In The Service of Two Masters
Singing the Praises of Williams and
Shore
From FSM Vol. 8, No. 5, On Sale Now...
Boys choir director Michael McCarthy
has enjoyed a unique experience of which most performers can only dream.
During the first part of the new
century, Michael and his London Oratory School Schola (boys choir) were
hired to perform on the soundtracks for two film trilogies -- one a
sure thing (Harry Potter) and
the other an unknown quantity (Lord of the Rings). Both jobs were recorded at Abbey Road
Studios, sometimes just days apart and often just one room apart. FSM readers may remember a mention of the
Schola in Doug Adams' article "7 Days in September" (FSM, Volume 8., Number 10).
Michael's experiences reveal the
subtle realities of what it takes to do the job -- and do a good job.
The realities of time, money, and the need to interpret and perform
what the composer wants generate their own unique pressures. As much as
the process of delivering music written by two of cinema's most
highly-respected composers -- John Williams and Howard Shore -- was the
same in structure, it was entirely different in feel.
Michael left the Schola at the end of
2003 to come to America as the new Director of Music at Washington
National Cathedral in Washington, DC. It was here that I caught up with
him to ask if he would share his observations of these particular
recording experiences.
KR: First, how did you get
these jobs?
MM: I founded the Schola in
1996 at the London Oratory School in Fulham, London. It was to be a
liturgical choir, and I knew we would have a lot of spare time on our
hands because there was only one service to sing a week rather than a
hundred. I knew we would have to head off in another direction,
possibly as a concert choir. Being a singer, I was already recording a
lot of soundtracks and, when my contractor realized I had a boys choir,
that was the string to their bow. There aren't many boys choirs that
would be available at such short notice, or that would have a program
whose boys were of a standard where they could work quickly. In studio
work, the most important thing is to work as fast as you can.
KR: Jumping right in, was that
the case for LOTR?
MM: We would get five to six
days notice and then we would be in the studio. Sometimes they would be
able to fax music the night before because they were working during the
night. I would meet with my kids every morning at 8:00. If there wasn't
any music on the fax machine, we would just wait for it at the studio.
The kids would be booked for a three-hour session at a time. We'd get
the cues, note-bash them and put them down as a track.
Peter [Jackson] took a very hands-on approach to the editing, so that
prevented Howard from having a complete look at what he was writing
music for. Well, not preventing really, but everything had to happen
very much at the end of the editing process. Howard picked up the score
in August. We were usually booked on the second or third week of
September, with probably one more [session] to finish off the first
week of October. Then everything was edited down and mastered by the
end of October. Those guys had to work fast.
The music itself was technically fairly straightforward. Sometimes
knitting it into the rest of the orchestration was not always obvious,
and Howard was very specific in the noise that he wanted. A lot of the
takes we performed were to ensure that he got exactly the noise he was
after.
KR: The "noise"?
MM: By "noise" I mean that the
choirs I train up have a certain characteristic noise. Every choir does
-- a noise that is characteristic of its director. The idea is for the
boys to be able to be flexible enough to change that sound to suit the
employer.
Howard had in his ear a sound that he wanted to hear. What you have to
do is to refine or moderate the noise the kids make into something that
he will like. Suppose the noise that my kids make is a slightly
brighter, more Italianate noise; Howard prefers it to be a little more
rounded.
[In LOTR], the boys
represented the innocence of the Hobbits. Howard had a full male/female
chorus as well making their own very distinctive impressive sound. He
really wanted the boys' tone to be separate from that so as not to
sound like an extension of the choir. Each of the choirs -- each of the
sound fields if you like -- had their own representative bit.
KR: Many of us have already
read about the incredible process by which the LOTR scores were put together,
challenged by time, distance, and many sleepless nights. Was this your
experience?
MM: Howard was very much
involved with the boys' sessions during the first film. He was at all
of the sessions, explaining what he wanted and then directing the boys.
As the sessions went on, he left me to work with the boys. Poor fellow
was recording during the day and writing during the night. Literally
I'd be talking with his score people in the middle of the night as the
night shift was coming on.
The team he had on hand for all three films was the same. Although the
work occurred a year apart for each film, we'd know within an hour or
so what to do. We could just pick up where we were the previous year in
terms of what would provide the right feel.
For the last film, I would work with the kids, the engineer and
the producer. When we had what we thought was close to what Howard
wanted, we would contact him back at the hotel room where he was
working, interrupt him, and play the track. Then he would just tidy up
what he wanted. The orchestral score was already down. We just set our
stuff on top. All the vocals tended to go on last, with René
[Fleming] put on even later. We tended to sing to orchestral tracks;
not a temp track with clicks. [Work on] the first film was very much
discovering the sound. Subsequent films were more refining.
KR: Discovering the sound was
critical to maintaining a musical continuity throughout all three
films. And Howard wanted this, right?
MM: Absolutely, absolutely. For
example, on the first film there was a solo in the credits at the end
by a boy named Edward Ross ["In Dreams"]. Edward came very much out of
the first session that we did. Howard had just come across the boys an
hour earlier and immediately we had to decide who would do the solos.
Edward was my selection because he was very flexible and very quick.
There were a lot of changes going on at the end of "In Dreams." Edward
was going to have to be very fast at being dictated notes, writing them
in and regurgitating them the right way 'round. And he did a very good
job of it.
When we did the first film Edward was approaching the end of his
career. By the time we came around to do Two Towers… we had to find a boy
who could best continue that specific "noise" of Edward's … and that
was Ben Del Maestro.
KR: You mention a number of
changes coming in for "In Dreams." Did this process of discovery and
rewriting happen a lot?
MM: Howard has a more organic
way of developing film scores than some other composers. He is very
accessible to input and is interested in exploring options and thus
able to galvanize his own view on what he wanted the boys choir to
represent in the score.
From that point of view, [this recording project] was very refreshing.
And, because of his approach, Howard got a very good result out of the
kids.
KR: What kind of exploration
would Howard do?
MM: Sometimes until you
assemble the final cue, there are effects you can try. For example, you
could put this line up an octave, or put one boy up an octave and keep
the rest below. You may get some type of build-up effect that you like
or don't like. Looking at Howard, that's where the success of the score
lies. People go into the studio and work it, instead of going into a
studio, opening up the score, playing it and going home.
KR: Let's shift gears a moment
to Harry Potter.
MM: Actually, for the first
film we were just asked to record what sounded like a school song. But
that didn't appear in the film. That was all we were asked to do.
I remember at the time that we were recording we didn't know if J.K.
Rowling had approved the text of the song. Since they were just
starting off on the venture they may have thought having a school song
would be handy.
That was a very experimental session. We were only there for half an
hour. John Williams is very much someone who knows exactly what he
wants from the outset. He's a very efficient studio man. That's not to
say Howard's not, but the two methods are completely different. John
Williams is very clear on what he wants and is very economic with time.
We had three or four tries at this school song, some orchestrated, some
not, and then we were done. And we've heard no more about that.
We also recorded a witchcraft-type song that I know is in the trailer
for the third movie. The typical "hubble-bubble we're in trouble"
stuff; it was a lot of fun. The piece asked the kids to be very
characterized, not choir boys but real, sort of, louts. This was more a
Halloween type of noise.
KR: The Schola is considered a
premiere concert choir, both when you were directing and now. How does
the music you perform on a concert stage compare to the music you
perform on the scoring stage?
MM: My school studies included
an entire year on film score composition, so I know that the whole
point to film scores is to not notice them. The film score is supposed
to enhance what you're watching. To compare it to a concert situation,
well, there is no comparison.
The use of the boys choir in LOTR
was [to provide] very much an ethereal, transcendent feel. That was our
function. Our small contribution was to be that transcendent element.
That was our stereotype, if you like. We weren't trying to be all the
actors in the film; we just had a small little nugget.
KR: To be transcendent, in a
way.
MM: There is a strong religious
pang to the trilogy. And the boys were the purity. It had to be there.
That's what Howard had to get. That's the noise. Not some mini-kids
opera chorus going on, but something very clean and tidy and pure.
Come to think of it, René was a "Mary"-- an influence [as in
Mary, mother of Jesus]. I just thought of that. If one takes a
religious angle, when I hear a track on which René sings, I can
see the link between what we were doing and how she was used.
KR: I come back to the question
of how much you were aware at the time that you were involved in
something special, at least with LOTR?
MM: What was odd that week was
that it was a Sunday night in Abbey Road, Studio 2. We had just been
doing Harry Potter in Studio
1 three days earlier. The feel of the first [LOTR] session felt very different
from the Harry Potter
session, which was actually still being separated in the other studio.
Harry Potter was already in
the kids' imaginations. The books were doing their thing; making films
of them was just a matter of time. They certainly weren't saying that
of LOTR; the books were so
old. But there was certainly a different feel -- to say a vocation
would be the wrong word -- when we walked into a studio where there
were a lot of people who'd been working together for an awfully long
time. This was a big project but one didn't quite know how big. I'm not
sure whether they knew.
You wouldn't normally expect to get more than two or three cues done,
and we did 10. Typically, the amount of singing that a boys choir would
do on a disc wouldn't require more than one three-hour session for an
entire movie. We must have done seven or eight sessions with Howard for
just the first film. That gives you an idea how much more investment
was made and how much more open to exploration they were [on LOTR].
KR: Because Howard needed to
discover the sound for all three films?
MM: For a trilogy you are going
to use the same thematic ideas, so you have to take the time in the
first film to figure out what the musicians can do, what you want them
to do, and to set out the score for the next two films. That's not to
say you simply show up and rewrite the same tunes again. Howard just
isn't like that. Howard's a very cerebral, thinking person who uses a
very personal approach. Each note was as crafted from film one to film
three. I was always, always aware of that.
Although he used the same material, which you have to do… the attention
to detail never wavered. He never thought, "Oh, that's good enough." It
was never a question of being good enough.
KR: So do you hope to bring
this soundtrack recording legacy to your new boys and girls choirs here
in Washington?
MM: We may do some scores
here. The fact of the matter is, however, that Williams, Shore, Elfman
are still going to London to do it all. Whilst they're there, they'll
use a studio choir in London. But they know where I am!
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