According to a list provided by the American Film Institute, the third-best film score ever composed for a Hollywood movie was written by a young Frenchman who couldn’t read music until age 15. A percussionist by training, the Frenchman’s most extensive experience prior to scoring this masterpiece was 12 years of penning background scores for Parisian theater productions. Yet, anyone who has heard his music might well assume that the composer was a violinist or pianist with developed skills in shaping long, luxurious melodies. The score in question is that for “Lawrence of Arabia,” and the young Frenchman was Maurice Jarre (1924–2009).
Producer Sam Spiegel originally wanted “Lawrence of Arabia” to be scored by Malcolm Arnold, the distinguished English concert composer who’d won Best Music Oscar for “The Bridge on the River Kwai” (1957). But Arnold had had a falling out with David Lean, the “Bridge” director set to direct “Lawrence.”
With Arnold out of the question, Spiegel at first opted to use multiple composers. But when he heard the sweeping theme that Jarre submitted—the one you’re thinking of right now if you know the movie—he put all his money on the Frenchman.
A Neophyte and Not Much Time
At 38, Jarre had scored only three previous films, two French features, and “The Longest Day,” which had just been released in September 1962, when Spiegel hired him for “Lawrence.” Music for “The Longest Day” centered on a title song by Paul Anka; Jarre’s contributions were minimal. But “Lawrence” demanded almost constant music for a film over three and a half hours long, and a tight release schedule gave Jarre only six weeks in which to create and record it. He reportedly worked in four-hour stretches, with short breaks between for rest.The music for “Lawrence of Arabia” richly deserves its third-place position in AFI’s list of great film scores. Jarre did not settle for the main theme over and over again, though that theme is a perfect match for both the desert vistas of Lean’s visuals and the isolation of the title character’s psyche. The cues range from menacing dissonances to steely rhythmic exaltations—the arrival at Auda’s camp—to light-hearted moments such as the runaway camel scene and eerie soundscapes using the latest in electronic music. Jarre had learned to play an early electronic instrument, the ondes Martenot, with its inventor, and he put it to good use throughout “Lawrence.” The accompaniment to Lawrence’s wanderings in the desert, as he silently meditates on how to attack Aqaba, is a small tone poem of symphonic quality.
At Spiegel’s insistence, Jarre’s score incorporated a march, “The Voice of the Guns,” by British bandmaster Kenneth Alford. Another Alford march, “Colonel Bogey,” had been slipped into Arnold’s music for “The Bridge on the River Kwai” and became a huge hit, boosting the movie at the box office. It’s likely Siegel thought that “The Voice of the Guns” would do the same for “Lawrence.” It didn’t. But Jarre used it tastefully in those scenes that required a “terribly British” atmosphere.
Success, Failure, Success
Jarre won his first Oscar for “Lawrence” and went on to win two more. All three were for collaborations with Lean, the others being “Dr. Zhivago” (1965) and “A Passage to India” (1984). “Dr. Zhivago” once more found Jarre at the top of his game, with a main theme that became a popular hit and cues that perfectly captured each scene’s emotion. But the next Lean-Jarre collaboration, “Ryan’s Daughter” (1970), was a disaster, owing in no small part to Jarre’s over-the-top music. The score’s main theme is supposed to be Irish as the story is set in Ireland, but it is more British music-hall than Irish, and the martial theme seems almost comical. The movie’s failure was a big fall from Jarre’s stellar status, but he recovered, came back with “A Passage to India,” and went on to score a variety of films including “Witness” (1985), “No Way Out” (1987), “Dead Poets Society” (1989), and “Ghost” (1990).“Witness” is of special interest since it is a completely electronic score, following on Jarre’s fascination with the ondes Martenot. (Jarre’s son, Jean-Michel Jarre, had by 1985 become a leading electronic-music performer.)
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11/2/2023
In previous articles for The Epoch Times, I discussed the first two scores on the AFI list, John Williams’s “Star Wars” (1977) and Max Steiner’s “Gone With the Wind” (1939). In all three scores, the main theme is the central focus and the generating point of the rest of the music; the ear always wants to come back to it. The main themes of the top three film scores share common elements, and considering their popularity, it’s doubtful that’s an accident. These elements are the employment of certain intervals, or melodic gestures. Their technical names are perfect fourths, fifths, and octaves. The emotion they convey belongs to the open, expansive, and epic. As Plato observed, and as countless contemporary philosophers have tried to deny, music is neither arbitrary nor accidental. It contains meaning.
Film scores are a study of the way that music expresses the human condition. In his music for “Lawrence of Arabia,” Jarre inscribed heroism, fear, and majesty into musical notes to accompany one of the great historical epics ever filmed.
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