After scoring over fifty projects, what have you accomplished?
I think I’ve accomplished wedging in some alternative ways of scoring dramatic music in popular culture. Taking segments of avant-garde jazz and orchestral music and even rock music and finding ways to meld them into mass culture without diluting my personality.
By doing this have you established a certain type of sound or style when scoring films?
Yes. Certainly when I hear other musicians doing something the way that I do it, I recognize it in that way and say, “Oh, my God, that person’s doing me.” I can’t tell when I do me, but I can tell when other people do it.
One thing that surfaces in your sound a lot if your technique when writing for orchestral strings. You approach this in a very avant-garde fashion.
They’re not avant-garde anymore. The technique I was using is based on the Polish avant-garde from the late fifties and sixties, with Penderecki especially, who would use strings, clusters, semi-tones, and things like that. I found that technique created sonorities, swatches of color that don’t interfere with dialogue as opposed to letting melody only do the work. I took a special interest in studying Penderecki’s scores that were done in the sixties. Also I learned that type of orchestration from John Corigliano; he still does it brilliantly using clusters of strings. I don’t want to be too technical, but it’s an alternative to traditional string writing.
Another thing you love to use is a child’s solo voice or the children’s choir sound.
I use them only where I feel it’s necessary. I use it in “Interview with the Vampire” because of the central character of the child. I used it in “Alien 3” because of the words “Agnus Dei, Lamb of God”; I felt that everybody was a lamb going to slaughter. While I was composing it there was much more of a spiritual character in “Alien 3”, especially before it was finally edited. The group of prisoners were religious fanatics. It’s true that if people are in a place where they have nothing, in a prison in the middle of space somewhere, living a miserable existence, you have to find some sort of spiritual answer. The fact that this alien was going to come down and eat them all – I felt ‘Agnus Dei’ was a very appropriate thing for that.
I used this type of sound in “Pet Sematary” for a completely different reason. It was temped with music that had some children’s voices in it. Also, in “Pet Sematary” the essential character was a child who was unable to come to grips with death. Those three films had similar reasons for it; but to expand on this idea, many of my films include the human voice or some sort of vocal.
Where does religion or faith fit into film music?
The thing that religion and faith has done in music can be summed up in the Latin words magnum mysterium, or the great mystery. Somehow, knowing that music translates through every culture, you can write something that sounds yearning and people get it. You can write something that sounds cold and people will get it. So the lesser faiths of the world, a little tiny pygmy tribe in Africa or an Eskimo Kwakiutl village, when music is applied through theatrical means like a Mass or a ritual around the fire, it’s yearning to answer questions about the big mystery. There’s something about music that’s more eloquent than language and other arts; that it expresses a yearning to find out answers, but also being connected to the grand, great mystery.
What inspires you the most about film scoring?
Sometimes you create your own inspiration if the film is uninspired. When the film is inspiring, like “Butcher Boy”, you become terribly wrapped up with the characters. In a really great film like “Titus Andronicus”, you become wrapped up in the characters, almost like method acting and being part of the drama. That becomes a source of inspiration, but I think for a professional it’s less about inspiration than solving particular problems at each moment. I could look at a film and know the scene is not very good, so therefore I have to make it sound good. I have to fool the audience and make them think the acting or the direction is better, because that’s my job. At all times I have to enhance the image.
Let’s say you go and do a crossword puzzle. There’s a certain satisfaction for many people when filling out a crossword puzzle because you solve little particular problems and then it adds up to one big result of accomplishment and satisfaction. The same thing applies when I’m working on a project that’s less than inspirational; I’m still solving little problems that add up to a very big satisfying thing. The final result can be very inspiring.