What was the first movie to feature an original score?
Music and cinema have always gone hand in hand. A great score can be as immersive as watching the film itself, reminding us of a certain scene just through several unforgettable notes. You can’t hear the stabbing melody of Bernard Herrmann’s music for Psycho without the shower scene springing to mind, with the leitmotif coming to be used by other filmmakers as a sonic reference to death. It’s so iconic that it has transcended its boundaries as a piece of music and become a signifier, making us think of pain and fear.
That’s the indicator of a good film score—one that you can’t forget, no matter how much you try to shake it from your mind. When you hear the opening notes of the Star Wars theme, you’re instantly transported to another world, while James Bond’s theme will make you want to go undercover and sip martinis. While you can also make incredible soundtracks out of pre-existing pieces of music, there’s nothing like a good original score to add another layer of brilliance to a film. Look at Jonny Greenwood’s contributions to There Will Be Blood or Air’s compositions for The Virgin Suicides.
While classical and jazz composers typically created OSTs for movies back in the day, it now seems just as common for mainstream musicians, from pop artists to rock musicians, to create them. As a result, the world of film scoring has continued to develop dramatically alongside Hollywood, where intense electronic soundtracks can be found among experimental jazz ones, classic orchestral stylings, or perhaps even some ambient doom metal recordings.
But what was the first instance of an original soundtrack being written for a film? The silent era might have lacked sound, but films were screened with an accompanying live performance of pre-existing pieces, for the most part, preventing audiences from having to sit in silence as they watched the images on screen unfold. Yet, in 1908, everything changed when a certain composer made the first original movie score.
What was the first movie to feature an original score?
The iconic composer Camille Saint-Saëns, perhaps best known for The Carnival of the Animals, was asked to make an original series of compositions for the film La Mort du duc de Guise (The Assassination of the Duke of Guise). Directed by Charles le Bargy and André Calmettes, the film was hugely successful and influential in France, with its elaborate set designs helping bring the theatricality of the stage to the big screen.
Saint-Saëns penned the score watching each scene and painstakingly composing each second, which took a rather long time considering that the movie was 15 minutes long. However, it marked the start of a new era for cinema, with music becoming something that could also be a vital storytelling tool. From that point on, original soundtracks became more common until it was eventually established as standard practice, even resulting in award show categories like ‘Best Original Score’ at the Oscars.
So, while Saint-Saëns is better known for his beautiful compositions like ‘The Swan’ and ‘Danse macabre’, he actually played an incredibly important role in the world of cinema. However, considering that he died in 1921, he never got to see just how impactful his work as a composer would be for the future of film music.
