Category: Music

Boris Claudio Schifrin, was known as Lalo, the standard Argentinian diminutive of Claudio. He was noted for composing film music that incorporated jazz and Latin American musical elements. He also worked as a pianist, arranger and conductor. His themes included: T.H.E. Cat (1966), Mission: Impossible (1966), Mannix (1967), Cool Hand Luke (1967), Bullitt (1968), Dirty Harry (1971), THX 1138 (1971), Charlie Varrick (|1973), Magnum Force (1973), Enter the Dragon (1973), The Four Musketeers (1974), The Enforcer (1976), Voyage of the Damned (1976), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Telefon (1977), The Amityville Horror (1979) Sudden Impact (1983), The Dead Pool (1988), Rush Hour (1998), Rush Hour 2 (2001) and Rush Hour 3 (2007). He composed the Paramount Pictures fanfare used from 1976 to 2004.

Schifrin collected awards: Four Emmies for television work; five Grammies for recorded music; six Oscar nominations for Best Original Score and one nomination for Best Original Song. As compensation for never winning, in 2019 he received an Honorary Academy Award.

Schifrin was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. When he immigrated to the United States, he legally changed his first name to Lalo. His Jewish father, Luis, was a violinist for the Buenos Aires Philharmonic Orchestra. His Catholic mother, exposing him early to both kinds of worship. At the age of six, Schifrin began a six-year course of study on piano with Enrique Barenboim (1912 – 1998). After that he began studying piano with the Greek-Russian expatriate Andrea Karalin (? – 1961), the onetime head of the Kiev Conservatory. He also studied harmony with Argentinian composer Juan Carlos Paz (1897 – 1972). During this time, Schifrin also became interested in jazz.

Schifrin studied sociology and law at the University of Buenos Aires, but became increasingly interested in music. In 1952, he studied at the Conservatoire de Paris under composer Olivier Messiaen (1908 – 1992) and composer and mucicologist Charles Koechlin (1867 – 1950). His musical interests also included African drumming and more jazz. In 1955 Schifrin played piano with composer and bandoneon player Ástor Piazzolla (1921 – 1992). A bandoeon is a type of concertina = a free reed musical instrument, popular in Argentina and Uruguay, used in tango ensembles.

Schifrin returned to Argentina in in 1956. He formed a jazz big band with 16 players that became part of a popular weekly variety show on Buenos Aires TV. He also began accepting film, television and radio assignments. That year he met Dizzy Gillespie (1917 – 1993). By 1958 Schifrin had completed an extended work, Gillespiana, for Gillespie’s big band. It was recorded in 1960.

Schifrin married Sylvia Schon (? – ?) in Buenos Aires in 1958; they had two children: a daughter Frances (1959 – ) and a son William (1960 – ). At some date, for me unknown, the marriage ended in divorce.

While in New York City in 1960, Schifrin again met Gillespie, who had transitioned from big band to quintet, for financial reasons. Schifrin filled the quintet’s vacant piano position, and moved to New York City. Schifrin wrote The New Continent, a second extended composition for Gillespie. This was recorded in 1962. In 1963, Schifrin recorded another album, Buenos Aires Blues, with Duke Ellington’s alto saxophonist, Johnny Hodges (1907 – 1970). Schifrin wrote two compositions for the album: the title track, B. A. Blues, and Dreary Blues.

In 1963, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), which had Schifrin under contract, offered the composer his first Hollywood film assignment with the African adventure Rhino! (1964), directed by the Jewish Hungarian playwright Ivan Tors (1916 – 1983). Schifrin moved to Los Angeles to work on this. In 1966, Schifrin began working on one of his most recognizable compositions, the theme music for the Mission: Impossible television series (1966 – 1973). One distinctive feature is its 5/4 time signature. This mimics the dash dash, dot dot Morse code, signalling the letters M and I. In 1967, Schifrin’s produced a theme for Mannix, a private detective TV show shown from 1967 – 1975. This composition involved a jazz waltz. At about the same time, Schifrin’s 6/4 Tar Sequence from Cool Hand Luke became the theme for the Eyewitness News broadcasts on New York station WABC-TV and other ABC affiliates, as well as Nine News in Australia.

In 1968, Schifrin began association with actor Clint Eastwood (1930 – ) and director Don Siegel (1912 – 1991). This initially resulted in a score for Coogan’s Bluff. Similar scores were developed for Bullitt and Dirty Harry. Schifrin became a naturalized US citizen in 1969.

In 1971, Schifrin married Donna Cockrell, that resulted in a son, Ryan, being born in 1973. Donna managed his business and record label.

In 1973, Schifrin incorporated funk and traditional film score elements into soundtrack for the Bruce Lee film Enter the Dragon. The score was composed by sampling sounds from China, Korea and Japan. The soundtrack has sold more than 500 000 copies. Schifrin’s working score for The Exorcist (1973) was rejected by the film’s director, William Friedkin (1935 – 2023). Schifrin had written six minutes of music for the initial film trailer, but audiences were reportedly frightened by it. Allegedly, Warner Brothers executives told Friedkin to instruct Schifrin to tone it down with softer music, but this message did not reach the composer. Schifrin said that working on the film was one of the most unpleasant experiences in his life. In the end, Jack Nitzsche (1937 – 2000) produced the film score, while Schifrin reused the compositions in other projects. In 1976, Schifrin released a single called Jaws, a version of the John Williams theme from the Universal Pictures film directed by Stephen Spielberg, Jaws (1975), on CTI = Creed Taylor Incorporated records.

Shifrin also composed the 1976 fanfare for Paramount Pictures, mainly used for their home video label, but adapted for their television division in 1987, until it was renamed CBS Paramount Television in 2006.

In 1981 he wrote the music for the slapstick comedy film Caveman. From 1982 to 1995, he collaborated with composer Gary Stockdale (1952 – ) on many films including: Sam Peckinpah’s (1925 – 1984) final film The Osterman Weekend (1983), Michael Pressman’s (1950 – ) Doctor Detroit (1983) , Eastwood’s Sudden Impact (the Fourth Dirty Harry film), the Harley Cokeliss (1948 – ) directed science fiction/ action thriller Black Moon Rising (1986), with a screenplay written by John Carpenter (1948 – ).

In the 1990s, Schifrin composed music for Australian director Richard Franklin’s (1945 – ) action thriller F/X2 (1991), and Two Billion Hearts (Portuguese: Todos os Corações do Mundo), the official documentary film of the 1994 FIFA World Cup held in the United States, directed by Murilo Salles (1950 – ). From 1990–2025 Schifrin wrote many of the arrangements for The Three Tenors = Italian Luciano Pavarotti (1935 – 2007) and Spaniards Plácido Domingo (1941 – ) and José Carreras (1946 – ). Their concerts began with their first concert in Rome in 1990 on the eve of the FIFA World Cup final won by West Germany, for the third time. They beat defending champions Argentina 1–0 at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome. In Tango (1998) Schifirin returned to tango music, with which he had grown familiar while working as Piazzolla’s pianist in the mid-1950s. He brought traditional tango songs to the film, as well as introducing compositions of his own, where tango is fused with jazz.

Schifrin has been widely sampled in hip-hop and trip-hop songs including Helta(h) Skeltah, a Brooklyn, New York duo with Jahmal “Rock” Bush (1973 – ) and Sean “Ruck” Price (1972 – 2015) and their track Prowl on their Nocturnal (1996) album is one example. The Bristol, England band Portishead comprises Beth Gibbons (1965 – , vocals), Geoff Barrow (1971 – , multiple instruments, production), Adrian Utley (1957 – , guitar), along with audio engineer Dave McDonald (? – ?). Their track Sour Times (1994) is a second example. Both songs sample Schifrin’s Danube Incident, from the More Mission Impossible (1997) album.

In 2003, Qaboos bin Said commissioned Schifrin to compose Symphonic Impressions of Oman. In 2004, he wrote the main theme for Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, a stealth game published by Ubisoft.

In2007, Schifrin presented a concert of film music for the Festival du Film Jules Verne Aventures = Festival Jules Verne, at Europe’s biggest movie theater = Le Grand Rex theatre in Paris. This resulted in a CD = Lalo Schifrin: Le Concert à Paris. In 2010, a fictionalized account of Lalo Schifrin’s creation of the Theme from Mission: Impossible was featured in a Lipton Tea commercial.

After Rod Schejtman (ca. 1985 – ) won the 2024 Vienna WorldVision Composers Contest. Schifrin invited him to jointly compose a symphony dedicated to Argentina. They composed a 35-minute symphony in three movements, subtitled Long Live Freedom = Viva la Libertad. This tribute to Argentina drew inspiration from the nation’s history since democracy re-emerged in 1983, following the National Reorganization Process, a neo-fascist military dictatorship that began in 1976. The symphony fused cinematic and classical elements, and premiered at the Teatro Colón, in Buenos Aires on 2025-04-05. American acoustician Leo Beranek (1914 – 2016) regards this as the best acoustic space for opera and the second best for concerts, in the world.

In 2008 Schifrin wrote an autobiography, Mission Impossible: My Life in Music. He said: In music, the choices are infinite. The possibilities of sound combinations with the acoustic instruments of a symphony orchestra, a jazz band or a chamber ensemble have not yet been exhausted. What has been done in the field of electronic music so far has not even scratched the surface of a vast continent to be explored. Schifrin died from pneumonia complications in Los Angeles, at the age of 93, in 2025.

Notes:

Because of Schifrin’s use of Morse code in Mission Impossible, I thought I would add some notes about signalling codes. I have attempted to learn two of them in my life: Semaphore and Morse. I am not competent at either.

To communicate in semaphore, flags are not required but they make the alphabet’s characters (letters and numbers) clearer. At sea, Oscar (O) = red and yellow flags, are used. Its main use alone refers to man overboard. On land, Papa (P) = white and blue flags, are standard. This flag is commonly known as the Blue Peter. On a ship it means that the ship is about to sail. These flags are shown below.

Swallows and Amazons is a series of 12 children’s adventure novels published between 1930 and 1947, written by Arthur Ransome (1884 – 1967). These are my favourite children’s books. In the series, characters often use flag semaphore to exchange messages. Sometimes, these appear as concealed messages in drawings, often included in the books. The semaphore alphabet is included, as an illustration, in both Winter Holiday (1933) and Secret Water (1939).

Morse Code

As shown above, other languages supplement Morse code with additional letters: ·-·- is used for Ä or Æ, —· for Ö or Ø, and ·–·- for Å, where applicable in German, Swedish, Finnish, Danish and Norwegian.

Radio amateurs refer to Morse code as CW = continuous wave, in which a radio signal sounds (key pressed) or is disrupted (key released) according to a set of four rules. These are: 1) A dash is equal to three dots. 2) The space between the signals forming the same letter is equal to one dot. 3) The space between two letters is equal to three dots. 4) The space between two words is equal to seven dots.

In the early 1980s, I coded a Morse Code simulator in Pascal. It followed the above rules. It could read any text and convert it into a sound at a pitch specified by the user. Despite this, I did not manage to pass the Morse code test for my radio amateur certificate in the mid-1980s.

The Peace Symbol

A purple on white peace symbol, involving a super-imposition of the flag semaphore for the characters N and D = nuclear disarmament, was designed by conscientious objector artist/ designer Gerald Holtom (1914–1985), who presented it to Direct Action Committee on 1958-02-21. It was first used for a 80 km march from Trafalgar Square, in London, to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, Aldermaston, Berkshire on 1958-04.04. Holtom’s design was adapted by Eric Austen (1922–1999) to create ceramic lapel badges. The original design is in the Peace Museum in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England.

One final comment: I have an interest in Dizzy Gillespie, because we both are/ were members of the Baha’i Faith.

I have mentioned Johnny Dankworth and his jazz-based theme for The Avengers, before, in passing. It was the first theme I had heard for the series, and it impressed me. Yes, this theme inspired me to write this weblog series, a place where I could provide biographical information about film composers that avoided the hyperbole so often found in biographical articles.

The other reason for this series, is that I have a vague impression of a theme for a nature/ science television series on CTV = Canadian Television, the alternative to the CBC = Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. This theme, with its saxophones, resonates in my mind, but I am still unable to identify it. Visually, the theme featured what I can only refer to as a small, but fake, island. If anyone knows what it is, please advise. Note: The series is not CBC’s The Nature of Things, with David Suzuki, which started 1960-11-06.

Johnny Dankworth was described as part of a musical family. I looked at some data showing his ancestry. I could find nothing about music in it. They lived in England, but his father originated in Hanover, and was a sales manager. His mother was from Berlin, and was a housewife, a common occupation for the time period, in middle-class families. He was given violin and piano lessons. He settled on the clarinet at age 16, after hearing a record of the American Jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman (1909 – 1986) with his Quartet. He made his first recording in 1944 playing the clarinet on Good Old Wagon Blues by Freddie Mirfield (1908 – 1974) and his Garbage Men. Soon afterwards, inspired by Charlie Parker (1920 – 1955), Dankworth learned to play the alto saxophone after hearing Charlie Parker’s Cherokee (1943) on the BBC’s Radio Rhythm Club. In 1945-05, at 17, he led a quartet that won the North-West London Melody Maker contest. In 1949, he played alongside Parker at the Paris Jazz Festival.

His mother took a mature view: If her son was going to play jazz for a living, he might as well learn in a way that would prepare him for any kind of music. As a result, Dankworth was one of the few British jazz players of his generation to have had a formal musical education. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music, in London, where his interest in jazz was discouraged. (What does what one expect schools to do? They are poorly designed to encourage subversive expression, musical or otherwise. In America, Jazz is learned on the street, if not in a local speak easy, when they existed, or equivalent humble locations, commonly referred to as bars. Dankworth’s compulsory military service involved playing the alto sax and clarinet for the RAF Music Services.

In 1950, Dankworth formed an ensemble, the Dankworth Seven. Apart from himself on the alto sax, it included Jimmy Deuchar (1930 – 1993), a Scottish trumpeter, Eddie Harvey (1925 – 2012), an English trombonist and pianist, Don Rendell (1926 – 2015) an English tenor saxophonist, Bill Le Sage (1927 – 2001) an English pianist and vibraphonist, Eric Dawson (? – ?), a bassist and Tony Kinsey (1927 – 2025), an English jazz drummer. Guyanese jazz singer and percussionist Frank Holder (1925 – 2017) also worked with this ensemble, as did Cleo Laine (1927 – 2025) who was a jazz/ scatt singer, known for her vocal range.

Dankworth and Laine married in 1958, producing a son Alec (1960 – ), a jazz bassist and composer, and a daughter Jacqui (1963 – ), a jazz singer and sometime actress.

In his 1998 autobiography, Jazz in Revolution, Dankworth argued that “It [jazz] is not governed by the senseless world of current style that pervades and pollutes popular music … nor is it part of an established hierarchy, so that it is cloistered and protected.”

Dankworth devoted much of his career to putting jazz and classical music on the same stage. He claimed that symphonies were the great novels of western music, while jazz was journalism; one embraced the spirit of an era, while the other caught the intensity of the moment. He admired the uniqueness of jazz, and relished improvisation. Dankworth concluded his book with: “Jazz today can be spiritual, cerebral, motivating or moving. It can evoke tension, relaxation, laughter, tears. Surely jazz is truly the music of the era, combining stature, dignity and emotion with the highest musical ideals.

In 1958, the film director Karel Reisz hired Dankworth to write his first film score for We Are the Lambeth Boys (1958). This was followed by jazz scores for The Criminal (1960), Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), The Servant (1963), Darling (1965), Return from the Ashes (1965), Morgan (1966), Modesty Blaise (1966), Fathom (1967) and Accident (1967).

Television and radio themes and incidental music included: The Voodoo Factor (1959), Survival (1961), The Avengers (1961), Rediffusion London startup theme and callsign (1964), “Beefeaters” (1964 theme for the ITV series Search for a Star), Tomorrow’s World (1965), Telford’s Change (1979), Today (BBC Radio 4, 1983), Mitch (1984), No Strings (1989), Money for Nothing (1983 by Mike Ockrent), ZingZillas (2010, posthumous appearance).

Dankworth also composed for the theatre: a musical life of George Bernard Shaw = Boots with Strawberry Jam (1968) with American jazz trombonist Benny Green (1923 – 1977). In the 1970s, the musical Colette, worked as a vehicle for Laine. The London Philharmonic Society commissioned him to write Improvisations for Jazz Band and Symphony Orchestra, and the National Theatre requested a score for its production of Christopher Marlowe’s (1564 – 1593) Edward II (1968 version, originally created 1592). George Etherege (c. 1636 – 1692) wrote the Restoration comedy, The Man of Mode (1676). Dankworth provided music for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 1971 revival.

In 1985 Dankworth founded the London Symphony Orchestra’s pops programme, and became its musical director. He toured and conducted such programmes with the world’s leading orchestras, and he also served as principal guest pops conductor for the San Francisco Symphony, and pops conductor for the Rochester Philharmonic.

Dankworth provided services for the British visits of: American singer and jazz pianist Nat King Cole (1919 – 1965), American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald (1917 – 1996), Ukrainian-American singer Sophie Tucker (1886 – 1966) and Canadian pianist Oscar Peterson (1925 – 2007).

Sometimes, it is difficult to separate Dankworth acting alone and Dankworth cooperated with Laine. The 1969 Wavendon Allmusic Plan, was such a joint project. It combined a studio and concert setting at their house, The Stables, near Milton Keynes, with performances and seminars devoted to Allmusic, Dankworth’s preferred term for world music. In 1984, Dankworth wrote music for Lady in Waiting for the Houston Ballet. The ballet is set in the 1940s when a woman awaits the return of her husband from war. While she passes the time, she sleeps and dreams. Her dream is the story of how women through the ages have had to wait for their men to return from wars. Cleo Laine was the lead vocalist, with the dancers providing vocal backup.

In 2007, as part of the celebrations for their 80th birthdays, Laine and Dankworth performed Shakespeare and All: That Jazz programme, for the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall. Later that year, the pair released a retrospective album on 4 CDs with 73 tracks: I Hear Music, Cleo Laine and John Dankworth: a Celebration of Their Life & Work.

Notes:

I often read official records, obituaries and other sources to gain an understanding of the lives of people. I often copy biographical information, then paste relevant portions into a post, before editing. This may explain why I currently have 169 draft weblog posts, many biographical, in addition to 36 that are scheduled, in contrast to the 657 published so far, excluding 52 in the keywords.mclellan.no blog and 1 (a non-fiction post) in fiction.mclellan.no.

Working on this post, I wondered who else I knew who was born in 1927. I like to have age references. On Monday, 2016-06-15 I had begun the day investigating some British Columbia Museum genealogy records, along with death announcements. Only one name appeared.

One of my closest childhood friends was Grant Weldon Henderson (1947 – 2020). His brother James Eldon Henderson (1927 – 2022), was the one person I knew who born in 1927. The Hendersons lived three houses away from my childhood house. Grant had lost his father, Roy Grant Henderson (1890 – 1960), when he was 13 years old. From these records I learned that Grant was not a random given name, but the surname of my friend’s paternal grandmother, and his father’s mother.

My opinion is that Grant never recovered from the loss of his father. His older half brother, Jim had lost his mother, born Vera Zelda Cooper (1891 – 1944) who had died at the age of 53, when Jim was 14 years old. Jim’s maternal grandmother, born Margaret Galbraith (1866 – 1895) had died much younger, at the age of 29. Her husband, Jim’s maternal grandfather, Hugh Cooper (1840 – 1895) died six weeks later, at the age of 54. This meant that Vera was orphaned at the age of 4, as was her brother, Eldon, at the age of 1 year and 3 months. Their uncle = mother’s brother, James Lindsay Galbraith (1867 – 1951) become Guardian for the children. Life does not come with guarantees. The death announcement in New Westminster’s The Columbian described Margaret with two adjectives, faithful wife and devoted mother. How does the writer know? I attribute it to Victorian presumption. Yes, I want to avoid conjectured adjectives in my own writing. Confession: I had typed this second adjective in my notes as demoted, which probably expresses my opinion of a socially oppressive Victorian society. Further comment: I avoid titles such as king/ queen, duke/ duchess, earl/ countess, baron/ baroness, or anything else earned or unearned. I remain a socialist. People should be adjudicated on the basis of their work/ deeds/ efforts, not inherited or bestowed titles.

Jim married Ruby Jane Butler (1930 – 2012) in 1952.

Diligence. Unfortunately, I can no longer describe myself as a diligent worker. I was working on this upcoming weblog post, in a prone position when, somehow, I managed to fall asleep. My excuse was that it was after dinner. I awakened when a pair of F-35 Lightning II warplanes flew overhead, undoubtedly protecting Norway from Russian transgressions. Their flying over our house is a relatively common occurrence, with their main base located about 100 km away. These planes are loud, so overhead should be interpreted figuratively. They could have been up to several kilometers away.

I often find Canadians making apologies for stealing indiginous land. Here is today’s attempt. New Westminster is on the unceded and unsurrendered land of the Qayqayt, a Coast Salish, Halkomelem speaking people, often referred to as part of the Musqueum community. It is located on the west bank of the Fraser River. While Fort Langley was the capital of the Colony of British Columbia betweeen 1858 and 1859, New Westminster, replaced it colonial capital of British Columbia, starting in 1859, until it amalgamated with the Colony of Vancouver Island in 1866, after which, Victoria became the capital. British Columbia became a Province of Canada in 1871.

When I look up people I have known, their origins often surprise me. A large number of people I regarded as local, were born outside of British Columbia. If they were born in Britain, especially England, one can sometimes hear a different accent, but not always. If they were born in Ontario, the Maritime provinces or in the United States, it is almost impossible to hear any differences. For example, the spouses of my parents’ respective best friends were American. That said, my only grandchild is also an American citizen.

The music I first remember from the Avengers, was composed by Johnny Dankworth (1927 – 2010). He will be discussed in a post next week. This week, all I will say is that his music was jazz influenced, and seemed to suit the personality of Honor Blackman (1925 – 1920), as Cathy Gale, the first woman assistant, of five notables in the series, if one includes The New Avengers and The Avengers (1998) film. The others being: Diana Rigg (1938 – 2020) as Emma Peel, Linda Thorson (1947 – ) as Tara King, Joanne Lumley (1946 – ) as Purdey in the New Avengers, and Uma Thurman (1970 -) as Emma Peel, in the film. Music for that film was provided by Joel McNeely (1959 – ), who will not be discussed further in this series, but who will be the subject of another weblog post in the future. Compared to Dankworth, Johnson’s compositions were punchier. His first theme begins with percussion as a champagne bottle held by Steed is uncorked by a bullet shot from Emma Peel’s pistol, before he fills two glasses with drink. Then it switches to brass, followed by a string arrangement. We are then introduced to John Steed, a secret agent for The Ministry. No equivalent introduction is made for Emma Peel. Towards the theme’s end, Steed’s umbrella reveals a hidden steel blade that he uses to pluck a rose from a vase that Mrs Peel places in his buttonhole.

This series of posts was inspired by Laurie Johnson, a composer of some of the most distinctive television themes of all time, at least from my perspective.

One of the most dramatic themes, accompanied by stylish visuals, was for The Avengers, a series combining espionage with fantasy. It was revamped in 1965 for its fourth season. This coincided with the series’ sale to US television, a change to shooting from video to film, and the arrival of Diana Rigg as Emma Peel to assist Patrick Macnee as John Steed.

This theme was not original, it was based on a previous Johnson composition, The Shake, influenced by a mid-1960s dance craze. Indeed, I can understand critics who maintain that the theme was The Shake, slightly repackaged in terms of timing. Johnson wrote most of the incidental music for The Avengers from 1965 until 1969. After Rigg left and Linda Thorson joined as Tara King for the last iteration, he rearranged the title theme, with more frenetic percussion and a trumpet counter-melody.

Later, for the sequel The New Avengers (1976-77) – with Macnee as Steed, Gareth Hunt (1942 – 2007) as Mike Gambit, and Joanna Lumley as Purdey – Johnson came up with a military-style melody to reflect the red, white and blue title graphics.

Johnson began composing for the screen after success as a conductor for stage productions. Among his early television themes were music for the crime series No Hiding Place (1959-67), the espionage drama Top Secret (1961-62), as well as a theme for Animal Magic (1962-84), titled Las Vegas, that captured the whimsical tone of the long-running children’s programme presented by Johnny Morris (1916 – 1999). Johnson also composed The Trendsetters, the Whicker’s World theme used between 1965 and 1968.

Then came music for This Is Your Life after the celebrity life show switched to ITV from the BBC in 1969. Titled Gala Performance and later rearranged by Carl Davis and others, it remained even after the programme’s return to the BBC (1994-2003).

In 1964 Johnson had written original music for the Dr Strangelove, a film with Peter Sellers (1925 – 1980), a black comedy directed by Stanley Kubrick (1928 – 1999), one of many movies that he worked on as a composer. The film showcased his musical composing and arranging talents. These involved tension, irony and soothing comfort in the orchestral performance of Try a Little Tenderness.

Johnson was born in London, educated at Harrow and studied at the Royal College of Music, where one of his tutors was Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872 – 1958) and where he started composing his first published orchestral works.

Johnson played French Horn with the Coldstream Guards, the oldest continuously serving regular regiment in the British Army, dating back to 1660. From 1944 to 1948. He then became a composer and arranger for the Guards.

Johnson’s first film music productions included: The Good Companions (1957), The Moonraker (1958), No Trees in the Street (1959) and Tiger Bay (1959). Over the following decade his music was heard in Bitter Harvest (1963), The Beauty Jungle (1964), First Men in the Moon/East of Sudan (1964), the comedy You Must Be Joking! (1965) as well as Hot Millions (1968).

In a different vein he employed the sounds of trumpets, English horns and woodwind in The Belstone Fox (1973) and scored the Hammer horror film Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (1974).

Television producers increasingly saw Johnson as a go-to composer. His repertoire was wide, ranging from the original World in Action theme (1963-65) and the children’s drama Freewheelers (1968-73) to the sitcom Shirley’s World (1971), with Shirley MacLaine (1934 – ), and Jason King (1971-72). This last series is best described as a fictional biography of a spy writer such as Ian Flemming, with a leading actor who does not know either his real name or even his birthdate, but is estimated to be Peter Wyngarde (1927 – 2018).

Johnson eventually went into partnership with the Avengers producers Brian Clemens (1931 – 2015) and Albert Fennell (1920 – 1988) to form Mark 1 Productions and make The New Avengers. They followed it with a theme for The Professionals (1977-83), with Martin Shaw (1945 – ) and Lewis Collins (1946 – 2013). This theme expresses vitality and excitement. Johnson rearranged it for the sequel, CI5: The New Professionals (1999).

With Fennell and the director John Hough (1941 – ), Johnson also formed Gainsborough Pictures, named after a defunct British film studio, to make feature-length TV adaptations of Barbara Cartland (1901 – 2000) novels such as A Hazard of Hearts (1987), A Ghost in Monte Carlo (1990) and Duel of Hearts (1991).

While Johnson preferred film to theatre, he had some stage musical success writing Lock Up Your Daughters (Mermaid theatre, 1959) with lyrics by Lionel Bart (1930 – 1999), and The Four Musketeers (Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, 1967-68) with Herbert Kretzmer (1925 – 2020).

When I read that Alex North was born Isadore Soifer, I was puzzled. Why would an American composer adopt a totally different name? North/ Soifer was born in Chester, Pennsylvania. His parents, Jesse and Beila (Bessie) were Jewish and Russian/ Ukrainian, who had emigrated to USA, around 1906. His father was originally from Bila Tserkva (about 80 km south of Kyiv). His mother was from Odessa, Vancouver’s sister city. This is an important fact for me. In Chester, his mother ran a small grocery store. His father worked as a blacksmith and mechanic. In 1915 his father died of appendicitis. In an unforgiving USA, this left the family poor. In the late 1920s, Isadore’s older brother Jacob began writing articles for radical labor publications. To shield his family from political peril, Jacob adopted the pseudonym Joseph North. Soon after, others in the family followed with, Isadore Soifer becoming Alex North.

Readers of my blog will realize that my posts broadly fall into the category of non-fiction. At times I have tried, but I cannot write fiction. It is an alien world. For me, a composer is equivalent to a musical novelist. Soifer/ North (as he will be referred to from now on) is best known for his film scores, works of fiction designed to enhance movies. These works include A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), with its jazz-based film score, Viva Zapata! (1952), Spartacus (1960), Cleopatra (1963) and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). He received an Honorary Academy Award in 1986, the first for a composer.

My favourite Soifer/ North work is Unchained Melody, originally with lyrics by Hy Zaret = Hyman Harry Zaritsky (1907 –2007) working in Tin Pan Alley, a site noted for its music publishers and songwriters on West 28th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in the Manhattan, NYC flower district. Tin Pan Alley dominated American popular music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Unchained Melody was used in Unchained (1955) a prison film. Unchained Melody became one of the most recorded songs of the 20th century, with over 1 500 recordings made by more than 670 musicians, in multiple languages. I periodically listen to it, in one or more of its variants.

As a former prison teacher, I am well aware of the book upon which Unchained is based, Prisoners are People (1952) by Kenyon Judson Scudder (1888 [some sources claim 1890] – 1977). He also wrote The Twenty Billion Dollar Challenge, National Program for Delinquency Prevention (1961). Scudder was the first superintendent of the first American open prison, The California Institution for Men, in Chino, California, near Los Angeles, from 1941 – 1955. Note: Chino is the Spanish word for Chinese, which is also the origin of the type of trousers I wear on a daily basis.

Soifer/ North began studying the piano early in life. Nine years old, he switched to William Hatton Green (1864 – ?) as teacher, who grounded him in Theodor Leschetizky’s (1830 – 1915) method of piano pedagogy over a three year period of study. Leschetizky’s main legacy involved teaching great pianists. His most notable compositions are pedagogical piano pieces, that exploit the piano’s technical capabilities.

Soifer/ North befriended Samuel Barber (1910 – 1981) who was also a student in Green’s studio. At the age of 12 Soifer/ North began more rigorous music studies at the Settlement Music School (SMS), founded in 1908 by Jeannette Selig Frank and Blanche Wolf Kohn, where he studied piano for four years under the Australian/ American George Frederick Boyle (1886 – 1948). He also participated in a masterclass with pianist and composer Leopold Godowsky (1870 – 1939) during his time at SMS.

While a student at Chester High School (CHS), Soifer/ North worked as a telegraph operator to help pay for music studies, and assist the family’s finances. He graduated from CHS in 1927, and then studied at the Curtis Institute of Music in 1928-1929. With Boyle’s recommendation he transferred to the Juilliard School, after successfully auditioning for the German/ Polish – American conductor, Frank Damrosch (1859 – 1937) in 1929. He attended Juilliard on a four year full scholarship, but only completed three years of study. He felt intimidated by the senior piano recital, leading him to drop out in 1932 without completing his degree. At Juilliard he remained a piano student of Boyle, and also studied music composition and theory with Dutch American composer, conductor and violinist Bernard Wagenaar (1894 – 1971). He spent two years, between 1933 and 1935, studying composition at the Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory in Russia, while working as a telegraph operator. Soifer/ North later studied privately for a year in Mexico with composer Silvestre Revueltas (1899 – 1940) in the late 1930s; pursuing his passion for Mexican music.

Interjection: At times when researching this post, I have come across recommendations to read Under the Volcano (1947) by alcoholic novelist Malcolm Lowry’s (1909 – 1957), to gain an understanding of the appeal of Mexico. I am not in total agreement with that suggestioon, although the Mexican Day of the Dead is a feature. Día de Muertos is one of the country’s most important and iconic cultural holidays. It is celebrated the day after my birthday, Halloween, on 11-01 and 02, with a focus on honouring the spirits of deceased loved ones. Instead, I regard the novel as an analysis of alcoholism, with limited insights into Mexico. Lowry lived in Vancouver from 1938 to 1955, with some breaks. He most famously lived in a squatter’s shack on a beach near Dollarton, in North Vancouver, until it was destroyed by fire in 1944. Margerie Bonner (1905 – 1988), Lowry’s second wife, rescued the unfinished novel from the fire, but all of Lowry’s other works in progress were lost.

In 1932 Soifer/ North entered into a relationship with Jewish American dancer and choreographer Anna Sokolow (1910 – 2000). She had a profound impact in orienting his career towards music composition. He worked as the rehearsal pianist for her dance group, and through her encouragement and persuasion, he began composing music for her dancers. This set him on the path of a career as a composer. His first major composition was the Anti-War Trilogy (later part of the Anti-War Series) which he composed for Sokolow’s dance troupe.

In the Second World War, Soifer/ North served as a captain in the U.S. Army Special Services division from 1942 to 1946. There, he was responsible for self-entertainment programs in mental hospitals. He also composed music for more than twenty-six documentary films for the Office of War Information. While in the service, he wrote the score for the documentary short, A Better Tomorrow (1945) directed by was the Czech-American photographer, film director, cinematographer and film editor, Alexander Siegfried George Hackenschmied = Alexander Hammid (1907 – 2004).

Soifer/ North managed to integrate his modernism into typical film music leitmotif structure, rich with themes. One of these became the famous song Unchained Melody. Nominated for fifteen Oscars but unsuccessful each time, Soifer/ North is the first of only four film composers to receive the Lifetime Achievement Academy Award, the others being Italian composer, orchestrator, conductor, trumpeter and pianist Ennio Morricone (1928 – 2020), Argentine/ American pianist, composer, arranger and conductor Boris Claudio (Lalo) Schifrin (1932 – 2025) and Quincy Delight Jones Jr. (1933 – 2024) an American record producer, composer, arranger, record executive, conductor, trumpeter, film/ television producer, and bandleader. Soifer/ North’s frequent collaborator as orchestrator was the avant-garde Canadian/ American composer Henry Brant (1913 – 2008).

Soifer/ North’s best-known film scores include: A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman, Viva Zapata!, The Rainmaker, Spartacus, The Misfits, Cleopatra, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Dragonslayer and Under the Volcano. His music for The Wonderful Country makes use of Mexican and American motifs.

His commissioned score for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is notorious for having been discarded by director Stanley Kubrick (1928 – 1999) late in the production process. Although Soifer/ North subsequently incorporated motifs from the rejected score for The Shoes of the Fisherman, Shanks and Dragonslayer, the score itself remained unheard until the American composer Jerry Goldsmith (1929 – 2004) re-recorded it for the American record label, Varèse Sarabande, in 1993. In 2007, Intrada Records released the 1968 recording sessions on CD from North’s personal archives.

Soifer/ North was also commissioned to write a jazz score for Nero Wolfe, a 1959 CBS-TV series based on Rex Stout’s (1986 – 1975) Nero Wolfe characters, with Canadian actor William Shatner (1931 – ) as Archie Goodwin and Kurt Kasznar = Kurt Kasznar (born Kurt Servischer; 1913 – 1979) as Nero Wolfe. A pilot and two or three episodes were filmed, but the designated time slot was, in the end, given to another series. Soifer/ North’s unheard score for Nero Wolfe and six recorded tracks on digital audio tape are in the UCLA Music Library Special Collections. He wrote the music for various other TV shows, such as the anthologies Climax! and Playhouse 90.

Though Soifer/ North is best known for his work in Hollywood, he spent years in New York writing music for the stage; he composed the score for the original Broadway production of Death of a Salesman. It was in New York that he met Elia Kazan (1909 – 2003), director of Salesman, who brought him to Hollywood in the 1950s. Soifer/ North stopped working with Kazan after Kazan’s 1952 testimony to the House Un-American Activities Committee. In the 1950s Soifer/ North was unable to work in Hollywood for several years because of suspected communist affiliations.

Soifer/ North was one of several composers who merged the sound of contemporary concert music into film, in part marked by an increased use of dissonance and complex rhythms. In contrast, some commentators note there is a lyrical quality to much of his work. They claim this may be connected to the influence of Aaron Copland (), with whom he studied in 1936–37. His classical works include two symphonies and a Rhapsody for Piano, Trumpet obbligato and Orchestra. He also composed music for the 1976 television miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man, its sequel Rich Man, Poor Man Book II as well as the 1978 miniseries The Word. North is also known for his opening to the CBS television anthology series Playhouse 90 and the 1965 ABC television miniseries FDR.

In 2016, the Library of Congress added North’s 1951 recording of his score of A Streetcar Named Desire to its National Recording Registry. The American Film Institute ranked North’s score for A Streetcar Named Desire at number 19 on their list of the greatest film scores. His scores for the following films were also nominated for the list: Cleopatra (1963), The Misfits (1961), Spartacus (1960), Viva Zapata! (1952), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966).

Note about names. Back in 1990, my father gave me my original birth certificate. The name on it read, Richard Edwin Salter. I was over forty years old, and my original name was unfathomable. Since then I have learned to accept that biologically, I am a Salter, with origins in Essex County, Ontario. That flatland origin, initially came as a shock to me, too. I think of myself as a mountain, or at a minimum hill possibly cliff-face, person, living close to a fjord, not a Great Lake. Biologically, I am the youngest of five half-siblings, all brothers.

My first name also creates some challenges. I assume that it is related to Isaac Brock (1769 – 1812), notable for commanding the fortress at Fort Amherstburg, which is also located in Essex County, Ontario, about 28 km south of my assumed place of conception. Of course the name of the badger = broc, in Irish and Scottish Gaelic. The American badger is Taxidea taxus, while the European badger is of different origins, and is known as Meles meles. We suspect one of the latter is living on our property.

Then I remember some of the girls in my class at elementary school, trying out assorted surnames. For me, it seemed that many of them felt that they were required to destroy part of their soul, when (not if) they married. At one point, I remember suggesting to Trish that we could choose a more neutral surname. Marmot, named for those playful creatures that inhabit McArthur Island, in Kamloops, British Columbia.

I like music, sometimes. However, I am selective about what I listen to, and when. I often feel that more music has been imposed on me that I appreciate.

Take the situation on board the ferry, originally the Alakai, now the USNS Puerto Rico, promotionally referred to as The CAT. Soon after the ferry departed Yarmouth, Nova Scotia headed to Bar Harbor, Maine, it was announced that the bow of the vessel, where we were sitting, would be overtaken by some entertainer who would provide live music. We attempted to escape him, moving to seats in the middle of the vessel. Here all of the screens were showing some Disney movie, while loud-speakers ensured that music from the film was all that could be heard.

I consulted a crew member, and was told that the aft section of the ship was probably the quietest on offer. We moved there for the duration of the voyage. There is a difference between situations where people have music imposed on them, and those situations where they choose to being exposed to music. So, the rest of this post is about people who choose to watch a movie or a television program, with an expectation of listening to music. The purpose of film music is to enhance the dramatic narrative and emotional impact of scenes.

Film music is not random. It begins with a film score = music written specifically to accompany a film or a television program. For me, this term should also apply to computer games. These games produce the most income for their producers, exceeding that of people engaged in live theatre, television and radio programs, and film (movie) production. Cues = individual pieces of music timed to begin and end at specific points during the film. Thus, a score is a collection of a number of orchestral, instrumental, or choral pieces.

Musical scores are written by one or more composers under the guidance of a film director. Music is performed by an ensemble of musicians, which may include an orchestra = a large group of musicians, band = a small group of musicians, instrumental soloists, a choir = large group of singers, individual vocalists (often referred to collectively as playback singers). At some point this music is recorded by a sound engineer.

I am skeptical to this description. Film scores encompass an enormous variety of styles of music. depending on the nature of the films they accompany. While some scores are orchestral works rooted in Western classical music, many scores are also influenced by ambient, blues, jazz, new-age, pop as well as the modern standard rock music. In addition, there is a wide range of ethnic and world music styles.

Since the 1950s, a growing number of scores have also included electronic elements, and many scores written today feature a hybrid of orchestral and electronic instruments.

Since the invention of digital technology and audio sampling, many modern films have been able to rely on digital samples to imitate the sound of acoustic instruments, and some scores are created and performed wholly by the composers themselves, by using music composition software, synthesizers, samplers, and MIDI controllers.

In the coming weeks I intend to comment on several different film music composers, but I will start with a preview, the oldest composer on my list.

Silvestre Revueltas

One of the first and most important ethnic composers was Silvestre Revueltas Sánchez (1899 – 1940), a Mexican classical music composer, violinist and conductor. He was largely educated in Chicago, but returned to Mexico to work. His film works are: Redes (1935) = The Wave, used in a social realism film about Mexican fishermen, with a non-professional cast, directed by Alfred Zinnemann (1907-1997) and Emilio Gómez Muriel (1910 – 1985).

¡Vámonos con Pancho Villa! (1936) = Let’s Go With Pancho Villa, directed by Fernando de Fuentes Carrau[a] (1894 – 1958). It is the last part of the director’s Revolution Trilogy, which also included El prisionero trece (1933) = Prisoner 13 and El compadre Mendoza (1934) = Godfather Mendoza.

El indio (1939) = The Indian, a Mexican drama film directed by Armando Vargas de la Maza (1895 – 1941) based on the novel of the same name published in 1935, written by Gregorio López y Fuentes (1897 – 1966).

Ferrocarriles de Baja California (1938). It has been difficult for me to find out much about this film. However, The Ferrocarril Sonora–Baja California is a former railway line from Mexicali, in Baja California, to Benjamín Hill, in Sonora. It interchanged with the Southern Pacific Railroad at Calexico, California, and with the Ferrocarril del Pacifico in Benjamin Hill, Sonora. The problem with this explanation is that the film, from 1938, predates the railway by ten years. The railway started running in 1948. Sections of the film score were reworked as Música para charlar = which translates something like, musical gossip.

Other compositional works include music for: Bajo el signo de la muerte (1939), La noche de los mayas (1939) = Night of the Mayas, ¡Que viene mi marido! (1940).

Reading Cartas íntimas y escritos,a recompilation of Silvestre Revueltas’ letters and other writings, by his sister Rosaura Revueltas (1908 [1910, other sources] – 1996), could result in a better understanding of the composer. Rosaura was an actress, most famously appearing in Salt of the Earth (1954), which resulted in her being blacklisted by the Hollywood system. Her recompilation is important because it was in his letters and writings that Silvestre Revueltas most freely describes his thoughts and emotions in detail, including how he composed his music and, in some cases, his reasons for it. The pinnacle of Revueltas’ compositional technique is found in his film music. He once wrote: The spirit of Mexico is deep within me. He did not exploit Mexican folklore, but developed a compositional style that resulted in something nationalistic. His compositional manner was similar to that of Sergei Prokofiev and Dimitri Shostakovich in their relationships with Russia. People who understand Spanish with an interest in film music, should consider reading Cartas intimas y escritos.