Through the first six films of the Star Wars saga, John Williams’ inimitable scores have generated a large body of musical themes that have played an inextricable part in building the fantasy world that is the backbone of the films. … Continue reading →
When director Christopher Nolan first approached his regular composer, Hans Zimmer, to write the score for Interstellar, he wanted to avoid the clichés associated with the science-fiction genre and “engage Hans in a very pure creative process.” To do this, … Continue reading →
English composer Gary Yershon has largely staked out his career in various realms of dramatic music, scoring mainly for theater but also for television, radio, and film. His experience in writing original music for feature films has been for the … Continue reading →
No stranger to film scoring, Jóhann Jóhannsson has been writing music for films for the last fifteen years (mainly for films from his native Iceland and from Europe), and has had plenty of experience in scoring other narrative works such … Continue reading →
In addition to earning two Oscar nominations in 2014, Alexandre Desplat managed to score some of the year’s biggest box-office successes as all five of the films he scored ranked within the top fifty-five. These include The Grand Budapest Hotel, … Continue reading →
2014 was another busy year for Alexandre Desplat, who scored a total of five films released that year, of which both The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Imitation Game have been nominated for the Oscar for Best Original Score. The … Continue reading →
In most film scores, themes are usually associated with a single character. This is the case, for example, with the previous two themes examined in this blog series: those for Jill and Cheyenne. But the other prominent theme in … Continue reading →
“Cheyenne’s theme” from Once Upon a Time in the West is another example of Ennio Morricone’s economical use of melodic and harmonic materials, and unusual choice of instrumentation that help bestow his music with a very distinctive sound. The … Continue reading →
British composer Steven Price has steadily risen through the ranks of the film music world, beginning as performer, arranger, and programmer for film composer Trevor Jones, moving on to music editing on such blockbuster films as The Lord of the … Continue reading →
Although William Butler of the Canadian indie rock band Arcade Fire and Canadian composer/performer Owen Pallett received their first Oscar nomination for their score to the sci-fi romance film Her, this is not their first experience in film scoring. Both … Continue reading →
