving Private Ryan, Jaws, Superman, Schindler’s List, Home Alone, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind… Williams’s list of epic compositions goes on, as does his legacy.
Rogue One and Solo, scored by Michael Giacchino and John Powell respectively, mark the first big budget break from the traditional trilogy format for Star Wars and were met with the expected proportions of love/hate from passionate fans. The scores themselves are fine works in that they capture the Star Wars spirit and embellish the rag-tag action on screen but, in my opinion, that’s about all they do. In fairness, Giacchino had only four and a half weeks to put the score together and incorporated a lot of William’s past work accordingly. In Powell’s defence, Williams himself contributed to the score for Solo, hence the harmony between the two styles. Fine works, and unmistakeably Star Wars, but the scores merely mimicked the past heights of the franchise, leaving my ears relatively unenthused.
Enter, The Mandalorian. I realise at this point that I might be somewhat of a closeted Star Wars fan but hot damn if Ludwig Göransson didn’t smash the score for this show. It hits all the right notes to qualify as a Star Wars story, rising to the crescendo of fanfare to which we are all accustomed, but not before it states its claim, providing a uniquely bohemian element to the franchise expectation. With titles like Black Panther, Tenet and Creed under his belt, Göransson is no stranger to worldbuilding through treble clefs and staccatos, but by breathing life into a well-established series of sounds, carving his own identity into the monolith that is Star Wars, Göransson demonstrates that there is ample room for such monoliths to continue to thrive when treated with the same creative ingenuity that raised them to such colossal heights to begin with.
The Mandalorian marks yet another example of the talent transition to television that has steadily increased over the last two decades. Twenty years ago, you might have been mocked for suggesting that a show such as The Undoing could have Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant headlining, yet around the same time, the likes of The Sopranos and Oz hailed the beginning of the paradigm shift that would see television become something worth watching. Fast forward to today, and True Detective’s numerous award nominations seem like far longer than six years ago. Though it’s a song I rarely hear in the wild, ‘Far From Any Road’ conjures only images of backwater bayous and sleazy biker bars. ‘Woke Up This Morning’? New Jersey cold cuts of gabagool and newspapers at the end of the driveway. ‘Way Down In The Hole’? Baltimore projects, rooftop stakeouts and Irish bars. Television and great soundtracks have always had a healthy and steady relationship. Television’s increasingly flirtatious encounters with original scores is what interests me.
Whether it be Jeremy Zuckerman and Benjamin Wynn’s work on Avatar: The Last Airbender, Bear McCreary’s on Black Sails, or Murray Gold’s on Doctor Who, it’s mellifluously apparent that composers play a paramount role in channelling an audience’s perception of a show and its story. Ramin Djawadi stands out as the go-to composer if one wishes to bury their small screen audience in atmosphere. The epic tides of fortune and fate in Game Of Thrones (RIP) are made infinitely more dramatic by the orchestral melodies to match. The disconnect between the grandiosity of high society and their artificial counterparts in Westworld plays out to the eerily uncanny adaptions of classics from the likes of Nirvana or Wu Tang Clan, echoing the sinister, synthetic future that the show occupies. It’s all rather cleverly done.
And so it seems, if you seek to really captivate an audience, to take them to the furthest reaches of the universe, or into the furthest recesses of the soul, to make them truly believe in the unbelievable, you must entertain them through the delights of sight and sound in equal measure. Music can sculpt worlds, cultures and context in a way that words, nor visuals, can ever quite capture. It’s its very intangibility and rhythm that allows music to seep in and resonate so deeply with us on a personal and universal level and, if the young field of study in bio-musicology shows anything, it’s that we harmonise to it on a biological level.
Often this harmonisation is a symbiotic process, though this is not always the case. I was ten years old, busy being traumatised by an unsupervised viewing of Jaws when I worked out that if I turned the volume down, the film became about 50% less traumatic, though cowering behind the sofa also produced agreeable results. The fact that the theme caused the hairs on the back of my neck to stand for a few years after was testament enough to me that music holds significant sway by way of the psyche.
Before wrapping up, I thought I’d draw attention to the fact that, if you do happen to trawl through the various composers linked above, you may notice certain similarities in their corporeal attributes. Whilst the industry, like many others, bears a white male majority, its pockets of diversity are beginning to grow. With new voices coming to the fore, fresh and exciting sounds are emerging from the melting pot. Below are a few that come to mind.
If you’re yet to watch The Green Book, do yourself a favour and get on it. It tells the true story of Don Shirley, a black pianist and his chauffer, Tony Vallelonga, as they tour the southern states of America during the 60s. Scored by Kris Bowers, the film pulls no punches in its depiction of the harsh realities of its setting and the awe-inspiring piano solos convey the dynamic range of emotions that pulsate throughout the picture.
Manchester By The Sea is a desperately tragic watch. Set in the eponymous grey town in Massachusetts, the film follows one Lee Chandler through his current encounter with melancholia. Interspersed are flashbacks of bonus sadness, building a profile of a man caught in a circle of despair. Absolutely everything adds to this. The omnipresent grey skies, the stellar acting and, of course, Lesley Barber’s phenomenal score. Ripe with hallowed ‘hoooos’, fit to inspire the rapid onset of Catholic guilt, the music is both enrapturing and sorrowful, sealing the vacuum that is Lee Chandler’s world.
Taking the reins for an international success such as Peaky Blinders before its fifth season can’t have been easy, yet Anna Calvi made it sound breathtakingly so. In ‘You’re not God’, Calvi provides a grungy, industrial beat to take audiences through the spark laden, cobbled streets that we’ve come to know and love, before crash-landing us in the ever-increasingly fractured state of Thomas Shelby’s mind, accentuating the synonymity between Tommy’s mental and material worlds collapsing around him.
And last, but far from least, as the first African American female score composer to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Kathryn Bostic seemed the natural choice to score the documentary on the inspirational, Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am. Her score for Clemency was touching, but it was her Oscar shortlisted ‘High Above The Water’ that stands as her crowning achievement. As a celebration of Morrison’s life, Bostic raises her parting glass in a true and tasteful fashion.
Alas, there are only so many adjectives at my disposal. I would love to go on about Terrence Blanchard, Hildur Guðnadóttir, Quincy Jones and Lin-Manuel Miranda, but I think this article is quite long enough and to do so might only homogenise these talented individuals. If you’re still with me and have found this read any bit interesting, I encourage you to look further into these artists’ work and their contemporaries’, both on and off screen. I doubt you’ll be disappointed.
Scores will take you places. Upwards and out, inwards and down, and every which way in-between. At worst, a score may be forgettable. At best? Unforgettable.
Written by Martin O'Malley
Martin is a London based English graduate, currently working as a tutor. His claim to fame is that he won the Daily Mail Harry Potter lookalike competition in 2001, a feat he is yet to top. In his down time, if he’s not losing the battle against his ever-growing watchlist, he’ll be reading one King book or another.