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Film music Music 4ºESO

FILM MUSIC HISTORY

‘20s

Up to late ‘20s, films had titles in the middle of the images to explain the action , and were accompanied with live music from a pianist, a chamber group or a chamber . It was not possible to synchronize the music with the projection. This music consisted of musical adaptations of classical pieces previously organized according to different moods. Many of the films came with a "suggestion list" of what music to play in which scene. Also mixes of popular melodies. Also this music helped to drown out the noise that came from the projector.

The Singer in 1927 was the first film to include speech and songs synchronized with a recordplayer to the actors on the screen. This means that the first words spoken on film were the first words of this movie: "Wait a minute! You ain't heard nothin' yet!" This first filmsound system, the vitaphone, was bought by The Warner Bros that used it in the early Looney Tones. These type of films were called "talkies"

‘30s At the beginning, sound films followed the precedent set by their ancestors, using compiled "western music" (Classical music, usually from the 19th century.) This practice soon gave way, however, to the creating of original scores. Max Steiner wrote the first completely original score for King Kong in 1933. It was one of the first movies to have comprehensive scoring throughout the whole plot. the composer uses themes (a whole melody to represent something like love or war) and leitmotifs (a couple notes in a recognizable pattern to represent one character or small idea). Max Steiner scored also Gone With The Wind and Casablanca, among others. This was calles Classical Scoring Technique (sounds like an orchestra playing in the background of the movie). - The music started to be recorded in the same medium as the image

‘40s ‘50s until the 1950s, film music had been entirely symphonic. In the 1950s, however, Jazz opened the industry. Although it had been used for musicals and animated films, it had never been used in mainstream genre films of the 1930s and 1940s. The use of Jazz not only "contemporized" the sounds and theme of movies, but fewer musicians were needed, thus making orchestration less expensive. - Golden age of Musical films like Singing in the rain - Bernard Hermann stands out and composed films like Psycho

’60s The days of spaghetti Westerns brought back symphonic scoring, to an extent. They used the same ideas as the Classical Scoring Technique and similar orchestral instruments but added the "Western" sound with a guitar and/or a Spanish trumpet. is one of the most

Aida García Film music Music 4ºESO famous Italian composers for the "spaghetti" Westerns (The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly). He used non typical musical instruments. - They started to use a hook song that appears several times during the film, also as to promote the song.

‘70s Very little new innovation. In 1977, revived the Classical Scoring technique with his score of (symphonic music). He brought back to life the legacy of composers like Max Steiner by creating full scores with themes and recognizable leitmotifs. "Luke's Theme" remains one of the most generally familiar in film history. - Introduction of rock music

‘80s-’90s The first widespread use of synthesized sounds in films occurred in the 1980s and film scoring once again underwent a major revolution. For the first time, it became theoretically possible to score an entire film with only one performer – using the synthesizer to produce the sounds of many instrumentalists. - Vangelis

FILMS:

• J azz Singer 1927: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iX2lg4eYwQ • Kink Kong (1933, Max Steiner) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOq8IjDMKIw • Gone with the wind (1939, Max Steiner) : https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=ZJafwXXIkeA • Singing in the rain (1952): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GB2yiIoEtXw • Anatomy of a murder (, 1959) : https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=QRYyaO_gyNc • Psycho (1960, Bernard Hermann) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyLD9bydXEk • The good, the bad, and the ugly (1966, Ennio Morricone): https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=h1PfrmCGFnk • The pink panter (1963, Henri Mancini): https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=9OPc7MRm4Y8 • The godfather (1972, ): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWqKPWO5T4o • Star Wars, Luke´s theme, (John Williams, 1977) : https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=yVTN8BGe4-s • Chariots of fire (Vangelis , 1981): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8a-HfNE3EIo • 1492: Conquest of paradise (Vangelis,1992): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94dY- QxjDiE

For more information: http://www.twyman-whitney.com/film/essentials/music-history.html https://reelrundown.com/film-industry/Music-in-Film https://es.slideshare.net/smontero10/history-of-film-music

Aida García