USC THORNTON SCHOOL OF MUSIC



USC THORNTON SCHOOL OF MUSIC / SCREEN SCORING

SCOR 511: HISTORY OF FILM MUSIC

JON BURLINGAME, ASST. PROF. burlinga@usc.edu

rev. syllabus 8/17

Catalog description:

A comprehensive survey of the craft of composing music for motion pictures and television, geared specifically to composers, combining film-music history and score analysis.

Recommended reading:

Burlingame, Jon. Sound and Vision: 60 Years of Motion Picture Soundtracks. Billboard Books, 2000.

Hickman, Roger. Reel Music: Exploring 100 Years of Film Music, 2nd ed. W.W. Norton & Co., 2017.

Karlin, Fred. Listening to Movies. Schirmer Books, 1994.

Palmer, Christopher. The Composer in Hollywood. Marion Boyars, 1990. Thomas, Tony. Music for the Movies, second edition. Silman-James Press, 1997.

Grading:

a. First semester: One paper (due week 9): Analysis of one complete film score (to be approved by instructor), including a discussion of each cue in the score (description of both the music and its dramatic context, and opinion of its effectiveness).

b. Second semester: Another paper, subject to be determined (due week 15).

c. Attendance and general class participation.

Disability:

Any student requesting academic accomodations based on a disability is required to register with Disability Services and Programs (DSP) each semester. A letter of verification for approved accomodations can be obtained from DSP. Please be sure the letter is delivered to me as early in the semester as possible. (213) 740-0776.

[first semester]

Week 1. Introduction

* Overview of the course

* Film-music functions: origins of music in motion pictures

* Discussion of music in silent films: original vs. compiled scores, combinations

Weeks 2, 3. Transition to Sound / Pioneering Efforts

* Early experiments with underscoring dialogue and action

* Pioneers in dramatic scoring during the 1930s

* Max Steiner - RKO, Warner Bros.

(King Kong, Gone With the Wind, Now Voyager, Casablanca)

* Alfred Newman - United Artists, 20th Century-Fox

(Wuthering Heights, The Song of Bernadette, How the West Was Won)

* Herbert Stothart - MGM

(The Good Earth, The Wizard of Oz, Random Harvest)

Weeks 4, 5, 6. The Golden Age

* Rise of the classically trained composer in Hollywood

* Erich Wolfgang Korngold

(The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Sea Hawk, Kings Row)

* Miklos Rozsa

(Double Indemnity, Spellbound, Quo Vadis, Ben-Hur)

* Franz Waxman

(Sunset Boulevard, A Place in the Sun, The Spirit of St. Louis)

* Dimitri Tiomkin

(Lost Horizon, High Noon, The Alamo)

* Victor Young

(For Whom the Bell Tolls, Shane, Around the World in 80 Days)

Weeks 7, 8. The Medium Matures

* Film medium begins to mature, new approaches taken

* Bernard Herrmann

(Citizen Kane, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Vertigo, Psycho)

* David Raksin

(Laura, Forever Amber, The Bad and the Beautiful)

* Hugo Friedhofer (The Best Years of Our Lives)

* Hans J. Salter (The Wolf Man)

* Roy Webb (Cat People, Notorious)

Weeks 9, 10. New Faces, New Sounds: the ‘50s and ‘60s

* European-style 19th-century romanticism becomes outmoded as American music and composers come to the fore

* Alex North

(A Streetcar Named Desire, Spartacus, The Misfits)

* Leonard Rosenman

(East of Eden, Rebel Without a Cause, Fantastic Voyage)

* Elmer Bernstein

(Man With the Golden Arm, Magnificent Seven, To Kill a Mockingbird)

* Jerome Moross (The Big Country)

Weeks 11, 12. New Faces, New Sounds: the ’60s and ‘70s

* Influence of young composers from the big-band era and television

* Jerry Goldsmith

(Planet of the Apes, Patton, Chinatown, Star Trek: The Motion Picture)

* Henry Mancini

(Touch of Evil, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Pink Panther)

* John Barry

(Goldfinger, The Lion in Winter, Out of Africa)

Week 13. Jazz Composers in Film

* Johnny Mandel

(I Want to Live!, The Sandpiper)

* Quincy Jones

(The Pawnbroker, In Cold Blood, In the Heat of the Night)

* Dave Grusin

(On Golden Pond, The Firm)

* Terence Blanchard

(25th Hour, Inside Man)

Week 14. New Faces, New Sounds: the ‘70s and ‘80s

* Fresh sounds from composers in the popular-music fields

* Lalo Schifrin

(Cool Hand Luke, Dirty Harry, Enter the Dragon)

* Jerry Fielding

(The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs, The Outlaw Josey Wales)

Week 15. Resurgence of the Symphonic Score

* Spielberg and Lucas spur return to orchestral tradition

* John Williams

(Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Wars, Schindler’s List)

[second semester]

Weeks 1, 2. Foreign Composers and Notable Foreign-Film Scores

* Ennio Morricone

(The Good, the Bad & the Ugly; The Mission)

* Nino Rota

(8 1/2, Romeo and Juliet, The Godfather)

* Maurice Jarre

(Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago)

* Georges Delerue

(Jules et Jim, Day for Night, Agnes of God)

* Michel Legrand

(The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Thomas Crown Affair, Summer of ’42)

Weeks 3, 4. Concert Hall Composers in Film

* Surprising number of famed concert composers who wrote for film, why

* Stigma of scoring for film: Is it disappearing?

* Leonard Bernstein (On the Waterfront)

* Aaron Copland (The Red Pony, The Heiress)

* Sergei Prokofiev (Alexander Nevsky)

* Dmitri Shostakovich (Zoya, Michurin, Hamlet)

* William Walton (Henry V, Hamlet, Richard III)

* Ralph Vaughan Williams (41st Parallel, Scott of the Antarctic)

* Malcolm Arnold (The Bridge on the River Kwai)

* Toru Takemitsu (Dodes’ka-den, Ran)

* Richard Rodney Bennett (Murder on the Orient Express, Equus)

* John Corigliano (The Red Violin)

* Philip Glass (Kundun, The Hours)

Week 5. The Impact of Television

* History of television scoring; classic shows with outstanding scores

* Laurence Rosenthal (Peter the Great, Young Indiana Jones Chronicles)

Weeks 6, 7, 8, 9. Scoring Contemporary Films

* Changes in musical styles, circumstances in the ‘90s and beyond

* Alexandre Desplat (The Queen, Argo, Grand Budapest Hotel)

* Danny Elfman (Batman, Edward Scissorhands)

* Michael Giacchino (The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Up)

* Elliot Goldenthal (Alien 3, Frida)

* James Horner (Braveheart, Titanic)

* James Newton Howard (The Sixth Sense, The Village)

* Randy Newman (The Natural, Avalon)

* Thomas Newman (American Beauty, Finding Nemo)

* Rachel Portman (Emma, The Cider House Rules)

* Howard Shore (The Lord of the Rings trilogy)

* Alan Silvestri (Forrest Gump)

* Hans Zimmer (Gladiator, The Dark Knight, Inception)

* other composers

Week 10. Classical Music in Film

* Instances of classical music adapted for film

* Examples: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Excalibur, Amadeus, Platoon, etc.

Weeks 11, 12. The Use of Songs in Film

* Dramatic use of songs vs. songs as marketing tools

* Pre-existing songs: Casablanca, Easy Rider, The Graduate, Apocalypse Now

* Original songs: Shaft, Saturday Night Fever, etc.

* Rise, role and impact of the “music supervisor”

Weeks 13, 14. Animation Scores; Contemporary Issues

* Carl Stalling at Warner Bros., Scott Bradley at MGM, Frank Churchill and Leigh Harline at Walt Disney

* Fantasia

* Modern examples: Pixar films, TV animation music

* Creativity in independent film scoring

* Union vs. non-union dates

* Orchestral vs. electronic in low-budget films

* Practical advice

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