Fred Myrow

Myrow trained formally in composition and worked in both concert music and experimental performance art before moving into film scoring, giving him an unusually eclectic musical background for a studio genre composer.

He scored the film's famous soylent-green reveal with a swelling, tragic sweep — then, in its final scene, let Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony do the emotional work instead. A classically trained composer, he worked across both film scoring and experimental concert music throughout his career.

The deliberate choice to let a pre-existing classical piece carry the film's final emotional beat was considered a bold structural decision for a studio genre picture, one that has been widely praised by film-music historians since.