For Friday's film

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

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TO INCREASE YOUR enjoyment of Elmer Bernstein's underscore for To Kill a Mockingbird, you can prepare for Friday's screening by listening to the main theme from the film. After a brief introduction for a chamber ensemble, the main lyrical theme emerges, first introduced by a plaintive flute with harp accompaniment, then flowering in the strings. It's a beautiful melody and arrangement, trying, in musical terms, to capture the world of childhood.
    Elmer Bernstein was one of the most acclaimed film composers who emerged in the 1950s with a new musical vocabulary, more rooted in a strictly American idiom, rather than the European idiom associated with the classical Hollywood period (for example, Gone with the Wind). Several of Bernstein's film scores used the jazz idiom, most famously, The Man with the Golden Arm. Later Bernstein created a new (more rhythmic) musical style for Western scores, the most famous of which was the score for The Magnificent Seven, whose main theme became so popular it was used for a Marlboro cigarette commercial.
    Bernstein's score for To Kill a Mockingbird is one of his most celebrated, using a strictly American idiom in a musical vocabulary similar to that of the concert composer, Aaron Copland. The score is arranged for a chamber (small) orchestra, the delicate instrumentation evoking the charm and innocence of childhood.
    NOTE: Elmer Bernstein is sometimes humorously called the "West Coast" Bernstein to distinguish him from the "East Coast" Leonard Bernstein, conductor/composer/teacher, famous for West Side Story, but also for concert works and as one of the greatest musical conductors of the twentieth century.