The Academy Award for Best Original Score is presented to the best substantial body of music in the form of dramatic underscoring written specifically for the film by the submitting composer.
History
Academy Award for Best Original Score Winners - The 80s & 90s - This video presents each of the scores that won the Academy Award for Best Original Score, a composer's (or composers') award, from 1980 to 1999. Thanks for watching!
The Academy began awarding movies for their scores in 1935. The category was originally called Best Scoring. At the time, winners and nominees were a mix of original scores and adaptations of pre-existing material. Following the controversial win of Charles Previn for One Hundred Men and a Girl in 1938, a film without a credited composer that featured pre-existing classical music, the Academy added a Best Original Score category in 1939. In 1942, the distinction between the two Scoring categories changed slightly as they were renamed to Best Music Score of a Dramatic Picture and Best Scoring of a Musical Picture. This marked the first time the category was split into separate genres, a distinction that technically still lasts today, although there haven't been enough submissions for the musical category to be activated since 1985. From 1942 to 1985, musical scores had their own category, with the exception of 1958, 1981 and 1982. During that time, both categories had many name changes:
Following the wins of four Walt Disney Feature Animation films in six years from 1990 to 1995 (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King) during a period called the Disney Renaissance, it was decided to once again split the Best Original Score category by genres, this time by combining comedies and musicals together. As Alan Bergman, the chairman of the Academy's music branch said, "People were voting for the songs, not the underscores. We felt that Academy members outside the music branch didn't distinguish between the two. So when a score like The Lion King is competing against a drama like Forrest Gump, it's apples and oranges â€" not in the quality of the score, but in the way it functions in the movie. There's a big difference." The category was therefore split into Best Original Dramatic Score and Best Original Musical or Comedy Score in 1996. This change proved unpopular in the other branches of the Academy as Charles Bernstein, chairman of the Academy's rules committee, noted that "no other Oscar category depended on a film's genre" and "the job of composing an underscore for a romantic comedy is not substantially different from working on a heavy drama." This split was reverted in 2000.
Academy Award for Best Original Musical
The Academy Award for Best Original Musical was a category established in 2000 but was never awarded due to continuous insufficient eligibility each year up until it was taken out of the rulebook in 2017.
According to the rules, the Best Original Musical was defined as this: "An original musical consists of not fewer than five original songs by the same writer or team of writers either used as voiceovers or visually performed. Each of these songs must be substantively rendered, clearly audible, intelligible, and must further the storyline of the motion picture. An arbitrary group of songs unessential to the storyline will not be considered eligible."
Winners and nominees
The following is the list of nominated composers organized by year, and listing both films and composers. The years shown in the following list of winners are the production years, thus a reference to 1967 means the Oscars presented in 1968 for films released in 1967.
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s
Notes
Superlatives
These are only for nominations in the Scoring categories. Nominations in other categories, such as the Original Song category, are not included.
Only one composer has won two Scoring Oscars the same year: in 1973, Marvin Hamlisch won Original Dramatic Score for The Way We Were and Best Adaptation Score, for The Sting. Hamlisch also won Best Song that year for The Way We Were (song), making him the only composer to win three music Oscars in the same year.
Only one composer has won Oscars three years in a row: Roger Edens won for Easter Parade (1948), On the Town (1949) and Annie Get Your Gun (1950).
Eight composers have won Oscars two years in a row:
- Ray Heindorf won for Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) and This is the Army (1943).
- Franz Waxman won for Sunset Boulevard (1950) and A Place in the Sun (1951).
- Alfred Newman won for With a Song in My Heart (1952) and Call Me Madam (1953). He won again for Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955) and The King and I (1956).
- Adolph Deutsch won for Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) and Oklahoma! (1955).
- André Previn won for Gigi (1958) and 1959's Porgy and Bess (1959). He won again for Irma La Douce (1963) and My Fair Lady (1964).
- Leonard Rosenman won for Barry Lyndon (1975) and Bound for Glory (1976).
- Alan Menken won for Beauty and The Beast (1991) and Aladdin (1992).
- Gustavo Santaolalla won for Brokeback Mountain (2005) and Babel (2006).
Female nominees
Three women have won in the scoring categories. Two are composers: Rachel Portman, who won for Emma (1996), and Anne Dudley, who won for The Full Monty (1997); the third, is lyricist Marilyn Bergman, who won for Yentl (1983) in the Original Song Score category, sharing the award with co-lyricist Alan Bergman (her husband) and composer Michel Legrand.
The only female composers nominated for multiple Scoring Oscars are Rachel Portman, who was nominated for Emma (1996) (for which she won for Best Original Score), The Cider House Rules (1999) and Chocolat (2000); and Angela Morley, who was nominated twice in the Original Song or Adaptation Score category for The Little Prince (1974) and The Slipper and the Rose (1976).
In total, only five women have been nominated in Music Score categories: Rachel Portman, Anne Dudley, Marilyn Bergman, Angela Morley and Mica Levi.
Notable nominees
Dmitri Shostakovich and Duke Ellington were both nominated the same year but lost to arrangers of West Side Story.
The scores of Midnight Express by Giorgio Moroder in 1979, Slumdog Millionaire by A. R. Rahman in 2009, The Social Network in 2011 by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross and Her by William Butler and Owen Pallett in 2014 are the only scores with electronic based music ever to be nominated, with the first three winning the award.
Noted nominated composers known for their music mostly outside the film world include: Aaron Copland, Kurt Weill, Gian-Carlo Menotti, Philip Glass, John Corigliano, Peter Maxwell Davies, Randy Newman, Richard Rodney Bennett, Stephen Schwartz, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Artie Shaw, Trent Reznor, Quincy Jones, Herbie Hancock and Jonny Greenwood.
Rock musicians and pop stars are most often nominated in the songwriting category. A handful that were nominated in the Scoring categories includes: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Prince, Pete Townshend, Rod McKuen, Isaac Hayes, Kris Kristofferson, Quincy Jones, Randy Newman, Anthony Newley, Paul Williams, Tom Waits, David Byrne, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Trent Reznor and Matthew Wilder.
Record producers George Martin (the Beatles) and Jerry Wexler (Atlantic Records) also received nominations in the Scoring categories.
At the age of 87, Ennio Morricone became the oldest winner in Oscar history at the time for a competitive award.
Multiple nominations
The following is a list of composers nominated more than once and winning at least one Academy Award (in this category). This list is sorted by number of awards, with the number of total nominations listed in parentheses. These do not include nominations (or awards) in the Best Original Song category.
The following composers have been nominated for a Best Original Score Oscar more than once but have yet to garner one. The number of nominations is listed in parentheses. These do not include nominations (or awards) in the Best Original Song category.
See also
- Saturn Award for Best Music
- BAFTA Award for Best Film Music
- Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Score
- Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score
- Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Composition
- Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance
- Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media
- Grammy Award for Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media
- Grammy Award for Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella
References
External links
- Oscars.org (official Academy site)
- The Academy Awards Database (official site)
- Oscar.com (official ceremony promotional site)