Suspiria

Historical Markers of the Modern Soundtrack

Developed for RMIT Media Arts

Historical Streams & Distinctions

Most of us would be familiar with those weird musical sounds in old Hollywood movies which momentarily rise on the soundtrack when some death hovers near. Among the earliest examples would be the use of shimmering vibes in psychological melodramas, and theremins in psychotic noir movies, both of which ran rampant through the 40s. Such uses of dissonance and atonality have been employed (and still are) by composers of orchestral film scores to signify 'the Other': the marginalized/ostracised/repressed/feared spectre of psychological, sexual and/or physical threat. Many examples are now historically validated - Bernard Herrman's THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (51) and PSYCHO (60); Jerry Goldsmith's THE PLANET OF THE APES (68); etc. - even though lush schmaltz still guides the contemporary baton.

Running concurrent to these valiant attempts to infuse the orchestral score with some edgy and dynamic quality is the sporadic occurrences of Rock instrumentation which date from the late 50s. Interestingly, Rock instrumentation has been employed to not only signify a type of 'Otherness', but to also stylize that Otherness in new, modern and noisy ways.

'Rock instrumentation' in the realm of film scores can be broken down historically into four basically distinct streams whose histories often overlap each other:

1. Rock'n'Roll (bass, guitar and drums) 2. R'n'B/Jazz-derived toning (saxes, etc.) 3. Funk & Soul stylings (wah guitar, African percussion, combo brass, etc.) 4. synthesizers (used either with any of the above or in the style of any of the above).

Rock'n'Roll film scores start with the cycle of Rock & Roll, Juke Box, Hot Rod, JD and other B genre movies from the mid-50s. Many of these film scores were composed by Jazz-trained composers (eg. Ronald Stein, Gerald Fried, Joseph Gershenson, Albert Glasser, Leith Stevens, etc.) who often did highly inaccurate approximations of the music they attempted to mimic (but they sound pretty cool today). John Barry started here before he composed the James Bond scores, and other 'Pop' composer/orchestrators like Nelson Riddle and Les Baxter tried their hand at rockin' out.

The second wave of Rock'n'Roll scores comes in the early 60s when teen subcultures became more fragmented and thus easy prey for niche marketing. This was the period of Beach Party, Drag Strip, Psychedelic, Beatnik, Teen Sex and Biker genre movies. Many of these films contained cameos by British Invasion bands and their American Beat counterparts, and/or songs composed especially for the film by song writing teams like Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil. A seminal score from this period was for the film WILD ANGELS (1966) which featured hard rocking fuzz performed by Davie Allen & The Arrows and composed by Mike Curb. The apotheosis is reached with WILD IN THE STREETS (1968) and BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS (70).

R'n'B/Jazz scores are generally more tied to a separate (and long and complex) history of Jazz scores in films. Interestingly, Jazz toning would often arise in many film scores because: (a) many film composers were outwardly fond of the 20th Century idioms of Jazz; and (b) Jazz-style music cues were indiscriminately employed to represent any cinematic gathering of ... well, young people. Apart from many such confusing film music episodes, some films skilfully fused R'n'B/Jazz toning without resorting to caricature: eg. Duke Ellington's music for ANATOMY OF A MURDER (1958); Henry Mancini's score for TOUCH OF EVIL (1958 also); Andre Previn's combo work for DEAD RINGER (1964) and over 20 scores Quincy Jones composed between 1964 and 1970, including THE PAWNBROKER (1964), IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT (1967) and IN COLD BLOOD (1968).

Funk'n'Soul scores can be summed up in one word: Blaxploitation. The line between Jazz and Funk in many late 60s film scores becomes blurred, but when actual recording artists start composing film scores (ie. as opposed to doing a cameo in the film or providing a theme song), than the sound of Funk becomes distinct. Issac Hayes did the score for SHAFT (1971) which changed the sound of the cinematic city ever since (winning an Oscar for best Song helped). Other scores are Marvin Gaye's music for TROUBLE MAN (1972); Curtis Mayfield's music for SUPERFLY (1972) and James Brown's score for BLACK CAESAR (1973). These and many other scores (over 80 during the 'golden blaxploitation era' from 1971 to 1976) defined the funky (eg. BARNEY MILLER) and pseudo-funky (eg. CHARLIE'S ANGELS) TV cop show sound throughout the 70s.

Synthesizers go back to the cycle of 50s Sci-Fi movies - signposted by Bernard Herrmann's use of the theremin in THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951) and the totally electronic score by Louis & Bebe Baron for FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956). Harshly shackled to Sci-Fi movies, synthesizers rarely appeared elsewhere - save for the standard LSD trip sequence in 60s exploitation films, bizzarro sex & horror moments in European sexploitation movies, and occasional funky riffs in 70s blaxploitation films. But synthesizers form a major part of modern film scoring from the mid-70s on.

Modern & Contemporary Developments

While R'n'B/Jazz and Funk'n'Soul scores have predominantly been employed to typify 'the city' (and hence urban crime, state corruption and social decay), Rock and synthesizer scores have over the past two decades branched out to develop as means of orchestration and scoring capable of broader psychological symbolism. These two major musical types have been epicentral to the modern development of mood music centred on activating the viewers' adrenalin and creating feelings of terror, horror, dread, suspense and fear. Each of these types of scores also have quite specific origins:

1. Walter Carlos' electronic piece titled TIMESTEPS excerpted for Stanley Kubrick's A CLOCKWORK ORANGE in 1972; and 2. the momentary use of Michael Oldfield's Symphonic Rock opus TUBULAR BELLS for William Friedkin's THE EXORCIST in 1973.

In both cases, each only appeared in their respective films for an incredibly short scene, but their presence in the score (sandwiched between Rossini and Beethoven in ORANGE and between Penderecki and Bartok in EXORCIST) was strongly felt. These two pieces constitute two major precursors to the modern scoring trends and stylistic developments which have continued through to this day. Most interestingly, modern developments mark their difference to orchestral scores by blending rock and synthesizers. What follows is a charting of how both these seminal scores influenced much to follow.

Synthesizer scores

Walter Carlos released the album that introduced the world to the Moog Synthesizer in 1968 - SWITCHED ON BACH. The Moog synthesizer found its place in hundreds of rock bands who incorporated its novel sound into their hard rhythms, producing a sub-genre that shortly evolved into what was known as 'Symphonic Rock' or sometimes 'Euro Rock' (detailed later). Carlos made music solely with synthesizers. As he developed through a series of baroque & classical electronic interpretations or 'realizations', releasing various albums in the process, Kubrick contacted him to do the score for A CLOCKWORK ORANGE towards the end of 1971. While the bulk of Carlos' contribution was made up of electronic realizations of Beethoven, TIMESTEPS was an original composition solely composed with multi-tracked synthesizers.

While Carlos' use of synthesizers was treated either as a sonic novelty or a musical travesty in America, Germany openly embraced the use of synthesizers as a sign of a modern electronic postwar invention. Under the marketed term of Kraut Rock, a collection of bands formed around the same time (1971 onwards) like TANGERINE DREAM, KRAFTWERK, KLAUS SHULTZE, CLUSTER and HARMONIA who predominantly used synthesizers. (Other Geman groups like Can, Neu, La Dusseldorf, etc. were more Euro Rock in style and instrumentation, with Can actually scoring a number of independent films.)

Having released numerous albums since 1970, Tangerine Dream were the first band to compose commissioned soundtracks utilizing this particular type of synthesizer scoring in 1977 with Friedkin's THE SORCERER (Friedkin claimed he always wanted Tangerine Dream to do the score for THE EXORCIST). Less spacey and floating in tone was John Carpenter's simplistic melodic score using synthesizers for his ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13. Meanwhile Giorgio Moroder (whose reputation for Euro Disco was now consolidated through his work with Donna Summer and who influenced Kraftwerk's explorations of Electronic Disco) did the score for MIDNIGHT EXPRESS in 1978. In 1979, an American restyling of that same sound appeared in Barry DeVorzon's title theme for THE WARRIORS. By the end of the 70s, an analogue synth sequencer clearly symbolized the adrenaline pumping of the heart and the throbbing pulse of the City.

Laterally connected to the urban decay notions of his own ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 and the 'discofied' rock of THE WARRIORS, Carpenter composed the ultimate post-apocalyptic all-synthesizer score for ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK in 1981. That year Tangerine Dream returned with another peculating synth score for Michael Mann's THE THIEF. 1982 saw Moroder transform his Euro Disco sound into the horror genre for CAT PEOPLE. Other Tangerine Dream scores were for Michael Mann's THE KEEP (1983, Horror) and FLASHPOINT (1984, Cop Thriller). Moroder meanwhile did the synth-dance-rock scores for FLASHDANCE (1983) and METROPOLIS (1984).

This networking between Moroder's refinement of the disco beat for adrenalin rushes and Michael Mann's use of Tangerine Dream's synthesizers to represent the beat of the city is historically important because it leads us up to Jan Hammer's score for MIAMI VICE in 1985. The success of MIAMI VICE probably influenced William Friedkin to return to this synth-dance-rock fusion in his choice for Wang Chung to do the score for the MIAMI VICE-ish TO LIVE & DIE IN LA (1986). (The internationalist high-style city-beat sound & image fusion of MIAMI VICE also heavily influenced the style of Indian musicals and Hong Kong action movies from this point on.)

Rock scores

The Symphonic/Euro Rock push mainly came from Britain with bands whose line-ups featured classically-trained keyboard players, like YES (with Rick Wakeman on keyboards), EMERSON LAKE & PALMER (with Keith Emerson on keyboards) and GENESIS (with Tony Banks on keyboards). These 'giants' had their counterparts in Europe around this time (early to mid 70s) with Magma, Le Orme, P.F.M. and Goblin (most of whom, interestingly enough, came from Italy). In the midst of this Anglo-Euro exchange of rock symphony albums, Michael Oldfield released TUBULAR BELLS in 1973. The unexpected chart success world-wide of TUBULAR BELLS no doubt prompted its late inclusion in the soundtrack of THE EXORCIST a year later (although rights for Oldfield's original version were not cleared for appearance on the Warner Bros. soundtrack LP).

TUBULAR BELLS? Today it still has a daggy charm, but it had a profound influence on some great rockin' horror scores. The melodic compound-time riff of TUBULAR BELLS first surfaced in Dario Argento's Hitchcockian gore-thriller DEEP RED (1975) and was developed further in Goblin's score for Argento's next film SUSPIRIA (1977). That same year, Morricone did the score for John Boorman's sequel EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC, basing it very much on the Euro Rock of Goblin (the memorable end-theme was covered by Snakefinger in 1979). In 1979 Dario Argento produced the second of George Romero's infamous zombie trilogy DAWN OF THE DEAD and engaged Goblin to perform a typically Gothic Rock score, which itself draws on the Gothic tubular bells Morricone employed for many of his Spaghetti Western scores. (Of course a historical undercurrent to these Italian horrors toned with Gothic rock borrows much from Ennio Morricone, Bruno Nicolai & other Italian composers who made anything they did in the 60s sound Gothic - no matter what genre the film.)

1979 saw the first of the HALLOWEEN films by John Carpenter. The main title theme of this film is virtually a direct homage to Oldfield (although Carpenter's scores exclusively use synthesizers). 1979 also saw Keith Emerson of Emerson Lake & Palmer do the score for Dario Argento's lNFERNO. This opened the doors for Ulli Lommel to get Rick Wakeman (of Yes) to do the score for THE BURNING in 1981. Symphonic/Euro Rock in film scores starts its decline with Wendy (ex-Walter) Carlos' score for TRON (itself an interesting meeting of orchestral and electronic textures) which uses a love theme song performed by JOURNEY - the later American equivalent of Symphonic/Euro Rock, often referred to as Corporate Rock. (This next-generation of Symphonic Rock still persisted into the later 80s and, for example, can be heard even in the likes of Van Halen & Foreigner.) Rick Wakeman's score for the 1984 Italian gore flick MURDER ROCK exhibited similar Symphonic Rock cliches.

Text © Philip Brophy.