The series is part of the BBC's Sound of Cinema season. Neil Brand's Sound of Cinema: the Music that Made the Movies, begins tonight on BBC4 at 9pm. Oh, and The Lord of the Rings, Gladiator, Iron Man, The Dark Knight Rises, the Star Wars franchise, Star Trek … (fades away beneath orchestral bombast of Wagnerian proportions). And anything recognisable as music would make it less so.Īs time has gone by, us audiences have demanded more subtlety in music's manipulation of us – sweeping strings are the stuff of parody, not romance.
And why? Because the film is harsh, uncomfortable, vivid, immediate. He wrote a car-boot-load of music for No Country for Old Men, which is so discreet you'd think it was just the natural sounds of the landscape – the odd, metallic note way back in a scene of Javier Bardem toying with his victim, the electronic hiss that lends edge to the wind – and always, with the Coens, the lingering bell sounds that accompany sudden violence, from Miller's Crossing to Fargo, to No Country for Old Men. He tunes scrap metal to the 90 keys his music plays in, and works with sound designer Skip Lievsay to produce awesome soundtracks in which even he can't tell "where my stuff stops and Skip's begins". He is the minimalist's minimalist, the Wagner of musical parsimony. He can put foot-tapping swing to the service of The Hudsucker Proxy when necessary, but that's not his usual modus operandi. Nobody treads that no-man's-land between music and no music more sure-footedly than regular Coen brothers' collaborator Carter Burwell. The great conundrum of the film score is that music draws us into a scene, but the absence of music makes a scene feel more real. We've heard that hot, sweaty little station delineated in minute detail by sounds carefully organised into a score – and the effect has been more involving than music. I did briefly mistake 'The Mane 6' on the cover for ' The Maine ', an actually cool pop-rock group who really wouldnt feel at all out of place soundtracking an MLP Movie and I wouldnt mind hearing their contribution to. We've heard the squeak of the wind pump, regular as a metronome. Marketing departments gonna market and depart, I guess. The first music we hear, in fact, is Bronson's keening harmonica.īut that doesn't mean there was no soundtrack.
Start watching Once Upon a Time in the West, waiting for that fantastic score, and during the 10-minute title sequence there's not only no music, there's barely any dialogue either. Bernard Herrmann's score for the crop-duster sequence in North By Northwest is rightly celebrated – because he didn't compose one. Lalo Schifrin is always delighted to be congratulated on his music for the car chase in Bullitt – because he didn't write any. Reading on mobile? Click here to watch video
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