How Hollywood became a new home for classical music’s grandest ideas

Classical music isn’t dead, but who’s listening, and how, is changing.

One of the clearest signs of that change is the rise of live orchestral concerts paired with blockbuster film screenings.

These concerts are significantly driving the growth in live performance of classical music in Australia.

According to the latest Live Performance Australia data, the most popular classical music performances in 2024 included Star Wars, How to Train Your Dragon, Pirates of the Caribbean, and The Man from Snowy River in Concert.

According to Screen Sounds presenter Dan Golding, watching a film with a live orchestra isn’t new.

“In the 19th-century, film was something that was added into a musical context,” Golding says.

How Hollywood embraced classical music

Before the days of movie theatres, opulent opera houses were built to maximise opportunities for people to meet one another and to observe what other audience members were doing.

Composers like Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini wrote and staged operas with huge orchestras, but some attendees barely heard or saw anything during the performance.

That changed when Richard Wagner built a theatre in the small German town of Bayreuth to stage his operas

“Bayreuth looks like a movie theatre,” Golding says. “It’s a darkened room, all the seats face the stage, and the orchestra is obscured in the pit.”

Wagner profoundly influenced classical music. 

He changed audience behaviour, and also introduced the musical concept of leitmotif: a recurring musical idea associated with a person, place or situation.

This became an important building block for later film composers.

Golding says the earliest forms of film emerged from less highbrow entertainments, such as variety shows and fairs, which were often rooted in music.

But in the 1930s, when Hollywood wanted to build some cultural cachet, they turned to classical music.

“[Warner Brothers] wanted a great big-name composer to write a soundtrack so that they might be taken seriously,” Golding says.

The big name they turned to was Erich Korngold, a composer following in the footsteps of Wagner.

In 1938, Korngold made the journey from Austria to Hollywood to refuse the offer in person.

“[But] by the time he got off the boat in America, Germany had annexed Austria.”

This placed Korngold in a difficult situation because “he was a Jewish man,” Golding says.

Korngold changed his mind, scored The Adventures of Robin Hood, and became one of the first composers of international stature to write for Hollywood.

He became known for writing original, symphonic soundtracks for “Errol Flynn-type adventure movies,” Golding says.

Korngold blazed the trail for later composers like John Williams, Howard Shore, Hildur Guðnadóttir and countless others.

Inside the screen music industry today

By the time Australian composer Jessica Wells had her “baptism of fire” working with Hollywood composers and engineers in 2006, the screen music industry was a well-established ecosystem.

Wells is a composer, but often orchestrates other people’s music.

She has worked with composers including John Powell on Happy Feet and How to Train Your Dragon, and Elliott Wheeler on the Elvis biopic.

Using her deep knowledge of orchestral instruments, Wells translates “the composer’s intentions to the performers reading the notes.”

This involves everything from ensuring the players’ parts are in the right key, to knowing what notes they can or can’t play well.

“You don’t want to turn up to a recording session and have someone say, ‘I can’t play this note’,” Wells says.

Films with orchestral soundtracks require a big team to assemble the music, especially to work with the lead composers and directors.

Not only does everything need to be approved by the director, Wells also has to look after the complex process of getting the music onto players’ stands.

“If the music’s not being approved until the day before the recording session, then you’re in a bit of trouble, and I’ve had to deal with that,” she says.

Despite the hectic pace, Wells loves working in the screen music industry.

“[Working on] a couple of pieces from How To Train Your Dragon, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, was the biggest orchestra I’d ever orchestrated for,” Wells reflects.

“That was really fun and has become one of the most iconic film scores,” she says.

Bringing the screen to symphonic orchestra concerts

Golding notes that in the 1920s, Australian audiences often heard live orchestras accompany premiere silent-film screenings.

It disappeared in the 1930s when orchestras were replaced by synchronised soundtracks and visuals.

It took nearly half a century before film and live orchestras started coming together again.

“In the 1970s, orchestras started to program bootleg arrangements of Star Wars in particular,” Golding says.

“There wasn’t anything official because nobody really thought that this was something that people would love.”

The arrangements became global hits, according to Golding.

Then, around 2010, film companies began officially partnering with orchestras to present films-in-concert.

Conductor Nicholas Buc remembers “the sudden interest and rise in performing films live in concerts” around that time.

Buc, a lifelong movie buff, co-hosts a podcast with Golding discussing scores in films, and regularly conducts films-in-concert with orchestras around Australia.

“The very first film I conducted was Psycho, followed by a [compilation] show of 10-minute vignettes of every single Pixar film,” Buc says.

Soon after, symphony orchestras around Australia began programming blockbuster titles including The Lord of the Rings, Doctor Who and Star Wars.

Today, films-in-concert have become part of the regular offerings of major state orchestras across Australia.

Buc says performing to a film requires a unique set of skills.

“The music needs to be very precise, so a lot of the job is about getting the timing right,” Buc says.

He uses a tiny screen above his music stand with a built-in visual cue to conduct the orchestra.

In studios, this music is often recorded in sections over many weeks. In live performance, “some of this music is pretty hard, long and relentless,” Buc says.

But conversely, the reward for the musicians and audiences can be incredible.

“When you get a great film and a great score, it really is electric,” Buc says. 

These films are people’s gateway to experience a symphony orchestra concert for the first time, according to Buc.

That gateway can open other areas of classical music, such as introducing audiences to music by female composers.

Wells is currently working with symphony orchestras across Australia to tell the story of Mozart’s Sister, Maria Anna, through a documentary she scored.

“A lot of the orchestras are pairing the Mozart’s Sister concert with other works,” Wells says, “either by women who were composing during the Mozarts’ lifetime or by contemporary female composers.”

But for some people, these experiences are “significant concerts in their own right”, says Golding. 

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