Knowing the Score

January 1, 2001
It has been said that the most highly skilled worker on any movie is the composer of its musical score. Neither the 16 composers nor the film music record producer Morgan interviewed for this book says anything like that, of course, but what they do say leaves no doubt about their skills, professionalism, and intelligence. Morgan distributes their remarks in sections on such topics as getting started in the movie-music business, collaborating with film directors, creating distinctive as well as appropriate music for a film, researching to score historical films, orchestration, adapting pre-existing music, and recording. Morgan presents both montages of several composers' ideas on a subject and longer single-composer interviews on particular working experiences, such as Philip Glass discussing "Koyaanisqatsi" and Elmer Bernstein on adapting Bernard Herrmann's music for the original "Cape Fear" to score Martin Scorsese's remake. This is all fascinating stuff, and the only problem with the book is that it makes you want to see the movies it discusses again and this time really listen to them. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2001, American Library Association.)