This thesis examines Trevor Jones’s scoring processes that relate to his narrative television projects. In recent years, Jones has donated a large, unique collection of materials relating to his film and television productions to the University of Leeds, which form the Trevor Jones Archive. These materials consist of aural, textual, visual and notational resources, and offer the opportunity to explore many nuanced details pertaining to the industrial and musical processes that formed Jones’s television scores. In addition to the archival materials, this thesis is informed by interviews with Jones and his working team, and is contextualised by the literature surrounding the television industry and its scoring practices.
Jones has composed original scores for programmes produced predominantly by the American and British television industries, and transmitted by a number of advertising and non-advertising broadcasters that operate within these industries. Furthermore, Jones has written scores for a range of programme forms, including stand-alone telefilms and multi-episodic miniseries and series. All of these factors have influenced his industrial processes when writing for television, and the archive illuminates the many ways they have done this. Jones’s musical processes are also considered, in terms of the compositional devices he employs.
The findings of the thesis demonstrate that Jones’s television scoring practices undergo many industrial processes that are unique to television, and share many musical processes with his scores for cinema. Furthermore, they highlight the many changes that both of these processes have undergone since Jones’s earliest narrative television production until the most recent that is contained in the archive – a period that spans thirty years of the television industry.
