ABSTRACT
Three American composers exerted a profound influence on film music from the mid-1930s through the early-1960s. Although their individual styles differ from one another, they shared many similarities: each won the Pulitzer Prize in music, studied with Nadia Boulanger, made his career primarily away from Hollywood, and considered the concert hall his compositional focus. None was interested in writing for the cinema full time, and the total number of film scores composed by these individuals is relatively few. Yet their impact upon cinema music was significant. Fundamentally, all three shared a similar philosophy about film music— that one should respect the medium and not write down to it. Individually and collectively, they raised the standards of film scoring and helped to establish bench marks of excellence for their colleagues, beginning when the cinema with synchronous sound was less than a decade old. Most of their important contributions were made prior to 1950. They were Virgil Thomson (1896–1989), Aaron Copland (1900–1990), and Gail Kubik (1914–1984). Thomson was the first of the group to compose film music and his work encouraged Copland, who emerged as the most influential member of the triumvirate. Their success in the idiom—first in New York, then in Hollywood—inspired the youngest of the group, Kubik, whose earlier functional music experience was in radio.
