Great Works for Film Composers to Study
There are many works from the concert hall that film music pays homage to (and vice-versa). We can here the influences of Stravinsky in John Williams, Bartók in Danny Elfman, the list goes on. As the art of film scoring continues to grow we can’t loose sight of its roots to history. Here are some obvious, and not-so-obvious, concert works that can be used for film score study.
Gustav Holst: The Planets
The opener of Gustav Holst’s The Planets, Mars, the Bringer of War, will likely be an evident choice but the suite offers 6 more movements that deserve your ear. The work, taking two years to compose, (1914–1916), can easily be put to images to convey emotion and should be looked at for orchestration study for the concert hall and film.
Béla Bartók: Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (Movement I)
Want to seek out the dissonances we hear in horror films? This 1936 piece is a classic reference. The work is nearly traditional when you consider the techniques of fugues but also reinvents itself when it comes to the lack of tonality creating gripping sonic textures.
Henryk Górecki: Symphony №3 (Movement I)
Being written in 1976 this young work deserves your attention. Similar, and foreign, to Bartók’s Music for Strings, the first movement imitates itself through all the modes: aeolian, phrygian, locrian, lydian, ionian, mixolydian, dorian, and aeolian again. If you’re not familiar with those terms, don’t worry, just know what to expect when you hear the work’s nickname, “Symphony of Sorrowful Songs.”
Bartók: String Quartet №4 (Movement V)
Yes, Bartók is on the list again, a testament to how influential the 20th century composer has been on the world. Though Beethoven was named master of the string quartet, having written 16 of them, Bartók is a worthy adversary having written only 6. They all present the highest form of entertainment but specifically the fifth movement of his fourth is a movie.
Samuel Barber: First Essay for Orchestra
Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings has been used for film temp tracks a number of times but the composer has a catalog that most of the world may not be totally familiar with yet. I played to the First Essay for Orchestra for a friend. He responded with, “I’ve always enjoyed the music of Star Wars.”
Florence Price: Symphony №1
This jewel doesn’t have the audience it deserves…yet. Being the first symphony by a black woman to be performed by a major American orchestra, it was premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1933. It has remained a wonderful representation of American literature.
Arvo Pärt: Trisagion
Most know Pärt for his Spiegel im Spiegel which has been used in the trailers for Gravity, Silent House, as well as numerious films dating back to the 90s. Trisagion, though, is also worth taking a listen to. The piece takes advantage of silence using it as a powerful tool which might remind us of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s perfectly chilling The Revenant Main Theme.