When the pictures learnt to sound

Life has one decisive disadvantage, as someone once joked: it never has the right film music! In fact, anyone who goes to the cinema or watches Netflix series knows exactly what love or sadness sounds like, what sounds herald danger or shatter an illusion. This is all the more astonishing given that soundtracks come in all kinds of styles: You can flirt electronically or symphonically, scare or murder, with full sound or sparingly placed blasts of sound.

In other words, film music is an art in itself - and it can be experienced again this season at the Tonhalle Zurich. The International Film Music Competition (IFMW) has been a highlight of the autumn calendar for years, and in January 2026, tonhalleNIGHT will also be dedicated to film music. The following quiz contains questions about the works, composers and conductors who will be taking part, as well as historical and technical ones. And it works like the IFMW: sometimes there is more than one solution ..

1.How many soundtracks did Dmitri Shostakovich compose?
a) 14
b) Around 40
c) Over 100

2.In which film was his Waltz No. 2 from the "Suite for Variety Orchestra" used?
a) In "Moulin Rouge" by Baz Luhrmann
b) In "Being John Malkovich" by Spike Jonze
c) In "Eyes Wide Shut" by Stanley Kubrick

3.Which instrument did Ennio Morricone play?
a) Trumpet
b) Harmonica
c) None - but he could whistle extremely well

4.For which of these film series did the "Star Wars" composer John Williams NOT write the film music?
a) "Harry Potter"
b) "Jurassic Park"
c) "Pirates of the Caribbean"

5.Which other famous composer wrote the music for the film series that was not scored by John Williams?
a) Ennio Morricone
b) Hans Zimmer
c) Howard Shore

6.Who composed the very first film soundtrack?
a) Charles Gounod
b) Gabriel Fauré
c) Camille Saint-Saëns

7. Which of these composers influenced early Hollywood film music?
a) Béla Bartók
b) Erich Wolfgang Korngold
c) Erik Satie

8. Why were silent films accompanied by music?
a) To drown out the rattling of the film projectors
b) The audience found the soundlessness of the films strange
c) In the early cinemas it was very dark, with music it seemed less eerie

9. Which director exclusively used film music by Nino Rota for almost thirty years?
a) Federico Fellini
b) Luchino Visconti
c) Franco Zeffirelli

10. Which director combined works by Johann and Richard Strauss, György Ligeti and Aram Khachaturian in a legendary film?
a) Stanley Kubrick in "2001: A Space Odyssey"
b) Quentin Tarantino in "Django Unchained"
c) Steven Spielberg in "E.T."

11. Which orchestra played the soundtrack for "Amadeus"?
a) The Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich
b) The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
c) The Academy of St Martin in the Fields

12. Which composer was the first to use electronic instruments in a film soundtrack?
a) The American William Axt in "Chasing Rainbows" (1930)
b) The Swiss Arthur Honegger in "L'Idée" (1932)
c) The Austrian Max Steiner in "King Kong" (1933)

13. Which Swiss composer wrote the music for the cult films "Gilberte de Courgenay" and "Uli der Knecht"?
a) Robert Blum
b) Armin Schibler
c) Heinrich Sutermeister

14. What is underscoring?
a) The music provides a very restrained background to the film
b) The music doubles the action on the screen
c) The music uses mainly low sounds

15. Hildur Guðnadóttir, the jury president of this year's International Film Music Competition, received an Oscar for Best Soundtrack. For which film?
a) For the psychological thriller "Joker"
b) For the fictional conductor film "Tár"
c) For the feature film "Women Talking"

16. How many women have been honoured with an Oscar for best film music
?
a) Two
b) Three
c) Four

17. Which film music composer has received the most Oscars?

a) Alfred Newman
b) André Previn
c) John Williams

18. How does conductor Frank Strobel manage to stay in sync when accompanying films live?
a) He conducts strictly according to the metronome
b) He has a button in his ear that tells him the tempo
c) He follows light signals on a screen

19. For which classic film did horror specialist Christopher Young write a new soundtrack that was premiered by the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich and released on CD?
a) "Frankenstein" by James Whale
b) "Nosferatu" by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
c) "Psycho" by Alfred Hitchcock

20. Which sentence about film music comes from our music director Paavo Järvi?
a) "The best soundtracks even outlive the films for which they were created."
b) "Good directors are wise enough to hire the best musicians."
c) "Contemporary sounds are much more easily accepted in the cinema than in the concert hall."