Music Analysis: 'Danny Elfman's Nightmare Before Christmas'

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Recommended: The influence of classical music

Sarah Bliss
Dr. Pickett
Music History IV
April 16, 2016
Research Paper

Danny Elfman

In the world of film music you think of the big name composers; Michael Giancchino, James Horner, Howard Shore, Bernand Herrmann, Jerry Goldsmith, Han Zimmer, John Williams, and, my personal favorite, Danny Elfman. Daniel “Danny” Robert Elfman was born May 29, 1953 in Los Angeles into a Jewish family. His parents, Blossom, a writer and a teacher, and Milton Elfman, who was a teacher in the Air Force , raised him in a racially mixed community in the Baldwin Hills area of LA. He spent a lot of his time in the local movie theatre, adoring the music of such film composers as Herrman and Franz Waxman. He is married to actress Bridget Fonda since November 29, …show more content…

This film is a 1993 American stop motion dark fantasy horror musical film directed Henry Selick, and produced and conceived by Tim Burton. This film tells the story of Jack Skellington, a character from “Halloween Town” who stumbles through a portal to “Christmas Town” and decides to celebrate the holiday, with some dastardly and comical consequences. The Nightmare Before Christmas was originally a poem written by Tim Burton in 1982 while he was working as a Disney animator. In the film, the main villain’s song “Oogie Boogie’s Song” is sun by Oogie Boogie (voiced by Ken Page) and his prisoner, Santa Claus (voiced by Ed Ivory). In the lyrics, Oogie Boogie was lead to believe that Santa Claus was this fearsome beast called “Sandy Claws” and sings in the first and second versus about how he does not understand why people are afraid of him and since he was given Santa Claus what he might do to …show more content…

He made kids like myself who thought we were weird or odd and made us feel in like company. His music made me fall in love with how people make and perform music and I do not think I would be the educator and performer that I am today. This music I have taken into classrooms and performed it with groups for fall concerts and winter concerts to bring a comical side to concerts since the music can cover both Halloween and Christmas since it comes from the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas. It brings a little nostalgia for younger parents and Disney fanatics hearing their children or grandchildren playing eerily jazzy Christmas/Halloween

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