Music of the Movies

Few modern films are successful without music, although the use of music in film has changed significantly since it was first introduced. In 2022, Symphony New Brunswick performed the very first film score, the 1908 “L’assassinat du duc de Guise” by Camille Saint-Säens. It was followed in 1915 by “The Birth of a Nation”, a mix of original and compiled music by Joseph Carl Breil (1870-1926). When the “talkies” arrived in 1927 with Jolson’s “The Jazz Singer”, technology began a rapid advance. In “The Jazz Singer”, the music was not embedded in the film strip, rather it was on 33 rpm recordings synchronized with the film using a device called a Vitaphone. But also in 1927, the first successful integration of film and sound occurred. Ever since, movie sound tracks have become an art in themselves and we have been blessed or cursed, as the case may be, by some of the best and the worst. Many of the films of the 30s, 40s and 50s were accompanied by either syrupy, poorly recorded string music or bombastic orchestral scores that did little to augment events in the film.

But many fine composers jumped in, notably Dmitri Shostakovich and Serge Prokofieff in the U.S.S.R.; Ralph Vaughan Williams, Benjamin Britten and William Walton in the U.K.; Aaron Copland and Erich Korngold in the United States to name a very few. So the music gradually improved as did the sound quality and the artistic sensibility to employ music judiciously and to greatest effect. Today’s sound tracks, if at times over-amplified in the theatre, represent a major advance in technology and musical art. Composers can use techniques in film that might not work so well in the concert hall. As an example, the ear-grating dissonance that accompanies the sinking of “Titanic” effectively heightens the movie’s tension; but would otherwise not have much appeal without knowledge of what is happening visually.

In the 1970s, John Williams made his entry into musical history, initially with the score for “Jaws”, but soon thereafter for the first of the “Star Wars” films. Since then, he has written dozens of scores for some of the most successful film franchises, including the Indiana Jones Series, “E.T.”, “Harry Potter”, “Home Alone”, “Jurassic Park” and “Schindler’s List”. Notable others include James Horner (“Titanic”, “Apollo 13”), Hans Zimmer (“Dune”), Howard Shore (“Lord of the Rings”), Alexandre Desplat (“Harry Potter”) and many others.

On this evening’s program, we will once more hear the Star Wars Suite and a compendium of excerpts from a number of well-known films.

May the force be with you!