Forbidden Planet (1956) was what what Future Past was supposed to sound like.  From it's first electronic growl Forbidden Planet made it clear that this was not a film scored with brass and woodwind, but with electrons and transistors.  Instead of a melody there were hums and instead of notes there were pips, whines, and growls.  It was so out of this world that you couldn't tell where the film score ended and the sound effects began.

It was geek heaven.

The, for want of a better word, "composers" of the Forbidden Planet score were the husband and wife team of Louis and Bebe Barron.  In 1948, Louis Barron had read Norbert Wiener's pioneering work Cybernetics: Or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine; a pioneering work on computers that discussed the role of feedback in machines and animals and he hit on the idea of using Wiener's equations as the basis for building electronic circuitry to generate sounds.   These Bebe would record on tape and then splice together to create completed pieces of music-- which was a good thing, as the results of Louis tinkering were  so unpredictable that they often couldn't be duplicated.  Because of this, the Barron's had only limited control over what were less compositions than performances with the circuits less instruments than (in the words of the Barrons) "actors."

The Barrons became part of the New York avant garde music scene and in 1956 MGM asked them to create twenty minutes of sound effects for Forbidden Planet.  This brief was soon expanded until the Barrons were not only doing the effects, but the entire musical score as well.

The results were such that at the film preview the audience burst out in applause at the spectacular landing of the space cruiser C-57D on the surface of Altair IV and the score was received warmly by the critics.  Over at the American Federation of Musicians, however, the temperature was like a meat locker and the union was so up in arms over the threat of mechanised music that the Barrons were denied a music credit for the film (this changed to "electronic tonalities") as well as an Academy Award nomination.

First they stiff Robby the Robot for best supporting actor and now this.  There's no justice.

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