It is not uncommon to find that film producers either choose to not commission a new score, preferring instead to use existing classical music. Other producers perhaps combine a mixture of both.
Cinema trailers are almost a genre in their own right. The kind of music we are often exposed to must have an immediate impact and appeal, drawing the viewer straight into the movie.
Ultimately, these scores need to be an almost instant hook as trailers can be as brief as a minute, and the producers want a large audience for their work.
Classical Music in Cinema Trailers
Notable Examples of Classical Music in Film Trailers
One distinct advantage of opting for a classical piece over a new score is it’s probably considerably cheaper and you’d be licensing an already available recording(s).
In Frank Coraci’s 1998 comedy The Waterboy, the famous Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss the Second appears in a suitably comic role. Did you spot Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in the first Die Hard movie?
Ode To Joy appears in a transposed version that delivers a far darker tone than Beethoven intended. The music underscores the bad guys successfully opening a safe, leaving us with the impression they may win the day.
A piece that I remember first encountering in a 1970s advertisement for the aftershave called ‘Old Spice’ is Carl Orff’s cantata Carmina Burana (1935-36). It has been a go-to for movie directors for years.
Orff used 24 poems from a collection of Medieval texts called Carmina Burana. He scored it for a large orchestra and chorus, and it is the opening song, O Fortuna, that makes frequent appearances in movie trailers.
The earliest use of the opening of Carmina Burana that I can find is in 1989 for the trailer of the film Glory and in the TV trailer for Warlock. It’s also used in Stallone’s Cliffhanger (1993), The 13th Warrior (1999), and more recently in Doogal (2006).
For the majority of these trailers, the reasoning behind the use of Orff’s music is very apparent. The style of many of the movies is high energy, epic, dramatic, heroic, and driven.
O Fortuna is not a piece for shrinking violets. It crashes into life with a full orchestra and chorus in a blaze of majesty and menace. You don’t have to know the music to be immediately affected by it, and when used in conjunction with fast-paced, action-packed visuals, Orff’s music never fails to create the mood.
In the Doogal movie, we are dealing with a comic animation about one of the key characters from the 1970s children’s series The Magic Roundabout.
Whilst the Orff score can be heard as a comic juxtaposition to a rather mellow, unassuming dog on screen, he is also a hero and is deserving of suitably rousing music to reinforce this.
Other Famous Classical Pieces in Trailers
Another extremely famous classical piece is Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. It’s perhaps best known for its inclusion of actual cannons that make more than a dramatic impact in the final section of the work.
The overture was composed for the opening of the Cathedral of Christ The Saviour in Moscow. This was built to commemorate Napoleon’s failed Russian campaign of 1812. The music is typically valiant, strong, and uplifting, beautifully suited to movies of a similar nature.
The trailer for the 1995 Film Cutthroat Island fully exploits the music of Tchaikovsky. It accompanies, amplifies, and underscores the trailer in a way that would be hard to replace with an alternative score.
You are roused by the Overture, cheering for the heroes and shouting at the villains. Full of fantastic explosions, sword fights, and bravery, the music provides a winning background to the trailer.
The same overture appears in the theatre trailer for the 1993 comedy Robin Hood: Men In Tights. As you can gather from the title, this is a spoof of the Robin Hood story with a hero who is as accident-prone as a clown on the opening night of a circus.
In a similar way to previously mentioned trailers, the use of Tchaikovsky serves both to underline the heroic nature of the film and also to highlight the slightly over-the-top, even ridiculous character of the film.
Wagner and Other Composers in Film
You only need to listen to a small selection of Richard Wagner’s music to feel the expansive and epic temperament of his scores.
Director Francis Ford Coppola understood the powerful impact that Wagner’s music could have on an audience and selected the Ride of the Valkyries for the trailer of his chilling Vietnam War film, Apocalypse Now.
The triumphant music of Wagner plays unfalteringly as destruction is reigned down on the Vietnamese. It produces a curious mixture of effects that, for me, alter the more times you watch the film.
With feelings of horror at the terrible devastation of war, there is a latent triumph promoted by the music. Equally, there is an absurdity in the use of the Wagner score that leans towards madness, a mania that is deeply unsettling; as it is intended to be.
Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt in Film
On a slightly lighter note, the ever-popular music of Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg has not gone unnoticed by Hollywood film producers. Grieg drew on his cultural heritage when composing the music for Peer Gynt.
The music of choice for several films was taken from the Peer Gynt Suite called In the Hall of The Mountain King. Corpse Bride (2005), How The Grinch Stole Christmas (2000), The Ladykillers (2004), and The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause (2006) all used Grieg’s music.
What appeals is the mischievous yet humorous quality of the piece that is couched in the mystery of the mountains. Grieg’s music was composed to evoke the story of Peer Gynt, a young boy who is forbidden to marry the girl he loves.
There’s passion, heroics, love, and chase mixed with the eternal battle between good and evil. Grieg’s scoring is as ingenious as it is inviting with meticulously crafted textures that reflect the story. In these ways, the music fits neatly into any movie trailer that echoes these traits.
Bizet’s Carmen in Film Trailers
The four-act opera by French composer Georges Bizet called Carmen is not only one of the most performed and enjoyed operas from the Romantic repertoire, but some of the music has been gainfully employed in movie trailers.
The thing about the opera is that there are so many fantastic tunes that you can’t fail to discover something you’ll want to use. You also have the fact that the chances are that whatever part you select will be known by your audience.
In the trailer for Wild Hogs (2007), the Habanera (Love is a Rebellious Bird) opens the comic film. The enticingly hypnotic habanera rhythm gently suggests a certain amount of tomfoolery is about to take place.
It plays whilst lead actor John Travolta is having a particularly bad day. Bizet’s music takes the sting from the scene and replaces it with a comic edge that then leads into the various flawed characters of the movie.