The hypnotic notes of the main theme and Laura Palmer’s Theme from Twin Peaks made him one of the most recognized authors of soundtracks for television series. Angelo Badalamenti, the reference composer for director David Lynch, has died at his home in Lincoln Park, New Jersey at the age of 85, according to family members. Badalamenti also composed the soundtracks for other Lynch films, including Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, and was the author of the theme that accompanied the entry of the Olympic torch into the Montjuic stadium at the Barcelona 92 Olympic Games.
David Lynch, who has the extravagance of uploading to his YouTube channel every day a kind of weather report with the weather in Los Angeles, has pointed out between temperature and temperature: “Today there is no music”, in a neutral tone and without further ado. explanations.
Lynch, singer Julee Cruise and Angelo Badalamenti in New York in 1989. MICHEL DELSOL (Getty Images)
The symbiosis between the musician and the filmmaker had something of a coincidence. The producers of Blue Velvet (1986) hired Badalamenti to give singing lessons to the actress Isabella Rosellini, who was to interpret Blue Velvet, the Bobby Vinton song that gave the film its name. The musician, who had experience teaching actors to sing, managed to get Rosellini to hit the tone right away. When Lunch listened to the recording, he was delighted. He asked Badalamenti to write a song for the film, which Julee Cruise would perform at the musician’s suggestion, and ended up giving him the original soundtrack. He even appeared on the big screen as the pianist who accompanies the film’s protagonist in her performance.
The chemistry between Lynch and Badalamenti was immediate. From that moment on, Badalamenti became the reference musician for the cult filmmaker. He created the soundtrack for the different seasons of Twin Peaks (1989-1991) and for the films Wild Heart (1990), Twin Peaks: Fire Walks With Me (1992), Lost Highway (1997), A True Story (1999) and Mulholland Drive (2001).
It was enough for the filmmaker to tell him the scene he had in his head for the musician to start composing. “Lynch would sit on the other side of the shot and describe to me what he wanted for a sequence. I improvised while he spoke, developing melodies that fit with the images that he was describing, ”he recounted. Sometimes they composed together: Lynch, the lyrics, and Badalamenti, the music. Sometimes the sound led to rethinking the scene. They fed back.
In a video he explained in detail how he composed Laura Palmer’s Theme for Twin Peaks and summed it up in an interview with the publication Spirit & Flesh: “He sat next to me at the keyboard and told me: ‘I haven’t filmed anything, but it’s like you’re in a dark forest with an owl in the background and a cloud over the moon and the sycamores waving so softly…’ I started to play the opening chord keys because it was the sound of that darkness. She said: ‘A beautiful girl in anguish comes out of the woods, walking towards the camera…’ I reproduced the sounds she inspired. ‘And she comes closer and comes to a climax and…’ he continued with the music as he went on with the story. ‘And from this, we let her go back to the dark forest.’ The notes came out on their own. David was stunned, as was I. The hair on his arms stood up and he had tears in his eyes: ‘I see Twin Peaks. I have it’. I told him, ‘I’ll go home and work on it.’ ‘Work on it?! Don’t change a note’. And of course I never did.”
With the enveloping, serene and mysterious music of the original Twin Peaks theme, he rose to worldwide fame and won a Grammy. It is one of the most recognized tunes on television. The entire soundtrack, sometimes with the voice of Julee Cruise, fit like a glove into the magical and dreamlike atmosphere of the series.
Due to the fame he acquired then, he was hired to compose the music for the most exciting moment of the opening ceremony of the Barcelona 92 Olympic Games. The entrance of the Olympic fire into the stadium and the lighting of the great torch with an arrow shot by the archer Antonio Rebollo.
Badalamenti was born in Brooklyn (New York) on March 22, 1937 into an Italian-American family, as his name reveals. His father, originally from the Sicilian town of Cinisi, on the outskirts of Palermo, owned a fishmonger. He started taking piano lessons at the age of eight and, thanks to his talent, he began working as a vacation pianist as a teenager. After high school, he enrolled at the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music, but later transferred to the Manhattan School of Music, where he received his BA in 1958 and his MA in 1959.
He started as a music teacher at Dyker Heights Junior High in Brooklyn. A composition that he made for a Christmas performance ended up being televised and paved the way for him as a professional musician. He composed songs for artists such as Nina Simone and Nancy Wilson and began composing soundtracks for minor films (Gordon’s War, from 1973 and Law and Disorder, in 1974) and giving singing lessons, until his path crossed with that of David Lynch. .
In parallel to his collaboration with the director, he wrote the soundtracks for other films such as A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 (1987), Nude in New York (1993), The City of Lost Children (1995), among others. He also composed single pieces for the soundtracks of many other movies.
