SW: It’s a testament to the dynamism and richness of the soundtrack recording that all of those problems simply fade into the background. One simply wouldn’t know that any such disruption had taken place. It’s also a testament to the indestructible, canonical reputation of Leonard Bernstein’s music.

DN: A lot of people aren’t classical music purists. From 1750 to the present day, that’s considered canon. Hayden, Mozart, Beethoven and so on, then the romantics and then the 20th-century artists. Out of all the music written for orchestras and chamber music during that 250-year period, there are maybe 300 to 400 pieces considered canon. It’s got to be one in a million to make it into the canon and West Side Story makes it in there.

The American-born Leonard Bernstein makes an orchestral arrangement of the music from the original show and it makes it into the canon. That means it will be played forever as long as Western music continues and there’s an orchestra that can perform it. It’s hard to fathom that. One simply doesn’t mess with it. It is timeless. Everyone knows it. It’s a unique Broadway show, as well. It bridges vaudeville with musical theater with opera and ballet. The original show is mainly a musical ballet with a little bit of dialog. It has hardly any dialog, the show. The way it was conceived was so different from anything that came before and after. I cannot think of any movie except our movie that has successfully figured out how to present that as a movie-going experience.

SW: It’s fascinating isn’t it, because ordinarily, a film composer facilitates a director’s story, in this case, Steven Spielberg’s. And yet you’re using somebody else’s music to tell that story.

DN: We don’t really look at it that way, though, because it’s West Side Story. We all love it. We all probably would have done it for free. Staging West Side Story in high school is almost the most exciting thing you can do at that age, unless you’re on a winning sports team or something. There are hundreds of people involved. And everyone’s doing it because they love it. Making this movie had the same kind of feeling, even though it was very difficult and there were a lot of arguments. It wasn’t exactly free of human intercourse. One really didn’t think of oneself at all. The honor of being able to be involved in West Side Story—that was it.

SW: You mentioned the dubbing and the mixing earlier, which Spielberg is fantastic at, like you said. Is a successful mix of both music and sound one of the pivotal cornerstones of any scoring project?

DN: Yes, and it’s very hard to get right. There are reasons it doesn’t happen very often. Like you said, when you’re doing a movie, and you’re the film composer, and it’s your music, you’ve then got the sound mixers and sound editors doing their own thing. Then you’ve got the dialog mixers, as that element also needs to be heard. It can become a boxing match, maybe. It’s intrinsic in the system. But Spielberg has a vision of music. He grew up as a musician. He didn’t become a professional, but in the States we’re taught music classes learning specific instruments. That’s certainly true of people of my age and Spielberg’s age. Whether you do anything with the instrument is beside the point. You get a taste of it and for some people, it clicks. For others, not so. And for Spielberg, it clicked.

He just gets how to do it. We composers often ask, why is the music there if it’s not being used? It’s not that it has to be particularly loud; it just has to be used. Otherwise, don’t put it there. That’s the struggle. Pre-dubbing might take six, seven, eight weeks, and the final mix might take a week or two. Generally, there is no music at the pre-dub stage. They’re taking lots of dialog stems and sound effects and they are making them into tracks, combining things, balancing things. They’re also doing Foley and ADR, additional dialog recording.

Most of the time, the team is not running the music, and if they are, they’re not listening to it. That’s not their focus. Then comes the final mix, and all of a sudden the music needs to be used. And guess what? They’re used to all the other stuff because they haven’t been paying attention to the music at all. The music is mixed and done and stemmed out and ready. It might not even be there during pre-dubbing. A composer might be scoring during pre-dubbing. Basically, one shows up at the final mix and there’s the music. And one has had no practice with it. One doesn’t know where the phrases are. One doesn’t know what the composer intended in this scene or that scene. “I can’t hear the dialog?” “Well, just whack down the music.” And the effects people have been sitting with the director for weeks and weeks, and people bond when they’re together.

They’re used to all the other stuff because they haven’t been paying attention to the music at all.

It’s a systemic issue and it takes a very experienced director to know not to sit there forever. Such a director knows to give his or her team the permission to use music to tell the story. They have signed off on all the music and have been to all the scoring sessions. They’ve been through this huge process. Presumably, they know the music and then they get to the dub. Of course, it’s going to sound different because sound is sound. It takes a person who likes and knows how to use music. They know what their proclivities are going to be. Maybe they’ll bond with a sound effect that they like, and then the music comes and it drowns out the sound effect, so the music is dumped. Spielberg just happens to be good at it. He gets what music is there for.