Experiencing Film Music: A Listener’s Companion

In this elegant and energetic examination of the use of film scores throughout the history of cinema, composer and music writer LaFave (Experiencing Leonard Bernstein: A Listener’s Companion) delivers insightful observations on those who compose film music and a thorough study on how composers work with directors. Launching off of the American Film Institute’s 2005 list of the top 25 best film scores and their composers, LaFave looks at how those films worked and why the music sounded the way it did, exploring the subtleties and complexities in efforts including Max Steiner’s score for King Kong in 1933 to Ennio Morricone’s work on The Mission in 1986. His observations are always illustrative (Bernard Herrmann was Alfred Hitchcock’s “perfect musical soulmate”), perceptive (Franz Waxman’s Sunset Boulevard score is “the source of the sexy-sax-equals-film-noir notion”), and assertive (Alex North’s music for A Streetcar Named Desire (1949) is “the finest score ever written for the film adaptation of a stage play, and arguably the best score ever composed for a dramatic film”). No matter what or whom he is analyzing, LaFave never loses sight of the truth that “the final and only real reason for movie music is to serve the movie.” (Apr.)