This Is Halloween
Danny Elfman
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Browse piano sheets by Danny Elfman on Zen Virtual Piano. He grew up in Baldwin Hills, California, an affluent, racially mixed community; he spent a lot of time at the local cinema, where he found classic sci-fi, fantasy and horror films and first noticed the work of film composers such as Bernard Herrmann and Franz Waxman. He attended University High School in Los Angeles before dropping out. A boy in a movie theater noticing the music behind classic horror films suggests an early habit of listening to what scores do. In 1976 he took over the Mystic Knights as lead singer-songwriter, before the release of Forbidden Zone. For the group he wrote original pieces and helped make one-of-a-kind instruments: an aluminum gamelan, a Schlitz celeste of tuned beer cans, and a junkyard orchestra assembled from car parts and trash cans. Instruments built from beer cans and trash cans show a musician fond of unusual sound sources. Over 100 feature film scores, plus music for television, stage productions and the concert hall, make up his work since he first scored a studio film in 1985. Batman firmly established a relationship with Burton that has lasted throughout his career; he has scored all but three of the director's major studio releases. The American Composers Orchestra commissioned his first piece of original concert music, Serenada Schizophrana, and gave its premiere at Carnegie Hall on February 23, 2005. A long run of scores with one director and a concert piece written for an orchestra show two directions that his work has taken. This Is Halloween is a song from the 1993 film The Nightmare Before Christmas, composed and written by Elfman, who used repetition throughout the song, in the lyrics and, more subtly, in the music; the main melody is based on a series of three descending notes. In 2021 he commented that when the film came out nearly every interview started by asking whether it was too scary for kids, and that seeing families years later, and recordings of four-year-olds singing What's This or This Is Halloween, makes him feel blessed. A film that interviewers once asked about as possibly too scary for kids, and whose songs families now sing back to him, offers a clear case of how a reception can turn over time.
Browse piano sheets by Danny Elfman on Zen Virtual Piano.
He grew up in Baldwin Hills, California, an affluent, racially mixed community; he spent a lot of time at the local cinema, where he found classic sci-fi, fantasy and horror films and first noticed the work of film composers such as Bernard Herrmann and Franz Waxman. He attended University High School in Los Angeles before dropping out. A boy in a movie theater noticing the music behind classic horror films suggests an early habit of listening to what scores do.
In 1976 he took over the Mystic Knights as lead singer-songwriter, before the release of Forbidden Zone. For the group he wrote original pieces and helped make one-of-a-kind instruments: an aluminum gamelan, a Schlitz celeste of tuned beer cans, and a junkyard orchestra assembled from car parts and trash cans. Instruments built from beer cans and trash cans show a musician fond of unusual sound sources.
Over 100 feature film scores, plus music for television, stage productions and the concert hall, make up his work since he first scored a studio film in 1985. Batman firmly established a relationship with Burton that has lasted throughout his career; he has scored all but three of the director's major studio releases. The American Composers Orchestra commissioned his first piece of original concert music, Serenada Schizophrana, and gave its premiere at Carnegie Hall on February 23, 2005. A long run of scores with one director and a concert piece written for an orchestra show two directions that his work has taken.
This Is Halloween is a song from the 1993 film The Nightmare Before Christmas, composed and written by Elfman, who used repetition throughout the song, in the lyrics and, more subtly, in the music; the main melody is based on a series of three descending notes. In 2021 he commented that when the film came out nearly every interview started by asking whether it was too scary for kids, and that seeing families years later, and recordings of four-year-olds singing What's This or This Is Halloween, makes him feel blessed. A film that interviewers once asked about as possibly too scary for kids, and whose songs families now sing back to him, offers a clear case of how a reception can turn over time.
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Danny Elfman
Danny Elfman
Common questions
Danny Elfman is a film composer who was raised in Baldwin Hills, California, and has composed over 100 feature film scores since 1985.
It is a song from the 1993 film The Nightmare Before Christmas, composed and written by Elfman, with a main melody based on a series of three descending notes.
He helped make an aluminum gamelan, a celeste of tuned beer cans, and a junkyard orchestra assembled from car parts and trash cans.
The American Composers Orchestra commissioned it and premiered it at Carnegie Hall on February 23, 2005; it is Elfman's first piece of original concert music.