The Mission: Impossible theme is one of the most iconic (and hummable) pieces of cinematic music. Sadly, it’s been announced that the man behind the classic tune, Lalo Schifrin, is dead. He was 93.
Schifrin told the New York Post in 2015 that it took him just three minutes to create the Mission: Impossible theme, and he did it without seeing any footage from the show. “Orchestration’s not the problem for me. It’s like writing a letter. When you write a letter, you don’t have to think what grammar or what syntaxes you’re going to use, you just write a letter. And that’s the way it came,” Schifrin said. “Bruce Geller, who was the producer of the series, put together the pilot and came to me and said, ‘I want you to write something exciting, something that when people are in the living room and go into the kitchen to have a soft drink, and they hear it, they will know what it is. I want it to be identifiable, recognizable and a signature.’ And this is what I did.“
The theme won Schifrin a Grammy Award and continued to be used for all the big-screen movies starring Tom Cruise.
Of course, Schifrin is known for so much more than just Mission: Impossible. He composed music for movies such as Cool Hand Luke, Bullitt, Kelly’s Heroes, Dirty Harry, The Beguiled, THX 1138, Joe Kidd, Enter the Dragon, Magnum Force, The Eagle Has Landed, The Amityville Horror, Sudden Impact, The Sting II, the Rush Hour trilogy, and much more.
He also composed themes and music for many TV shows, such as Mannix, Starsky & Hutch, Planet of the Apes, and more.
Schifrin was also the original composer of The Exorcist before he was replaced. He recorded six minutes of music, which was used in the movie’s trailer, but executives told director William Friedkin to instruct Schifrin to tone it down. He didn’t pass on the message. “The people who saw the trailer reacted against the film, because the scenes were heavy and frightening, so most of them went to the toilet to vomit. The trailer was terrific, but the mix of those frightening scenes and my music, which was also a very difficult and heavy score, scared the audiences away,” Schifrin explained. “So, the Warner Brothers executives said Friedkin to tell me that I must write less dramatic and softer score. I could easily and perfectly do what they wanted because it was way too simple in relevance to what I have previously written, but Friedkin didn’t tell me what they said. I´m sure he did it deliberately. In the past we had an incident, caused by other reasons, and I think he wanted vengeance. This is my theory“
What an incredible body of work. Our thoughts and condolences go out to Schifrin’s family and friends. He will be deeply missed.
