The latest in the long list of scores Dimitri Tiomkin has written for motion pictures is the music for Warner Brothers’ LAND OF THE PHARAOHS. The film, in Cinema-Scope with stereophonic sound, was shot in Egypt; it describes the building of one of the gigantic pyramids which house the mummy and treasures of an Egyptian ruler. Mr. Tiomkin has provided this subject with an appropriately massive score. During an interview in New York he supplied some details on its composition. The score employed an orchestra of 90 men and a chorus of 80. The chorus is used both symphonically, and realistically as an expression of the Egyptian people's feelings during the long years of labor on the pyramid. Mr. Tiomkin asked Jester Hairston, a choir master in Los Angeles, to assemble a chorus for this recording, in preference to employing an established choral group that might have sounded too polished. The music is not based directly on Egyptian sources. Mr. Tiomkin explained that Egyptian music available for study did not reach far enough into the past to recreate faithfully the period of the pyramids. "It is theatrical music," was Mr. Tiomkin's description of the score, and that is in keeping with nature of the film which details the historical facts through the medium of a fairly conventional melodrama. To digress a moment, Mr. Tiomkin has some interesting things to say about music and the position of the composer in film-making. Music is of value to the final product only in so far as it helps to emphasize and heighten the impact of the scenes. Its merit is not necessarily judged by its quality as pure music, but has to implement all the elements of the sound track without getting in their way. In his own words, Mr. Tiomkin takes into consideration what sound effects, if any, are to be carried with a certain scene. The music is written and orchestrated accordingly. Dialogue, of course, is considered carefully - in LAND OF THE PHARAOHS there are many instances where the music leads up to and introduces speeches with almost operatic emphasis. Teamwork with the picture and sound editors helps to accomplish an integrated sound track in which none of the elements fight or overshadow one another. In many cases music might be eliminated when it is found that effects alone convey the feel of the scene to greater advantage, and vice versa. To the question: “Who decides where music is to be and where not?” Mr. Tiomkin pointed out that the score is most of the time the result of a close personal collaboration with the producer or director, often antedating the actual shooting of the film. In his next score, for example, GIANT based on Edna Ferber's novel, Mr. Tiomkin is working with the producer, George Stevens, in Texas. “The stature of the composer is higher than it has ever been,” Mr. Tiomkin remarked. “More and more his importance is being recognized and often the composer (or let us say a composer of Mr. Tiomkin’s experience and reputation) suggests picture changes and cuts in the final stage of the production. It is being recognized that a composer who is dealing with form in his work all the time can contribute to achieve this in a motion picture.” To return to the picture at hand, the music under the titles introduces a five-note theme which is carried throughout the score in various treatments. After a short narrative opening the picture explodes into a brilliant spectacle: Pharaoh's return from a war in a triumphal procession of soldiers, musicians, slaves and spoils. Here the music has it all: trumpets, drums, harps on scene, augmented by the large orchestra that is not suggested by the picture, a stereophonic holiday. Short sections of explanatory narration superimposed from time to time on this scene of jubilation point up a problem which is not exactly peculiar to stereophonic sound, but is magnified when dealing with such a large mass of sound: How do you take it down in volume once it has been established? The momentary drop of the tremendous battery of instruments and sound effects, sudden or gradual, to allow the narration to be heard breaks whatever impact the sound has created. Besides, narration is generally an afterthought anyway, added at a time when the music has been recorded and the scenes are frozen; otherwise it should conceivably be possible either to plan the sound so that it reaches a naturally lower level in instrumentation and momentary decrease of excitement, or place the narration over long shots or scenes in which the lowered sound might have pictorial motivation. The amount of music in this film is generous - it runs under many scenes where it does not seem to have much to say; in some cases it appears to have no relation to the scene at all, as for instance during the sequence where Pharaoh inspects the various plans for his tomb submitted by the Egyptian architects. In its long stretches of background to dialogue and interiors where its spectacular quality cannot assert itself, the score brings to mind a similar treatment in Mr. Tiomkin's DUEL IN THE SUN, and contrasts sharply with the conciseness with which music was handled in HIGH NOON, for instance. An impressive use of the chorus is made to portray the spirit of willingness with which the Egyptians answer the call to work on the building of the pyramid. The people march to work shouting in song their devotion to this project; in the quarries where great blocks of stone are chipped out of the rock the music blends with the sound effects of the chisels. The surging music carries forward these montage-like sequences. The sound effects in the quarries, on the other hand, seem curiously tame to suggest the noise made by such a gigantic horde of people. To dramatise the change of spirit that has taken place in the people after years and years of this toil, when willingness and joy have given way to resentment and despair under the overseers' lash, big drums take the place of the chanting. The change is effective and the slowing down of the human machinery is echoed in the music. In this sequence, again, the apparatus of sound employed to achieve the emotional effect has to drop abruptly to make way for explanatory narration. The sound of the drum which has just boomed out of the screen is suddenly brought down so low that it is almost non-existent, yet the picture has not changed: the big stick descends on the drum head as before. The overall impression of the music matches well the theatricality of the plot and acting and is thus successful in carrying out the spirit of the film. It reaches a high degree of descriptiveness in the final collapse of the pyramid’s interior: stones crash and crunch into place, sand runs out of pipes, and mingled with the sound effects coming at this point from speakers mounted in the side walls of the auditorium, is the music. It is an impressive climax to the film and the score that accompanies it.