Historical epic and sword-and-sandal film

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Genre

Historical epic and sword-and-sandal film · In the 1950s Hollywood fought television with widescreen, colour and long historical films. The music grew along with them. For Quo Vadis (1951), Miklós Rózsa researched ancient Greek and Roman melodies, and for Ben-Hur (1959) he wrote more than two hours of music, with fanfares, marches and chorales. Alex North gave Spartacus (1960) a harder, more modern sound with dissonances and unusual tone colours. In Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Maurice Jarre used an ondes Martenot and a great deal of percussion to evoke the desert. Typical features are an overture and intermission music, as in opera, and a large orchestra with a lot of brass.

Listening

• 
  Overture · Miklós Rózsa, 1959
• 
  Main Title · Alex North, 1960
• 
  Overture · Maurice Jarre, 1962

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

• Film Music Map^NL Map

See also

• Alfred Newman
• Elmer Bernstein
• Basil Poledouris
• Golden Age: symphonic Hollywood and leitmotif