Mark Snow, Composer of Eerie ‘X-Files’ Theme, Dies at 78

The Washington Post

11:19 JST, July 8, 2025

Mark Snow, who composed the ghostly theme for the long-running occult TV series “The X-Files” and more than 200 episodes of the show as well as its spin-off films, died July 3 at his home in Washington, Connecticut. He was 78.

The cause was a rare blood cancer, said his son-in-law, Peter Ferland.

A Juilliard-trained classical oboist who co-founded the New York Rock & Roll Ensemble in 1967, a quintet that performed Bach and modern rock, Mr. Snow eventually found a musical home in Hollywood scoring for Aaron Spelling-produced TV series.

“The X-Files” creator Chris Carter approached him in 1993 in part because Mr. Snow’s Santa Monica studio – filled with a digital synthesizer called a Synclavier and other high-tech gear – was convenient to his home.

Carter gave Mr. Snow a stack of CDs as musical suggestions for what might suit his new Fox series about two FBI agents, Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), who investigate supernatural phenomena and alleged alien conspiracies.

The composer’s first order of business was creating a signature theme. “I was looking for something that Boy Scouts could hum at the campfire as a scary song,” Carter told NPR, “something akin to ‘The Twilight Zone.’”

After ruling out a list of orthodox instruments, he tried performing the theme on a sample called “Whistling Joe” on his E-mu Proteus sampling machine. Mr. Snow said he was inspired, in part, by his studies with composer Earle Hagen, who had written (and whistled) “The Andy Griffith Show” theme song in the 1960s.

“The door was open to the studio,” Mr. Snow told NPR, “and my wife heard this, says, ‘Well, that’s pretty interesting. What’s that?’ I said, ‘I’m just fooling around with this new theme.’ She said, ‘Oh, that’s good. You know, I’m a good whistler, too. Maybe I could beef it up a little bit.’”

The end result – which combined “Whistling Joe” with a sample of his wife’s whistle – kicked off a nine-season pop culture sensation. “The X-Files” theme became one of TV’s most recognizable melodies and even charted around the world in its original form and as a dance remix. The whistle, Mr. Snow said, “has mystery and simplicity and transparency.”

Writing music for television is a largely anonymous and thankless job, but Mr. Snow’s affable and self-deprecating personality, by all accounts, was a good fit for the medium, as he composed thousands of minutes of mood music during the show’s run.

Many TV composers, he told the Orange County Register, can create music that sounds “very cold and unmusical. It’s very important to me that ‘X-Files’ sound as musical as possible – human, warm and emotional, although still in the electronic setting.”

“A little electronic music goes a long way,” he added. “Scully’s father comes back as a vision – that had to be really emotional, but really emotional in ‘X-Files’ language. That meant not a cornball, florid, over-the-top melody but a simple, heartfelt melody like Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings.

“Sometimes you have to lay low with it and go simple or neutral, because what’s happening on video is so wild,” he continued. “It’s so abnormal that big music or busy music would really hurt it.”

“The X-Files” yielded a spin-off series, two feature films and a belated reboot season. Mr. Snow also scored Carter’s late 1990s series “Millennium”; the hit teenage Superman drama “Smallville”; and the popular Tom Selleck police series “Blue Bloods.”

Martin Fulterman, who later changed his name when he entered the TV industry, was born in Brooklyn on Aug. 26, 1946. His mother was a kindergarten teacher, and his father was a drummer in big bands and Broadway pit orchestras.

His first instrument was the drums, but he eventually became first oboist in New York’s All-City High School Orchestra. At Juilliard, he majored in oboe performance in 1968 but lost interest in an orchestral career while playing in rock groups.

“A lot of Juilliard students go to school and lock themselves in their practice rooms,” Mr. Snow told Pop Scene Syndicate in 1968, soon after co-founding the New York Rock & Roll Ensemble. “All they can do is read scores, and all they can talk about is Chopin’s études.”

Mr. Snow played oboe, drums, piano and saxophone in the ensemble, which played on “The Tonight Show” and shared stages with Leonard Bernstein and Sly and the Family Stone. Before disbanding, they released five albums, performed Michael Small’s score for the 1969 film “Out of It” and appeared on-screen in the 1971 counterculture Western “Zachariah.”

After a brief stint working for a New York record company, Mr. Snow moved to California in 1974 and got a demo tape to producer Spelling. “My wife’s sister, Tyne Daly, was married at the time to Georg Stanford Brown, who was on [Spelling’s police show] ‘The Rookies.’” Spelling later hired Mr. Snow to work on series including “Starsky & Hutch,” “T.J. Hooker,” “Hart to Hart” and “Dynasty.”

In 1967, he married Mary Glynn Daly, known as Glynnis. In addition to his wife, survivors include three daughters, Sarah, Nora and Megan; and four grandsons.

Mr. Snow, who was nominated for 15 Primetime Emmy Awards, said that succeeding in series TV requires someone who can deliver creatively under high-pressure stakes.

“I’d say 80 to 85 percent of the time is spent under a time crunch,” Mr. Snow told Variety in 1989. “The guys who can work under those limits and not complain are called back before the guys who bitch about it. If the Muses visit you on a regular basis, you’ve got it made.”