Film Music

Abstract

Composers of film music have been numerous ever since the early 1930s, and in recent years some of them—because of their association with blockbuster movies—have become almost household names. Yet biographical writings about film composers remain few and far between. This chapter suggests that the reason for this paucity of material has to do not at all with the quality of the composers’ music but, rather, with the nature of their jobs. In marked contrast to the arguably individualistic output of composers in such fields as classical music, jazz, and certain forms of popular music, the output of film composers has always been—by definition—simply work-for-hire. The entry surveys the meager literature from early autobiographies to biographical sketches to full-fledged biographies, and it concludes that publishers know full well that readers interested in film music are more interested in the music itself than in the persons who created it.