Film Score Friday 6/9/00
by Lukas Kendall
A hearty thanks to those to wrote in with 10th anniversary congratulations
in response to last Friday's column! June 2000 marks the ten-year mark
for FSM and I appreciate everyone's kind words.
Film composer Mark Governor has written a musical based on The Scarlet
Letter which is opening June 16th in Boston. You can order the 2CD
original cast recording and find more information on the performances at
http://www.citysoundmusic.com,
or by calling toll-free 1-877-692-7999.
Silva Screen is recording a follow-up to their Valley of Gwangi compilation
of Jerome Moross music. This one will feature selections from The Cardinal,
The Proud Rebel, The Jayhawkers, The Captive City, Close-Up, and Cinerama's
Seven Wonders of the World. Paul Bateman conducted the City of Prague
Philharmonic; release date to be announced.
Jaws CD
See Jeff
Bond's monstrous preview of the upcoming Jaws original soundtrack anniversary
CD.
From: Jeffswim@aol.com, Jeff Commings
Can't wait to hear the Jaws CD (and see the DVD a week later). My
favorite cue will FINALLY be available to listen to over and over: the
music when poor Alex Kintner gets eaten. Outside of the opening chords
in the score, this is truly the scariest moment in the score, because we
are looking from the shark's point of view and the music gets stronger
as the shark gets closer to Alex. A close second to that is when the shark
approaches the Orca before Quint shoots the first barrel. It's a very high-end
rendition of the theme, making it very, very, very tense.
John Williams' finest hour (or two hours I suppose), enough said.
From: Amer Zahid <efkays@cyber.net.pk>
Thanks a great bunch for the excellent exhautsive review you just
did. Im only curious about one thing. The sound recording. How does the
new album fare in terms of ramastered sound?
Its only a year ago that I got the Jaws album and I disticntly noticed
the sound quality was somewhat similar to the Original Star Wars cd from
polydor.(The first remastered issue i.e) When the Star Wars album got remastered
and re-issued in the Trilogy Boxed set I was so amzed at the super clear
and crisp sound of that cd. So, Im kinda hoping that this new Jaws CD has
gone through such remastering metamorphosis.
Also, If the copy they sent you to review is a press release did
it arrive in the original packaging?
We got a press release and have not seen the actual packaging or liner
notes. Regarding the sound, fear not! It sounds fantastic: very good, closely
miked stereo. In fact it might have been recorded a little too cleanly:
you can hear orchestra noise and the overall ambiance is harsher than the
sound of the MCA LP and subsequent CD. Basically you're listening to the
same music you remember from that record, but solos will stick out more,
as they are when recorded for a film to cut through sound effects.
Jerry Goldsmith in Detroit
From: Mike Skerritt <mskerrit@umich.edu>
Being the huge film music fan I've been for the last 10 years or
so, I've always been disappointed living nowhere near NYC or Los Angeles
(IMO, the hot spots to see consistently great film music concerts). So,
it was to my amazed disbelief and unbearable delight that last Thursday
night, I had the privilege of seeing Jerry Goldsmith conducting his own
scores, as performed by the great Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
To my understanding, the program was fairly standard:
- Star Trek: First Contact
- Motion Picture Medley (Sand Pebbles, Chinatown, Air Force One,
etc.)
- L.A. Confidential
- The Mummy
- The Generals Suite (MacArthur and Patton)
- Fanfare for Oscar
- The Russia House (what an amazing score)
- Tiny Creatures (Gremlins and Small Soldiers)
- Medley of Television Themes
- Suite from Mulan
- Fireworks: A Celebration of Los Angeles
With the small exception of some hiccups during Star Trek, the DSO's
performance was fabulous. I especially enjoyed The Generals Suite and The
Mummy. I was also very excited to hear Fireworks for the first time. I'm
keeping my fingers crossed for a recording of the piece someday.
Here's the kicker. During intermission, I nonchalantly asked Marty,
suburban Detroit's one friendly usher, if I might be able to meet Mr. Goldsmith
after the performance. Well, he answered nonchalantly, "Sure, go to
the North Entrance and you might see him." I saw him. I met him. I
got him to leave a voice memo on my cell phone: "Hi Mike, this is
Jerry Goldsmith. Where are you when I need you?" Wow, I'm still recovering
from that. And the whole evening. I never thought I'd get the chance to
see a real concert of the music I've been obsessed with for half my life.
And let me say hi to those guys from Indiana who thought my idea was weird,
but don't have Goldmsith on their cell phones. Hehe.
Things That Came
See Bill
Snedden's retrospective of Things to Come from earlier this week.
From: Preston Jones <pjones@fulpat.com>
As a lover of English music, whether film, folk or classical, I
greatly enjoyed reading about my old childhood favorite, Bliss's THINGS
TO COME. Thanks for writing/presenting the piece.
For those interested in further reading or listening:
John Mauceri/Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, "Journey to the Stars,"
Philips 446 403-2. Clocking it at 15:54, the THINGS TO COME suite comprises:
Main Title; War Montage; Pestilence; Happy March; The Building of the New
World; Attack on the Moon Gun; Epilogue, ("Edited by John Mauceri.")
Other selections are by Herrmann, Corigliano, Goldsmith, Waxman, North,
Williams, Elfman, etc.
The British Film Institue Series of books, "BFI Film Classics,"
includes a volume on THINGS TO COME by Christopher Frayling which features
much information on Bliss's relationship with Wells and the creation of
the score.
From: Brian Gruber <knightbg@mindless.com>
Bravo... I love this type of article, and I'd like to encourage
you guys to do more of them... I really feel that knowing and understanding
the histories of film scoring is the only way to really understand current
projects. And I don't know those histories at all, save what you guys have
offered me. But, what you have offered me causes me to look into films
and scores I never would have known existed, and provides insight I never
would have had otherwise.
Gladiator
From: Sean Nethery <SNethery@cpr.org>
I've listened to the album but haven't yet seen the movie, and so
am not qualified to discuss the overall merit's of Hans Zimmer's score
for Gladiator. But I do want to chime in on the "use" of Holst's
"Mars" music in the fabric of the score.
As a few have noted, the practice of borrowing music originally
written by others is common (if not universal). This is true not only in
film music, but in all kinds of music in all cultures.
Here's one good test: listen to any type of ethnic music with which
you're unfamiliar. At first everything may seem the same, but the more
you listen the more differences you'll hear.
I'll pick Indian classical music (cliched by movies to the sitar
out of later Beatles with those impossibly fast tabla rhythms). Every raga
(the dominant musical form) begins very slowly, with the soloist improvising
on one of dozens of ancient melodic patterns. Eventually things speed up,
the tabla (small hand drums) enters, and there's a fast and furious exchange
of ideas and variations on the original melody. When I first listened to
a bit of this music, my impression was that everything sounded more or
less similar - in part because the melodies are quite restricted, in part
because the notes and patterns were somewhat unfamiliar to me, and in part
because this kind of music is based entirely on melody without the harmony
that is a prominent feature of Western music. But the more I've listened
to different performers and different recordings, the more I'm beginning
to understand the variety and richness of one of the oldest continuous
art musics in the world. Each performer is a co-composer, using or combining
traditional and innovative practices to create new music.
Music is always a tradition, a synthesis of new ideas and those
that came before. In many cases, there is no particular author to hold
up as the creator. For example, the majority of film music (and pop music
and classical music) is written in "common time": each measure
has four beats, usually with accents on the first and third beats: Da da
Da da , Da da Da da. (Forgive me for being Dadaist.) I don't hear anyone
complain about this - no one says about John Williams, "I can't BELIEVE
he's using common time again!" But when the musical device known from
a famous work is employed, it's easy to mistake a similar idea as plagiarism
(or homage or pastiche).
Zimmer is not aping "Mars" - he's using the same brass-based
ostinato (a repeating rhythmic pattern) that Holst either introduced or
at least made indelible in his work. (Are we SURE that The Planets is the
first time that's been used?) But just like countless composers before
him, to my ears Zimmer has taken that ostinato as a basis for his own composition,
and has created a piece that acknowledges the source but that does what
Zimmer wants it to do. He goes somewhere new with the idea, and therefore
leaves the influence behind.
Maybe it's a shame that Holst is not given a credit in the album
notes, but we should be careful to listen to what the music does, rather
than simply where some of its ideas came from, if we want to give it a
fair chance. Or another grumpier way to say this is, if you're not going
to castigate John Williams for his constant borrowings, then you've no
right to castigate anyone else. (I happened to hear Richard Strauss's Der
Rosenkavalier suite yesterday, and it sounded like a template for half
of Williams' orchestral ideas.)
Congratulations to Film Score Monthly for ten years of devotion
to the art of film music, and for giving us a forum for these endless debates!
From: Altauria@aol.com, Brian Paul
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it true that we have almost no
knowledge of what Roman music really was? I mean, of course I love the
brassy and percussive scores we hear in Gladiator, Ben Hur and Spartacus,
but who's to say who is accurate? The only music that we could guess that
they used is evidence of harps and simple poem music, but our knowledge
ends there. The only reason we know of ancient Rome to begin with is because
of lucky discoveries by archeologists. Although it seems odd that after
Rome fell that we would think that people would be curious about the ruins
left behind, but they really didn't know. It's comparable, I guess, to
those sci-fi novels that portray the post-apocalyptic futures with people
riding horse and buggies next to abbandoned highways and skyscrapers.
I believe you are right -- we really have no idea what actual Roman
music was like. Composers like Miklos Rozsa came up with their Roman "movie"
sound by using their imagination and perhaps basing it on assumptions of
what Roman instruments would have been. I think Alex North in Spartacus
tried to evoke the sounds of armor and swords clinking. But it's all
guesswork. Gladiator is musically more Russian than Roman! It's
all in the affect.
From: "tnealbrown" <tnealbrown@email.msn.com>
Hercules (Alan Menken and David Zippel) ***
Even though I'm writing about something that you might think is
a rotten piece of music (you might even think that it is Disney's worst
musical ever), it is not. I think that the songs and score to Hercules
were good (not the best but good). Oh sure, it had many silly little pop
songs to it, but that is what made the movie funny. The score to it, I
think was perfect for that kind of movie--not too much and not too little.
Alan Menken has a great talent for writng songs and scores for the
animated films. Please don't be critical of him writing some "Old
Gospel-type soul music" for this movie. After all, I'm sure the director
would be found at fault too for many things that happened to this movie
and how it became a "Greek Tragedy."
Hey, what happened to Gladiator?
Love's Labours Lost
See the recent
CD review.
From: steve.stromberg@autodesk.com
I saw an advanced screening of Branagh's version of Love's Labour's
Lost and it is delightful. His use of Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, and the
Gershwin's was just so right. Icing on the cake, Brannagh showed up to
introduce it for a benefit for the Marin County Shakespeare Company. He
did the same several years ago for Hamlet. Congratulations again on the
10th anniversary.
Ebay
From: Mike Murray <recrdman@dreamscape.com>
Subject: A VG Vinyl "A Child is Born" 10" LP sells
for $365 on eBay
Thought you might be interested in news that this item [not mine]
sold for $365 this morning on eBay. From description and private e-mail
it sounds like only a VG copy. I've heard of others of these selling at
up to $1500 privately. [BTW if you look at ad, there are more than a "dozen"
of these floating around].
BERNARD HERRMANN soundtrack- on LP A 1955 original 10 inch mono
LP first pressing of the TV soundtrack and score composed and conducted
by BERNARD HERRMANN - his musical adaptation of Stephen Vincent Benet's
"A CHILD IS BORN" - as presented on The General Electric Theater
on Christmas Day, December 25, 1955, on CBS television. This soundtrack
LP is on 10 inch deep groove yellow PROMO label MCA-TV C-55. http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=346346412
I see Recordman and his brethren are still out there collecting good
old vinyl. How reassuring!
Also relating to ebay, I close with one of the few non-film music links
we'll ever run on Film Score Monthly -- but this one deserves to
be seen by everyone. Thanks go to Ben Pedersen who alerted me to www.ebaytreasure.com,
an unofficial site cataloging the ugliest, tackiest items people have ever
tried to sell on ebay. Jeff Bond and I almost threw up from laughing at
the Satanic one-eyed dolls and such.
Have fun!
MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com
| 
