The 1990's saw the rise of independent cinema as well as the big studio blockbusters, and this led to a great variety of film music.
How can I have never heard of James Newton Howard? He wrote the scores for over a hundred films and garnered eight Academy Award nominations. He came from a musical family but I guess he got bored with his traditional music education and went into rock and roll, notably orchestrating Elton John's Don't Go Breaking my Heart. He was composing for films in the 1980's but made his breakthrough when chosen to score what was thought to be a small film, but 1990's Pretty Woman became a classic. The programme ignored his first Oscar nomination for the score to 1991's Prince of Tides and jumped Joel Shumacher's 1993's Falling Down. Howard's music suited the chaos of the movie. The same year he worked on The Fugitive, a "big and bold score" and another Oscar nomination. A huge number of films later, the programme described his music for 1999's The Sixth Sense as being such a subtle score telling two separate stories, one horror and the other an emotional drama with "the ability to bring them all together".
Dave Grusin had a background in jazz music and was composing music for films from the late 1960's. I wasn't sure why this series ignored his early work, especially as by the time he won the Academy Award for best score for 1988's The Milagro Beanfield War, he had already been nominated four times. Instead his score for The Firm in 1993 was classed as a superb piano composition, almost sounding improvised, winning yet another Oscar nomination.
Carter Burwell has scored most of the films of the Coen Brothers. From 1984's Blood Simple, to 1987's Raising Arizona and Miller's Crossing in 1990. The first two scores came from his background working with rock bands, but the last saw him work with an orchestra for the first time, making a "romantic score" against all the bloodshed. After scoring more films, then came one of my favourite movies of all time, the 1996 Coen Brothers' Fargo. The bleakness of the film was set against a melodramatic score" for what is a black comedy thriller. The music had a "beautiful haunting melody". I hope that The Big Lebowski gets a mention in the future.
Thomas Newman has been nominated for fifteen Academy Awards without ever winning. He came from a very musical family, but the episode skipped many of his scores to concentrate on 1994's The Shawshank Redemption. Called a doom laden classic, it won Newman his first Academy Award nomination. (As did his score for Little Women in the same year, ignored by the programme).
Another composer whose work for the cinema started in the 1980's was the American James Horner. He studied in England at the Royal College of Music before teaching at UCLA. Horner was the man for the big score. He started composing for films in the 1980's and made his breakthrough with the score for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Amongst many, many other movies in this decade were Cocoon 1985) and Aliens (1986) which won Horner his first Oscar Nomination. He was equally busy in the 1990's but it was 1995's Braveheart that the programme picked out. Yet another Oscar nomination, his medieval music was modernised to a "huge sweeping score". In 1997 came one of Horner's best known scores for the movie Titanic. Not only did it win the Oscar for original score, but also that for the song.
Many established composers who started writing music for films in previous decades continued their success. Among other films that he scored in the 1990's, Hans Zimmer composed the music for Tony Scott's Crimson Tide in 1995 that won a Grammy award for the main theme. The score was said to be a big sound full of "throbs and rumbles".
Gabriel Yared (yes, another name I didn't know) was a Lebanese-French composer whose big success was the music for The English Patient. It won both the Academy Award and a Grammy. Among other Oscar nominations came his score for 1999's The Talented Mr Ripley that the programme ignored.
Howard Shore had a big musical education and was the composer and musical director for Saturday Night Live. It was David Cronenberg who engaged him to compose the music for The Brood in 1979. Through the 1980's he continued to score many movies and the programme picked Dead Ringers from 1988. Then in 1991 came The Silence of the Lambs and his score was said to emphasise the battles between dark and light/. "A most seductive piece of dark music" was the conclusion. Shore was then the obvious choice for David Fincher's serial killer movie Seven in 1995. The programme dipped into the next decade to remind us that Howard Shore composed the music for 1991's Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (the first of the trilogy) that won the Oscar for best original score.
John Williams continued his association with Steven Spielberg with 1993's Schindler's List. It was called one of "his simplest scores" with one amazing heartbreaking theme. Very different from his scores for the many blockbusters for which he was so well known. An Oscar for the score was well deserved.
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