Lalo Schifrin Was Asked to Write a Signature TV Theme

Lalo Schifrin, the composer who wrote the endlessly catchy theme for Mission: Impossible and more than 100 other arrangements for film and television, died Thursday. He was 93. The Argentine won four Grammys and was nominated for six Oscars, including five for original score for Cool Hand Luke, The Fox, Voyage of the Damned, The Amityville Horror, and The Sting II. "Every movie has its own personality. There are no rules to write music for movies," Schifrin said in 2018, per the AP. "The movie dictates what the music will be."

He also wrote the grand finale musical performance for the World Cup championship in Italy in 1990, in which the Three Tenors—Plácido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti and José Carreras—sang together for the first time. The work became one of the biggest sellers in the history of classical music. Schifrin, also a jazz pianist and classical conductor, had a remarkable career that included working with Dizzy Gillespie and recording with Count Basie and Sarah Vaughan. But perhaps his biggest contribution was the instantly recognizable score to television's Mission: Impossible, which fueled the just-wrapped, decades-spanning feature film franchise led by Tom Cruise. Written in the unusual 5/4 time signature, the theme was married to a self-destruct clock that kicked off the TV show, which ran from 1966 to 1973.

It was described as "only the most contagious tune ever heard by mortal ears" by New Yorker film critic Anthony Lane and hit No. 41 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1968. Schifrin originally wrote a different piece for the theme song, but series creator Bruce Geller liked another arrangement Schifrin had composed for an action sequence. "The producer called me and told me, 'You're going to have to write something exciting, almost like a logo, something that will be a signature, and it's going to start with a fuse,'" Schifrin said in 2006. He added that the music he wrote "came from inside me." Mission: Impossible won Grammys for best instrumental theme and best original score from a motion picture or a TV show.

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Born Boris Claudio Schifrin in Buenos Aires—where his father was the concertmaster of the philharmonic orchestra—Schifrin was classically trained in music, in addition to studying law. After studying at the Paris Conservatory, Schifrin returned to Argentina and formed a concert band. Gillespie heard Schifrin perform and asked him to become his pianist, arranger, and composer. In 1958, Schifrin moved to the US, playing in Gillespie's quintet in 1960-62 and composing the acclaimed "Gillespiana." He moved easily between genres, winning a Grammy for 1965's Jazz Suite on the Mass Texts while also earning a nod for the score of TV's The Man From U.N.C.L.E. In 2018, he was given an honorary Oscar statuette, and in 2017, the Latin Recording Academy bestowed on him one of its special trustee awards. In 2017, the Mission: Impossible theme was entered into the Grammy Hall of Fame.