Great Film Composers: The Music of the Movies on Sky Arts: The 1960's Parts 1 and 2

This episode started with a bang. Bernard Hermann re-wrote the book for thriller scores. On a limited budget (he could just afford strings) his music for Psycho added drama to Hitchcock's horror. Austrian born Ernest Gold moved to the USA in 1938 and his first symphony was performed a year later. He was engaged by Columbia Pictures. He is best remembered for his score for Exodus in 1960.

Elmer Bernstein's roots were in jazz and as a modern composer he was well suited to the movies. His score for The Magnificent Seven is a classic, as well as those for To Kill a Mocking Bird, The Great Escape and many others. He ways nominated fourteen times for an Oscar and in 1967 he won with Thoroughly Modern Millie.

This was the decade of memorable music and songs. Henry Mancini spent 35 years working with Blake Edwards on thirty films. Not only was he nominated for seventy two Grammy awards and won twenty, but he won four Oscars out of eighteen nominations. In 1961 he won best song for Moon River (with that distinctive harmonica) and another for the film it came from Breakfast at Tiffan'ys. The following year he won best song again for Days of Wine and Roses. Who can forget his theme for The Pink Panther from 1963. Another long standing relationship was with Stanley Donen, particularly for his scores for Arabesque and Charade.

 Another star composer from the 1960's was Alex North. Nominated fourteen times, he never won an Oscar until he beacme the first composer to be presented with an Honorary academy Award. His best known scores were for Spartacus (1960), The Misfits (1961), Cleopatra (1963) and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf in 1966. That ended Part 1.

Part 2 started with some words about the combining of lush orchestration with the electric guitar. This was typified by Sergio Leone's scores for A Fistful of Dollars and it's sequels For a Few Dollars More and The Big, The Bad and The Ugly. With very few musicians , he made up for it with that whistling and haunting melody. The last of the three had no speech for the last 20 minutes proving the music came first and the action second.

We then come to John Barry, my favourite film composer of all time (see my post 31st January 2011). His father managed a cinema and his mother played classical piano. His breakthrough came in 1962 with his music for the first James Bond movie Dr No. He followed this with another ten scores for this franchise. In 1966 he won two Oscars for song and music to Born Free. Another Oscar followed for the music to The Lion in Winter. He won more Academy Awards in the following decades.

Stanley Kubrick's 1968 blockbuster 2001; A Space Odyssey used classical and other orchestral music, none original. Best known for the Johann Strauss 11 waltz.  Composer Gerry Goldsmith was nominated for an Academy Award on multiple occasions but did not win until the next decade. His score for Planet of the Apes was his best know in the 60's. The score was hugely avant-garde with the use of weird instruments that portrayed the anger and danger in the action.

Quincy Jones started his illustrious career with the movie The Pawnbroker in 1965. His jazz score for In the Heat of the Night really made his name. British composer on Goodwin had scored many films before his great success with Where Eagles Dare in 1968. Previous work included 633 Squadron, Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines and Operation Crossbow. In 1962, David Lean engaged Maurice Jarre to compose the music for Lawrence of Arabia. This proved to be an inspired choice. The score won the Oscar and Jarre continued this partnership on many movies to come, including in 1965 Doctor Zhivago. Another Oscar was on it's way.

The film for the music played over the end titles was never discussed. But it's familiarity was never in doubt - Quincy Jones music for Getta Bloomin' Move On (The Self Preservation Society) for The Italian Job.