Villain Music: An Introduction

luvche21 posted some pics said
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Long story short, I have the best job in the world, and my research is in old film music. So you get to hear about it, luck you!

My first film music analysis is Arsenic and Old Lace (1944, with Kerry Grant). There are 20 different musical themes that I have discovered that Max Steiner uses throughout his score. One of them being that old timey villain music. Here’s a great example, I’m positive you’ll recognize it:

This theme only appears for a few seconds when Peter Lorre (as Dr. Einstein) does something sneaky on screen.

I was initially stumped trying to figure out where on earth that theme is from. It’s used many, many times to represent a villain in old cartoons, silent films, and even current pop culture. But where is it from?

Luckily, old silent film music composers would create folios of different themes for a pianist or organist to use when accompanying a silent film. Here are a few examples:

The furthest back I could trace it is to one of such books by John Stepan Zamecnik, published in 1913. His theme, as you saw on the previous list is called Mysterioso - Burglar Music

It’s not the same as the theme that we know today, but if you look at measures 3-4 (or even better if you have a piano to play it on), you’ll notice the same theme. You can hear it in [MIDI form provided by Wikipedia] (it auto-downoaded on my computer, but sometimes it opens a playable link instead…)1.

The theme became very popular, so other silent film composers started making their own version of it. A closer resemblance to the them that we know today is found in a 1914 publication, The Remick Folio of Moving Picture Music

One of my favorite renditions of this theme is from an old favorite NES game, Wizards and Warriors:

That was such a difficult game!

I tried really really hard to find an excellent gif of an old timey bank robber and stumbled across this one instead. Enjoy!

Although my research doesn’t go back into the silent film era (at least for now), this was a blast to delve into. Enjoy!