Vangelis
Identification Greek composer and keyboardist
Born March 29, 1943; Volos, Greece
A prolific, accomplished keyboard composer in both classical
and electronic jazz, Vangelis brought to film scores in the
1980’s an opulent feel that lent emotional weight to the the-
atrical experience. Recordings of his scores also stood on
their own, enjoying wide commercial success.
Vangelis was born Evangelos Odysseas Papathanas-
siou in Greece. As a composer, he spent more than
twenty years compiling a distinguished repertoire of
distinctive keyboard works that reflected his era’s ex-
perimentation with lush electronic sounds and the
studio construction of massive sonic effects around a
single, often plaintive melody line, participating in a
movement that would be dubbed New Age music.
He first achieved international success with his score
for Hugh Hudson’s 1981 filmChariots of Fire, the in-
spirational story of two British runners at the 1924
Paris Olympics. Forsaking the traditional expecta-
tion that the score of a period film should reflect
the musical tastes and styles of its setting, Vangelis
crafted a pulsing, electronic score that itself con-
tained a kind of heroic narrative, swelling to emo-
tional, even inspirational peaks. The film’s main
theme, released as a single in 1982, enjoyed rare in-
ternational commercial success for an instrumental
composition, including a week as the number one
single on theBillboardHot 100 chart. It went on to
become a staple among sports anthems—as well as
the subject of countless parodies. The film’s full
score won an Academy Award.
That same year, Vangelis was approached to pro-
vide the score for Ridley Scott’s dystopian futuristic
filmBlade Runner(1982). The score captured the
anxious, isolated feel of the stylish science-fiction
thriller. Artistic differences between director and
composer led to entangling legal actions that pre-
vented the music as Vangelis scored it from accom-
panying the film’s initial release. However, when the
film was later re-released in a “director’s cut,” it in-
cluded Vangelis’s original score. In the interim, the
score was distributed in bootleg recordings, gaining
a cult following similar to that ofBlade Runneritself.
The reclusive Vangelis continued his prodigious
output, composing dozens of New Age recordings,
as well as pieces for the stage (particularly ballet),
and scoring films, especially epics. Ironically, for a
composer who conceived of music as a purely aes-
thetic form unto itself, his soaring and hummable
musical themes were most often recognized because
they had been appropriated by successful marketing
campaigns for commodities, events, and television
programs.Impact Vangelis’s work demonstrated a deliber-
ate disregard for the conventions of film scoring
that dominated the 1980’s. Those conventions were
driven by the rise in tandem of music videos and ag-
gressive cross-marketing campaigns by film studios
attempting to exploit a plurality of merchandising
opportunities for each film. Thus, film scores of the
1980’s were often little more than catalogs of com-
mercial hits with Top 40 potential linked by nonde-
script background music, as directors received man-
dates to include montage sequences in their films
that could enable hit singles to be played in their en-
tirety. Vangelis, however, brought to his film scores a
sense of classical elevation and unity. Aided by his
uncanny ear for unforgettable themes delivered by
the stirring vibrato of his signature synthesizer, his
music provided a rich emotional underscoring to
the events within a film’s narrative and thus became
an integral part of the film’s aesthetic impact.Further Reading
Boundas, Constantin.Film’s Musical Moments. Edin-
burgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006.
Calotychos, Vangelis.Modern Greece: A Cultural Poetics.
Oxford, England: Berg, 2003.
Summer, Lisa, and Joseph Summer.Music: The New
Age Elixir. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1996.
Joseph DeweySee also Academy Awards; Advertising;Blade Run-
ner; Classical music; Jazz; Music; Music videos; Pop
music; Synthesizers.Video games and arcades
Definition Electronic games played by
manipulating images on a video display and
public centers devoted to playing themVideo games began to become a significant aspect of popular
culture during the 1980’s, as they were mass marketed in
both home and coin-operated versions. By the end of the de-
cade, video game characters such as Pac-Man and Mario1020 Vangelis The Eighties in America