Sadly, and without much fanfare, we lost another dedicated film music fan and a very good friend, Thomas L Kiefner (November 2, 1947 – June 13, 2025.) He was a gentle soul, a passionate baseball fan and a skilled photographer.
I initially met Tom in the early 2000s when I joined a message board on scorereviews.com, which is now maintitles.net. There, I read Tom’s enthusiastic postings about melodic, orchestral Golden Age scores and classical music. He would wax poetic about Korngold, Rozsa, Waxman, Herrmann, Tiomkin, Newman and Hugo Friedhofer, who penned his favourite score of all time, THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES. He would often express his admiration for early television shows and the music composed for them including Lalo Schifrin’s MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE and Morton Stevens’ HAWAII-FIVE-O. I befriended Tom, and we talked about film music and his other interests, such as photography and baseball. He once told me that he casually chatted with Wayne Gretzky, whose son played for one of the teams Tom was photographing that day.
The discussions would continue to include Hammer Horror films, Les Baxter, Charles Gerhardt, and Tom’s dream of starting a website dedicated solely to Golden Age scores. I thought it was a great idea. He then offered me money to create the website for him. Even if I could… I don’t have the skills to do so… I would never take Tom’s money. I then suggested he contact Bregt De Lange, who designed the maintitles.net website. GoldenScores.com launched in 2006. After the site closed a few years later, Tom moved his film music essays and reviews to his new WordPress blog, Film and Classical Music: Neglected Art. There, Tom’s writings, which began in 2006, are archived. His last review was on May 4, 2022.
In 2010, Tom accepted an invitation to guest-host his own episode of Cinematic Sound Radio. I told him he could play whatever he wanted, as long as it was Golden Age-themed. These are the original show notes.
FILM MUSIC MIX | GOLDEN AGE SCORES
with guest host TOM KIEFNER from FILM MUSIC: THE NEGLECTED ARTOn this edition of FILM MUSIC MIX guest host Tom Kiefner from the film music blog, FILM MUSIC: THE NEGLECTED ART, will take us on a journey through the wonderful sounds of Hollywood’s Golden Age. You will hear music by Bernard Herrmann from the film HANGOVER SQUARE featuring the Concert Macabre. You’ll also hear a couple of selections from THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES by Hugo Friedhofer (Tom’s favorite score) and a spectacular suite from HORROR OF DRACULA by James Bernard. Afterwards, enjoy the Americana sounds of Aaron Copland with THE RED PONY and finish off with the tune that got Tom into film music; the up tempo theme from PETER GUNN by Henry Mancini.
So, on today’s very special episode, and in honour of one of the great champions of film music and my friend, we proudly rebroadcast Tom’s show, which first premiered on September 3, 2010.
Rest in peace, my friend!
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