John Barry’s career as a composer for the James Bond franchise spanned twenty-five years and twelve films beginning with his collaboration with Monty Norman on the Bond theme for the very first Bond film, Dr. No in 1962, and ending with the The Living Daylights in 1987. After Dr. No, Barry went on to score eleven Bond films on his own.

Across these eleven films, there are certainly recurring elements that form a distinctive style for Bond scoring that Barry firmly established with Goldfinger, his second solo Bond score. But at the same time, Barry treated these elements flexibly, developing them further, adding new elements or excluding old ones, sometimes at the request of the filmmakers. Hence, although Barry’s Bond style was always recognizable, these sorts of changes kept the music sounding fresh even while it remained familiar enough to form a strong connection with previous Bond scores. The following film music analysis traces the progression of four key features in Barry’s changing Bond style:

1. The James Bond Theme
2. The Title Song
3. Other Themes
4. Ostinatos

In addition to these four features, I will also discuss the filmmakers’ influence on Barry’s Bond scores.

1. The James Bond Theme

Of course, the James Bond theme appears in all of Barry’s Bond scores, most often fragmented and rescored in a slow tempo to create a suspenseful atmosphere. But the way in which its familiar jazz-scored version appears evolved with time. Not only is it always heard with the famous gunbarrel sequence, but it also usually appears in the pre-title sequence at the start of each film. Within the film proper, though, its function changed more than once.

With the first Bond film, Dr. No (scored by Monty Norman), it was used to project Bond’s suave, cool character, as when he is introduced in the casino:

Barry followed this use of the Bond theme in From Russia with Love, as when Bond arrives at a hotel and proceeds to examine his room for listening devices (from 4:23 below):

In Barry’s next two scores, however, Goldfinger and Thunderball (the next two Bond films), this particular scoring of the Bond theme essentially disappears outside of the gunbarrel sequence. Instead, Barry weaves the theme into each film’s title song, thereby creating a more organic mixture of musical material and allowing him to rely far more on the title song and less on the Bond theme without neglecting it altogether. Notice the Bond accompaniment in the “Goldfinger” song below at 0:52 and a little of the theme’s B section near the end at 2:30:

…and in the “Thunderball” song below at its very start (the Bond theme’s B section) and at 0:37 (the Bond accompaniment):

After these films, the jazz-scored Bond theme was associated with action scenes in which Bond has the upper hand, as in You Only Live Twice, in which he takes down a fleet of enemy helicopters in Q’s flying device, “Little Nellie” (heard from 0:21):

…or in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, in which Bond and his allies come to the rescue of Bond’s fiancée Tracy. (In this latter case, however, Barry was asked to insert the theme against his will.) In Barry’s scores that followed, Diamonds Are Forever, The Man with the Golden Gun, and Moonraker, the jazzy form of the Bond theme was generally confined to the gunbarrel sequence and perhaps the pre-title sequence. In Octopussy, because the film was in competition with the unofficial Bond film Never Say Never Again, the theme appeared a record nine times, most prominently during a car chase in which Bond does not have the advantage until the very end of the scene (heard at 1:23):

This type of usage of the theme returned in Barry’s next (and last) two Bond scores, A View to a Kill and The Living Daylights. Thus, beyond merely signifying the film’s protagonist, the theme’s function underwent several subtle changes over the years.

2. The Title Song

For Barry, the title song was a crucial aspect of a Bond score since he always drew on its material to fashion a good portion of each score. With Goldfinger, Barry established the technique of beginning each song with a distinctive figure or two. While this technique was partly tied to the attempt to sell soundtrack albums, it also had a functional aspect in that Barry generally employed these figures as recurring motives in the film. Notably, his title songs  often open with the interval of a fourth or fifth, making them easy to identify when they return:

Goldfinger

You Only Live Twice

Diamonds are Forever – Accompaniment

Diamonds are Forever – Melody

The Man with the Golden Gun

“Where Are You?” from Moonraker

Although the function of the title song remained more consistent than the Bond theme over Barry’s career, it too experienced some changes in its application. As we saw in Goldfinger, Barry utilized the title song as a generalized main theme that not only accompanied Goldfinger himself as a kind of leitmotif, but also suspenseful scenes, a car chase, and a landscape scene as well. With the enormous success of Goldfinger, both film and music, Barry clearly felt that he had hit on a winning technique, so continued to employ it in his next five Bond scores. (Though in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, it’s not the instrumental title theme that acts as a main theme, but the vocal song “We Have All the Time in the World”, which appears in a montage within the film proper.) Moreover, the technique allowed Barry to work with new music in each Bond film while still keeping within the style he had created.

With Moonraker, we saw that Barry’s style began to take on more symphonic characteristics, especially in the development and reshaping of musical ideas rather than their repetition, likely as an influence from John Williams’ success with Star Wars only two years earlier. Consequently, those aspects of Barry’s Bond scores that had previously played more minor roles—the Bond theme and ostinatos—could take on a larger role in the film without becoming tiring. In other words, the symphonic style allowed Barry more melodic variety in his options for a Bond score. Rather than relying mainly on the title song, he could now incorporate more new music through the use of new developments of the Bond theme and more developmental ostinatos.

With so many ideas at Barry’s disposal, the title song no longer needed to accompany so many different emotional situations. Thus, he confined its use almost exclusively to love scenes. This narrower function continued into his subsequent scores for Octopussy and A View to a Kill. This scene from Octopussy is typical of Barry’s use of the title song in these later Bond scores:

In Barry’s final Bond score, The Living Daylights, the title song’s appearance is reduced to the point of being negligible. It occurs only during a couple of suspense scenes and more prominently in a couple of chase scenes (with a segment of the song’s B section, which is harder to recognize). But it is important to remember that Barry had very little to do with this song, as his creative difficulties with a-ha­, the band who wrote and performed the song, are well known. For the love scenes, Barry instead wrote a theme of his own that became the song “If There Was a Man”, heard over the end credits. Hence, the same basic technique is still in evidence, though with a shift in the song’s placement due to Barry’s waning control over the title song. (This loss of control was partly why Barry refused when asked to return to the Bond franchise for Tomorrow Never Dies.)

3. Other Themes and Songs

Henchmen’s Leitmotifs

Another feature of Barry’s Bond style is the use of themes, songs, and motives (i.e., distinctive melodies) other than the Bond theme and title song. In some cases, these additional themes are leitmotifs for the villain’s henchmen, examples being Oddjob from Goldfinger, Kidd and Wint from Diamonds Are Forever, and Necros from The Living Daylights, all of which I’ve discussed in these posts. Whether or not a henchman received a leitmotif seems not to have depended on any particular aspect of the film. Rather, it was most likely a way to offer melodic diversity in the score. The majority of Goldfinger, for instance, is based on the title song, so the leitmotif provides some welcome contrast. In Diamonds Are Forever, several scenes contain diegetic jazzy lounge music, and many of the action scenes are very sparsely scored, forcing Barry to make the most of the relatively small amount of non-diegetic music used in the film. And in The Living Daylights, Barry’s marginalization of the title song left him plenty of room to fill with other themes.

The 007 Theme

Barry employed the 007 theme in five Bond films beginning with From Russia with Love and continuing into Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, Diamonds Are Forever, and Moonraker. He seems to have used it as a kind of counterweight for each of these films in that, in the four Connery Bond films in which it appears (the first four above), its buoyant, active sound provides the action with some levity, especially in Diamonds Are Forever, where the overall dark tone of the film is considerably lightened when Bond takes control of Blofeld’s escape pod and tosses it about. Compare these to its appearance in Moonraker, where the already light and somewhat humourous tone of the film is made more serious by a noticeably slowed down version of the theme:

Here it is in From Russia with Love:

And here it is in Moonraker (starting at 1:45):

Landscape Themes

Occasionally, Barry wrote a separate theme to accompany shots of landscapes, as in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (at 0:19):

and Moonraker (at 0:09):

Like the leitmotifs for henchmen and the 007 theme, these landscape themes offer melodic contrast within Barry’s James Bond style.

4. Ostinatos

Ostinatos—repetitions of a relatively short unit of music—are an integral part of each one of Barry’s Bond scores, primarily because they occupy so much of the score. (I would estimate as much as half of most scores.) Barry’s technique for ostinatos did not, however, remain unchanged throughout his career. In the early scores, the ostinato pattern tends to undergo only minimal change by adding short fragments of melody overtop. This keeps the engine-like drive of the ostinato intact for its entire length and works especially well in intense scenes like “The Laser Beam” from Goldfinger, where a laser beam slowly nears Bond’s groin.

As we saw with Moonraker, Barry’s approach to ostinatos began to include more contrasting material in accordance with a more symphonic style, hence breaking up the repetitions and creating a more relaxed mood appropriate for landscape scenes, space scenes, and other visual expanses. This technique was taken somewhat further in The Living Daylights, in the cue I discussed called “Mujahadin and Opium”, where a broad two-phrase melody unfolds over the ostinato, suggesting the vastness of the Afghan desert:

And yet, it’s not as if Barry continued to develop his ostinato technique in isolation from his other Bond-score components. Some themes, such as that of Kidd and Wint in Diamonds Are Forever, have an ostinato accompaniment. At other times, as in the pre-title sequence of Goldfinger, the Bond theme’s accompaniment becomes an ostinato on its own. And even a part of the title song may be used as an ostinato, as do the opening two chords of the Goldfinger title song in the cue “Dawn Raid on Fort Knox”:

And as we saw above, in his later scores, Barry’s ostinatos themselves tended to become more melodic, more like a theme. Thus, the ostinatos were one of the more flexible aspects of Barry’s Bond score style.

The Filmmakers’ Influence

While the four features discussed above form the core of Barry’s Bond style, there were sometimes other elements that made their way into some of the films at the request of the filmmakers. Perhaps the most prominent of these is the use of musical quotations, which actually originated in Marvin Hamlisch’s score for The Spy Who Loved Me with its quotes of Maurice Jarre’s themes from Doctor Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia, as well as Bach’s Air on the G String, and Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major. In the very next Bond film, Moonraker, there are quotations of Elmer Bernstein’s theme from The Magnificent Seven, Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Oveture, and Chopin’s “Raindrop” Prelude. As I argued in the Moonraker analysis, the appearance of these pieces was almost certainly at the suggestion of Lewis Gilbert, who directed both this film and The Spy Who Loved Me.

In other cases, the filmmakers asked for the insertion of the Bond theme in a scene against Barry’s wishes. This occurred in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service during Bond’s helicopter rescue of Tracy in Blofeld’s mountaintop lair, and also in Diamonds Are Forever, when Bond is searching a house for Willard Whyte (just before he runs into “Bambi” and “Thumper”).

And in a few other instances, there was disagreement as to what kind of music should accompany a scene or whether music should be present at all. In the dune buggy chase in Diamonds Are Forever, director Guy Hamilton wanted comical music to match the light-hearted character of the scene. But Barry disagreed and thought the scene would be more effective scored with more serious action music to heighten the contrast and throw the parodic nature of the scene into relief. What ended up in the film was a compromise between the two sides that ironically makes it more difficult to interpret the emotional content of the scene since it incorporates both comical and serious qualities (from 2:17):

Finally, there was also the sparse use of music in many action scenes in Barry’s Bond scores of the late 1970s and early to mid 80s due to the filmmakers’ preference for a variety of sound effects in place of music, a consequence of the clearer film sound achieved with the new Dolby stereo technology. Once again, Barry disagreed with this approach, especially in Moonraker, which was released only two years after the widespread adoption of Dolby. Nevertheless, as with all of the filmmakers’ suggestions, the approach forms a part of the Bond style for these films, just not Barry’s Bond style.

Conclusion

John Barry firmly established his James Bond style in his second Bond score, Goldfinger. In that film, he employed the title song in various situations as a main theme for the film, made sparing use of the James Bond theme, and created a leitmotif for the henchman, Oddjob. Another substantial part of the score was based on ostinatos. These four components became the basis of Barry’s Bond style for the remainder of his career. But Barry never allowed this pattern to fall into monotony because most of the components—the title song, other themes (excluding the 007 theme), and ostinatos—were new with each film. And even the one constant element, the Bond theme, underwent changes in the frequency of its appearance and in its function, so that it could feel quite different even if heard with the same upbeat, jazzy scoring as before. In this way, Barry’s Bond style always offers much that is new even while continuing in a similar vein as previous Bond films. Striking the right balance between new and old was one of Barry’s many strengths as a Bond composer and surely part of the reason why his music for the James Bond legacy remains greatly admired today.

Coming soon… John Williams’ Superman March

The Living Daylights was the fifteenth official (i.e., Eon-produced) Bond film and the first to star Timothy Dalton after a string of seven films with Roger Moore as 007. It was also the eleventh and last Bond film scored by John Barry, who had been with the franchise for twenty-five years since its inception with Dr. No in 1962. Barry’s decision to leave the Bond legacy behind was in part driven by creative differences between himself and the Norweigian band a-ha, who wrote and performed the film’s title song, and in part by a feeling of limitation in the style of Bond music. (Though it must be said that Barry was slated to score the next Bond film, Licence to Kill, and was in talks to score Tomorrow Never Dies, several years later. Both projects, however, ended up with another composer.)  After scoring The Living Daylights, Barry explained of working on Bond films that

“It lost its natural energy. It started to be just formula, and once that happens, the work gets really hard. The spontaneity and excitement of the original scores is gone, so you move on.”

Even so, Barry’s score for The Living Daylights could hardly be chalked up to mere formulaic repetition. Of course, there are several aspects that clearly relate the score to previous Bond films. But as we shall see in the following film music analysis, Barry continued to experiment with the Bond style, furthering the symphonic style he began to cultivate in Moonraker and offering new takes on his more established techniques.

The James Bond Theme

The Gunbarrel Sequence

As with all of his scores for the Roger Moore Bond films, Barry keeps the opening gunbarrel sequence within an orchestral milieu through the use of string instruments on the Bond melody. Here’s a brief rundown of the instrumentations Barry used on this melody in the Moore films:

• The Man with the Golden Gun – Strings only
• Moonraker – Trumpets and strings
• Octopussy – Trumpets and strings
• A View to a Kill – Clarinets and strings

In The Living Daylights, Barry again employs the trumpets and strings on the Bond melody:

The Rest of the Film

The most obvious change Barry made to some statements of the Bond theme is the addition of a synthesized rhythm track mixed with the orchestra, which he included for its “more up-to-date sound.” More subtle, however, is the way in which Barry re-fashions the theme’s original guitar riff into a new melody. Along with the following score examples, compare the melody at 0:08 in the above clip with that of 0:09 in the clip below:

While the latter melody is indeed a new addition to the Bond musical family, its relationship to the older tune cleverly expands the style in a very organic and subconsciously suitable way.

The Title Song/Theme

As with the other Bond films, Barry uses the title song, “The Living Daylights”, within the film proper. Here’s how we first hear the song in the film’s main titles:

Unlike most other Bonds, Barry relies on the song more as an occasional theme than as a  pervasive main theme. When it does appear, it is usually with the type of synthesized rhythm track mentioned above as accompaniment to action scenes, one example being the final shootout between Bond and the Russian General Koskov (the melody that enters at 0:13 is from the song’s B section—just before the song’s title lyrics come in—heard at 1:08 in the clip above):

It is here that Barry’s experiments with the Bond style are perhaps the most palpable. For, the relatively minor use of the title song leaves more room to expand other aspects of the score, as we shall see.

Other Themes

Necros’ Theme – “Where Has Everybody Gone”

Like Oddjob in Goldfinger or Kidd and Wint in Diamonds Are Forever, Barry gives Necros, the main henchman in The Living Daylights, his own leitmotif. But a key difference is that the leitmotif is first heard as a rock song called “Where Has Everybody Gone?”, which Barry fashioned from his instrumental motif for the character, and which Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders wrote the lyrics for and also performed. Necros himself often plays the song through a set of Walkman headphones that doubles as his weapon of strangulation. Thus, in this form, the leitmotif is actually heard and controlled by the character it represents. This would be like Kidd or Wint whistling their own theme. While it may sound like a corny device for film scoring, the aggressive rock flavour of the song renders it an appropriate sign of nearing danger when it appears.

Below is the song’s melody in score and its full form in the audio (it’s the first 30 seconds that appear most frequently in the film):

The leitmotif, however, also makes its way into the non-diegetic and instrumental accompaniment, meaning that the characters now do not hear the music. In the following clip, notice how the song begins as diegetic music heard through Necros’ headphones a few times, then, when he battles one of the servants, how the same theme is transferred into the non-diegetic score at 1:47 as accompaniment for the fight scene.

The Love Theme – “If There Was a Man”

In most Bond films, Barry employs the title song as a love theme between Bond and the film’s leading lady. But in The Living Daylights, Barry’s love music enters as a separate theme first heard when Bond tells the cellist Kara Milovy that her playing at a concert was “exquisite” (beginning at 0:32):

The theme then recurs in other scenes where the focus is on these characters’ emotional connection, and culminates in the vocal version of the theme in Barry’s song, “If There Was a Man”, heard over the end credits (also performed and with lyrics by Hynde). The theme thus functions exclusively as a love theme in the score, an approach that allowed Barry the flexibility to compose other music with a different function for the score. In short, this technique allows for a score with a greater diversity of themes than one that draws primarily from the title song.

Why would he have preferred to work with new themes than with the usual title song? One can only conjecture. But as we have seen, there was certainly conflict between Barry and a-ha, who wrote the title song. As Barry put it, working with the three members of a-ha was like “playing ping-pong with four balls. They had an attitude which I really didn’t like at all. It was not a pleasant experience.” With such discontent about the collaboration, it is not surprising that the title song plays a much smaller role than in most other Bond films, appearing only four times (plus once in the main titles) compared to seven times (plus once in the end credits) for “If There Was a Man”. Even so, it may simply have been the case that Barry felt the title song more suitable for action scenes than love scenes. It is surely no coincidence that the other Bond film for which Barry composed a separate love theme was On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, in which the title song became the accompaniment to the chase scenes near the end of the film.

Ostinatos

Ostinatos are a substantial component of all of Barry’s Bond scores. But with Moonraker, we began to see more of a symphonic style emerging that focused less on direct repetition and more on the development and contrast of musical ideas. Barry employs the same approach in The Living Daylights, though with even more emphasis on development and contrast. In the pre-title sequence, for instance, we hear a two-chord pattern begin as one of the double-0 agents prepares to climb a cliff, adding an appropriately suspenseful atmosphere:

After only two statements, this pattern changes to an ominous three-chord pattern that coordinates with a man’s shadow entering over the agent’s grappling hook at the top of the cliff, signalling the man’s villainous character. Then, as this villain drops the message “Smiert Spionem” (death to spies) down to the agent, the original two-chord pattern returns, but now enhanced with a wavering violin melody. Barry then shifts this melody up an octave after only one statement, raising the tension as the villain cuts the agent’s lifeline. Successive statements of material are thus kept to only two in this scene, allowing the music to closely mirror our changing emotional responses to the situations onscreen. Watch the scene here from 2:19:

Barry’s symphonic style is even more evident in the scenes in Afghanistan, when Bond joins forces with the Mujahideen people (the Afghan resistance). As the group travels across the desert, we hear an ostinato on the small scale, the medium scale, and the large scale unfold simultaneously. On the small scale, a short rising violin line is the first element to be repeated at 0:05 below. A few bars later at 0:16, we realize that there is a four-chord pattern that begins to repeat on a medium scale. In the second statement of this four-chord pattern at 0:16, Barry adds a trombone and horn melody. And on the large scale, the first two statements of the four-chord pattern are then repeated as large “blocks” of music at 0:32 with changes in scoring, the rising violin line shifting up an octave and the trombone and horn melody moving to the trumpets. Hear this portion of the cue below from 0:00 to 1:05:

The overall result is a complex structure based on repetition, variation, and addition that, over the first four statements of the four-chord pattern, can be represented schematically as follows:

Violin Line:        AAAA   AAAA   A’A’A’A’   A’A’A’A’

Four Chords:    B          B’         B           B’ ’

Large Blocks:   C                      C’

A’= higher octave

B’= added melody

B’ ’ = rescoring of added melody

C’ = rescored version of C

This kind of structure creates a sound that is highly unified through the economy of material but that remains fresh with each statement due to the variations and additions Barry makes. In short, it is a deceptively simple construction.

Diegetic Music

One noticeably new musical feature of The Living Daylights is its use of classical music as diegetic music (music that the characters actually hear). Since Bond’s love interest, Kara Milovy, is a classical cellist, this choice of music is entirely appropriate and reinforces the classy and sophisticated associations of the social world that Bond inhabits. But like much diegetic film music, the pieces relate directly to the geographical locations the characters visit. When Bond and Milovy arrive in Vienna, we hear the Viennese waltz Wein, Weib, und Gesang by the inimitable Johann Strauss, Jr., who was known as “The Waltz King” during his lifetime (in the film, we hear from 7:20 of the following clip):

Bond then attends a performance of The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart, a composer who spent much of his life in Vienna. Milovy also performs in an orchestra in Czechoslovakia, hence we hear her practicing the Cello Concerto of the Czech composer Dvořák. And at the end of the film, the Russian aspect of the plot is emphasized by Milovy’s performance in the Variations on a Rococo Theme by Tchaikovsky.

Conclusion

After scoring The Living Daylights, John Barry felt that he had written all that he could offer for the Bond franchise. But although his score for the film retains several aspects that characterized his earlier Bond scores, we nevertheless hear new elements and further extensions of ideas introduced in his other Bond scores. As we saw, a number of action cues were adorned with a new synthesized rhythm track. And while Barry still drew on the well-established technique of reusing the title song within the film proper, he minimized the song’s appearances to make room for two other themes that are a more prominent part of the score: the theme for the henchman Necros, which became the basis of the song “Where Has Everybody Gone?”, and the love theme for Bond and Milovy, which was the basis for the song “If There Was a Man”. Furthermore, Barry’s use of ostinatos was even more influenced by a symphonic mode of thought than before as they usually turned to varied or contrasting material after only two statements. Finally, the diegetic classical pieces by Dvořák, Mozart and Johann Strauss, and Tchaikovsky reinforce the film’s Czechoslovakian, Austrian, and Russian aspects, respectively. With such a diversity of music, it is no wonder the score continues to be one of Barry’s most highly regarded Bond scores.

Coming soon… A Summary of John Barry’s Changing Bond Style

In writing his score for Moonraker (1979), the eleventh James Bond film and the fourth to star Roger Moore, John Barry met with several setbacks and frustrations. First, Barry had the idea of writing an eight-movement symphonic suite from which the film’s score could be drawn. And as Jon Burlinghame notes in The Music of James Bond, Barry “had hoped to turn it into a two-LP set à la the colossally successful Star Wars album.” This, however, never came to fruition. Second, three singers were approached to sing the title song—Frank Sinatra, Johnny Mathis, and Kate Bush—before Shirley Bassey signed on at the last minute. Third, the song’s original lyrics by Paul Williams were ousted at a late stage in favour of new lyrics by Hal David. Finally, Barry was never happy with the way his music was used in the film, feeling that his contribution had been, to some extent, marginalized.

Nevertheless, Barry’s music for the film remains a highly regarded Bond score, in part because of Barry’s subtle shift towards a more symphonic style whose initial impulses in his Bond scores can be heard in The Man with the Golden Gun and which became more fully developed in his scores for films such as Out of Africa and Dances with Wolves, both of which won him an Oscar. More noticeable, however, is the effect of two strong new influences: 1) an increased focus on sound effects due to the introduction of Dolby stereo in what may be called the “Star Wars Revolution”, and 2) the lighter, more comedic style of the Roger Moore Bond films. At the same time, the adherence to some of the techniques of Barry’s previous Bond scores ensured that the sound of Moonraker would be readily identifiable as a Bond score. Precisely how all these influences affected the sound of Barry’s score will be discussed below in a film music analysis.

The James Bond Theme

The Gunbarrel Sequence

In the gunbarrel sequence of Barry’s previous Bond score, for The Man with the Golden Gun, the melody of the James Bond theme is played by the strings, which not only served to distinguish the sound from the Connery Bond films, but also began to push the style of the music in a symphonic direction. In Moonraker, Barry adds trumpets to the strings for the Bond melody, delving even further into a symphonic sound (from 0:28 in the clip below):

The Symphonic Style

Because symphonies, and indeed most forms of concert music, lack the overt narrative of film music, they must be self-sufficient and create their meaning by referring mainly or entirely to themselves. As a result, symphonic music tends to be driven less by the repetition of ideas, as in much film music, and more by their development, as though the musical themes and motives themselves are characters in a drama that are shaped by the musical events of the piece. In other words, the more variation of ideas we hear in a film score, the more symphonic its style. Barry’s score for Moonraker adopts more of this symphonic style, no doubt partly influenced by the great success of John Williams’ symphonic score for Star Wars, which had appeared only two years prior.

The Bond theme, for instance, starts to undergo developments that had previously not been part of Barry’s Bond vocabulary. When Bond finds and investigates the glass shop in Venice, overtop of the Bond accompaniment, we hear fragments from the theme’s B section and end of the guitar riff that are transformed enough in its tempo and instrumentation that one may not consciously recognize them as the Bond theme even if their emotional qualities of mystery and wary confidence are fully perceived (compare the two excerpts from the original Bond theme with Barry’s developments in Moonraker):

The excerpt directly above is heard at the start of this clip (a well done synthesized version):

The Title Song/Theme – “Moonraker”

Like Barry’s other Bond scores, the title song to Moonraker appears throughout the film as an instrumental theme. This time, however, the theme’s function is not nearly as broad and therefore is not a main theme for the film in general, as in previous films, but is almost exclusively a love theme. We hear it, for instance, when:

• Corinne yields to Bond’s advances
• Bond thanks Corinne for her help
• Jaws finds his girlfriend Dolly in the space station

This narrower focus in function allows Barry to score the theme with a rich accompaniment for strings in a highly symphonic style. A good example occurs when Bond kisses Goodhead for the first time:

Lack of Music in Action Scenes

With Diamonds Are Forever, we saw that just about every action scene began without music and remained that way for most of the scene. In Moonraker, the same tactic is employed, but ostensibly for different reasons. In Diamonds, there was a clear attempt to infuse the characters—including Bond—with a darker, grittier quality. The absence of music during action scenes heightened the scene’s sense of reality and augmented the film’s already gritty feel.

With the widespread adoption of Dolby stereo sound in 1977 for Star Wars, however, action films changed dramatically. The quality of sound heard in films had increased by such a large margin that specially trained technicians began to be hired specifically to work on the construction of the film’s sound effects—essentially, the position of the sound designer was born. With the success of Star Wars, detailed film sound became something of a novelty with which filmmakers experimented. In Moonraker, the lack of music in the majority of most action scenes allows one’s aural attention to be focused entirely on the sound effects, as when:

• Bond is in danger in the ever-accelerating gravity-simulator
• A sniper in a tree aims at Bond while he shoots at pheasants
• Bond first enters Drax’s secret laboratory in Venice
• Bond fights Drax’s henchman Cheng in the Venice glass shop
• Bond fights the henchman in the ambulance
• Bond is chased by boat down the Amazon River
• American forces fight Drax’s people in space
• The final battle takes place inside the space station

Notice, for example, even in a short excerpt below from the Venice glass shop fight how the lack of music is attempted to be compensated for by the detailed and diverse sound effects of (among others):

• Cheng’s battle cries
• The abnormally loud footsteps
• The bamboo sword swiping the air, then hitting a brick wall
• Cheng hitting the brick wall
• The breaking of the glass display cases
• The tossing aside of the wooden shelves
• Cheng’s kick to Bond
• Bond picking up the glass-handled sword as it rubs against the armour
• Bond’s sword cutting the bamboo sword in half and the loose portion hitting the ground

Watch the scene from the start to 0:50:

While the sound effects in such scenes are indeed more detailed and clearer than in any previous Bond film, the lack of music seems strangely out of place given the outlandish nature of the film’s plot. As I have said before, the addition of non-diegetic music helps to immerse us in a film’s fictional world. A lack of music starts to suggest that very unreal situations are somehow realistic, a jarring feeling for a film as unrealistic as Moonraker. Surely this is partly why Barry was dissatisfied with the way his music was mixed in the film (known as the “dubbing” process), laying blame with director Lewis Gilbert:

“I was very disappointed with the dub of Moonraker… Personally, I believe Lewis Gilbert’s ears were out to lunch when he made that dub. I think a director should spend a few days familiarizing himself with what Dolby offers and how best to employ these new balances and perspectives in order to get the maximum effect instead of simply going in cold with a traditional mind.”

Ostinatos

While Barry still makes use of the short repeated units of ostinatos in Moonraker, there is one particularly important difference in the technique: there are significantly fewer repetitions of each ostinato before moving on to different material. Listen, for example, to “Flight Into Space” below from the start up to 0:41 and notice how each of the first three different phrases is initially stated twice, as though it will become a more extended ostinato:

Barry, however, moves onto differing material after the second statement of each, suggesting the more diverse nature of symphonic music. This technique pervades most of the ostinatos (or perhaps would-be ostinatos) of Barry’s score. Notice also the use of a female choir (most obviously from 1:44 above), another indication of a grander, more symphonic style.

Other Themes

Despite the many new and altered elements in the Moonraker score, some techniques, particularly themes, remain much the same as in Barry’s earlier Bond scores, providing a solid connection with the rest of the franchise.

The 007 Theme

This theme had thus far appeared in four other Bond films: From Russia with Love, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, and Diamonds Are Forever. In each case, it provides an action scene with a lighter feel through its major key and upbeat syncopated rhythms:

It reappears in Moonraker during the boat chase down the Amazon River, though this time Barry slows the tempo slightly, which ironically provides the scene with a slightly more serious atmosphere within the lighter style of the film (watch this scene from 0:45):

The “Beautiful Landscape” Theme

When Bond enters the Amazon jungle and begins to follow a blonde beauty who leads him to a mysterious pyramid, Barry writes a lushly scored theme with a lyrical melody that suggests the beauty of the natural landscape and appears nowhere else in the film (from 0:09 in the clip below):

Barry had used a “beautiful landscape” scoring several times before in Bond films, though not usually with a unique melody—for example, the cue “Alpine Drive” from Goldfinger (from 0:13 in the audio clip below):

One exception, however, is the cue “Journey to Blofeld’s Hideaway” from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (starting from 1:06):

Quotations

One aspect of the Moonraker score that is novel to Barry’s James Bond scores is its quotation of other musical works. Almost all of these quotations are for a humorous effect, as with Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet overture, which accompanies the love-at-first-sight moment between the assassin Jaws and his girlfriend Dolly. Most of the quotations draw from other films that were recent and would have been in the public consciousness at the time of Moonraker’s release. When Drax begins his pheasant hunt, for example, we hear the first three notes of Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra, which was famously used at climactic points in Stanley Kubrick’s hugely successful 2001: A Space Odyssey (like Moonraker, another film about space). The numeric code to Drax’s secret lab in Venice sounds out the five-note “alien-communication” motif from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, yet another space-themed film. And even though The Magnificent Seven, from which we hear Elmer Bernstein’s main theme as Bond rides to the MI6 base on horseback and in western gear, was not exactly a recent film, being released in 1960, the use of its theme in Marlboro cigarette commercials would have been very familiar to the filmgoing audience. And lest anyone should miss the reference, the ambulance from which Bond escapes drives by a billboard for Marlboro less than a minute before the theme enters, thus solidifying the connection on a subliminal level.

These touches of corny comedy were almost certainly not imposed by Barry—the previous Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me (scored by Marvin Hamlisch), contains a similarly comic treatment of Maurice Jarre’s main theme from Lawrence of Arabia, which sounds as Bond walks through the desert. Considering that both films were directed by Lewis Gilbert and that only the later film was scored by Barry, the decision to use these pieces almost certainly came from Gilbert rather than Barry. Besides, in his previous Bond score, The Man with the Golden Gun, Barry regretted setting the mid-air spiralling of Bond’s car over a river to the silly sound of a slide whistle. As he explained,

“I just took the liberty of poking fun at it. It made a mockery of Bond, looking back on it. Even Cubby didn’t like that.”

One quotation that certainly does not fall into the category of humour is Drax’s playing of Chopin’s famous “Raindrop” prelude on the piano when we first meet him:

This use of classical music is likely meant to suggest an air of sophistication in Drax in much the same way as the strains from Bach and Mozart heard in bad-guy Stromberg’s underwater hideout, Atlantis, in The Spy Who Loved Me. Chopin also spent the vast majority of his career in Paris, and since Drax’s residence is supposed to have been imported from France (the residence is actually Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, which lies just outside of Paris), Chopin’s music is an appropriate fit with Drax’s French tastes.

Conclusion

As we have seen, Barry’s score for Moonraker was in many ways quite unlike his previous Bond scores. On the one hand, he began to explore a more symphonic style of writing with richer string writing, the addition of a female choir, a narrower use of the title song as a lyrical love theme, and a greater focus on the development rather than repetition of musical ideas. At times Moonraker also delves into a more comedic musical style than in Barry’s previous scores, which accords with the lighter style of the Roger Moore Bond films in general. Perhaps most of all, Barry’s score contends with Lewis Gilbert’s prolonged focus on sound effects in action scenes, no doubt as an experiment with the new Dolby stereo technology. Yet at the same time, Barry retains a number of familiar elements of his Bond style to maintain a clear continuity with the previous films, such as a frequent use of the title theme, ostinatos, and even another appearance of the 007 theme. But despite the fact that Barry himself was quite dissatisfied with the use of his score in the film, it continues to be among the most admired of his Bond scores.

Coming soon… The Living Daylights.

Diamonds Are Forever (1971), the seventh entry in the James Bond film franchise, saw the return of Sean Connery in the lead role after George Lazenby’s only performance as 007 in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Also back was Guy Hamilton, who had directed Goldfinger and would go on to direct the next two Bond films after Diamonds. One might therefore think that Diamonds would largely continue the style of the first five Bond films, especially Goldfinger. This time, however, things were different.

Despite Jon Burlingame’s claim of Diamonds in The Music of James Bond that “the new film’s tone was much lighter than any previous Eon-produced Bond,” I argue that the tone of the film is actually a good deal darker through the more deliberate cruelty of the characters: Blofeld’s hired assassins, Kidd and Wint, carry out several murders with an unsettlingly disingenuous air; a gang member throws Plenty O’Toole out a high hotel window and admits he didn’t know she would land (safely) in a swimming pool; and even Bond himself adopts a more sadistic manner, in the opening scene choking a woman with her own bikini top, leaving her both bare-breasted and breathless. Clearly, Hamilton wanted to take the Bond series in a new direction despite having Connery back in the lead. Musically, however, their vision was not as clear. While it seems that John Barry sought to continue composing in largely the same vein as the previous Bond films, Hamilton and the producers did not always agree. The result is a score that remains oddly situated between the familiar and the unfamiliar, as we shall see in the following film music analysis.

The James Bond Theme

The first indication of the music’s return to the pre-Lazenby Bond sound is the scoring of the James Bond theme in the famous gun-barrel opening. In On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Barry replaced the electric guitar that plays the opening riff with a synthesizer, giving the theme a new sound to match the new face of Bond. But in Diamonds Are Forever, the theme reverts to the old guitar scoring last heard in You Only Live Twice:

With this familiar guitar sound, the music seems to signal that the film’s style is back in the world of the other Connery Bond films. Significantly, though, besides this gun-barrel opening and the immediately following precredit sequence, the riff is not heard in this way anywhere else in the film, Barry instead scoring it for the brass (when Bond leaves on the hovercraft to Amsterdam) or a more subdued high electric guitar (when Bond goes to Willard Whyte’s summer house, where he meets “Bambi” and “Thumper”).

The Title Song – “Diamonds Are Forever”

As with his use of finger cymbals in Goldfinger to suggest the gold metal in the film, Barry made a similar decision for his Diamonds score. The title song for Diamonds begins with an eight-note repeating figure, or ostinato, that serves as an accompaniment:

The figure is sounded by a particular electronic organ Barry came across at the CTS studios, where the early Bond scores were recorded. As audio engineer of the Diamonds score, John Richards recalls of Barry, “John used just one facet of that organ. That tinkly bright sound that you couldn’t get on anything else.” Hence, Barry conjures up an appropriately “sparkling” sound to suggest the precious gem in Diamonds. Hear this figure at the start of the clip below:

As with the previous Bond films, Barry’s title song for Diamonds is used throughout the film as a sort of main theme:

The accompaniment, for example, appears at several points in the film as a suspense or danger motif, but it doesn’t always occur in the same way. Although Barry generally retains its eight-note pattern, he changes the scoring of each consecutive appearance, keeping it sounding fresh. In particular, those appearances that are scored for the electronic organ are associated with a heightened sense of uncertainty in Bond, as occurs when:

• Surprisingly to Bond, thugs in his hotel room leave without discussing the diamonds (this appearance is actually combined with the glockenspiel, giving it a slightly harder sound)
• Bond and Tiffany Case follow Bert Saxby in his van to a mysterious and remote facility that they later discover is researching lasers for Blofeld’s satellite
• When Bond goes to and arrives at Willard Whyte’s summer house, Bond’s CIA accomplice Felix asks Bond if he knows what he’s doing, to which Bond responds, “ask me again in ten minutes”

Thus, the accompaniment’s scoring doesn’t just set the mood for the scene, it has a narrative function in suggesting Bond’s psychological state in those scenes.

Likewise, the song’s melody, which begins with a memorable hook of a rising fifth on the words “diamonds are forever”, appears at numerous points in the film, again as a sort of main theme. For example when Bond unexpectedly comes across Tiffany in his hotel room, the theme is heard in a luscious string arrangement that suggests a romantic encounter between the two.

But the title song and/or its accompaniment appear far less prominently in this score than in previous Bond scores because more room was made for numerous jazzy diegetic cues like “Q’s Trick”, which is heard inside a casino as Q manipulates the slot machines to his advantage:

As Burlingame notes, these cues comprise nearly a third of the sixty-seven minutes of music in the film. And this idea was tied to the soundtrack album, which United Artists Records believed would be more profitable with more jazz cues and less non-diegetic score. Thus, from the perspective of previous Bond films, Diamonds takes the music in quite a new and unfamiliar direction.

Other Themes

Kidd and Wint’s Theme

Mr. Kidd and Mr. Wint are given their own theme (or leitmotif), a stealthy, mysterious melody for the flute and alto saxophone that tails off into a glissando, heard at 0:10 in the clip below:

Recall in Goldfinger that Oddjob was given his own leitmotif. Hence, the technique of scoring the main henchmen of a Bond film with a leitmotif continues a familiar aspect of the older Connery Bond films.

The 007 Theme

Barry introduced this theme into the Bond franchise with the second film, From Russia with Love, as a theme to accompany some of the action scenes. Its upbeat rhythm is of course typical for this type of music, but it is unusual by being set in a major key, which lightens the tone of the music and, in turn, the scene onscreen. In Diamonds, the theme appears near the end of the film when Bond is on the oil rig, takes control of Blofeld’s escape pod with Blofeld inside, and proceeds to thrash it about:

Certainly, the use of this theme creates a strong link with the other Connery Bond films, not only From Russia with Love, but Thunderball as well, where it is heard during the climactic underwater battle. But at the same time, its use in Diamonds is an unusual bit of levity within an otherwise more serious Bond film.

Sparse Music in Action Scenes

Perhaps the most conspicuous difference between the use of music in Diamonds as compared to its predecessors is the sparse music in fight and chase scenes. While music generally does make an appearance in such scenes, it is only after an ample portion of the scene has passed completely unaccompanied. Examples are numerous:

• The elevator fight between Bond and smuggler Peter Franks
• The moon buggy chase
• The car chase in Las Vegas
• Bond climbing the wall of the “Whyte House” hotel
• The final battle on the oil rig

In feature films, one of the functions of music is to provide a signal that what we are watching is a work of fiction. Generally, the more unreal a film is, the more music is required to draw us in, allow us to suspend our disbelief, and experience the characters’ fictional world vicariously. In the absence of music, the situations in the film become much more real, as though we are watching a portion of a documentary film. This shift towards reality lends the film more gravitas and creates a more serious atmosphere. In the previous Bond films, action scenes such as this are usually more completely lined with music (unless the sound effects are the focus of the scene). The particular “spotting” of music in Diamonds (i.e., the decision of where to place music and what kind to use) is therefore quite an unfamiliar element in the film.

Ostinatos

As with the previous Bond scores, Barry uses several ostinatos throughout the film. Kidd and Wint’s theme, for instance, is usually heard with a plodding ostinato accompaniment. But the most prominent ostinato in Diamonds is surely the four-chord progression associated with the launch and operation of Blofeld’s diamond-studded laser-beam satellite, which carves a destructive path across the globe, heard in the clip below from 0:20:

This memorable ostinato forms an especially strong connection to You Only Live Twice, which features a “Space March” that likewise is associated with a spacecraft and occupies a similar soundworld:

Conclusion

Despite the return of Sean Connery as James Bond, Diamonds Are Forever sharply diverged from the previous Bond films as its tone was noticeably darker. And yet, the director and producers of the film seemed to be ambivalent about the direction the music ought to take. Barry seemed adamant to retain more of the established musical style of the Bond films than he was allowed, the best example being the moon buggy chase, for which he actually wrote a dramatic cue in the manner of previous Bond films. But since the scene begins with the filming of a falsified moon landing (a joke that refers to conspiracy theories about the 1969 American moon landing being a fraud), the filmmakers believed a more comical type of music to be more appropriate. Barry ended up writing something in between—light, but not necessarily comical. The result is a cue that begins with a hesitant sound that feels shackled, as though it wants to burst out into something more intense, which it only does later in the scene. What is remarkable is that, despite these inconsistencies in the filmmakers’ vision for the film, Barry was still able to come up with one of his best-loved scores in the James Bond canon.

Coming soon… Moonraker.

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, released in 1969, was the sixth film in the James Bond franchise, and the first not to star Sean Connery as 007. With Connery having become so strongly associated with the character, his replacement, Australian model George Lazenby, certainly had big shoes to fill. As the film’s composer John Barry himself admitted, he had

“to make the audience forget that they don’t have Sean. What I did was to overemphasize everything that I’d done in the first few movies, just go over the top to try and make the soundtrack strong. To do Bondian beyond Bondian.”

So how does one “do Bondian beyond Bondian” exactly? As Jeff Smith points out in The Sounds of Commerce, “producers Harry Saltzman and Albert ‘Cubby’ Broccoli have frequently acknowledged the importance of a consistent formula to the durability of the series,” part of which is the music. And indeed, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service makes a concerted effort to forge deliberate links with the previous Bond films. In the title sequence, for instance, brief clips from the five previous films are shown behind the credits. And when Bond has supposedly resigned from the secret service, we hear snippets of themes from the previous films as he looks nostalgically at the trinkets he has collected from the assignments in those same films. With Honey’s belt and knife, we hear “Under the Mango Tree” from Dr. No; with Grant’s garrotte-watch, we hear “From Russia with Love”; when Bond looks at his own miniature underwater breathing apparatus from Thunderball, we hear the title song of that film. And when Bond is taken by force to see Draco, the caretaker whistles the tune to “Goldfinger” as he sweeps the floor.

Naturally then, in his score for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service Barry uses many of the same techniques as he did in his previous Bond scores, including those we saw in his score for Goldfinger. But he also includes new elements that serve to distinguish this score from the previous films and give it an appropriately fresh sound that matches the fresh face audiences were now seeing in the role of Bond. Below I give a brief film music analysis demonstrating how the score fuses both the old and the new with this extra emphasis on the new.

The James Bond Theme

The first new musical element of Barry’s score is the replacement of the guitar riff in the James Bond theme with a Moog synthesizer, which occurs in the gunbarrel opening, the precredit sequence, and the end credits. Here it is in the first of these:

As Jon Burlinghame notes in his book The Music of James Bond,

“The film’s release in December 1969 marked the first time any major studio had featured the synthesizer so prominently, and at the same time fully integrated within the traditional orchestra. It wasn’t just trendy; it was a groundbreaking application of electronic music that would presage decades of synthesizer use by film composers everywhere.”

Thus, from the start, and even before we see Lazenby as Bond in the film, the music alerts us of a striking change to the film’s style and does so in a way that, like the very choice of Lazenby, is something of an experiment.

The use of the Bond theme is also downplayed more than in the previous films. In large part, this has to do with the fact that the theme is not incorporated into either the film’s title piece or main song (“We Have All the Time in the World”) the way it was in Goldfinger (and Thunderball as well).

There are a few times the Bond accompaniment alone is heard, as when Bond has what he thinks is his request for resignation signed and returned to him by M, or when Bond first meets the young women being trained as Blofeld’s “angels of death”. We do hear the older guitar-riff version of the theme when Bond and Draco come to rescue Draco’s daughter Tracy from the hands of Blofeld, but, significantly, this was director Peter Hunt’s decision, not John Barry’s. For Barry then, it seems that the new face of Bond required toning down the reliance on the Bond theme.

The Title Song

Although, like the previous Bond films, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service provides a memorable popular theme with the main titles, it is one performed instrumentally rather than vocally, something that had not been done in previous Bond films. (In Dr. No, there is an instrumental portion in the main titles, but it is strictly a percussive rhythm and not a theme). Like the Bond theme, Barry’s title theme, simply called “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”, makes use of the Moog synthesizer, only in this case, we hear it as part of a march-like four-note accompaniment figure:

The theme’s melody begins with a dark colouring in the trombone and is supported by some quirky changes of harmony that give the theme a distinctive sound:

Here’s the theme as it appears in the main titles (with its introductory chords):

After these main titles, the theme disappears until the ski chase of Bond by Blofeld and his men roughly an hour and a half into the film. From this point on, Barry makes heavy use of the title theme to score the several intense action scenes in the latter portion of the film. While it may seem strange to hold off on repeating a theme for such a length of time, Barry’s decision is quite effective for at least two reasons. First, most of the film’s score contains not the title theme, but the film’s vocal song, “We Have All the Time in the World”. Given that this film is one of the longer Bond films at 142 minutes, the shift in focus from the song to the title theme provides a welcome sense of musical variety. And secondly, this shift occurs just as Bond is escaping from Blofeld in the ski chase, which sets into motion the series of action scenes that are the climax of the film. Thus, the change in the music’s intensity from the romantic sound of the song to the march-like title theme is also well coordinated with the events in the narrative.

“We Have All the Time in the World”

The film’s main vocal song, “We Have All the Time in the World”, composed by Barry and performed by the inimitable Louis Armstrong, appears not with the main titles, as is typical of Bond films, but with a montage of Bond and Tracy’s blossoming romance:

While not exactly a leitmotif, the song appears in instrumental form throughout most of the film in relation to Tracy and Bond together (mostly as a love theme), as when:

• Tracy confronts Bond after he fights off an intruder in his own suite
• Tracy and Bond arrive safely in a barn, where they spend the night
• Bond caresses Tracy after she is shot by Blofeld and Fräulein Bunt

The song is also used to refer only to Tracy on her own, as when she is seen driving to see her father on his birthday, or, indirectly, when her father is telling Bond about Tracy’s upbringing. But there are other appearances of the song that do not relate to Tracy or her relationship with Bond, as when Bond is taken by gunpoint and knifepoint to Draco (from 0:11 below):

Notice, however, that before the melody comes in, we hear a four-beat accompaniment that sounds much like a major-key form of the accompaniment to the march-like title theme we saw above, now even with snare drum added. We hear this form of the song in several scenes, for example when:

• M relieves Bond of “Operation: Bedlam” (that is, to catch Blofeld)
• Bond explains the procedures involved in attempting to locate Blofeld through his genealogical request to the London College of Arms
• Bond arrives at Piz Gloria, Blofeld’s mountain-top lair (Piz Gloria)
• Bond inspects the room he has been shown to at Piz Gloria

In each case, the focus is on Bond in a situation where he is not in immediate danger (even his forced taking to Draco is for Draco’s benign purposes). In this way, the song sometimes functions as a theme for Bond—a substitute for the James Bond theme. After all, in From Russia with Love, we hear the full James Bond theme while Bond inspects the hotel room he has been shown to, in just the same way he does in the scene above. Hence, as with the “Goldfinger” song in that film, “We Have All the Time in the World” sometimes functions as a leitmotif, but is more accurately described as an overall main theme for the film that may be transformed to accommodate various characters in various situations.

The “Sexy” Theme

Barry introduces a new theme for Bond’s encounters with the young women at Piz Gloria who believe they are being treated for their allergies, all of whom just happen to look like models. This theme is heard when Bond is first introduced to the women and when he is acting on one of the women’s invitations to a nocturnal tryst. On the other hand, it is also heard whenever one of the women is attempting to seduce Bond. Thus the theme, which might well be called the “sexy” theme, signals not only Bond’s attraction to the women, but also the women’s strong yet playful attraction to Bond (disguised as the genealogist Sir Hilary Bray). To give it this playful, sexy air, Barry scores the theme for a quartet of alto saxophones plus violins and writes a mildly dissonant pair of major-seventh chords in F major (BbM7 and FM7) that are repeated:

The opening upward leap in the melodic line also helps convey the almost electric sense of attraction the characters feel upon seeing their object of desire.

Ostinatos

As in Goldfinger, Barry makes use of several ostinatos in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, usually to create a suspenseful mood. For example, when Bond goes to the office of Blofeld’s lawyer, Gumbold, and breaks into his safe in search of Blofeld’s current location, we hear a two-phrase ostinato in the piano, timpani, and low strings:

Hear this from 0:05 in the clip below:

As time begins to run out for Bond in the office of Gumbold (who will soon return), Barry adds a melodic line in the synthesizer overtop of the original ostinato that reiterates the “newness” of this particular sound in the Bond series and heightens the tension of the scene (listen to the clip below from 1:05):

Another prominent ostinato in the score is one associated with the mind-control of the young women. Like the “sexy” theme, this ostinato is based on a slow progression of only two chords, a pair of minor major-seventh chords (a particular favourite with Barry), or EmM7 – G#mM7 (hear this in the clip below at 2:36):

These two chords are connected through a series of parallel fifths rising chromatically, which are suggestive of something done in stealth. (Note that the same technique appears in Henri Mancini’s theme to The Pink Panther, which he wrote to suggest the stealthy nature of the jewel thief known as “The Phantom”).

Conclusion

As we have seen, John Barry fuses both old and new techniques in his score for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. On the one hand, the general components of the score remain largely in the same vein as the earlier scores—the use of the title theme and vocal song (which are separate in this case) as main themes, the incorporation of the Bond theme at the beginning and end, and the employment of other themes and ostinatos unique to each film. On the other hand, the particulars of each of these components are altered, from the use of the Moog synthesizer in the Bond theme (and throughout the score) to that theme’s decreased presence in favour of the two main themes of the score, even to the extent of using a main theme where, in earlier films, we heard the Bond theme. In that sense, while Barry remained true to the ingredients of a Bond score, he altered their proportions so that there is more emphasis on the new additions to the score than the familiar old ones. In other words, he expanded the boundaries of the traditional Bond score. Perhaps this is what Barry meant by doing “Bondian beyond Bondian”.

Coming soon… Diamonds are Forever.

While the first two James Bond films, Dr. No and From Russia with Love, were profitable enough to spawn sequels, the third—Goldfinger, released in 1964—was the first massive Bond hit. The film’s soundtrack was a huge success as well, selling 400,000 copies within five months of its release and earning $1 million in sales to reach the status of, appropriately enough, certified gold. As the film’s composer, John Barry, claimed of the film’s music, “everything came together, the song, the score, the style.” It is the style of the score that I will examine in this post, breaking down several of Barry’s compositional techniques in a film music analysis.

The “Goldfinger” Song

The music of Barry’s score is highly unified because it derives almost entirely from the “Goldfinger” song played with the main titles:

In this way, the score may be considered a “theme score”, which, in her book Settling the Score, Kathryn Kalinak defines as “a stylistic approach to film scoring which privileged a single musical theme.” This practice certainly wasn’t new with Goldfinger—twenty years earlier, David Raksin had used the same technique in the classic film noir Laura, the title song of which became an unexpected pop sensation when it was set with lyrics.

But in the 1960s, production companies actively sought out pop-style title songs for their films that could be marketed to the burgeoning youth audience and, with any luck, become a hit. Thus, as Jeff Smith points out in The Sounds of Commerce, “songs like ‘Goldfinger,’ ‘Moon River,’ from Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and ‘Lara’s Theme (Somewhere My Love)’ from Doctor Zhivago (1965) were amply repeated within their respective films in order to strengthen their prospects as commercial singles.”

All this is not to say that Barry’s score is somehow devalued in light of this financial concern for his music. On the contrary, the score works incredibly well, partly because of Barry’s skill in manipulating the same basic material to express a variety of moods, and also because Barry cleverly includes quotes of the James Bond theme within the Goldfinger song, providing a way of suggesting Bond even while using the Goldfinger song’s material.

Uses of the Goldfinger Song/Theme in the Film

Most obviously, the material of the Goldfinger song functions as a sort of leitmotif for Goldfinger himself, as is made clear when we first see the character at the Miami Beach hotel at the film’s beginning. Throughout the film, Barry draws mainly on the song’s opening two chords and the melodic figure set to the word “Goldfinger”:

But more typically, the song’s material works as a general main theme for the film, not necessarily suggesting the Goldfinger character. For example, when Bond drives through the Swiss Alps following Goldfinger, we hear the theme scored lyrically with the melody soaring beautifully in the violins, heard in the following track from 0:13:

Of course, Goldfinger himself is a part of the scene, and so the theme in part represents that character. Yet at the same time, the beauty of the music is also suggestive of the visual spelndour of the alpine landscape and, a little further into the scene, perhaps something of Bond’s romantic attraction to Tilly Masterson, who zooms past his car in a convertible, and of whom Bond says to himself “discipline, 007, discipline” (recalling his promise to M not to get involved with women on his assignments).

There are, however, many instances in the film when the Goldfinger theme is heard but the character is not seen. When Bond escapes from the cell at Goldfinger’s farm by duping the guard into entering the cell, we hear the three-note motive that is sung to the word “Goldfinger” in the song (played twice between 1:45 and 1:57 in the following track):

This would seem to be the perfect place to sound one of the motives from the James Bond theme instead, given that the focus is on that character and his success at this moment. But since this is a “theme score”, Barry’s use of the Goldfinger theme here is more as a main theme for the film than as a leitmotif for Goldfinger. Besides, it’s not as if Barry simply repeats the theme as it was in the song. The key is now minor, and most importantly, the scoring is very light, with a sustained string chord accompanying the theme played delicately in the harp. Thus, the music has an ominous quality that suggests that, even though Bond has managed to escape from his cell, he is not out of the woods just yet—indeed he’s still inside one of Goldfinger’s buildings and is captured again a short time later by Goldfinger’s collaborator, Pussy Galore. Barry therefore manages to capture an appropriate mood for the scene through a variation of the film’s main theme.

Other Themes in the Film

The James Bond Theme

Outside of the gun-barrel sequence that starts the film, there is very little use of the famous James Bond theme as an independent piece of music in Goldfinger. (In fact, besides this opening sequence, the guitar riff doesn’t appear in the film at all.) Rather, as noted earlier, Barry incorporates parts of it into the main theme, thus cleverly allowing himself to draw on Bond’s music in cues supported by the Goldfinger theme:

Most appearances of the Bond motives occur in this way. As with the main Goldfinger motives (the opening two chords, and the three-note “Goldfinger” figure), not all of these appearances of Bond’s motives are coordinated with a focus on the Bond character. Sometimes they are merely sounded as part of the film’s main theme and therefore contribute to the overall mood (in addition to signalling that this is a Bond film).

At other times, however, they do have a more specific meaning. For instance, after the golf game in which Bond unscrupulously beats Goldfinger, the Goldfinger theme begins in a light-heared vein. Then when Oddjob is loading the clubs into Goldfinger’s trunk and Bond tosses the homing device into it, we hear the portion of the Goldfinger theme containing the Bond accompaniment. Given the circumstances at this point, the Bond music emphasizes the twofold victory for James: first in winning the golf game, and second in tracking Goldfinger’s movements with the homing device. View the scene here:

Oddjob’s Leitmotif

Barry also created a leitmotif for Goldfinger’s mute henchman, Oddjob, that incorporates the unique sound of finger cymbals. As Barry explains,

“You hear it the first time you see Oddjob. I wanted the sound of metal, and finger cymbals are very small but they have a distinctive ‘ting’ sound—it was the whole idea of metal, of gold and the hardness of it.”

Harmonically, Oddjob’s leitmotif consists of a single sustained chord known as a minor-major seventh chord, that is, a minor chord with a major seventh added to it, a chord Bernard Herrmann made frequent use of in his Hitchcock scores (and hence Royal S. Brown dubs it Herrmann’s “Hitchcock chord”). With Oddjob, the chord is consistently C-Eb-G-B, or Cm^M7:

Because this chord contains the striking dissonances of a major seventh (C-B) and an augmented fifth (Eb-B), the resulting sound is full of tension and has quite an ominous ring.

We first hear the leitmotif when Oddjob’s shadow projects onto the wall after he knocks Bond out in the hotel room in Miami, thus clearly associating the leitmotif with the character. But the leitmotif is also associated with the terror of facing Oddjob’s deadly hat. Notice that the leitmotif appears when the tables are turned on Oddjob and Bond prepares to throw the hat at Oddjob in the duo’s fight scene at the end of the film (in the following clip at 3:50):

Ostinatos

When a major theme is not being sounded in the film, Barry often turns to the musical technique of ostinato—the repetition of a relatively short motive or phrase. Several of these ostinatos are based entirely on a single chord. For example, when Bond discovers Jill dead and painted gold, an E minor chord supports the ostinato melody. And when he is captured outside Goldfinger’s smelting plant, the ostinato is on a C minor added sixth chord (or Cm⁶), C-Eb-G-A:

Despite the simplicity of this technique, it can be enormously effective, as discussed below.

“The Laser Beam”

This is the famous scene in which Goldfinger has Bond splayed out on a gold platform with a laser beam inching ever closer to his groin. Like many other ostinatos in the film, it is based on a single chord, this time an F minor chord with an added second (or Fm^add2), F-G-Ab-C. Barry states the chord, then repeats its top three notes an octave higher, then three more times in a faster rhythm another octave higher:

Then the pattern starts all over again. Near the end of the scene, as the laser nears Bond, Barry adds a new repeating eight-note melody overtop of the ostinato that is half the length of the ostinato, thus raising the tension in the music and the scene. Then as the laser gets uncomfortably close to Bond, Barry shortens the new melody to just two notes repeating over the same ostinato—the tension has risen once more, and this time the melody’s insistence drives towards an impending resolution to the scene that keeps us on the edge of our seats. Just in the nick of time, Bond convinces Goldfinger to keep him alive and shut down the laser, at which point the ostinato finally breaks off into a fading sustained chord, releasing the tension built up throughout the scene. View it here:

The Unity of the Score

Barry’s Goldfinger score hangs together remarkably well. Of course, this being a theme score, the frequent use of the Goldfinger theme is a large part of the explanation. But Barry went further to ensure the unity of his score.

As noted earlier, the Goldfinger theme contains statements of the Bond accompaniment. But even in the pre-title sequence where the Bond theme is played on its own (since we have not yet been introduced to the Goldfinger character), some of the melodic figures heard over the Bond accompaniment sound an awful lot like Goldfinger’s theme, as if to suggest the intertwining of the two themes to come. In the following clip, the Bond theme begins at 1:11 and the Goldfinger-like figures occur at 1:25 and 1:28:

Furthermore, Oddjob’s major-minor seventh chord is actually contained within the opening chordal blast of the James Bond theme. The first chord of that theme is a major-minor seventh with a ninth added, or E-G-B-D#-F#, what could well be called the “James Bond chord” since it also memorably ends the theme on the electric guitar. Oddjob’s chord, then, can be formed by taking the first four notes of the “James Bond chord”, transposed to C as C-Eb-G-B:

Subtle as this may be, it gives the score a subconscious sense of unity, that Oddjob’s chord just somehow “fits” with the rest of the score.

Finally, many of the ostinatos Barry uses derive from the Goldfinger theme, usually its first two chords, for instance just before Bond is knocked out by Oddjob, and when he comes to again. But the most extensive use of an ostinato based on the Goldfinger theme occurs in the cue “Dawn Raid on Fort Knox”, which uses a variation of the theme’s first two chords as the basis of most of the cue, heard from the start of this track:

Coming soon – On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.