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Barry was the composer of the original music for the Jodie Foster, Peter O'Toole film (1983,) "Svengali."
Take a look at his prolific body of work.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/movies/01barry.html?src=twrhp
January 31, 2011
John Barry Dies at 77; Composed for Bond Films
By WILLIAM GRIMES
John Barry, whose bold, jazzy scores for “From Russia With Love,” “Goldfinger” and nine other James Bond films put a musical stamp on one of the most successful film franchises of all time, and who won five Academy Awards as a composer for “Born Free,” “Dances With Wolves” and other films, died on Sunday in New York. He was 77.
His death was announced in a statement by family members and reported by The Associated Press. No other details about the cause of death or where he died were provided.
Mr. Barry scored dozens of films, big and small, that called for music to express a wide variety of human emotions and dramatic situations. He composed taut, pulsing, jittery music for the espionage thrillers “The Ipcress File” (1965) and “The Quiller Memorandum” (1966), delivered a sultry sound for the noirish “Body Heat” (1981) and established an offbeat intimacy for “Midnight Cowboy” (1969), with its haunting harmonica theme.
“I like to score the inner feelings of a character — get into their shoes in an imaginative way and take the audience there and enlighten them in a poetic rather than realistic way,” he told The New York Times in 2000.
His throbbing, expansive score for “Born Free” (1966) earned him two Oscars, one for best score and the other for best song.
Although he won Oscars for his work on “The Lion in Winter” (1968), “Out of Africa” (1985) and “Dances With Wolves” (1990), he was known first and foremost as the resident composer for most of the Bond films.
The musical template he established was as much a part of the films as Bond’s double entendres, Q’s gadgetry and Miss Moneypenny’s flirtatious repartee. The films began with a catchy song performed by a pop star, its themes picked up and reprised throughout the movie, most effectively in the tense transitions when Bond moved from one exotic location to the next or prepared to execute a choice bit of spycraft.
His role in composing the most famous Bond music of all, the theme that has been a signature of the films since “Dr. No” (1962), remains unclear. When he took credit for the theme in an interview with The Sunday Times of London in 1997, the original composer hired for the film, Monty Norman, successfully sued the newspaper for libel, asserting that Mr. Barry had only done the orchestration.
After being called in as a kind of musical special agent for “Dr. No” by the film’s producers, Mr. Barry went on to score “From Russia With Love” (1963), “Goldfinger” (1964), “Thunderball” (1965), “You Only Live Twice” (1967), “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” (1969), “Diamonds Are Forever” (1971), “The Man With the Golden Gun” (1974), “Moonraker” (1979), “Octopussy” (1983), “A View to a Kill” (1985) and “The Living Daylights” (1987).
Jonathan Barry Prendergast was born on Nov. 3, 1933, in York, England. His father ran a chain of movie theaters in the north of England, and early on he became entranced by film music. He later credited film composers like Max Stern, Erich Korngold and Bernard Herrmann as important influences, as well as Stan Kenton’s big band.
“I think the genesis of the Bond sound was most certainly that Kentonesque sharp attack,” he told Film Score Monthly in 1996, calling it a brassy wall of sound with notes hitting extreme highs and lows.
He studied piano and took instruction in composition with Francis Jackson, the organist and composer at York Minster. He later played the trumpet with dance bands and, during his military service, with an Army band.
In 1957 he formed the John Barry Seven, a rock ’n’ roll band styled after the popular guitar-based instrumental group the Ventures. His group recorded several instrumental hits as well as “Hit and Miss,” the theme song for the popular television program “Juke Box Jury.”
The band reached its widest audience as the backup group for Adam Faith on the BBC pop show “Drumbeat.” When the singer was cast in the 1959 film “Beat Girl,” released in the United States as “Living for Kicks,” and the Peter Sellers film “Never Let Go,” Mr. Barry came along to write the music.
He quickly found himself in demand at a time when British directors looked to jazz and pop music to create a cool image for their films. He was the composer for “Man in the Middle” (1963), “The Wrong Box” (1966), “The L-Shaped Room” (1962) and “Zulu” (1964).
He inched closer to the center of the British New Wave when he married the actress Jane Birkin in 1965, inspiring Newsweek to call him the man “with the E-type Jag and the E-type wife.”
It was his second marriage. He is survived by his fourth wife, Laurie; four children, Kate, Suzanne, Sian and Jonpatrick; and five grandchildren.
The origins of the James Bond theme are disputed. Mr. Norman said that he brushed off a musical passage from “Bad Sign, Good Sign,” a song he had written for a musical version of the V. S. Naipaul novel “A House for Mr. Biswas.” With a few adjustments, it became the theme to “Dr. No.” The John Barry Orchestra, an expanded version of Mr. Barry’s group, performed the theme, with Vic Flick supplying the twangy, Duane Eddy-style guitar sound.
Mr. Barry testified in court in 2001 that he had entered into a secret agreement with the film’s producers to write the theme for a flat fee, with Mr. Norman, whose authorship claims he called “absolute nonsense,” retaining the credit. He adopted a more circumspect tone after the libel judgment in 2001.
When he was not scoring the Bond films, Mr. Barry composed the music for films like “The Tamarind Seed” (1974), “The Day of the Locust” (1975), “Robin and Marian” (1976), “The Deep” (1977), “The Cotton Club” (1984), “Peggy Sue Got Married” (1986), “Jagged Edge” (1985) and, perhaps least of all, “Howard the Duck” (1986). He also composed the theme for the 1970s television series “The Persuaders,” with Tony Curtis and Roger Moore.
His scores for “Mary, Queen of Scots” (1971) and “Chaplin” (1992) were nominated for Academy Awards.
Mr. Barry decided to quit the Bond game while the going was still good. “I gave up after ‘The Living Daylights’ in 1987,” he told The Sunday Express of London in 2006. “I’d exhausted all my ideas, rung all the changes possible. It was a formula that had run its course. The best had been done as far as I was concerned.”
Take a look at his prolific body of work.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/movies/01barry.html?src=twrhp
January 31, 2011
John Barry Dies at 77; Composed for Bond Films
By WILLIAM GRIMES
John Barry, whose bold, jazzy scores for “From Russia With Love,” “Goldfinger” and nine other James Bond films put a musical stamp on one of the most successful film franchises of all time, and who won five Academy Awards as a composer for “Born Free,” “Dances With Wolves” and other films, died on Sunday in New York. He was 77.
His death was announced in a statement by family members and reported by The Associated Press. No other details about the cause of death or where he died were provided.
Mr. Barry scored dozens of films, big and small, that called for music to express a wide variety of human emotions and dramatic situations. He composed taut, pulsing, jittery music for the espionage thrillers “The Ipcress File” (1965) and “The Quiller Memorandum” (1966), delivered a sultry sound for the noirish “Body Heat” (1981) and established an offbeat intimacy for “Midnight Cowboy” (1969), with its haunting harmonica theme.
“I like to score the inner feelings of a character — get into their shoes in an imaginative way and take the audience there and enlighten them in a poetic rather than realistic way,” he told The New York Times in 2000.
His throbbing, expansive score for “Born Free” (1966) earned him two Oscars, one for best score and the other for best song.
Although he won Oscars for his work on “The Lion in Winter” (1968), “Out of Africa” (1985) and “Dances With Wolves” (1990), he was known first and foremost as the resident composer for most of the Bond films.
The musical template he established was as much a part of the films as Bond’s double entendres, Q’s gadgetry and Miss Moneypenny’s flirtatious repartee. The films began with a catchy song performed by a pop star, its themes picked up and reprised throughout the movie, most effectively in the tense transitions when Bond moved from one exotic location to the next or prepared to execute a choice bit of spycraft.
His role in composing the most famous Bond music of all, the theme that has been a signature of the films since “Dr. No” (1962), remains unclear. When he took credit for the theme in an interview with The Sunday Times of London in 1997, the original composer hired for the film, Monty Norman, successfully sued the newspaper for libel, asserting that Mr. Barry had only done the orchestration.
After being called in as a kind of musical special agent for “Dr. No” by the film’s producers, Mr. Barry went on to score “From Russia With Love” (1963), “Goldfinger” (1964), “Thunderball” (1965), “You Only Live Twice” (1967), “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” (1969), “Diamonds Are Forever” (1971), “The Man With the Golden Gun” (1974), “Moonraker” (1979), “Octopussy” (1983), “A View to a Kill” (1985) and “The Living Daylights” (1987).
Jonathan Barry Prendergast was born on Nov. 3, 1933, in York, England. His father ran a chain of movie theaters in the north of England, and early on he became entranced by film music. He later credited film composers like Max Stern, Erich Korngold and Bernard Herrmann as important influences, as well as Stan Kenton’s big band.
“I think the genesis of the Bond sound was most certainly that Kentonesque sharp attack,” he told Film Score Monthly in 1996, calling it a brassy wall of sound with notes hitting extreme highs and lows.
He studied piano and took instruction in composition with Francis Jackson, the organist and composer at York Minster. He later played the trumpet with dance bands and, during his military service, with an Army band.
In 1957 he formed the John Barry Seven, a rock ’n’ roll band styled after the popular guitar-based instrumental group the Ventures. His group recorded several instrumental hits as well as “Hit and Miss,” the theme song for the popular television program “Juke Box Jury.”
The band reached its widest audience as the backup group for Adam Faith on the BBC pop show “Drumbeat.” When the singer was cast in the 1959 film “Beat Girl,” released in the United States as “Living for Kicks,” and the Peter Sellers film “Never Let Go,” Mr. Barry came along to write the music.
He quickly found himself in demand at a time when British directors looked to jazz and pop music to create a cool image for their films. He was the composer for “Man in the Middle” (1963), “The Wrong Box” (1966), “The L-Shaped Room” (1962) and “Zulu” (1964).
He inched closer to the center of the British New Wave when he married the actress Jane Birkin in 1965, inspiring Newsweek to call him the man “with the E-type Jag and the E-type wife.”
It was his second marriage. He is survived by his fourth wife, Laurie; four children, Kate, Suzanne, Sian and Jonpatrick; and five grandchildren.
The origins of the James Bond theme are disputed. Mr. Norman said that he brushed off a musical passage from “Bad Sign, Good Sign,” a song he had written for a musical version of the V. S. Naipaul novel “A House for Mr. Biswas.” With a few adjustments, it became the theme to “Dr. No.” The John Barry Orchestra, an expanded version of Mr. Barry’s group, performed the theme, with Vic Flick supplying the twangy, Duane Eddy-style guitar sound.
Mr. Barry testified in court in 2001 that he had entered into a secret agreement with the film’s producers to write the theme for a flat fee, with Mr. Norman, whose authorship claims he called “absolute nonsense,” retaining the credit. He adopted a more circumspect tone after the libel judgment in 2001.
When he was not scoring the Bond films, Mr. Barry composed the music for films like “The Tamarind Seed” (1974), “The Day of the Locust” (1975), “Robin and Marian” (1976), “The Deep” (1977), “The Cotton Club” (1984), “Peggy Sue Got Married” (1986), “Jagged Edge” (1985) and, perhaps least of all, “Howard the Duck” (1986). He also composed the theme for the 1970s television series “The Persuaders,” with Tony Curtis and Roger Moore.
His scores for “Mary, Queen of Scots” (1971) and “Chaplin” (1992) were nominated for Academy Awards.
Mr. Barry decided to quit the Bond game while the going was still good. “I gave up after ‘The Living Daylights’ in 1987,” he told The Sunday Express of London in 2006. “I’d exhausted all my ideas, rung all the changes possible. It was a formula that had run its course. The best had been done as far as I was concerned.”
