Overhearing Film Music; Conversations with Screen Composers

Three generations of famous movie soundtrack composers reveal the secrets of their art and success.

Beginning with a quick history of film scoring and then taking the reader backstage to interview a dozen major screen composers, Overhearing Film Music represents three generations of movie soundtrack music. Ranging from groundbreaking composers who scored classic 1940s melodramas such as Laura and the Thief of Bagdad, to the jazz-influenced modernists who worked on Rebel Without a Cause and The Pink Panther, and into the symphonic renaissance represented by films like Star Wars and Harry Potter, Caps asks the seminal questions: How did this kind of active movie scoring evolve from silent films-and where is it headed? These interviews provide a master class in how and why to score a film. Interspersed among the interviews, Caps's single-subject essays provide concise histories of the use of choral music in films, African American and female film composers, and digital composing software for a new era.

John Caps is the author of Crisis Music: Six 20th Century Composers and Henry Mancini: Reinventing Film Music.