Year 6
❤️ Cycle D ❤️
Genre: Western Classical Tradition
Style: 21st Century Modern Era
Composers:
Hans Zimmer & Music for Film
Zimmer was born in Frankfurt, West Germany. As a young child, he lived in Königstein-Falkenstein, where he played the piano at home but had piano lessons only briefly, as he disliked the discipline of formal lessons. He joined a band.
Zimmer is Jewish – his mother survived World War II thanks to her escape from Germany to England in 1939.
He believes in working on sounds and pieces for a movie for a long time ‘The Lion King’ took 4 years! He does not finish until he is really happy. Sometimes good, meaningful work takes a long, long time. Zimmer’s works are notable for combining electronic music sounds with traditional orchestral arrangements. Won many awards and also composed video game scores such as Call of Duty and Fortnite.
‘I am self-taught. But I’ve always heard music in my head. And I’m a child of the 20th century; computers came in very handy.’
“My mother was very musical and my father was an engineer and an inventor. So I grew up modifying the piano which made my mother gasp in horror, and my father would think it was fantastic when I would attach chainsaws and stuff like that to the piano because he thought it was an evolution in technology.”
“My father died when I was just a child, and I escaped somehow into the music and music has been my best friend.”
Here’s the man himself, Hans Zimmer, talking about this piece of music named, ‘Earth’, which he wrote and recorded especially for the BBC!
Listen to this excerpt from the movie ‘Dunkirk’ and think about:
How has Hans Zimmer built tension throughout the piece?
What instruments are played?
Can you find the ‘Shepard Tone’ sonic illusion? (the sense of infinite ascending pitch)
Why do you think he used the sound of a clock?
What scene can you imagine is playing out in the movie at this point?
Discuss: Dynamics / Volume, Pitch, Texture, Instrumentation, Structure, Mood, Atmosphere, Emotion.
Hans Zimmer co-wrote this piece.
Did you know that Hans Zimmer helped to create the first ever song with video to appear on TV in 1979? Check it out!
❤️Music Lesson❤️
featuring Hans Zimmer
He has scored (made the music for) over 100 movies so far! He is Jewish and, luckily for us, is mother escaped Nazi Germany in 1939. Have you ever wondered who wrote the beautifully atmospheric music throughout ‘The Lion King’ – it’s Hans! He also makes music for games like Fortnite!
Lesson Resources: