CNFIS-FDI-0537 Project

ART AND RESEARCH – CONTEMPORARY

CHALLENGES
DOI number 10.2478/9788366675193-024

Music Issues in Historical Films

Cristian Ilie DOBOȘ

PhD Student, George Enescu National University of Arts, Iasi

Abstract: Considering the discrepancy between the huge amount of

universal works of film music criticism and the existence of a relatively small number
of Romanian specialized materials, concerning film music, in general, and
particularly music for historical film, I consider that a study is perfectly justified as a
small contribution to increase the perception of musical creation for cinema, among
musicians and moviegoers or filmmakers in Romania. The choice of the subject is
based on subjective arguments, like my passion for history and for cinema, having a
support of musical knowledge, acquired step-by-step since childhood. Due to the
vastness of this chapter in the history of film music, it is obvious that this essay is
hardly an exhaustive presentation, but more of a concise approach. Out of the several
hundred cinematic masterpieces that contain original scores loved by the public, I
have chosen three titles: ‘Ben Hur’, ‘Mihai Viteazul’ and ‘Schindler's List’. The
criteria I have been guided by are not only positive reviews by specialists in music
and film, awards at various festivals or film competitions, the notoriety of the films,
thematic diversity, also the leading characters and historic moments: the hero Ben
Hur of the first Christian century, the Romanian ruler Mihai Viteazul (late sixteenth
- early seventeenth centuries) and the Holocaust phenomenon of the Nazi period of
the twentieth century. The different periods in which the films were made, 1959 –
‘Ben Hur’, 1971 – ‘Mihai Viteazul’ (‘Michael the Brave’), 1993 – ‘Schindler's list’,
reflect both the technical and artistic features specific to these stages of cinema
development, as well as the content of the original musical scores used in the
respective soundtracks.
Keywords: music, film, Rózsa, Olah, Williams

Motto: "The score is the heartbeat of the film."

James Cameron1

1
director, screenwriter, producer and editor (e.g. Titanic, Avatar etc.) (cf. IMDb; Score: A
Film Music Documentary)

258
 CNFIS-FDI-0537 Project
ART AND RESEARCH – CONTEMPORARY
CHALLENGES
Introduction
Considering the discrepancy between the huge amount of universal
works of film music criticism and the existence of a relatively small number
of Romanian specialized materials concerning film music, in general, and
particularly music for historical film, I consider that a study is perfectly
justified as a small contribution to increase the perception of musical creation
for cinema, among musicians and moviegoers or filmmakers in Romania.
The choice of the subject "Music Issues in Historical Films" is based
on subjective arguments, like my passion for history and for cinematography,
having a support of musical knowledge, acquired step-by-step since
childhood.
Due to the vastness of this chapter in the history of film music, it is
obvious that this essay is hardly an exhaustive presentation, but more of a
concise approach. Out of the several hundred cinematic masterpieces that
contain original scores loved by the public, I have chosen three titles: 'Ben
Hur’, ‘Mihai Viteazul’ and ‘Schindler's List’. The criteria I was guided by
were:
- music and film specialists' positive reviews
- prizes obtained at various film festivals or competitions
- the fame of the respective films
- thematic variety, respectively the hero Ben Hur from Antiquity, the
Romanian leader Mihai Viteazul from the end of the 16th century and the
beginning of the 17th century and the Holocaust phenomenon from the Nazi
period
- the different periods in which the films were made, respectively 1959
– Ben Hur, 1971 – Mihai Viteazul, 1993 – Schindler’s List, in the mentioned
films being reflected both the technical and artistic means specific to those
stages of development of cinematography and the content of the original
musical scores used in the soundtracks of these films.

Stages of film music creation

We owe the birth of film to Thomas Edison and, especially, to the
French brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière. Between 1895 and 1919, films
were either news reports or simple fictional scenes, immediately appearing in
studios (e.g. Biograph, Vitagraph, etc.), stars (the actress Florence Lawrence,
the director D. W. Griffith, etc.) and cinemas (e.g. Nickelodeon).
Cinematography, considered from the beginning a form of culture, is gaining

259
 CNFIS-FDI-0537 Project
ART AND RESEARCH – CONTEMPORARY
CHALLENGES
momentum in countries such as Italy, France, Germany, Denmark, USA etc.
Many of the big companies in the film industry (based on film production in
the Universal, Paramount, MGM studios, etc.) have established their
headquarters in Hollywood – California. It is worth mentioning the United
Artists company, founded, among others, by Charlie Chaplin and D.W.
Griffith, as a reaction of frustration to the restrictions imposed by the managers
who put the sale of the film product in the foreground (Borden et al., 2010:
10-15).
The first distinct genres of fiction films also appear, which will later
be divided, according to Wikipedia, into: action movies, adventures,
biographical, comedy, movies about murders, love movies, drama, fantasy
movies, historical movies, musicals, detective movies, science fiction movies,
thrillers, western movies, etc. The classification of films is also made
according to the specifics of the broadcast (films for theaters or films for
television), according to technical characteristics of presentation (silent films,
normal films, stereo films and stereoscopic films), according to footage
(feature films, medium-length films, short films), or depending on the methods
of expression, form, style and theme (motion pictures, documentaries,
animated films, feature films).
Alongside the birth and, especially, with the flourishing of cinema,
considered the seventh art, the artistic movement receives a significant boost,
in the sense that many of the artists' efforts to discover and create new
masterpieces will be made as a whole, through collaboration and the
contribution of language elements from several arts. So cinema will establish
partnerships necessary for progress but also mutually beneficial with theater /
literature (actors develop the way of acting in theater, writers design original
scenarios or make film adaptations of masterpieces of prose, poetry or theater),
with painting / graphics, sculpture, architecture (can easily be seen in movies,
especially in blockbusters, more or less original monumental sets or costumes,
masks, makeup, graphics, etc.), dance / choreography (simple stage movement
borrows secrets of choreography; but especially in the musical genre we will
notice true modern choreographic masterpieces).
We mention the two distinct stages of cinematic creation in terms of
sound: silent film and sound film. One of the last silent films was City Lights
- 1931 directed by Charlie Chaplin (the star of silent comedies, who is the
embodiment of the transition from experiments to art), and the first "talking"
film was The Jazz Singer – 1927. Among the first great personalities of the
film scene were, beside Charlie Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino (The Four

260
 CNFIS-FDI-0537 Project
ART AND RESEARCH – CONTEMPORARY
CHALLENGES
Horsemen of the Apocalypse - 1921), Greta Garbo (Anna Karenina - 1935;
Camille - 1936), Bette Davis (Now, Voyager - 1942), Clark Gable (Gone with
the Wind - 1939), Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman (Casablanca - 1942)
etc. (Borden et al., 2010: 42, 56, 57, 80)
The first Romanian feature-length film and the only film preserved
from the early period of the Romanian film history was The Independence of
Romania. The Romanian-Russian-Turkish War 1877-1878, directed by
Aristide Demetriade and launched on September 1, 1912 (Sava, 1999: 46).
In the first stage of film development, that of silent film, music had a
more special role, not being an integrated part in films, but after the appearance
of sound film, around 1930, we can talk about a real explosion in film music,
as it will result from this paper.
At the 2016 OSCAR Awards Gala, Steven Spielberg said that in well-
made films we talk about a marital union between image and music. As a
result, moviegoers fall in love with such movies. If movies were without
music, we would not ask ourselves questions, we would not cry, we would not
believe. […] Music makes real movies so that they last in time to the delight
of billions of people. Spielberg briefly describes the collaboration with the
great musician John Williams: in a first stage, thousands of people work for
months, sometimes even years, to make the film, except John Williams. When
this stage has been completed, the whole work is presented to the composer
and then all together decide which scenes to be with music and which scenes
to be without music (Cf. 44th Life Achievement Award Gala, 2016). Film
producer George Lucas says that music is that magic dust of the film (Cf. 44th
Life Achievement Award Gala, 2016), and actor Ben Kingsley believes that
film music is the wind that makes flight possible, the image float. When the
film ends, a perfume remains in the air that is actually left by the music in the
film (John Williams Oscars 2002).
The appearance and affirmation of the sound film allowed the
development of a new type of functional musical creation. The complexity of
the cinematographic phenomenon obliges the artists involved to quality and
professionalism, and the musicians, in particular, to versatility and excellence.
Watching several documentaries with and about the musicians involved in
cinema, I understood that to perform in this field you need special skills and
solid knowledge of music, general culture, communication skills and
teamwork, etc. To build an original score that enhances cinematic emotion
through appropriate types of sound colors requires a broad spectrum of
musical culture and notions in the field of elements of musical language, the

261
 CNFIS-FDI-0537 Project
ART AND RESEARCH – CONTEMPORARY
CHALLENGES
processes of composition and interpretation, all placed in an interdependent
relationship with the other artistic events that take place in the film. As can be
seen in the curriculum of the specialization of Film, Television and Video
Game Composition at Berklee College of Music (USA), this being one of the
most famous institutions that prepare future film music composers (Cf. The
Top 10 Schools…; Top 25 Music Schools…), the music creator must know
elements of musical language from all stages of music development, from
Prehistory to the present day, of all types (academic music, jazz, rock, pop,
electronic music, disco, musical folklore, etc.) and from as many areas of the
world as possible. All these puzzle pieces must be arranged with mastery in a
unitary unit, using knowledge of dramatic art, history, sociology, physics,
computer science, etc.
In the approximately 90 years of history of film music, many
composers have asserted themselves through musical masterpieces created
and intended for soundtracks, many of these scores surpassing the fame of the
film for which they were written. Dividing into three stages of three decades
each, we tried to make in this study a brief presentation of some names of
representative musicians for film music: 1930 – 1959: Max Steiner, Alfred
Newman, Dimitri Tiomkin, Miklós Rózsa, Franz Waxman; 1960 - 1989:
Henry Mancini, Maurice Jarre, John Barry, John Williams, Ennio Morricone,
Tiberiu Olah, Theodor Grigoriu; 1990 – 2019: Hans Zimmer, James Horner,
Danny Elfman, Thomas Newman, Howard Shore, Alan Silvestri etc.

Types of sonorities of historical film music

The soundtrack of a movie can contain moments of complete silence,
i.e. without sounds; spoken parts (monologue, dialogue etc.); various natural
sounds or noises (e.g.: cannonballs, leaves rustling etc.); isolated musical
sounds or organized into small simple fragments which do not constitute cells
or musical motifs; significant musical motifs and themes.
In historical films, composers use a wide variety of musical language
features to augment cinematic emotions depending on the eras, phenomena, or
personalities of the film heroes. Thus, carefully watching the music of the
three mentioned films and integrating this analysis in the sonorities of the
scores of historical films, we can say that during the historical films we can
notice: tonal organizations, modal, atonal, mixed; the correct choice of sound
pitches, the use of modes with less than five sounds, pentatonic, heptatonic,
etc., diatonic or chromatic scales (very rarely enharmonic) are important; there

262
 CNFIS-FDI-0537 Project
ART AND RESEARCH – CONTEMPORARY
CHALLENGES
are melodic motifs or themes that have a leitmotif character and that
accompany a character, a feeling, a certain place, etc., but also thematic
developments - we also mention the existence of non-thematic fragments; we
notice a wide variety of tempo, proper rhythm, metrics, polymetry,
polyrhythm, all in relation to the stage movement or the dynamics of events;
musicians use various types of harmonies, modulations or transpositions, but
also polyphonic developments, sometimes polytonalism.
According to the sources that produce the musical sounds and the
technical equipment used, in the music intended for the soundtracks of
historical films we find a wide range of sounds.
In this sense, we can say that the scores for the symphony orchestra
predominate, in all stages of creation, but especially in the creations of the
musicians of the first two generations mentioned earlier in this study.
We also identify many vocal and vocal-instrumental scores, the
examples being numerous in this case as well. The original songs written for
the soundtracks of the films remain famous: A Time for Us (What Is a Youth),
for the Romeo & Juliet movie (1968); My heart will go on, for the Titanic
movie (1997); Now We Are Free, for the Gladiator movie (2000). We also
notice polyphonic, choral vocal scores, finding examples both in the films Ben
Hur, Mihai Viteazul, Schindler's List and in other films such as Răpirea
fecioarelor (The abduction of the virgins) (1968, music by Mircea Istrate),
Empire of the Sun (1987, music by John Williams), The Lord of the Rings –
The Return of the King (2003, music by Howard Shore) etc.
In the last 30-40 years, the interest of musicians in electronic music
scores is noticeable: 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992, music by Vangelis),
Dunkirk (2017, music by Hans Zimmer), 1917 (2019, music by Thomas
Newman) etc.
In order to suggest archaic or some isolated geographical areas, far
from the centers of civilization, some musicians use old instruments, ethnic
instruments or even untempered intonations, reported at a frequency of 432
Hz for the sound A (the case of the musical score of the film Troy, written by
James Horner). In most Romanian films that approach topics from the history
of our people we notice traditional musical instruments. Numerous examples
can also be identified in the musical scores that constitute the soundtracks of
some universal films, such as Zorba The Greek (1964, music by Mikis
Theodorakis), Gandhi (1982, music by Ravi Shankar and George Fenton),
Braveheart (1995, music by James Horner).

263
 CNFIS-FDI-0537 Project
ART AND RESEARCH – CONTEMPORARY
CHALLENGES
Comments on the films: Ben Hur, Mihai Viteazul, Schindler’s List
The tendency of filmmakers to make monumental cinematic
masterpieces based on great, massive, engaging historical scenery, impressive
landscapes, dramatic scenarios, numerous cast and special technical effects
has manifested itself since the silent movies period (Quo Vadis?, 1912). The
following achievements remain remarkable: Lawrence of Arabia - 1962,
Ștefan cel Mare - Vaslui 1475 – 1975, The Last Emperor – 1987 etc.

One of the most awarded films in the history of cinema, Ben Hur is a
historical drama with an epic character and intense action that premiered on
November 18, 1959, being a production of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It is the
third adaptation of Lew Wallace's pseudo-biblical novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of
the Christ published in 1880 (IMDb; Caranfil, 2008: 95-96), after Karl
Tunberg's screenplay, in which the Jewish hero Ben Hur fights against Roman
rule. The film received 11 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director -
William Wyler, Best Supporting Actor - Charlton Heston, Best Original Score
- Miklós Rózsa. This blockbuster also won the Golden Globe Award for Best
Dramatic Film and the BAFTA Award for Best Film. In the cast, beside the
actor Charlton Heston, we can see Stephen Boyd or Haya Harareet. From the
many original musical themes used in the soundtrack of this film, I chose Ben
Hur's theme for the following reasons: it is displayed several times during the
film, having both an epic and a leitmotif role in several scenes. I must mention
that the most common musical theme is another theme, namely the theme of
love, along with themes such as the theme of friendship and the theme of Jesus.

264
 CNFIS-FDI-0537 Project
ART AND RESEARCH – CONTEMPORARY
CHALLENGES
The composer proposes for the soundtrack of this film scores based
generally on timbre combinations specific to a large orchestra, alternating,
depending on the moments of the film, tonal sounds with modal or even atonal
sounds but also a great rhythmic variety: divisional structures and cross
rhythms in contrast to syncope or exceptional divisions, binary, ternary,
alternative or rubatto rhythm etc.
We have two contrasting motives for Ben Hur’s theme. The first motif
is a homophonic one, processed in a modal way and transposed throughout the
film, based on surprising successions of elliptical third chords (sometimes the
final cadence proposes a major third), the very high ambit and the
orchestration suggesting the robustness of the main character in antithesis with
the unpredictable situations he has to go through, aspects suggested by the lack
of a third from the chords. The second motif, one based on a pentatony, creates
an archaic atmosphere.

Fig. 1, Ben Hur’s theme, Miklós Rózsa, 9 ms.

Mihai Viteazul is a Romanian historical film consisting of two parts,

namely Călugăreni and Unirea (or Țara Românească, Moldova and
Ardealul), produced in 1970 and released in 1971, directed by Sergiu
Nicolaescu, the most prolific Romanian filmmaker of the '70s (Căliman, 2000:

265
 CNFIS-FDI-0537 Project
ART AND RESEARCH – CONTEMPORARY
CHALLENGES
230), after a screenplay by Titus Popovici. If the musical score of the composer
Tiberiu Olah enjoyed a unanimous appreciation, the same cannot be said about
the observance of the historical truth related in the film about the Romanian
ruler. The film was Romania's nomination for the Oscar for best foreign film
in 1972. The Union of Romanian Film Authors and Directors placing the film
Mihai Viteazul on the third place in the top of the most watched Romanian
films. The film benefited from an exceptional cast: Amza Pellea as Mihai
Viteazul, accompanied by Ion Besoiu, Ioana Bulcă, Ilarion Ciobanu, Olga
Tudorache, György Kovács, Florin Piersic, Mircea Albulescu, Colea Răutu
etc., actors who were part of that species of artists that disappeared, as Dan
Puric says. Tudor Caranfil considers this film one of the most successful pages
of the "National Cinematographic Epic" (Caranfil, 2008: 579-580), the cast
including 240 actors and ten theaters in the country, along with several
thousand background actors, soldiers, peasants, stuntmen etc. (Căliman, 2000:
231).
The musical score belongs to Tiberiu Olah. I must mention that the
music of this film was later transformed by the composer into a symphonic
suite that enjoys a large audience. The musical examples in the soundtrack that
can be identified during the film would be: Sună tulnicele – The Sound of
Alpenhorns, Nicopole, Dans la curtea regală - Dance at the royal court,
Singuraticul – The Loner, Intrarea în Alba Iulia - The entrance to Alba Iulia…

Fig. 2, Sună tulnicele – The Sound of Alpenhorns, Tiberiu Olah, 5 ms.

The motif of the alpenhorn, which is heard several times throughout

the film, is based on successions of small descending sevenths and perfect
fifths, intervals which, together with the perfect descending octave, are found
in Transylvania and Bucovina as funeral signals, and which, in the past,
represented the balance between life and death, as a bridge to the afterlife and
perhaps a better continuation of earthly life. The dramatic sound of the
fragment comes from the dissonant pedal presented by brass wind instruments
doubled with violas.

266
 CNFIS-FDI-0537 Project
ART AND RESEARCH – CONTEMPORARY
CHALLENGES
Schindler's List is a 1993 historical war drama directed by Steven
Spielberg, based on the novel Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally, based on
a screenplay written by Steve Zaillian, and one of the most award-winning
films in the history of cinema with excellent reviews (Oscar, BAFTA, Golden
Globe, CFCA etc. for the best movie) and benefiting from a very good cast:
Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley …, the film received numerous
awards: 7 Oscars out of 12 nominations, including Best Original Score - John
Williams, Best Movie and Best Directing; 7 BAFTA Awards, including Best
Picture, Best Director, Best Music, Best Supporting Actor - Ralph Fiennes; 3
Golden Globe Awards, 6 CFCA Awards and many more (Cf. IMDb).
The music written by the composer John Williams, honoured with the
Oscar Award and the BAFTA Award, includes various themes and themes
appropriate to the different scenes in the film, such as Jewish Town,
Remembrances, Auschwitz – Birkenau, Stolen Memories, Give Me Your
Names, Yerushalaim Shel Zahav, but the main theme, used both as a generic
theme and throughout the film, has a tonal sound, with a universal romantic
scent.

Fig. 3, Schindler's List, John Williams, 15 ms.

267
 CNFIS-FDI-0537 Project
ART AND RESEARCH – CONTEMPORARY
CHALLENGES

Another romantic theme of the film, Stolen Memories, is also

remarkable. A few insertions of Jewish songs or Erika, the Nazi anthem, could
not be missed.

Conclusions
In the three mentioned films, the composers use the tempered sound
system, sometimes they use modes with less-than-five-sound musical scales
(e.g. The Sound of Alpenhorns), pentatonic scales (e.g. the second motif of
Ben Hur's theme is an anhemitonic pentatony), or heptachordic, tonal or modal
structures (ancient Dorian or Phrygian modes), diatonic or chromatic scales
(e.g. Phrygic chromatic mode with the third step ascended by a semitone, the
equivalent of the VI scale in Byzantine music, present in the theme of
friendship in Ben Hur). It is also worth mentioning the atonal sonority of the
rowing of the galley slaves theme, from Ben Hur.
We notice the whole palette of rhythmic hypostases. The three
musicians also use surprising modal harmonies (e.g. in the theme of Ben Hur),
medieval harmonies (the theme of Arrius's Party in Ben Hur), parallel fourth
performances (in Ben Hur: The March of the Romans) or parallel quintets (in
Ben Hur: the theme of The parade of chariots), renaissance type sound (in the
theme of Jesus from Ben Hur), baroque specific sounds (in Mihai Viteazul:
theme Dance at the royal court) and, predominantly, classical-romantic sounds
(e.g. the main theme from Schindler’s List or the generic theme The Loner
from Mihai Viteazul). Composers' predilection for emphasizing dramatic,
tense moments through the use of dissonant cluster-type overlays should be
noted.
We also have to mention the insertion of traditional themes inspired by
folklore (in Mihai Viteazul - Romanian themes) or in Schindler’s List (Jewish
themes). From a timbre point of view, composers prefer the traditional
orchestra, complemented by a blockflote or a guitar (in Schindler’s List) and
vocal moments (the processing of the Nicopolis theme from Mihai Viteazul,

268
 CNFIS-FDI-0537 Project
ART AND RESEARCH – CONTEMPORARY
CHALLENGES
the theme of Jesus in Ben Hur and the themes of Sacrifice, Night Action,
Golden Jerusalem from Schindler’s List).

References
1. Borden et al. 2010: Daniel Borden; Florian Duijsens; Thomas Gilbert, Adele Smith, The
film - directors, genres, masterpieces - from its origins to the Second World War, vol.
1, Bucharest, Litera Publishing House.
2. Caranfil 2008: Tudor Caranfil, Universal Dictionary of Feature Films, Third Edition
revised and added, Bucharest, Litera International Publishing House.
3. Căliman, 2000: Călin Căliman, History of Romanian film 1897-2000, Bucharest,
Romanian Cultural Foundation Publishing House.
4. Sava, 1999: Valerian Sava, The Critical History of Contemporary Romanian Film,
Bucharest, Meridiane Publishing House.

Webography
5. https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lista_celor_mai_vizionate_filme_românești accessed
10.11.2020
6. https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihai_Viteazul_(film) accessed 10.11.2020
The Top 10 Schools for Film and Television Scoring,
7. https://musicschoolcentral.com/top-10-schools-film-television-scoring/acc 10.11.2020
8. Top 25 Music Schools for Composing for Film and TV Rankedt.ly/W97f accessed
10.11.2020
9. John Williams Oscars, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_0g3tEcM0w accessed
10.11.2020
10. 44th Life Achievement Award Gala, 2016, t.ly/ExX4 accessed 10.11.2020
11. Internet Movie Database, https://www.imdb.com, accessed 10.11.2020
121. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1AKrk8cA8g accessed 08.11.2020
t.ly/jAvD accessed 08.11.2020
13. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMWzkYgfiUA accessed 08.11.2020
t.ly/fFzY accessed 08.11.2020
14. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMWzkYgfiUA accessed 08.11.2020

269