MGM 90620
Composer: Maurice Jarre
Track listing: Overture from “Doctor Zhivago” / Main Title from “Doctor Zhivago” / Lara Leaves Yuri / At the Student Cafe / Komarovsky and Lara’s Rendezvous / Revolution / Lara’s Theme from “Doctor Zhivago” / The Funeral Sventyski’s Waltz / Yuri Escapes Tanya Arrives at Varykino / Yuri Writes a Poem for Lara
November 5, 1966
1 week
Doctor Zhivago is an epic love story set in Russia during World War I. When director David Lean decided to take Boris Pasternak’s 1957 novel to the big screen, he felt it needed a similarly epic soundtrack to enhance the drama, passion, and beauty of the story. He called on Maurice Jarre, a young French composer who picked up an Academy Award for his work on Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia.
In composing and recording the film’s score, Jarre attempted to capture the sound of Russia during the war, which was no easy feat, considering he was living in Los Angeles at the time. “I wanted to find balalaikas, a Russian instrument that has a big sweeping sound, but they were difficult to find,” he recalls. “I didn’t just want one or two, I wanted 25 or 30.” After searching for weeks, Jarre discovered a Russian Orthodox Church located in downtown Los Angeles. “I found 24 people who had balalaikas, but they didn’t know how to read music,” he says. “So I had to teach them the 16 bars of ‘Lara’s Theme.'”
The soundtrack was recorded in 10 days at the MGM Studios, featuring a 105-piece, 40-voice orchestra. Aside from the balalaikas, Jarre also utilized a banjo-like instrument called a shamisen, a Japanese harp known as a koto, and an early predecessor of the synthesizer.
To inspire the music, Jarre traveled to the film location near Madrid, where Lean had a huge set of Moscow constructed, but much of the score was written after he returned home to Los Angeles.
Originally, Lean had planned to use an old piece of Russian music as a centerpiece for the score. “He thought it was public domain, but it wasn’t. After doing research, MGM found out it was written by three composers, but they couldn’t clear the rights to it. So David called me and told me I had to write a new theme for the movie.”
Jarre was thus thrust into the hot seat, having to compose the new theme in a matter of weeks before the film’s opening. “I played him what I wrote and he said, ‘Maurice, I think you can do better.'” Lean also rejected Jarre’s next three attempts. “He said, ‘Don’t think about Doctor Zhivago and Russia. I want you to think about doing a love theme for your girlfriend,'” Jarre says.
Lean’s advice paid off. Jarre took his girlfriend to the mountains for the weekend. “On Monday morning, I went in my studio and I wrote the main theme in an hour.” He notes that the theme, which appears several times in the film and in different variations on the soundtrack, wasn’t particularly Russian-sounding; it was the instrumentation that made the tracks sound that way.
Doctor Zhivago‘s climb to the top wasn’t immediate. It took the soundtrack album 34 weeks to hit Number One and knock Supremes A’ Go-Go from the summit. And its stay at the top only lasted a mere week, but for many, Jarre’s romantic score music would be embedded in their hearts and minds for a lifetime.
THE TOP FIVE
Week of November 5, 1966
1. Doctor Zhivago, Soundtrack
2. The Monkees, The Monkees
3. Supremes A’ Go-Go, The Supremes
4. The Mamas and the Papas, The Mamas and the Papas
5. Revolver, The Beatles