Best Original Musical or Comedy Score
| Academy Award for Best Original Score | |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Presented by | Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences |
| First awarded | February 27, 1935 |
| Currently held by |
Justin Hurwitz La La Land (2016) |
| Official website | oscars |
The Academy Award for Best Original Score is presented to the best substantial body of music in the form of dramatic underscoring written specifically for the film by the submitting composer.
The Academy began awarding movies for their scores in 1935. The category was originally called 'Best Scoring'. At the time, winners and nominees were a mix of original scores and adaptations of pre-existing material. Following the controversial win of Charles Previn for One Hundred Men and a Girl in 1938, a film without a credited composer that featured pre-existing classical music, the Academy added a 'Best Original Score' category in 1939. In 1942, the distinction between the two Scoring categories changed slightly as they were renamed to 'Best Music Score of a Dramatic Picture' and 'Best Scoring of a Musical Picture'. This marked the first time the category was split into separate genres, a distinction that technically still lasts today, although there haven't been enough submissions for the musical category to be awarded since 1985. From 1942 to 1985, musical scores had their own category, with the exception of 1958, 1981 and 1982, where there were not enough submissions. During that time, both categories had many name changes:
1. Non-musical scores
2. Musical scores
Following the wins of 4 Walt Disney Feature Animation films in 6 years from 1990 to 1995 (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King) during a period that was called the Disney Renaissance, it was decided to once again split the 'Best Original Score' category by genres, this time by combining comedies and musicals together. As Alan Bergman, the chairman of the academy's music branch said, "People were voting for the songs, not the underscores. We felt that academy members outside the music branch didn't distinguish between the two. So when a score like 'The Lion King' is competing against a drama like 'Forrest Gump,' it's apples and oranges -- not in the quality of the score, but in the way it functions in the movie. There's a big difference." The category was therefore split into 'Best Original Dramatic Score' and 'Best Original Musical or Comedy Score' in 1996. This change proved unpopular in the other branches of the Academy as Charles Bernstein, chairman of the academy's rules committee noted, "no other Oscar category depended on a film's genre", and "the job of composing an underscore for a romantic comedy is not substantially different from working on a heavy drama". This split was reverted in 2000.
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