Music in the Key of Snow

By: Randall D. Larson
Date: Thursday, December 22, 2005

Even before he began his prolific run as the composer for THE X-FILES, Mark Snow had racked up an impressive array of television and feature film scores since emerging into Hollywood television music in 1976. With more than 200 features, TV-movies, miniseries, and series to his compositional credit to date, Snow has dabbled in just about every musical style and filmic genre Hollywood has yet produced, although to most fans his ongoing collaboration with Chris Carter has linked him pretty solidly as the composer of Music In The Key of THE X-FILES. Midway through 2005, Snow embarked on a project that pulled him both forward and backward at the same time. KOLCHAK, a new ABC TV pilot from X-FILES' Frank Spotnitz, revived the 1970's cult classic, KOLCHAK THE NIGHT STALKER, which was X-FILES' most direct antecedent.

Snow's ambient sound design for THE X-FILES, which debuted in 1993, sustained and embellished the show's pervasively claustrophobic atmosphere. Snow composed the series theme as well as original music for each of the show's 202 episodes. "Musically, the show evolved from being more ambient, supportive music to really getting into some melodic music in a dark, Mahleresque style," Snow said. The thematic diversity of the series, even within the context of its conspiratorial supernaturality, gave Snow opportunities to compose all kinds of music, from classical motifs to aleatoric tonality, avant-garde sound design, and "wonderfully weird combinations of sound and music," as Snow put it.

The X-FILES feature film (1998), taking place between the series' fifth and sixth seasons, allowed Snow the opportunity to enhance the sensibility of his episode

scores, most of which were recorded with small ensembles and electronically sampled instruments, with a large 80-piece symphony orchestra. "The X-Files theme is being harmonized and orchestrated in different settings that never have appeared on the TV show," Snow said. "Ninety percent of the score is big orchestra combined with electronics." Snow also created new themes for the Cigarette-Smoking Man ("a chordal structure," said Snow. "A bunch of minor chords going from one to another."), the Elders, the Well-Manicured Man, and other malevolent characters from the show, and gave the feature a greatly expansive dynamic.

When X-FILES creator Chris Carter created a new series in 1996 about a former FBI profiler with an affinity for ferreting out murderers called MILLENNIUM, he brought Snow in to score it as well. The show's subject matter led Snow to compose an even darker undertone, emphasizing solo violin over a dark percussion accompaniment during the series' initial episodes. "I've gotten into more specific dark music with a Celtic contrast, whether its solo violin or solo harp or solo woodwind, or woodwinds with harp or piano accompaniment" Snow said. His music mirrored the show's exploration of good and bad through a contrasting evocation of soprano and bass instrumentation.

For HARSH REALM, Carter's short-lived virtual reality series (1999), Snow crafted a contrasting sensibility using traditional instruments (pianos, strings) to reflect the real world and using more unusual, X-FILES-ish sound design to represent the virtual Harsh Realm world, mostly achieved through sampled sounds manipulated on a Synclavier.

Snow gave an entirely different musical sensibility to THE LONE GUNMEN (2001), the one-season spin-off of exploring the adventures of THE X-FILES's supporting trio of conspiracy busters. Here, his music took on a mixture of electronic patriotism and a hearty MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE-styled vibe dominated by electric guitars, emphasizing both the show's mix of humor and the macabre.

Around the same time, Snow began scoring SMALLVILLE, Warner Bros' weekly series about the adventures of a young Clark Kent/Superboy. This show needed a far more traditional orchestral approach than the dark ambiences of THE X-FILES. "The approach on SMALLVILLE was pretty much traditional old-fashioned innocence, and it's never really changed," said Snow. He was asked to include a close-variation on John William's SUPERMAN film score without duplicating the feature film theme, and the scoring emphasized symphonic romantic music (achieved mostly through the Synclavier). Snow has composed all four episodes of the series so far.

Other television shows and miniseries that have benefited from Snow's memorable music include LA FEMME NIKITA (1997), ABC's 1997 20,000 LEAGUES BENEATH THE SEA miniseries, THE DAY LINCOLN WAS SHOT (1998), a pair of Dean Koontz-based miniseries (MR. MURDER, 1997; SOLE SURVIVOR, 2000), and episodes of 2002's THE TWILIGHT ZONE.

On the big screen, Snow composed mysterious and atmospheric scores for DISTURBING BEHAVIOR (1998), CRAZY IN ALABAMA (1999), BEREFT (2004), and John Gray's 2004 remake of HELTER SKELTER. Each has contained vastly different styles of music, from the swashbuckling lyricism of ABC's take on Captain Nemo to the dark, jaded tonalities and monstrous chord progressions of Gray's Manson docudrama.

Snow can't really articulate how he comes up with the sounds he uses in his scores. "I just react to things in a very simplistic sort of visual way," he said. "I see something,

I hear a sound. My eye and my ear and my brain make a connection. It's like a synapse that fires, and it just feels right, and I'll go for it. I don't question it, and I don't study a lot of stuff."

Last summer saw the short-lived revival of two classic 1970's TV series, KOJAK for the USA Network, starring Ving Rhames in the Telly Savalas role as NYPD detective Theo Kojak, and KOLCHAK for ABC. Snow scored all eight episodes of the former, and the pilot of the latter, which unfortunately failed to sell as a new series.

For KOJAK, Snow has adopted a mainstream urban type of approach. "It's textural and more ambient," said Snow. "There's a live sax and guitar every once in a while and it's very moody. It has a New York City vibe, and some very good rhythmic moments." Snow wrote a main theme, but found it supplanted by a song from a female hip-hop singer named Tweet. "There is this very nice gospel ballad melody that I used in the pilot that keeps coming up in the episodes at the appropriate time," said Snow.

The series, including post-production, was made in Toronto, Canada, which required Los Angeles-based Snow to spot each episode by telephone, determining where the music will go, and then upload his final studio scores to Toronto for the final mix.

KOLCHAK is ABC's new version of the 1970s cult series KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER which, in fact, was the show that inspired THE X-FILES. Stuart Townsend starts as the intrepid crime reporter investigating supernatural phenomena, a role made famous by Darren McGavin in ABC's original miniseries and series. The remake is from writer/director Frank Spotnitz, Chris Carter's former partner on THE X-FILES.

"The KOLCHAK score definitely has an X-FILES influence to it," Snow said, while admitting that initially the producers advised him to avoid X-FILES music. "They didn't want a lot of music, they wanted very moody, ethereal, modern, kind of music. I did that. And then they said, 'oh, wait a minute, this isn't working... we need bang-crash-bang and a lot more music!'" Snow went off and rewrote and recorded the score anew. "It's actually turning out pretty good," he said. "It doesn't sound like THE X-FILES but it's got a pulse and a rhythm and a ton of ambient, sound design, atmospheric material."

I've used the synclavier for almost twenty years, so I know the thing inside and out," Snow said. "I know as soon as I walk out of a spotting session, my mind is thinking 'I know where to go and what realm of sound or instruments to go far."

Snow said that scoring SMALLVILLE is actually more difficult than crafting the chaotic mysteriosos of KOLCHAK, MILLENNIUM, or THE X-FILES. "Writing so many notes is harder than writing sounds," he said. "It's actually takes more effort to create traditional developed melodic harmonic music."

Neither KOJAK nor KOLCHAK contained any reference to their original musical styles. Both are completely new takes on the old chestnuts, and Snow's music is thoroughly his own. In fact, he said the toughest thing about scoring KOLCHAK was to avoid being too X-FILES like.

Shedding the "X-FILES composer" label has been a challenge for Snow. "Looking back on it, you think 'oh my god I wouldn't have traded this for anything!'" he said. "On the other hand, producers think of you as 'oh, he's the X-FILES guy, get him to do the scary shows.' Who knows? Before X-FILES I was doing comedies and action and romances. If X-FILES turned out to be like MOONLIGHTING or THE SIMPSONS or something, I guess I would have been labeled that."

Snow's latest score is for another television pilot and series called GHOST

WHISPERER, starring Jennifer Love Hewitt as Melinda Gordon, a woman who sees ghosts and dead people and helps them transition into the other world. "It's like a hip version of TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL," said Snow. "I'm doing a mostly piano and strings type of melodic score. There are some mysterious and tense moments, but the majority of it is heartfelt, emphasizing characters as opposed to the horrible things that are going on."

He is set to do a film for the great French director, Alain Resnais in Paris this June, and a Robert Duvall mini-series for the AMC channel. With GHOST WHISPERER and SMALLVILLE ongoing, it doesn't look like it will be a lean period for Mark Snow.

Even though he has proven he can ably provide music for a wide range of genres and styles, music of the macabre or extraordinary continues to draw him, giving him opportunities where he can create entire environments while also emphasizing character and emotion. Whether it's Mulder & Scully, Frank Black, Carl Kolchak, or Melinda Gordon, Mark Snow is right there beside them, providing music that is broodingly mysterious, gruelingly suspenseful, and exceedingly heartfelt.

Mark Snow: My Five Favorite Musical Moments:

THE ROOKIES. Episode: A Bloody Shade of Blue (12/11/72) "This was the second or third score I ever did, for a sensitive story about a cop who loses his eyesight. This was in days before home studios it was ocarina and strings. It was pretty cool to be able to get away with that ensemble on a cop show."

SOMETHING ABOUT AMELIA. TV-movie, (1984) "This was the first TV show to deal with incest, with Ted Danson as the incestuous father and Glenn Close as the disbelieving mother. The score was very simple, with piano, woodwinds, and strings, just below the surface to create a kind of nervous tension. The music starts off with a beautiful melodic theme and then deteriorates from there, like the family does. The score was nominated for an Emmy."

THE X-FILES. Episode: Home (10/11/96) "This was about a family in the South, the Peacock family, where the mother literally had no arms or legs, and was on this board on wheels under the bed, and she had these inventive sons who would take care of her, and do all kinds of nefarious stuff. There was nothing warm or melodic whatsoever about the score - it was just as disturbing as I could get it."

MILLENNIUM. Episode: Jose Chung's Doomsday Defense (11/16/97) "This was a real black comedy episode featuring the character, Jose Chung, played by Charles Nelson Reilly, who first surfaced in THE X-FILES. The score consisted of light 1950s be bop, with bongos and organ and finger snapping, clarinet, sax, piano, upright bass, acoustic bass. Very tongue-in-cheek. A far cry from the Peacock family music!"

SMALLVILLE. Episode: Pilot (10/16/01) "The pilot episode was really a standout, with Clark Kent coming out of the meteorite in the middle of Kansas. The music was heroic, large scale Americana, very John Williamsesque."

Former editor/publisher of CinemaScore magazine, Randall Larson was for many years senior editor for Soundtrack Magazine and a film music columnist for Cinefantastique magazine. He is the author of Musique Fantastique: A Survey of Film Music in the Fantastic Cinema (Scarecrow, 1984) and Music from the House of Hammer (Scarecrow, 1995). In addition to Soundtrax and Music News for Cinescape.com, Randall reviews soundtracks Music from the Movies, writes for Film Music Magazine, and in many other fields.

Recommended Soundtrack sources:
www.buysoundtrax.com  
www.intrada.com
www.screenarchives.com  
www.footlight.com
www.arksquare.com/index_main.html  (Japan)
www.intermezzomedia.com/  (Italy)
www.moviegrooves.com  
www.moviemusic.com  

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