Reinventing the Western Film Score from High Noon to The Magnificent Seven

It may seem backwards, but I’d like to start this essay with The Magnificent Seven.  Telling you where we are going will make the journey on how we got there make more sense.

In January 1963, Phillip Morris, the cigarette company that manufactured Marlboro cigarettes, bought the rights to the main theme from The Magnificent Seven from United Artists and with it launched what has become known as “the marketing campaign of the century.”   While music had previously been an inherent and necessary part of advertising, this was probably the first time that a film soundtrack had been adapted to sell a product.

In this and other Marlboro commercials, Elmer Bernstein’s music carried with it the message of invincibility personified by the gunfighters in the movie, and it superimposed those characteristics on the rugged cowboys in the ads.  Consumers hearing that music, particularly male white-collar workers who were targeted in the ad campaign, longed to be the strong and untethered individuals that Bernstein’s music helped portray.

As the music from The Magnificent Seven set the tone for the idealization of the masculine and the West, inhabitants of suburban neighborhoods, such as this one (probably in California), saw these billboards and longed to escape to Marlboro Country.  As a result, sales of Marlboro cigarettes doubled between 1960 and 1969, and Marlboro executives were able to boast:

As cultural historian Richard Slotkin Slotkin noted in his 1992 study of Westerns, Gunfighter Nation, the association between Bernstein’s music and “one of the major advertising triumphs of the era” ultimately branded the entire West as Marlboro Country.

I will take this a step further and suggest that Bernstein’s music branded the entire United States as Marlboro Country, elevating the nation’s sense of empowerment, as it considered its position in a changing world threatened by Communism and coping with the threat of an escalating war in Vietnam.

The music that accompanied Western films changed during the post-World War II years and it became so influential that, to this decade, echoes of the Western soundscape reverberate outside the walls of the cinema.

Clues about America . . .

Viewed broadly, Western movies are not really about the West. They may be situated in the old West, but they are not intended to be accurate historic representations of what occurred there.  Most often they are what film scholars identify as a “fusion of history and myth” that suggests a commentary on contemporary socio-political issues.  In dealing with the themes of conflict and aggression (whether individual or political), overcoming adversity, and dominating one’s environment, Westerns provide perspective on how we should consider and confront contemporary issues.  As Richard Acquila notes, “Clues about America are scattered along the ‘sagebrush trail’ of western movies . . . [revealing that] for more than a century, western movies have reflected—and sometimes have helped shape—American history and culture.”

In her book on American exceptionalism, Deborah Madsen traces the conflicts enacted in Westerns to the colonization of the country and considers the role of the genre (including novels and films) in bolstering the mythology of the West.  She notes, “The Western hero . . . represents the idealized American, living out the extreme significance of America’s exceptional destiny.”  No matter whom he is fighting, whether Native Americans, cattle rustlers, or town bullies, the hero’s ultimate goal is justice.  And the traditional Western plays this out for audiences, often in an exaggerated and embellished fashion, modeling the decency and moral honesty that was important to American exceptionalism.

During the 1940s and 1950s the Western became synonymous with all that was good in America.  Until the late 1950s, when it began exploring the psychological aspects of the Western character and became more realistic in its gritty depiction, the genre communicated patriotism, heroism, and successful boldness.  The music that accompanies these hypertextualized frontier dramas became attached to their implied messages and thus often reflects their broader perspective. 

Music is particularly useful in the Western.  In addition to aurally distinguishing the good guys from the villains, it can control the pacing of the action and enhance the tension that accompanies confrontations.  In addition, music helps establish the atmosphere for the particular setting in which the cowboys often find themselves: from wide-open prairie to high mountain range and from dusty town to raucous saloon. While these functions can also be applied to other genres, in Westerns music is necessary for lowering the threshold of disbelief for a narrative that is chronologically and often geographically distant from our own experiences.

Since the western genre plainly emphasizes American values, when providing accompaniment film composers have tended to focus on styles defined as American.  Thus, American folk songs, or melodies inspired by them, were initially able to suggest an atmosphere that audiences would connect with the West. Nineteenth century popular songs, cowboy songs, and hymn tunes were originally adapted to legitimize the Western soundscape.  Newly composed music often emulated these sources, thus providing a somewhat authentic sonic evocation of the West. By the late 1940s and early 1950s, cowboys were often introduced by quietly echoing pastoral music, as in the main title for Shane (1953).

Remember when I said that Westerns were not really about the West?  High Noon is about the Hollywood Blacklist.  As director Zinnemann later observed, Carl Foreman, the screenwriter, wrote this “as an allegory on his own experience of political persecution in the McCarthy era.” Foreman, a member of the Communist Party who was named by a colleague to the House Committee on Un-American Activities, was later blacklisted and worked for a time under a pseudonym.

Second, Tiomkin limited the song’s presentation for solo voice (instead of male chorus, as in his previous films), with guitar, accordion, and percussion.  Tiomkin, who would continue to explore the use of different timbral techniques in a variety of Westerns, boasted that High Noon was the first film score ever not to use violins (although the lower strings were still included), thus avoiding the lush, romantic sound associated with Hollywood films at the time, and making this soundscape more realistic.

(Note the disconnect between rugged masculine visuals and the sensitive lyrics.)

The song is heard repeatedly throughout the film, both with the lyrics and instrumentally, at times crossing the boundaries between source music (performed within the film by a character) and sung narration (heard only by the audience).  Thus, the song works in tandem with other aspects of the film that similarly blur the lines between reality and imagination (such as the unity of time).  The repetition of the song, as well as the generally limited musical materials in the score, lends the film a sense of claustrophobia, furthering Zinnemann’s objective to present the film as a quasi-documentary.  This sparse and realistic scoring would later inspire Ennio Morricone when he revolutionized the Western score with his music for The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.  But more on that later.

(Józef Brandt, Cossack’s Wedding, 1893)

The success of the title song in High Noon was helped by an impressive marketing strategy: no less than six different artists released the song prior to the premiere of the film, thus increasing the chances for radio airplay and record sales. The result was that the song promoted the film and the film plugged the song. 

By the mid to late 1950s opening a Western with a song was standard practice in the hopes that it would reap the same financial success, both in the record stores and at the box office.  Sung titles introduced The Man from Laramie (1955), The Searchers (1956), and 3:10 to Yuma (1957), as well as Tiomkin’s later score for Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957), in which the main title is musically and visually strikingly similar to that of High Noon. These songs would not only set the folksy musical tone for the film but also preview or assist the narrative (flash forward). 

It was New York City native, and Copland’s colleague, Jerome Moross (pictured below) who would change the way Westerns were scored.  Years later, Moross would boldly state that he “invented the archetypal Western theme.”  It wasn’t a conscious decision, but he felt that the way Westerns had been scored was wrong, and in an interview from 1978, he bashed Tiomkin as he boasted,

For a composer who, in 1958, had limited experience with scoring films, and had worked on only one other Western, to make such a pronouncement was brashness itself.

Whereas Wyler wanted the music to establish an atmosphere or a sense of place (what Moross called a “sound effects score”), for Moross it was also important to support the psychological development of the characters. Another Western that is not about the West but about standing up for what you believe, The Big Country is a film about a pacifist, a former merchant marine, who travels west to marry the young woman he met on the east coast. When he arrives, however, he finds that, now returned to her father’s ranch, his fiancée has assumed the aggressive behaviors of this hostile (and primarily male) environment, as they battle over water rights.

Moross brought to the score for The Big Country two aspects of his compositional experiences: his skill as a concert hall composer of large orchestral works and his love for musical theater.  His familiarity with these two realms, along with his affinity for American popular musical idioms (such as blues, folk, and jazz), inspired a new approach.

Unlike Tiomkin’s folksy ensemble, Moross utilized a full orchestra for the entire score, meaning for his music to be heard—and heard loudly. With a force of 90 musicians (including a very young John Williams on one of the pianos) the ensemble was clearly more robust than the typical studio orchestra.  With such a sizable force, Moross was able to lend excitement to the score by contrasting the various instrument families and create a bold sound that brought the music to the foreground.  (On a side note, when they finished recording, all of the studio musicians gave Moross a standing ovation).

Perhaps to our sensibilities the film and its soundtrack are not extraordinary, but to the audience watching it for the first time in 1958 it was most likely astounding. Gone is the opening pseudo-campfire song; instead the audience is overwhelmed by the full sound of the strings as they reiterate a motive as consistent and captivating as the turning wheel on the stagecoach.  The initial shots focus on the horses until the first cadential point, when the visual changes to the wide-open plains, putting the stagecoach in perspective.  The cinematic grandeur of The Big Country, which showcased the vast expanses of the West, offered Moross the opportunity to compose large musical gestures to complement the spectacular scenery.

While other Western film scores relied on the action to determine the musical content and the formal structure of each cue, or section of music in the score, in The Big Country the dramatic or emotional substance shapes the music.  The music needed to tell the story as much as (if not more than) the dialogue. Moross carefully unified the overall score by introducing the important melodic material in the early cues and then recalling different parts in subsequent scenes, depending on the emotional and atmospheric requirements of the visual and narrative. Moross did not use music to represent specific characters (as with leitmotivs), but rather to recall previous action and, more importantly, the subtext associated with it. Lending a formal cohesiveness to the film through the music demonstrates Moross’s belief that “music can give the scene a sense of form and of unity.”   (Moross Interview with Bob Sherman & John Caps, 1979)

When McKay (Gregory Peck) arrives, he and his fiancé are subjected to a raucous welcome and hazing by the rival Hannessey clan. This included roping McKay, taking off his hat and trying to shoot holes in it. McKay, who had been keel-hauled as a sailor, was not bothered. The next morning, after an incident where McKay is invited to ride the most violent horse on the ranch—yet another form of hazing—the future father-in-law rides with a posse to avenge the previous day’s humiliation. 

The musical cue that accompanies this extended scene is divided into two parts, both of which start the same, with a descending minor second over a syncopated accompaniment.  The subsequent melody heard in the first section is re-worked in later scenes that feature McKay, as he eventually distances himself from his fiancé.  The tense atmosphere from the dining room is musically recalled in the second section, the exterior shot, as the raiding party rides off.  In post-production this scene was altered by the insertion of crosscuts showing an extremely annoyed fiancé, thus allowing Moross to introduce an “angry” reiterated motive that eventually infiltrates McKay’s more pensive main theme music.  With this cue, Moross highlights the tension surrounding McKay’s pacifism early in the film and foreshadows the couple’s eventual breakup.  Unfortunately, the music editor cut the music during the breakfast scene (leaving it awkwardly silent), as well as the melody’s return in later parts of the film.  Moross’ intention to musically connect the various incidents leading to their separation, starting with the breakfast scene, is, sadly, left out.

The Magnificent Seven

If Jerome Moross invented the Western film score, then it was Elmer Bernstein who later secured the patent and reaped the benefits with his score for The Magnificent Seven.  To Moross’s approach, Bernstein added his considerable experience in film scoring.  Whereas Moross dabbled in film music to support his other musical endeavors, primarily in musical theater, Bernstein was dedicated to film composition.

The Magnificent Seven was an American adaptation of a Japanese film, which was in turn inspired by American Westerns.  (It is a popular story line and if you have seen A Bug’s Life, you will recognize it.)  A small Mexican village is terrorized by a group of bandits so they pool their resources and hire a group of gunfighters to help rid them of their tormentors.  (Yet again, not about the West. The cross-border adaptation was a preview of America’s attempt at counterinsurgency in Vietnam [see Slotkin].)

Bernstein had composed the music to several Westerns in the early 1950s prior to The Magnificent Seven, including two with title songs (Saddle the Wind, 1958 and Drango, 1956).  He was generally against the notion of using songs, however he would accept any musical approach, if done well and capable of advancing the drama. 

Like Moross, Bernstein felt that the dramatic action in a film was paramount and that the music had to have a function.  He adapted Moross’s large symphonic conception and delineated two objectives for the score: to provide a musical atmosphere and to set an appropriate pace, as he later explained: 

Almost every cue related to the gunfighters or the villains begins with repeated notes or insistent syncopated rhythms that establish an unrelenting pace for their music. Bernstein applied this approach to several instances where the visual required added energy, but it is especially well demonstrated in these scenes of the Seven riding to the Mexican village (as Bernstein mentioned), which are accompanied by the main theme (ultimately used for the Marlboro ad).

Bernstein enhanced how the music worked with the drama by defining the character groups with distinctive music and thus clearly delineating the inherent conflict in the film.  While the Seven gunfighters are heralded with those consonant, uplifting melodies that emphasize their superiority, the gang of bandits rides accompanied by a menacing declarative tune.  

Meanwhile, Bernstein’s music for the oppressed Mexican villagers, which is at times uniquely based on ethnic models, is simple and exudes innocence.  Because The Magnificent Seven takes place south of the border, Bernstein sought to reflect the Mexican setting in contrast to the strong American presence of the Seven gunfighters. The score is infused with local tone color, as guitars, marimba, high flutes, and log drums (in addition to the controversial castanets) all contribute to the Mexican soundscape.

Central to the drama is the character Chico, a former Mexican villager who longs to be a gunfighter.  His music is completely different, featuring chords strummed on the open strings of a guitar followed by a melancholy melodic line.  We hear this initially during an embarrassing scene in the cantina when Chico tries to initiate a gunfight, but instead passes out at the bar.  He persists in following the Seven and when they arrive at the village, Chico delivers a speech, which affords him the opportunity to reclaim his self-esteem in the eyes of the gunfighters, and also to voice his dissatisfaction with his heritage by reprimanding the farmers.  The music begins in the same manner as in the cantina, but changes with his increasing bravado. Notice at the end of the scene when the opening motive of the main theme is heard (an ascending minor third) just before Chris proclaims, “Now we are seven.”

Both Moross’ and Bernstein’s scores were nominated for Academy Awards and set the standard for many subsequent Westerns, including John Williams’ own contribution to the genre The Cowboys (released in 1973), which exhibited the syncopated rhythms and full orchestral sound favored by both.   

Echoes of The Magnificent Seven can still be heard in scores for later Westerns, such as Silverado (1985) and Dances with Wolves (1990), as well as other films that feature a western narrative, like Back to the Future, Part 3 (1990).

Yet in the mid-1960s another shift occurred in the development of the genre and its music, as the adult or psychological Western began to dominate the field. No longer simple shoot-em-ups, the narratives developed as the characters (both good and bad) became complex and, at times, increasingly brooding and brutally violent.    

Sergio Leone took this change to a new level with his stark narratives in the “Dollars Trilogy,” with help from composer Ennio Morricone, who established a creative precedent for the Western film score through his use of minimalism and adoption of techniques from musique concrete, including natural sounds, whistles, whips, and gunshots.  While he still included expansive, singable melodies, Morricone’s scores were also full of short motives, using a limited pitch-class set and reiterated intervals.  This has become the most used technique for underscoring in Western films, and advertising firms have adapted this style as well, using the main title from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, for instance, as a code for confrontation. 

But there’s more.  In a 2017 marketing campaign intended to counteract the anti-immigrant rhetoric in our national (and international) conversations, Modelo Especial, the Mexican beer company, created a series of advertisements celebrating the accomplishments of Latin Americans.

The scene in the film that is accompanied by this music is neither showdown nor gunfight, but rather a display of hopeful emotional intensification and growing excitement as Tuco (played by Eli Wallach) races around the cemetery, realizing that he is near to the gold they have been seeking.

Using this same music by Morricone are similarly positive marketing campaigns by Nike and Lamborghini that emphasize success through personal effort.  This shift to positive music returns us to the Marlboro commercial I showed at the beginning. Although the visuals do not situate us in the West, like Marlboro Country, Western movie music is once again applied to a product with the goal of branding it with the allure of the frontier and all that it signifies. Reinvented several times, the Western film score continues to evolve and influence commercial and popular culture outside of the cinematic world. 

In addition to commercials, the music from Westerns has also been heard on the rock concert stage.  Bruce Springsteen used the main theme from The Magnificent Seven during his 2002 “Badlands” Tour, and Metallica continues to cover Morricone’s “Ecstasy of Gold” on their tours.



References:

Acquila, Richard, The Sagebrush Trail: Western Movies and Twentieth-Century America (The Modern American West), Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2015..

Bandy, Mary Lea, and Kevin Stoehr, Ride Boldly Ride: The Evolution of the American Western, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2012. 

Giannetti, Louis, ‘‘Fred Zinnemann’s High Noon,’’ Film Criticism 1.3 (Winter 1976–77).

Lerner, Neil, “‘Look at that Big Hand Move Along’: Clocks, Containment, and Music in High Noon.” South Atlantic Quarterly 104:1, Duke University Press, 2005.

Madsen, Deborah L. American Exceptionalism. University Press of Mississippi, 1998.

Slotkin, Richard, Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America. (New York: Atheneum, 1992).

Smith, Jeff, Sounds of Commerce: Marketing Popular Film Music, New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.