Archive
Malcolm Arnold, 1921-2006
Composer and conductor Sir Malcolm Arnold died at his home in Norwich, England, on September 23, 2006, at the age of 84, following a short illness.
One of the most prolific and distinctive British composers of the twentieth century, Arnold wrote nine symphonies, numerous concertos and orchestral works, and more than 100 scores for films and documentaries. His music for David Lean’s The Bridge on the River Kwai won the Academy Award for Best Original Score in 1958.
Arnold was born in Northampton on October 21, 1921. Inspired by jazz and especially by hearing Louis Armstrong, he took up the trumpet and studied at the Royal College of Music with Ernest Hall while learning composition from Gordon Jacob. He joined the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 1940 and eventually became its principal trumpet before abandoning orchestral playing in 1948 to concentrate entirely on composition.
Film music quickly became an important part of Arnold’s career. His ability to write rapidly, his instinctive command of the orchestra and his gift for direct, memorable melody made him exceptionally well suited to the demands of British cinema. During the 1950s he scored such films as The Captain’s Paradise (1953), The Belles of St Trinian’s (1954), The Sea Shall Not Have Them (1954), The Night My Number Came Up (1955), 1984 (1956), Trapeze (1956) and A Hill in Korea (1956). Read more…
Remembering Miles Goodman, 1948-1996
Composer, arranger and record producer Miles Goodman died in Santa Monica, California, ten years ago today, on August 16, 1996, after suffering a heart attack at his Brentwood home. He was 47.
During a career cut short at its peak, Goodman became particularly associated with comedy, scoring films including Teen Wolf, About Last Night…, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, What About Bob? and The Muppet Christmas Carol, while his work on Little Shop of Horrors earned him a Golden Globe nomination.
Elliot Miles Goodman was born in Los Angeles on August 27, 1948. He graduated from Antioch College in Ohio with a degree in English and initially planned to become a director, also studying Shakespeare in London. His cousin, Oscar-winning composer Johnny Mandel, encouraged him to pursue film music instead, and Goodman returned to Los Angeles to study composition and scoring privately with teachers including Albert Harris.
His early career included television and low-budget films, but Mandel also provided valuable practical experience. Goodman orchestrated portions of Being There (1979) and worked with his cousin on Sidney Lumet’s The Verdict (1982), absorbing the sophisticated jazz harmonies and understated dramatic approach that would remain evident in much of his own music. By the mid-1980s he was receiving increasingly prominent feature assignments, including the Michael J. Fox comedy Teen Wolf (1985) and Edward Zwick’s romantic comedy-drama About Last Night… (1986). Read more…
Remembering Toru Takemitsu, 1930-1996
Composer Toru Takemitsu died ten years ago today, on February 20, 1996, in Tokyo, Japan, of pneumonia while undergoing treatment for bladder cancer. He was 65.
Takemitsu was born in Tokyo in October 1930 and spent part of his childhood in Japanese-occupied Manchuria. During the final years of World War II he encountered Western classical music, and after the war immersed himself in composers including Claude Debussy, Olivier Messiaen and Arnold Schoenberg. Although he studied briefly with Yasuji Kiyose, he was largely self-taught.
Film soon became central to his career. His association with composer Fumio Hayasaka helped introduce him to the Japanese film industry, and in 1956 he co-wrote the music for Ko Nakahira’s Crazed Fruit, an early landmark of the Japanese New Wave. The score’s jazz influences already revealed Takemitsu’s willingness to combine popular styles, avant-garde techniques, electronics and unconventional instrumental sounds.
During the 1960s he became one of the defining musical voices of Japanese cinema, collaborating repeatedly with directors Hiroshi Teshigahara, Masaki Kobayashi, Masahiro Shinoda and Nagisa Oshima. Takemitsu treated the entire soundtrack as a compositional object, often giving music, ambient noise, electronically manipulated sound and silence equal dramatic importance. Read more…
Akira Ifukube, 1914-2006
Composer Akira Ifukube died in Tokyo, Japan, on February 8, 2006, at the age of 91, from multiple organ failure.
One of the most important Japanese composers of the twentieth century, Ifukube wrote nearly 300 film scores during a career spanning half a century, but remains internationally famous for his association with Toho’s monster films and especially for creating the thunderous musical identity of Godzilla.
Ifukube was born in Kushiro, Hokkaido, on May 31, 1914. Growing up in northern Japan, he was exposed to the music of the indigenous Ainu people, whose rhythms and melodic patterns would profoundly influence his musical language. Largely self-taught as a composer, he originally studied forestry at Hokkaido Imperial University and worked in the timber industry before turning professionally to music. After World War II he began teaching composition in Tokyo and entered the Japanese film industry.
His first feature score was Senkichi Taniguchi’s Snow Trail in 1947, beginning an extraordinarily prolific period in which he worked with many prominent Japanese directors. Early assignments included Akira Kurosawa’s The Quiet Duel (1949), Kaneto Shindo’s Children of Hiroshima (1952), Josef von Sternberg’s Anatahan (1953), and Hideo Sekigawa’s Hiroshima (1953). His music already displayed the characteristics that would define his career: heavy rhythmic writing, powerful brass, modal melodies and a distinctive fusion of Western symphonic technique with Japanese musical traditions. Read more…
Remembering Les Baxter, 1922-1996
Composer, arranger and conductor Les Baxter died ten years ago today in Newport Beach, California, on January 15, 1996, at the age of 73.
One of the most prolific and colorful figures in American popular music, Baxter enjoyed parallel careers as a recording artist and film composer, becoming a pioneer of the exotica movement while writing music for well over 100 films. His screen work ranged from low-budget crime pictures and westerns to teenage comedies and some of the most memorable horror films produced by American International Pictures.
Leslie Thompson Baxter was born in Mexia, Texas, on March 14, 1922. He studied piano before moving toward composition and arranging, and began his professional career as a performer. During the 1940s he sang with Mel Tormé’s vocal group the Mel-Tones and worked as an arranger and conductor, eventually becoming closely associated with Capitol Records.
Baxter first achieved national prominence through a series of lush orchestral recordings that combined traditional popular music with unusual percussion, voices and instrumental colors. His 1951 album Ritual of the Savage became one of the foundational recordings of what would later be called exotica, with pieces such as “Quiet Village” evoking imaginary tropical landscapes through percussion, strings and wordless voices. Albums including Tamboo!, Caribbean Moonlight, Ports of Pleasure and Space Escapade further established his distinctive mixture of orchestral sophistication and unabashed escapism. Read more…
Remembering Alessandro Cicognini, 1906-1995
Composer Alessandro Cicognini died ten years ago today in Rome on November 9, 1995, at the age of 89.
One of the most important figures in the development of Italian film music, Cicognini was particularly associated with the great post-war neorealist films of Vittorio De Sica, including Shoeshine, Bicycle Thieves, Miracle in Milan and Umberto D. He also enjoyed significant collaborations with Alessandro Blasetti and other leading Italian directors, writing music for more than 100 feature films during a career spanning three decades.
Cicognini was born in Pescara on January 25, 1906, and spent much of his youth in nearby Francavilla al Mare. As a teenager he accompanied silent films on the piano at local cinemas, an experience that provided an unusually direct introduction to the relationship between music and moving images. Although his father encouraged him to pursue a conventional profession and he obtained a degree in law, Cicognini continued studying music, attending the Milan Conservatory under Giulio Cesare Paribeni and Renzo Bossi.
His early ambitions were in concert and operatic music. The cantata Saul appeared in 1932, followed by the three-act opera Donna Lombarda, which won recognition in a competition organized by Italian radio. Cinema soon became his principal occupation, however. His first film assignment was I Due Sergenti in 1936, followed by The Black Corsair the following year, and during the 1940s he developed an important relationship with Alessandro Blasetti on films including The Iron Crown, Four Steps in the Clouds and Prima Comunione. Read more…
Francesco De Masi, 1930-2005
Composer and conductor Francesco De Masi died in Rome, Italy, on November 6, 2005, at the age of 75, following a battle with cancer.
One of the most prolific figures in Italian film music, De Masi wrote scores for more than 200 films and numerous television productions and documentaries, but remains best known for the distinctive music he composed for spaghetti westerns during the genre’s golden age.
De Masi was born in Rome on January 11, 1930, and studied composition at the San Pietro a Majella Conservatory in Naples with his uncle, Achille Longo. He also studied conducting with Franco Ferrara and Paul van Kempen and trained as a horn player, performing with orchestras including the RAI Symphony Orchestra in Rome. His interest in cinema began while assisting Longo on a film score, and in 1951 he composed the music for the documentary Fiat Panis. Several years of documentary work followed before he moved increasingly into feature films.
During the early 1960s De Masi worked extensively on the historical adventures and sword-and-sandal epics then dominating Italian popular cinema, including Hercules the Invincible. However, it was the explosion of the Italian western that provided him with his most characteristic body of work. Unlike many composers who entered the genre after the enormous success of Ennio Morricone’s scores for Sergio Leone, De Masi was already developing his own western sound and consequently retained a style that was distinctly his own.
Among his most notable westerns were A Coffin for the Sheriff (1965), Arizona Colt (1966), Seven Winchesters for a Massacre (1967), Any Gun Can Play (1967), and Kill Them All and Come Back Alone (1968). His music combined traditional symphonic scoring with electric guitars, percussion, whistles, choral writing and memorable title songs, while retaining a stronger orchestral foundation than many of his contemporaries. Arizona Colt was especially successful, with De Masi collaborating with guitarist and vocalist Alessandro Alessandroni on the score and its song “The Man from Nowhere.” Read more…
Remembering Brian Easdale, 1909-1995
Composer Brian Easdale died ten years ago today, on October 30, 1995, at his home in London, England. He was 86.
A distinguished composer of concert, operatic and film music, Easdale is best remembered for his long association with directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, and especially for The Red Shoes, which made him the first British composer to win an Academy Award for a film score.
Easdale was born in Manchester on August 10, 1909, and was educated at Westminster Abbey Choir School before studying at the Royal College of Music with Gordon Jacob and Armstrong Gibbs. A precocious talent, he wrote his first opera, Rapunzel, at 17. During World War II he served with the Royal Artillery and later with the Public Relations Film Unit in India, where his experience writing music for government films helped prepare him for his subsequent career in cinema.
His breakthrough came when Powell and Pressburger hired him to score Black Narcissus in 1947. Easdale’s dramatic, sensuous music was an ideal complement to Jack Cardiff’s extraordinary Technicolor photography and the film’s atmosphere of suppressed desire and psychological tension. The success of the film led to Easdale becoming musical director for Powell and Pressburger’s Archers company, beginning one of the most important composer-director relationships in post-war British cinema.
Remembering Miklós Rózsa, 1907-1995
Composer Miklós Rózsa died ten years ago today, on July 27, 1995, at his home in Los Angeles, California, due to complications from a series of strokes. He was 88.
Born in Budapest in April 1907, Rózsa was a child prodigy who studied violin and composition from an early age. He completed his formal training in Leipzig, Germany, and initially made his name as a composer of concert music. In the 1930s he moved to Paris, and later London, having been encouraged by his friend, Swiss composer Arthur Honegger, to supplement his income writing music for cinema. His entry into film scoring came with Knight Without Armour (1937), produced by his fellow Hungarian Alexander Korda, and his success in British cinema led to a contract with MGM and a move to Hollywood in 1940.
Rózsa quickly distinguished himself in America with powerful, emotionally charged scores for films such as The Thief of Bagdad (1940), Lydia (1940), Sundown (1941), That Hamilton Woman (1941), Jungle Book (1942), Double Indemnity (1944), and Spellbound (1945), the latter of which earned him the the first of his three Oscar wins for Best Original Score. He was acclaimed for his ability to seamlessly blend traditional symphonic writing with dramatic storytelling, and often conducted extensive historical and ethnomusicological research to bring authenticity to his scores, resulting in a style that helped define the sound of Hollywood’s Golden Age.
He won his second Oscar for A Double Life (1947), and then a third for Ben-Hur (1959), which at time was heralded as one of the most ambitious film scores ever written, and which subsequently became a benchmark of epic film music. His other acclaimed and popular scores included such titles as The Lost Weekend (1945), The Killers (1946), The Red Danube (1949), Quo Vadis (1951), Ivanhoe (1952), Julius Caesar (1953), Knights of the Round Table (1953), Young Bess (1953), Valley of the Kings (1954), Lust for Life (1956), El Cid (1961), King of Kings (1961), Sodom and Gomorrah (1963), and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974). Read more…
Joe Harnell, 1924-2005
Composer, arranger, conductor and pianist Joe Harnell died in Sherman Oaks, California, on July 14, 2005, at the age of 80, from heart failure.
A musician whose career stretched from the big-band era to modern television, Harnell was best known for his haunting music for The Incredible Hulk, especially the melancholy piano piece “The Lonely Man,” which became one of the most memorable television themes of the 1970s. His other major screen credits included The Bionic Woman, V, Santa Barbara and Alien Nation.
Harnell was born Joseph Hittelman in the Bronx, New York, on August 2, 1924. His father performed in vaudeville and played in jazz and klezmer groups, and Harnell began piano lessons at six. By 14 he was already performing professionally. He studied music at the University of Miami before joining the United States Army Air Forces during World War II, where he toured with Glenn Miller’s celebrated military band.
Following the war Harnell continued his studies, including composition lessons with Aaron Copland, while establishing himself as a pianist, arranger and musical director. He worked with artists including Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Lena Horne, Pearl Bailey and Peggy Lee, accompanying Lee in concert and contributing to several of her recordings. Read more…
Remembering Irwin Kostal, 1911-1994
Composer, arranger, orchestrator and conductor Irwin Kostal died ten years ago today, on November 23, 1994, in Studio City, California, at the age of 83, following a heart attack.
One of the great musical craftsmen of the Hollywood musical, Kostal’s career encompassed Broadway, television and cinema, and included two Academy Awards for his work on West Side Story and The Sound of Music. He was also closely associated with Walt Disney, supervising the music for several of the studio’s most celebrated live-action musicals.
Kostal was born in Chicago, Illinois, on October 1, 1911, into a Czech-American family. He began playing piano as a child but was largely self-taught, learning orchestration by studying the scores of Beethoven, Debussy and other composers in his local library. After working as a dance-band musician in Chicago, he became an arranger for the NBC radio program Design for Listening. He moved to New York in 1946 and subsequently worked on television programs including Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows and The Garry Moore Show.
By the late 1950s Kostal had become one of Broadway’s leading orchestrators. His most important early assignment was Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story (1957), whose complex mixture of jazz, Latin rhythms, symphonic writing and Broadway song was orchestrated by Kostal and Sid Ramin. He also worked on shows including Fiorello! and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.
When West Side Story reached the screen in 1961, Kostal joined Saul Chaplin, Johnny Green and Ramin in adapting Bernstein’s music for the much larger resources of the film orchestra. The result retained the rhythmic ferocity of the stage score while giving numbers such as “Tonight,” “America,” “Maria” and the climactic ballet sequences an enormous cinematic sweep. The four men shared the Academy Award for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture, one of ten Oscars won by the film. Read more…
Michel Colombier, 1939-2004
Composer, arranger, conductor and pianist Michel Colombier died at his home in Santa Monica, California, on November 14, 2004, at the age of 65, following a battle with cancer.
One of the most versatile French composers to enjoy a substantial Hollywood career, Colombier wrote music for more than 100 film and television productions while also working extensively in jazz, pop, ballet and concert music.
Colombier was born in Lyon on May 23, 1939, and grew up in Mulhouse, where his father played in the local opera orchestra. He studied piano and violin before entering the Paris Conservatoire and developed an early fascination with American jazz. In 1961 he became musical director for Barclay Records, arranging for Charles Aznavour, and later worked with artists including Serge Gainsbourg and Petula Clark.
His film career began in France during the 1960s, and he subsequently worked with directors including Claude Chabrol, Vittorio De Sica, Marcel Carné and Claude Lelouch. Particularly notable were Jean-Pierre Melville’s austere crime drama Un Flic (1972), Philippe Labro’s The Inheritor (1973), and Jacques Demy’s ambitious all-sung musical Une Chambre en Ville (1982). Colombier’s ability to combine classical technique with jazz, pop and electronic textures quickly distinguished him from more traditionally symphonic composers. Read more…
Carlo Rustichelli, 1916-2004
Composer Carlo Rustichelli died in Rome, Italy, on November 13, 2004, at the age of 87.
One of the most prolific and versatile composers in Italian cinema, Rustichelli wrote music for more than 250 films during a career spanning some five decades, working in virtually every genre from neorealist drama and comedy to horror, historical epics and spaghetti westerns.
Rustichelli was born in Carpi, near Modena, on December 24, 1916, into a musical family. He studied piano in Bologna before continuing his training in composition at Rome’s Santa Cecilia Academy, initially working in opera and theatre. He entered the film industry during the 1940s, but cinema became the focus of his career after meeting director Pietro Germi, beginning a collaboration that would last more than 25 years.
Their first significant collaboration was Lost Youth in 1947, followed by In the Name of the Law (1949) and The Path of Hope (1950). Rustichelli subsequently scored almost every major Germi film, including The Railroad Man (1956), A Man of Straw (1958), The Facts of Murder (1959), Divorce Italian Style (1961), Seduced and Abandoned (1964), The Birds, the Bees and the Italians (1966), and Alfredo, Alfredo (1972). His music became an essential part of Germi’s cinema, equally comfortable with intimate drama, Sicilian folk influences, sentiment and biting comic irony.
Divorce Italian Style, starring Marcello Mastroianni, was perhaps their most internationally famous collaboration. Rustichelli’s witty, deliberately exaggerated music perfectly complemented Germi’s savage satire of Sicilian morality and helped establish the composer’s reputation outside Italy. His gentler dramatic writing was equally effective, and A Man of Straw earned him his first Nastro d’Argento for Best Music in 1959.
The early 1960s were among Rustichelli’s busiest years. He scored Nanni Loy’s powerful wartime drama The Four Days of Naples (1962), Florestano Vancini’s The Long Night of ’43 (1960), Bernardo Bertolucci’s debut La commare secca (1962), and worked with Pier Paolo Pasolini on Accattone, Mamma Roma, Ro.Go.Pa.G. and The Gospel According to St. Matthew. His ability to draw on folk music, classical traditions and immediately memorable melodies made him exceptionally adaptable to the rapidly changing Italian cinema of the period. Read more…
Gil Mellé, 1931-2004
Composer, jazz musician, artist and electronic-music pioneer Gil Mellé died at his home in Malibu, California, on October 28, 2004, at the age of 72, following a heart attack.
One of the most unconventional figures in American film and television music, Mellé wrote scores for more than 125 productions, but remains best remembered for Robert Wise’s The Andromeda Strain and his groundbreaking use of electronic instruments.
Gilbert John Mellé was born in New York City on December 31, 1931. A gifted visual artist as well as a musician, he began playing saxophone as a teenager and was performing in Greenwich Village jazz clubs before he was 16. At 19 he signed with Blue Note Records, becoming the label’s first white musician, and recorded a series of albums including Patterns in Jazz and 5 Impressions of Color. He also designed album artwork for musicians including Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins.
Mellé’s interests increasingly turned toward technology and electronic music. After moving to Los Angeles during the 1960s, he built his own synthesizers and other electronic devices and formed the Electronauts, an all-electronic jazz ensemble which performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival. His 1967 album Tome VI explored electronic jazz at a time when synthesizers were still a novelty.
His defining film assignment was The Andromeda Strain (1971), Wise’s adaptation of Michael Crichton’s science-fiction novel. Mellé created an almost entirely electronic sound world of pulses, oscillations, distorted tones and mechanical textures that perfectly complemented the film’s clinical laboratories and technological paranoia. He even recorded sounds at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory while researching the score. The result was one of the pioneering electronic scores for a major Hollywood film and earned Mellé a Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Score. Read more…
Remembering Jule Styne, 1905-1994
Composer and songwriter Jule Styne died at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City ten years ago today, on September 20, 1994, at the age of 88, following a heart attack after several weeks of ill health.
One of the towering figures of the American musical theatre, Styne composed the music for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Bells Are Ringing, Gypsy and Funny Girl, while his extensive Hollywood career produced songs including “It’s Magic,” “I Fall in Love Too Easily” and the Academy Award-winning “Three Coins in the Fountain.”
Julius Kerwin Stein was born in London’s East End on December 31, 1905, into a Jewish family of Ukrainian ancestry. His family emigrated to Chicago in 1912, where his exceptional talent at the piano quickly became apparent. A child prodigy, he performed with major symphony orchestras while still young, but eventually abandoned ambitions for a classical concert career and immersed himself instead in Chicago’s jazz and popular-music scene.
By the 1930s Styne was working as a pianist, bandleader and vocal coach. He eventually moved to Hollywood, where he coached performers including Shirley Temple and Alice Faye before establishing himself as a songwriter. His most important early partnership was with lyricist Sammy Cahn. Together they wrote dozens of songs for films and popular singers, including “I’ll Walk Alone,” “It’s Been a Long, Long Time,” “The Things We Did Last Summer,” “Time After Time,” “Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out to Dry” and the seasonal standard “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” Read more…
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