ABSTRACT
The traditional use of music in the movies was that it was a heavily orchestrated background score that accompanied the action on the screen. Different musical themes were used for different characters, and depending upon the director’s vision and the composer’s talent, the music could subtly underline unspoken thoughts, predict actions that would develop a few seconds or a few minutes later, bring a sense of place and time to a film, or simply directly reinforce the action. The composers were generally well-trained musicians. In the Hollywood studio system that prevailed from the inception of “talkies” in 1927 through the 1950s, another team of skilled musical orchestrators, also known as arrangers, would copy the instrumental parts from fairly extensive sketches made by the composer.
