Oxford native wins prestigious film-score scholarship

Timothy Maurice watches movies with his ears.

He listens for the moment when the music begins, when a film score tries coaxing emotion from a scene or when it supports the director’s vision with tenderness, fury, whimsy or passion.

Toughest of all, he listens for the places when the silence ends and the music begins.

“Sometimes it can be very tough to catch it,” said Maurice, a Berklee College of Music senior who grew up in Oxford. When film scores are done well, the sights and sounds of a movie blend so that it’s hard to discern one from the other.

Just imagine the shark from “Jaws” without John Williams’ score or the shower scene from Hitchcock’s “Psycho” without composer Bernard Herrmann’s shrieking violins.

It’s the kind of blend that Maurice aims for, and it has won him awards.

Only months after transferring to Berklee from Bates College in January 2007, he was named a finalist in the school’s third annual film-scoring contest.

Last week, he won a prestigious film-scoring scholarship from BMI, an association that represents 375,000 songwriters.

“It will help me pay for my last semester at school,” said Maurice, who plans to graduate in the fall.

It may also help him find work when he’s done.

Oscar-nominated film composer David Newman, who wrote the scores for “The Spirit” and “Serenity” among dozens of other films, presented Maurice with a plaque in a small ceremony at the Boston school.

He is already building a resume. He has scored his fourth film, a low-budget independent titled “Karma’s Choice.” He has also written the music for Internet “webisodes” and helped prepare music for TV, working on a Sci Fi Channel movie, “Captain Drake.”

In a phone interview from Boston, Maurice talked quietly about his accomplishments. He didn’t know how to write music for movies when he was given his first scoring work, he said.

“They saw I was a finalist and gave me a job,” he said. “I had no idea what I was doing.” He checked out a book, written by a Berklee teacher, and learned about creating a main theme and individual themes for characters.

It worked.

“Without it, there’s no structure for the time you have to fill,” he said. “You have to have music for the good guys and the bad guys.”

On some level, it felt natural.

His mother, Linda, likes to tell the story of Timothy as a 2-year-old. Whenever “Lassie” came on TV, he’d cry. There was something about the show’s melancholy opening credits, the whistling and the boy’s plaintive call for his dog, that affected him.

At 6, Linda and William Maurice started Timothy on piano lessons. He started writing by 10.

“I always enjoyed making music, creating it,” he said. “It never really felt like a chore.”

He dabbled in violin and guitar. He played percussion in middle and high school, but piano was his main focus.

After graduating from Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School in 2003, he studied music at Bates, but transferred as he learned more about what he wanted to do.

“I didn’t want to be a performer,” he said. “I thought there was no way I was going to sing.”

Writing for movies fit the self-effacing Mainer. He can work alone much of the time, trying to make music that fits the images provided. And he can try to perfect his skill at finding the places to end the silences, to find the perfect cues to begin the music.

“That’s something that film composers want – to be seamless,” he said. “I’m working on it.”