Film score composers are often required to compose forty minutes worth of music in several weeks time, necessitating the use of previously invented music or the liberal borrowing of others' previously written music. The fragmented form of film music often discourages developed themes on large compositional canvases, but calls for the use of "mere snatches of music." Using the widely understood extramusical associations of previously written music, the first film score composers often borrowed easily recognizable music, conveying meaning quickly to early moviegoers. The "Bridal Chorus" from Wagner's Lohengrin was used to seal holy matrimony, Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata for moonlit nights and calm waters, and Rossini's William Tell Overture to underscore Western cowboy heroics, creating a language of musical cliché for generations of film score composers to come. With all art, both serious and popular, becoming an amusement commodity for leisure-time activity, the film industry has absorbed the materials of traditional art in order to imbue its product with all the outer trappings of genuine culture.

Works: Stanley Kubrick: compilation score to 2001: A Space Odyssey; Wendy (Walter) Carlos: score to A Clockwork Orange (35); Leonard Rosenman: score to Fantastic Voyage (39); Ezra Laderman: score to The Eleanor Roosevelt Story (38); Elmer Bernstein: score to The Magnificent Seven (75); Lalo Schifrin: score to Cool Hand Luke (75); Toru Takemitsu: score to Woman in the Dunes (78); Hanns Eisler: score to Hangmen Also Die (84).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Film

Contributed by: Kathleen Widden

The "suture effect," adapted from psychoanalytic theory by Jean-Pierre Oudart, identifies the relationship of the spectator to the chain of signifying images, while also accounting for the subject's connection with the film score. Once becoming aware of the absence of vital information presented visually, the spectator unconsciously closes the gap between the seen and unseen, simultaneously sealing the spectator within the film. Music serves as an off-screen signifier, replacing the absence of corresponding affect, and the spectator is freed to claim the imaged emotion as his own. The film score permits the spectator to impart human depth to the flatness of photographed images by using programmatic music or music which carries off-screen meaning. Hugo Friedhofer's 1946 score for The Best Years of Our Lives draws stylistically from neo-classicism in its employment of numerous leitmotifs; the opening notes of the theme suggest somber memories of war, corresponding directly to the opening intervals of "Taps." Hoagy Carmichael's "Among My Souvenirs" is borrowed as a sentimental relic from the popular songs of the 1930s, as well as "Up a Lazy River" and "Chopsticks."

Works: Hugo Friedhofer: score to The Best Years of Our Lives (27-28, 31-38).

Sources: Taps (32); Traditional: It's Raining, It's Pouring (33); Hoagy Carmichael: Among My Souvenirs (33), Up a Lazy River (35); Antonín Dvořák: Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, From the New World (33).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Film

Contributed by: Kathleen Widden

The score to Edgar G. Ulmer's 1945 film Detour exemplifies the duplicitous portrayal of women through the employment of music that strongly evokes nostalgia and longing. Detour belongs to the 1940s detective film genre known as film noir, which often uses music to support references to the past. Flashback narrative structures are commonly used in film noir to explain the present or the film as a whole. Women are often portrayed in this genre as either the good and wholesome virgin-mother or as the undermining villainous beauty. The song "I Can't Believe That You're in Love with Me," by Jimmy McHugh, becomes a reoccurring leitmotif for nostalgic references to the character's past throughout the film, played on the jukebox and later scored off-screen by blending from the song to a Brahms lullaby. "I Can't Believe That You're in Love with Me" is especially effective at evoking nostalgia as a 1927 Tin Pan Alley song, performed by Count Basie, Earl Hines, Ella Fitzgerald, and Bing Crosby; the 1945 filmgoers recognized the tune not as a current hit, but one of the past. Brahms's Waltz in A flat, Op. 39, No.15, is used to signify the intensification of the obsession with nostalgia as the villainous heroine abandons the detective. Home Sweet Home is later used to reinforce the sense of nostalgia as the detective is reunited with the heroine.

Works: Leo Erdody: score to Detour (19).

Sources: Jimmy McHugh: I Can't Believe That You're in Love with Me (20); Brahms: Waltz in A flat, Op. 39, No. 15 (23); Henry R. Bishop: Home Sweet Home (23).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Film

Contributed by: Kathleen Widden

Jazz in Hollywood films creates a context for the formation of a stylized representation of African-American culture, beginning with The Jazz Singer (1927). American myths regarding white ethnics and African-American sexuality are assimilated through the borrowing of African-American music, specifically jazz, as used in director Alan Crossland's The Jazz Singer (1927) and Paul Whiteman's King of Jazz (1930), and later in Alfred E. Green's The Jolson Story (1946) and Luis Valdez's La Bamba (1987). Spike Lee's Mo' Better Blues portrays the larger tradition in which the trumpet is a crucial signifier of masculinity, by borrowing from the music of Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis. In contemporary films, jazz has been configured to signify elegance and affluence as an art form through borrowings from Ellington, Armstrong, Nat King Cole, and Carmichael.

Works: Charles Wolcott: score to Blackboard Jungle (9); Taj Mahal: score to Zebrahead (101); Alfred Newman: score to No Way Out (102); Hugo Friedhofer, Edward B. Powell, and Marvin Hatley: score to Topper (256); Franz Waxman and William Lava: score to To Have and Have Not (261).

Sources: Max C. Freedman and Jimmy DeKnight: Rock Around the Clock (9); John Coltrane: Say It Over and Over Again (102); Duke Ellington: In a Sentimental Mood,Sophisticated Lady (102); Nat King Cole: When I Fall in Love (247); Hoagy Carmichael: Old Man Moon (256), I Am Blue (261).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Film

Contributed by: Kathleen Widden

Film theory must include music as a "condition of identification," how film music is received and interpreted by the audience, taking into account the impact of the intertextual reference between different films which borrow the same music, as well as the emotional impact of less recognizable music on the listener. Film audiences develop "socio-historically specific musical languages," where all music becomes referential, especially through the use of quotation, allusion, and leitmotif. Musical quotation has become a staple form of contemporary film scores through "compilation," the use of a series of pre-recorded music tracks rather than a newly-composed film score, because previously recorded and distributed music may carry with it strong ties to time period, genre, or location. The concepts of "assimilating," describing borrowings that are closely aligned with dominant ideologies, and "affiliating," for uses that broaden the range of acceptable connections between the text and music, contribute to understanding how the identification of preexisting music by the audience member serves to form notions of cultural identities or stereotypes as part of character and or plot development within film.

Works: Charles Wolcott: score to Blackboard Jungle (50); Carmine Coppola: score to Apocalypse Now (50); Charles Strouse: score to Bonnie and Clyde (51); Dick Hyman: score to Moonstruck (51).

Sources: Max C. Freedman and Jimmy DeKnight: Rock Around the Clock (50); Wagner: "Ride of the Valkyres" from Die Walküre (50); Traditional: Foggy Mountain Breakdown (51); Puccini: "Che gelida manina" from La Boheme (51).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Film

Contributed by: Kathleen Widden

Popular music in film can serve to inspire and enliven directors and accompany, counterpoint, boost, or ironically comment upon their visual work. Popular music can create an instant period location, establishing time and place with just a few choice chords, haunting vocal phrases, or distinctive drumbeats. More than any other art form, popular music is a disposable, transient product that reflects, mimics, and occasionally shapes the American zeitgeist through film music. American popular music can serve as a film's memory, tapping into a nostalgic past or fixing the film firmly in the present. In the film score of Richard Brooks's Blackboard Jungle, which borrowed Bill Haley and the Comets' Rock Around the Clock, and Frank Tashlin's score for The Girl Can't Help It, which included music from Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps, Eddie Cochran, Julie London, Fats Domino, and Little Richard, Brooks and Tashlin were successful in capturing the essence of the 1950s teenage experience by incorporating the emerging genre of Rock and Roll. Contemporary popular music has also been used to help tell the story. Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider used Steppenwolf's Born to be Wild to epitomize the new breed of youth rebellion in the 1970s. John Badham's Saturday Night Fever featured the Bee Gees, Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing included rap and blues artists, and Cameron Crowe's Singles showcased Seattle 1990s grunge bands, all utilizing contemporary artists to place the film in the "now." John Carpenter's sound track to Christine, based on Stephen King's novel, references the nostalgic 1950s through the radio of the 1958 Plymouth Fury. American films based on the Vietnam War rely heavily on the political sentiments expressed via 1970s Rock and Roll; Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now opens ominously with The Door's The End, while Mark Rydell's For the Boys has Bette Midler on screen singing The Beatles' In My Life as her son is killed in battle. Film scores often develop a symbiotic relationship between pop music and film, where the music borrowed for a film is re-released as a marketing scheme for the movie.

Works: Richard Brooks: score to Blackboard Jungle (9); Bobby Troup: songs for The Girl Can't Help It (9); Dennis Hopper: score to Easy Rider (12); Barry Gibb, Maurice Gibb, Robin Gibb, and David Shire: songs for Saturday Night Fever (12); Spike Lee: score to Do the Right Thing (12); Cameron Crowe, et al.: score to Singles (12); Mike Nichols: score to The Graduate (12); Michelangelo Antonioni: score to Blowup (12), Zabriskie Point (12); John Carpenter: score to Christine (13); Carmine Coppola: score to Apocalypse Now (16); Philip Kaufman: score to The Wanderers (16); Dave Grusin and Diane Warren: score to For the Boys (17).

Sources: Max C. Freedman and Jimmy DeKnight: Rock Around the Clock as performed by Bill Haley and the Comets (9); Mars Bonfire (Dennis Edmonton): Born to be Wild as performed by Steppenwolf (12); Paul Simon: Mrs. Robinson (12); Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel: Scarborough Fair (12); Jeff Beck, Chris Dreja, Jimmy Page, and Keith Relf [The Yardbirds]: Stroll On (12); David Gilmour, Nick Mason, Roger Waters, Richard Wright [Pink Floyd]: Come in Number 51, Your Time is Up (12); Traditional: Sugar Babes as performed by The Youngbloods (12); Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter [The Grateful Dead]: Dark Star (12); The Doors: The End (16); Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio: Walk Like a Man as performed by the Four Seasons (16); Lee Feldman, Jerry Goldstein, and Richard Gottehrer: My Boyfriend's Back as performed by The Angels (16); Dion DiMucci and Ernie Maresca: Runaround Sue,The Wanderer (16); Bob Berryhill, Jim Fuller, and Ron Wilson [The Surfaris]: Wipe Out (16); Acker Bilk and Robert Mellin: Stranger on the Shore as performed by Mel Martin (16); John Lennon and Paul McCartney: In My Life (17).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Film

Contributed by: Kathleen Widden

The didjeridu is misleadingly used on the soundtrack of Burke and Wills (1986) to suggest an Aboriginal presence, by borrowing the distinct timbre of the instrument but discarding the free rhythmical form of aboriginal music. The timbre of the didjeridu, electronically synthesized and symmetrically organized in meter, is used in film scores aimed at western audiences to signify a single element of Australian Aboriginal culture as complex histories of "otherness," networks of beliefs, and the relationships between peoples and lands. Borrowing the distinct timbre and register of the didjeridu in Australian cultural representations provides for white Australians and Western cinematic audiences a spurious notion of Australian Aboriginal musics, which are primarily vocal musics accompanied by drum and whistle.

Works: Peter Sculthorpe: score to Burke and Wills (66); Guy Gross: score to Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (69); J. Peter Robinson: music for Encino Man (69); Martin Armiger, William Motzing, and Tommy Tycho: music for Young Einstein (72); Ira Newborn: score to Ace Ventura, Pet Detective (72); Bill Conti: score to The Right Stuff (73).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Film

Contributed by: Kathleen Widden

Musical self-borrowing was a popular method of scoring in America's Universal Pictures, which during the 1940s and 1950s often scored entire films (Erle C. Kenton: House of Dracula, Jack Arnold: Revenge of the Creature) with little more than tracked cues from their music library. Nevertheless, Hammer only sporadically reused their music tracks; fewer than a dozen Hammer films contain credited reused cues. Choosing to reuse music often arose from deadline pressures and budgetary pressures.

Works: Humphrey Searle: score to The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas (15); Benjamin Frankel: score to The Curse of the Werewolf (15).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Film

Contributed by: Kathleen Widden

ABBA's music is used to negotiate the formation of gay identity in Muriel's Wedding. ABBA's "Dancing Queen" becomes the theme for the main character as she struggles to establish her unique persona in a small town. Muriel is marked by her friends as having outdated taste in music for listening to ABBA while at the same time making her more sympathetic to an urban audience that placed value on retro style and music. Through the use of 1970s popular music, Muriel's Wedding and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert established a sense of camp, rather than kitsch, creating the identification with gay counter-culture. Alicia Bridges's "I Love the Nightlife" is used in Priscilla to portray both the town's backwater status and the theatrical nature of the drag queen performance, highlighting the tension between the main characters' identification with gay culture and the unyielding conservative culture of the small town.

Works: Peter Allen and Peter Best: music for Muriel's Wedding (79); Guy Gross: score to The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (83).

Sources: Benny Andersson, Stig Anderson, Bjorn Ulvaeus: Dancing Queen (79); Benny Andersson, Bjorn Ulvaeus: Fernando (83); Benny Andersson, Stig Anderson, Bjorn Ulvaeus: Waterloo (83), I Do, I Do (86); Alicia Bridges: I Love the Nightlife (81); Ken Hirsch and Ron Miller: I've Never Been to Me, as performed by Charlene (85); Henri Belolo, Jacques Morali, and Victor Willis: Go West (85); Dino Fekaris and Freddy Perren: I Will Survive as performed by Gloria Gaynor (87).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Film

Contributed by: Kathleen Widden

Music in film can serve to strengthen the plot and emotional intensity if it is made an essential part of the narrative. In the case of Casablanca, Max Steiner scores approximately forty-five minutes of music that makes an indelible mark on the film's narrative through borrowing the French national anthem, La Marseillaise, the German national anthem, Deutschland über alles,As Time Goes By, and Watch on the Rhine, scoring them repeatedly in various ways to show sympathy for the star-crossed lovers. Adolph Deutsch's score for the Maltese Falcon contains fifty minutes of composed music that does not contain borrowed tunes, lending itself to a less noticeable role in the film's narrative. Steiner borrowed La Marseillaise to symbolize the French, and by extension, the Allied resistance to Nazi oppression. Deutschland über alles and Watch on the Rhine were used to symbolize the Nazi German menace. As Time Goes By is scored unobtrusively with background music throughout the score as a theme song, enhancing the unity of the film and imbuing the narrative with a strong sense of nostalgia.

Works: Max Steiner: score to Casablanca (118); Adolph Deutsch: score to The Maltese Falcon (128).

Sources: Joseph Haydn (tune), Hoffman and Fallersleben (poem): Deutschland über alles (119); Herman Hupfeld: As Time Goes By (121); Karl Wilhelm: Watch on the Rhine (121).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Film

Contributed by: Kathleen Widden

Film music serves many purposes in supporting the visual media by setting the mood, location, or time-period, suggesting a principal ethnic group, reinforcing action, offering contrary information, and drawing attention away from undesirable visual images. Film scores borrow from well-known pre-existing music to suggest location, time, and ethnic groups. In John Cromwell's Of Human Bondage, the music switches from "La Marseillaise" to "British Grenadiers" to signal the main character's change in location. Film score composers allude stylistically to ethnic folk music idioms to suggest a particular group of people. These idioms are often spuriously employed through the repetitious use of a particular convention, such as a pentatonic scale, gongs, and temple bells to signify Chinese traditional music, or heavy drumbeats and chanting for Native American music. Film music composers often model compositions on stylistic conventions of a given period in Western art music. Max Steiner's score for The Informer, set in Ireland during the 1920s, borrowed the Irish traditional tune, "The Minstrel Boy," Miklos Rozsa's score for Ivanhoe reflects the film's setting through the music of French troubadours, and Elmer Bernstein's score for The Ten Commandments draws on the unique timbre of the ram's horn during the Exodus scene. Bernard Herrmann's score for The 7th Voyage of Sinbad did not directly borrow the corresponding ethnic idiomatic music, but implied its use through the borrowing of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade. Early American film scores were often modeled on or borrowed directly from late nineteenth-century European composers, as Joseph Carl Breil's score for the 1915 Birth of a Nation used Richard Wagner's "The Ride of the Valkyries." Aaron Copland and Virgil Thomson influenced the move towards sparse orchestration in later American film score composers by incorporating American folksongs. Jazz and popular music became frequent sources of borrowing in the 1940s, as did rock music from the 1950s through the 1970s in films as in Rock Around the Clock,Don't Knock the Rock, and The Twist.American Graffiti used rock music as background for stories of the turbulence and uncertainty of the period. Film score composers are now employing both rich symphonic scoring along with the "musical potpourri" of the silent film era.

Works: Max Steiner: score to Of Human Bondage (27), score to The Informer (28); Miklos Rozsa: score to Ivanhoe (28); Bernard Herrmann: score to The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (28); George Lucas, et al.: score to American Graffiti (32).

Sources: Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade (28); Richard Wagner: "Ride of the Valkyries" from Die Walküre (29); Jimmy DeKnight and Max Freedman: Rock Around the Clock as performed by Bill Haley and the Comets (32).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Film

Contributed by: Kathleen Widden

The 1941 film Ivan was produced and directed by Sergei Eisenstein in Moscow, Russia, based on the life of Ivan the Terrible. The film's score, by Sergei Prokofiev, borrows heavily from Russian folk and ecclesiastical idioms to convey nationalistic sentiments. The Russian folk songs "Russian Sea" and "Song of the Beaver" are used and both a "round dance" and an ardent love song are modeled on the folk idiom. Humming of a liturgical chant results in a "devil's parody." Close modeling on the works of Rimsky-Korsakov are evident through the thematic material in his first opera, The Maid of Pskov, a narrative of Ivan the Terrible, and the similarities of folk idiom use in Act III of The Snow Maiden, where the woodland festivities begin with a "round dance" and "Song of the Beaver." Prokofiev may or may not have intentionally borrowed from the folk traditions or from Rimsky-Korsakov, but the fact that the score is so saturated with Russian folk and ecclesiastical idioms shows how conversant he was with his own musical heritage.

Works: Sergei Prokofiev: score for Ivan (179-81).

Sources: Russian traditional song: Russian Sea,Song of the Beaver (179); Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov: The Maid of Pskov,The Snow Maiden,The Tsar's Bride (179).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Film

Contributed by: Kathleen Widden

Ry Cooder's apprenticeship as a soundtrack specialist began in the 1960s in Southern California, where he was active in the blues and folk circles. Known primarily as a recording artist, Cooder is particularly adept at providing atmosphere for rural, Southwest, and Deep South settings; the three-inch, sawed-off sherry bottle neck he uses on slide guitar provides a rich tone that evokes the scorching heat and background dust of the American south. His music has been borrowed for several films depicting the rural South, and Cooder himself has compiled soundtracks for various feature length films and documentaries. Cooder's music first appeared in Blue Collar, directed by Paul Schrader, which borrowed Cooder's blues-based "Hard Working Man" in 1978 to depict auto workers' struggles with management and their unions. Later that year Cooder's 1970 song "Available Space" was used in Goin' South, directed by Jack Nicholson. Cocktail features Cooder's cover of "All Shook Up," and Steel Magnolias borrows Cooder's "I Got Mine" and Hank Williams's "Jambalaya" to convey a Cajun culture. Roger Donaldson's Cadillac Man makes use of Cooder's "The Tattler," as well as The Bee Gees's "Stayin' Alive," and Percy Mayfield's "Hit the Road Jack" to underscore Robin Williams's character's redemption.

Works: Jack Nitzsche and Ry Cooder: score to Blue Collar (57); Roger Donaldson: score to Goin' South (57); J. Peter Robinson, Jim Weidman, et al.: score to Cocktail (60); Georges Delerue: score to Steel Magnolias (61).

Sources: Ry Cooder: Hard Working Man (57), Available Space (57); Traditional: I Got Mine as performed by Ry Cooder (61); Ry Cooder: The Tattler (61); Hank Williams: Jambalaya (61); Otis Blackwell: All Shook Up as performed by Ry Cooder (60); Barry Gibb, Maurice Gibb, and Barry Gibb: Stayin' Alive (61); Percy Mayfield: Hit the Road Jack (61).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Film

Contributed by: Kathleen Widden