Lalo Schifrin, renowned for composing the irresistibly memorable “Mission: Impossible” theme and over 100 scores for film and TV, passed away on Thursday at 93.
His sons, William and Ryan, disclosed his death to news outlets. Attempts to reach Schifrin’s publicist and the brothers’ representatives by the Associated Press were not immediately successful.
The Argentine composer won four Grammy Awards and was nominated for six Oscars, including five nods for original scores in “Cool Hand Luke,” “The Fox,” “Voyage of the Damned,” “The Amityville Horror,” and “The Sting II.”
“Every movie has its own personality. There are no rules to write music for movies,” Schifrin told The Associated Press in 2018. “The movie dictates what the music will be.”
He also wrote the grand finale musical performance for the World Cup championship in Italy in 1990, in which the Three Tenors – Plácido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti and José Carreras – sang together for the first time. The work became one of the biggest sellers in the history of classical music.
‘The most contagious tune ever heard’
Schifrin, also a jazz pianist and classical conductor, had a remarkable career in music that included working with Dizzy Gillespie and recording with Count Basie and Sarah Vaughan. But perhaps his biggest contribution was the instantly recognizable score to television’s “Mission: Impossible,” which fueled the just-wrapped, decades-spanning feature film franchise led by Tom Cruise.
Written in the unusual 5/4 time signature, the theme – Dum-dum DUM DUM dum-dum DUM DUM – was married to an on-screen self-destruct clock that kicked off the TV show, which ran from 1966 to 1973. It was described as “only the most contagious tune ever heard by mortal ears” by New Yorker film critic Anthony Lane and even hit No. 41 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1968.
Schifrin originally wrote a different piece of music for the theme song but series creator Bruce Geller liked another arrangement Schifrin had composed for an action sequence.
“The producer called me and told me, ‘You’re going to have to write something exciting, almost like a logo, something that will be a signature, and it’s going to start with a fuse,'” Schifrin told the AP in 2006. “So I did it and there was nothing on the screen. And maybe the fact that I was so free and I had no images to catch, maybe that’s why this thing has become so successful – because I wrote something that came from inside me.”
When director Brian De Palma was asked to take the series to the silver screen, he wanted to bring the theme along with him, leading to a creative conflict with composer John Williams, who wanted to work with a new theme of his own. Out went Williams and in came Danny Elfman, who agreed to retain Schifrin’s music.
Hans Zimmer took over scoring for the second film, and Michael Giacchino scored the next two. Giacchino told NPR he was a hesitant to take it on, because Schifrin’s music was one of his favorite themes of all time.
“I remember calling Lalo and asking if we could meet for lunch,” Giacchino told NPR. “And I was very nervous – I felt like someone asking a father if I could marry their daughter or something. And he said, ‘Just have fun with it.’ And I did.”
“Mission: Impossible” won Grammys for best instrumental theme and best original score from a motion picture or a TV show. In 2017, the theme was entered into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
U2 members Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. covered the theme while making the soundtrack to 1996’s first installment; that version peaked at No. 16 on the Billboard 200 with a Grammy nomination.
A 2010 commercial for Lipton tea depicted a young Schifrin composing the theme at his piano while gaining inspiration through sips of the brand’s Lipton Yellow Label. Musicians dropped from the sky as he added elements.
Early life filled with music
Born Boris Claudio Schifrin to a Jewish family in Buenos Aires – where his father was the concertmaster of the philharmonic orchestra – Schifrin was classically trained in music, in addition to studying law.
After studying at the Paris Conservatory – where he learned about harmony and composition from the legendary Olivier Messiaen – Schifrin returned to Argentina and formed a concert band. Gillespie heard Schifrin perform and asked him to become his pianist, arranger and composer. In 1958, Schifrin moved to the United States, playing in Gillespie’s quintet in 1960-62 and composing the acclaimed “Gillespiana.”
The long list of luminaries he performed and recorded with includes Ella Fitzgerald, Stan Getz, Dee Dee Bridgewater and George Benson. He also worked with such classical stars as Zubin Mehta, Mstislav Rostropovich, Daniel Barenboim and others.
Schifrin moved easily between genres, winning a Grammy for 1965’s “Jazz Suite on the Mass Texts” while also earning a nod that same year for the score of TV’s “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” In 2018, he was given an honorary Oscar statuette and, in 2017, the Latin Recording Academy bestowed on him one of its special trustee awards.
Later film scores included “Tango,” “Rush Hour” and its two sequels, “Bringing Down The House,” “The Bridge of San Luis Rey,” “After the Sunset” and the horror film “Abominable.”
Writing the arrangements for “Dirty Harry,” Schifrin decided that the main character wasn’t in fact Clint Eastwood’s hero, Harry Callahan, but the villain, Scorpio.
“You would think the composer would pay more attention to the hero. But in this case, no, I did it to Scorpio, the bad guy, the evil guy,” he told the AP. “I wrote a theme for Scorpio.”
It was Eastwood who handed him his honorary Oscar.
“Receiving this honorary Oscar is the culmination of a dream,” Schifrin said at the time. “It is mission accomplished.”
Beyond film and TV
Among Schifrin’s conducting credits include the London Symphony Orchestra, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic, the Mexico Philharmonic, the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. He was appointed music director of Southern California’s Glendale Symphony Orchestra and served in that capacity from 1989-1995. Schifrin also wrote and adapted the music for “Christmas in Vienna” in 1992, a concert featuring Diana Ross, Carreras and Domingo.
He also combined tango, folk and classical genres when he recorded “Letters from Argentina,” nominated for a Latin Grammy for best tango album in 2006.
Schifrin was also commissioned to write the overture for the 1987 Pan American Games, and composed and conducted the event’s 1995 final performance in Argentina.
And for perhaps one of the only operas performed in the ancient Indigenous language of Nahuatl, in 1988 Schifrin wrote and conducted the choral symphony “Songs of the Aztecs.” The work premiered at Mexico’s Teotihuacan pyramids with Domingo as part of a campaign to raise money to restore the site’s Aztec temple.
“I found it to be a very sweet, musical language, one in which the sounds of the words dictated interesting melodies,” Schifrin told The Associated Press at the time. “But the real answer is that there’s something magic about it. … There’s something magic in the art of music anyway.”
In addition to his sons, he’s survived by his daughter, Frances, and wife, Donna.
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