Mark Snow

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mark Snow

Born	Martin Fulterman August 26, 1946 (1946-08-26) (age 61) New York City, New York
Spouse(s)	Glynn Daly (1967-present) 3 children

Mark Snow (born Martin Fulterman on 26 August 1946 in New York City) is a prolific composer for film and television.

He is brother-in-law of actress Tyne Daly and actor Tim Daly.

Snow graduated from the Juilliard School in New York City. He was a co-founder of the New York Rock & Roll Ensemble.

One of his most famous compositions is the theme music for sci-fi show The X-Files, which reached #2 in the UK Singles Chart, but Snow also wrote the music for Chris Carter's Millennium, and the background music scores for both shows, a total of 12 seasons' worth. The X-Files typically used more instrumental music score than most hour-long dramas.

He also composed the scoring for Smallville and "One Tree Hill", as well as a dramatic theme for the third series of Starsky & Hutch around 1979, which highlighted more socially-conscious and light-hearted stories. He has also composed music for video games, such as Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror and Giants: Citizen Kabuto.

He has been nominated for 12 Emmy Awards and won 18 ASCAP awards.

[edit] Miscellany

According to the "Behind the Truth" segment on the Season 1 DVD, Mark Snow created the echo effect on his famous X-Files theme song by accident. Snow said that he had gone through several revisions, but Chris Carter felt that something was not quite right. Carter walked out of the room and Snow put his hand and forearm on his keyboard in frustration. Snow said, "this sound was in the keyboard. And that was it."
Mark Snow's scores occasionally contain very brief excerpts of works by 20th century Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski. For instance, episode 3 of the TV show Nowhere Man contains a piano and flute passage from Lutoslawski's Les espaces du sommeil for baritone and orchestra, and an episode of The X-Files contains an excerpt from his Symphony no. 3.