download this page <\/a>as an Adobe (pdf) document The composer of the music for “To Kill A Mockingbird” was Elmer Bernstein, pictured\u00a0below.\u00a0 His opening credit sequence work “stands as one of the “Bernstein’s gentle evocation of small town Southern living seen through the eyes of a child uses a small orchestra of strings and horns, featuring solos for piano, flute, accordion, and celeste. He clearly borrows a Coplandesque tone but makes it speak personally for him, capturing the family nostalgia in close, warm harmonies and using the low piano and brass for some of the more unseemly creatures that occasionally burst out of the backwoods. What makes this score important is that it was used to fill an essential gap in the film as a whole: music was the one element that really took the children’s point of view. Bernstein’s opening piano solo sets us in a child’s world, his up-tempo music represents them at play, the spooky piano waltz “fingers all their fears,” as he has said, and in the end, his benedictory cadence for the full orchestra acts like a blessing on them. The script explains how these people acted during that summer of racial prejudice and neighborhood mysteries–only Bernstein reveals how they felt.” 2<\/p>\n The original soundtrack cover is displayed below. Here is an excerpt\u00a0from it:\u00a0 ” (the score) underscores important points or heightens tense moments To learn more about Bernstein and his career as a motion picture composer, NY Times obituary Cover image of Soundtrack LP<\/span> ” It will be interesting for film students at some point to run the film without the music and to realize that how, in certain films, music is designed into the very texture of the film.” (Alan Pakula, Producer, TKAM ) 4<\/p>\n Presented here is a portion of a review of the soundtrack: On writing the opening piece, Bernstein said\u00a0 \u201cOne approaches it in terms An Interview with Elmer Bernstein<\/b> The question becomes what to get involved in, how to get into these issues. But then I realised that the film was about these issues but seen through the eyes of children.\u00a0That was the clue. Once I got that, that led to the tentative one finger piano thing\u00a0that children do when they are trying to pick out a tune. It gave me the bells and\u00a0musical box effects and harps.” 8 Selections to choose from include:<\/p>\n
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>“one function of film music is to reveal our emotions as the audience\u00a0….film scores are thus important in representing community (via martial\u00a0or nationalistic music, for example) in both film and audience. The\u00a0important point here is that as spectators we are drawn to identify\u00a0not with the film characters themselves but with their emotions, which\u00a0are signalled pre-eminently by music which can offer us emotional\u00a0experience directly. Music is central to the the way in which the pleasure\u00a0of cinema is simultaneously individualised and shared.”1<\/p>\n
\nbest main titles, visually and musically.”1\u00a0 The score was recognized recently (Nov\/Dec.’03) as one of the 101\u00a0Best Movies You’ve Ever Heard by FILM COMMENT magazine:<\/p>\n
\nwithout ever intruding upon the flow of the story. The range of action with which\u00a0Composer Bernstein had to work was wide. It included the scoring of a children’s\u00a0game and the welling of terror surrounding a night reconnoiter of the forbidding\u00a0house where Boo Radley lived. There is music to underline the nobility of Atticus\u00a0Finch in his dealings with children and in his efforts to save the unjustly accused\u00a0Negro Tom Robinson…..”<\/p>\n
\ngo to his website:\u00a0 http:\/\/www.elmerbernstein.com\/<\/a>
\nAdditional info on his career can be found here<\/a>.
\n<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n
\n \n
\n<\/span><\/span>Elmer Bernstein
\n(1922-2004)<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n
\n ![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.frankwbaker.com\/filmscorecover.jpg\")
<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\n<\/a>Guardian obituary
\n<\/a>ASCAP obituary<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n\n
\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.frankwbaker.com\/MUSIC.9.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\n<\/span>Music plays a large role in the film. Students should be aware not only
\nwhen and how music is used, but also what impact music has on the viewer.<\/p>\n
\n\u201d(composer) Elmer Bernstein’s score for the 1962 Robert Mulligan movie
\nhas long been regarded as one of the classic film scores of the early
\nsixties, \u2026\u2026\u2026..the main titles opening piano solo, subsequently taken
\nover by strings and woodwinds, was long imitated. \u2026\u2026\u2026.. His score
\nconjures up a distant childhood world, in the thirties deep South, not
\nan easy task, but Bernstein was always up to such challenges and his
\nmusic is fine, lasting and durable.\u201d5<\/p>\n
\nof \u2018what would address itself to children?\u2019 What would children play on a piano,
\ngiven a chance? What do children do, when they go to the piano? What children
\ndo, very often is, they\u2019ll play one note at a time. (plays keys indiscriminately)
\nThat\u2019s what children do, and it led to this idea: (plays the opening main theme
\non the piano)\u201d6\u00a0 “Music-box-type sounds, bells, harps, single-note flutes were all things that suggested a child’s world.” 7<\/p>\n
\n<\/span>“I couldn’t figure out what the film was about in a way that was an open door to\u00a0walk through. Certain things were obvious – it was about racism, the Depression,\u00a0the South. But the minute you say it’s about the South you get tied up with\u00a0geography. Do you want banjos and the blues? I didn’t want to get involved in geography.<\/p>\n
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\nListening to THE SOUNDTRACK on the Internet<\/b>
\n<\/span>Listen to selections from\u00a0the film soundtrack here:\u00a0
\nhttp:\/\/www.jefflangonline.com\/peck\/home\/index.htm<\/a>
\nClick on SOUNDS in the left hand column
\nThen click on the first link under To Kill a Mockingbird SCORE<\/p>\n