From panic to perfection: How Lalo Schifrin created the iconic ‘Mission: Impossible’ theme

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Lalo Schifrin, the legendary Argentine-American composer best known for creating the iconic "Theme From Mission: Impossible," died Thursday at the age of 93.

In 1966, Bruce Geller, the creator of the Mission: Impossible TV series, tasked Schifrin with a simple, yet daunting directive: "Make something exciting." Despite having little time and no script to work with, Schifrin composed the now-famous piece, originally titled "Burning Fuse," in just minutes. Influenced by his jazz background, the theme’s distinctive 5/4 time signature — rumored but never confirmed to be inspired by Morse code for the letters "M" (dash-dash) and "I" (dot-dot) — gave it its unique tension and swing.

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“It was a bit of a production panic because they were so late with their deadlines,” Schifrin said in a 2018 interview with The Independent. “I didn’t have a clue what the television show was at first. I had never been to a TV shoot.”

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Forced to come up with something on the fly without even a script to read, Schifrin was invited to the set of TV series while they were filming. “I did not understand anything,” he said. Geller told the composer, “I want you to write something that will get people’s attention. Make it sound like a promise that there’s going to be a little bit of action. Like, when they’re in the kitchen having a soft drink and the television set is on in the living room, they’ll hear it and say, ‘Oh,Mission: Impossibleis on!’ Then they’ll run immediately to the living room.

Schifrin described his process: “I sat at my desk and wrote that theme in exactly one-and-a-half minutes. It was not inspiration; it was a need to do it. It was my own littlemission impossible! The whole thing – including the chorus, the bongos, everything you hear — took me maybe three minutes. I was creating sound of impossible missions and making them swing. I didn’t know it was going to be so successful.”

Born in 1932 in Buenos Aires, Schifrin's musical journey began with classical piano under his violinist father's guidance. However, his passion for jazz led him to smuggle records into Argentina and study music composition in Paris. After a transformative stint with Dizzy Gillespie’s quintet, Schifrin went on to become a prolific film and television composer, scoring classics like Cool Hand Luke, Bullitt, and the Dirty Harry films.

The Mission: Impossible theme became a cultural touchstone, earning Schifrin two Grammy Awards and international acclaim, and incorporated into the scores for the blockbuster Tom Cruise film series. Even when adapted by composers for the film series starting in 1996, the heart of Schifrin’s work remained. Reflecting on its legacy, he called it "a bridge across time."

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Throughout Schifrin's career he was the recipient of many accolades, including six Academy Award nominations, four Emmy nominations, and four Grammys. In 2018 he was bestowed an Honorary Oscar, presented by Clint Eastwood and Kathy Bates, "in recognition of his unique musical style, compositional integrity and influential contributions to the art of film scoring." When accepting the award, the maestro humbly declared: "It is a mission accomplished."

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