“Nothing really big happens in the song. It stays in A-minor, there’s no singing, drums or guitars, and it was a smash hit. That’s pretty wild”: Tributes paid to X-Files composer Mark Snow

Mark Snow receives The ASCAP Golden Note Award during The 20th Annual ASCAP Film & Television Music Awards at Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California.

Mark Snow, the TV composer who scored a surprise 1990s chart hit with the theme to The X-Files has died, aged 78.

Snow trained at Julliard and like most composers in the 1970s, started off writing for full orchestra. But he was one of the first of his generation to make the move into electronic music in the late 1980s. All of the music for The X Files, which often totalled as much as 40 minutes each episode, was created in his own studio on synthesizers and samplers.