MovieChat Forums > Composers > Hollywood Western Film Themes

Hollywood Western Film Themes

posted 12 years ago by Eumenides_0
4 replies | jump to latest

One of the great pleasures of watching Django Unchained was listening, for the first time in a cinema, to several of the great themes Luis Bacalov and Ennio Morricone composed for the Western spaghetties. I had heard all the themes before, but the experience was overwhelming nonetheless. And for the past days I've been thinking about all the Western spaghetti themes I love.

But this also made me realize that I have a certain bias against Hollywood western film scores. I was having a hard time coming up with themes from Hollywood westerns from the '40s, '50s and '60s, the great age of American cowboy movies. When I think of western themes, I think of Morricone, Bacalov, Bruno Nicolai, Marcello Giombini and others. I guess I always saw them as more modern, cooler if you will, and better composed. I think this bias is shared by other people too, Morricone is far more popular than Dimitri Tiomkin or Victor Young, if we want to be honest; everyone knows the themes from the Man with No Name trilogy and they're used outside movies.

But since I'm always eager to discover more scores, especially from the past, I went looking for classic Hollywood western themes to see if my bias was justified. I'm really happy to report that Italy has nothing on the Hollywood classics! Here's a short list of amazing themes I've (re)discovered lately:

Dimitri Tiomkin, Rio Bravo (1959):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR-KbvXvBd8

Dimitri Tiomkin, Red River (1948):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYHsuMTJpfE

Dimitri Tiomkin, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1956):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8wuEDVfha0&feature=youtu.be

Dimitri Tiomkin, The Unforgiven (1960):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-YRr3oL6hI

Victor Young, Rio Grande (1950):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zsn0OfBiqs

Victor Young, Shane (1953):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tHA0Q_Q2qc&feature=youtu.be

Max Steiner, The Searchers (1956):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccPBMI9Lixo

Alfred Newman, How the West was Won (1962):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HbRTohn6Ng

Jerome Moross, The Big Country (1958):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpeXyme8JXs

Elmer Bernstein, The Magnificent Seven (1960):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-6nfSy2mDU

Elmer Bernstein, The Sons of Katie Elder (1965)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hyrjh0EDlss

Elmer Bernstein, The Hallelujah Trail (1965):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ANhE2utO_8

Richard Hageman, Stagecoach (1939):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk_4cx_kXOk

Maurice Jarre, The Professionals (1966):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdNq5pak2nw

I don't know, I feel like the guy who arrived too late at the party

This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.

[–] YippieKaiYay 12 years ago

Thanks for posting this. For a guy who considers himself a soundtrack aficionado, I am embarrassingly unfamiliar with the classic westerns. Granted, most of them were before my time, but still... It wasn't until recently that I gained a full appreciation for Ennio Morricone, and recently I've been listening to more of his work than I have anything new. And aside from The Magnificent Seven, I hardly know anything about the scores you posted, so I look forward to studying up! I was always more of a modern Western guy (Tombstone, Quick and the Dead, Young Guns II) but this post reminds me that the classics are classics for a reason. I'm not ready to weigh in with a Bernsten vs. Morricone debate, but man - there never would have BEEN a Western genre without those guys!

[–] justinboggan 12 years ago

Here are some good missing ones:

"Hannie Caulder" (Ken Thorne)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZRnelQ3438

"Zachariah" (Jimmie Haskell)
More of a weird modern western and a score not in the tradition of the big western efforts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkyiI3CJjb4

_____
The New Number 2: "Are you going to run?"
Number 6: "Like blazes. First chance I get."

[–] mgtbltp 12 years ago

Rio Conchos has a good one & Bandolero has a Spaghetti-ish theme.

[–] Eumenides_0 12 years ago

And they're both by Jerry Goldsmith. He composed another interesting western score in the '60s, Hour of the Gun; very good.

This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.