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Posted: |
May 23, 2017 - 5:11 PM
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By: |
OnyaBirri
(Member)
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I am a product of the LP era, and I have been conditioned - for better or worse - to experience music in 15- to 20-minute servings, two servings per LP, for a total of generally 30- to 40-minutes per album.
This goes for all genres, and certainly film music.
Many of the complete film scores I've picked up on CD over the decades are things that I had on LP, and I have had fun evaluating how good or bad of a job the original LP accomplished in presenting the music.
Bernard Herrmann is one of my favorite film composers, but his catalog presents a very interesting case: He had relatively few LP releases dedicated to single scores. Five of the six most readily available Herrmann LPs at the time that I started buying were collections of suites (4 albums by Herrmann on Phase 4, and the Gerhardt collection on RCA).
So, with few exceptions, I went from having things on a suite to having the full score on CD, without having an album in between.
Prior to his break with Hitchcock, I believe the only Herrmann single-score LPs were The Egyptian, Gulliver, Vertigo, and Sinbad.
For his later career, we had Sisters, Obsession, and Taxi Driver. There were also some oddball collections of his TV and library music.
In looking at the LPs that were not released concurrently with the films, Laurie Johnson did a North by Northwest LP; and Elmer Bernstein gave us Ghost and Mrs. Muir and Torn Curtain. And Herrmann gave us a Psycho album that consisted of the complete score, uncharacteristically.
I have wondered what Herrmann would have thought of the tracks selected for the Laurie Johnson and Bernstein LPs.
I have also wondered which tracks he would have selected had he done these same LPs, or other scores for that matter.
I often think that album lengths are ideal for Herrmann's music. Sometimes the full score is almost too much, and sometimes the suites provide a nice appetizer but leave me hungry.
I have created LP-length playlists for some Herrmann scores, using the suites as a starting point and supplementing them from there. In some cases, I have loaded them into ProTools, tightened up the crossfades, and combined short cues.
I'm curious to hear opinions of other Herrmann fans about his LP representation, if any of you have assembled Herrmann LP lineups where none exist, and even what you think about the LP format in general (in terms of length, not in terms of vinyl as a medium).
Thanks for indulging me.
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Posted: |
May 24, 2017 - 3:22 AM
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By: |
Graham Watt
(Member)
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Bernard Herrmann is one of my favorite film composers, but his catalog presents a very interesting case: He had relatively few LP releases dedicated to single scores. Five of the six most readily available Herrmann LPs at the time that I started buying were collections of suites (4 albums by Herrmann on Phase 4, and the Gerhardt collection on RCA).
I often think that album lengths are ideal for Herrmann's music. Sometimes the full score is almost too much, and sometimes the suites provide a nice appetizer but leave me hungry.
Onya, I've singled out those two passages because they're the only ones I can address at the moment without having to think too hard. Modern times - always on the go.
My introduction to Herrmann on LP was via the Phase 4 collections of suites, and I found them totally satisfying in capturing the essence of each score (although in later years we would begin to comment on things like different tempos from the actual film tracks etc). I never felt they were too brief, and certainly not too long - something I do feel about a lot of his full scores. I rarely return to his PSYCHO re-recording, and when I do, it's in teenager attention-span chunks. PSYCHO may be an extreme case, but in general I find Herrmann too frantic, heavy, minimalistic and/ or dense for extended listening. Now there's a list of conradictory adjectives, but what I'm saying is that I can't find much "middle ground" with him. I like things such as Broughton's re-recording of JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS, but again I play it as if it were two LPs, with a break in the middle of anything between twenty minutes and a week.
I'm running out of time here, but I just wanted to comment that I recently picked up the Music Box release of OBSESSION which includes the album presentation and the complete score (never got the Tadlow re-recording). The LP's sitting two thousand miles away, so I wanted to have it on CD, and compare it to the full score. Well, the Music Box release is very laudable, and I applaud it, but the full score is simply too long and fragmentary for me, while the original LP programme is just about the most perfect representation of any score - Herrmann or not - that I can imagine.
Sorry, must go.
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I agree that LP's often did create strong representations of film scores, both because of the overall length and the tendency to create two 15-20 minute suites.
My first Herrmann LP was E. Bernstein's Torn Curtain recording, followed a couple of years later by two of the Phase IV collections, Fantasy Films and Hitchcock. And then Mercury's Vertigo, Johnson's NbyNW, and Herrmann's full Psycho, and whatever of Herrmann was on the Varese Twilight Zone albums.
I loved them all, though was disappointed by the tempos in NbyNW, and Psycho did seem to drag on and on. And when I started picking up Cd releases of Sisters, It's Alive 2, Obsession and The Night Digger, I kind of looked back longingly on the short suites in his original collections. Though I never try to create programs nor do I enjoy playlists much - I'm an album-oriented dude, happy to be guided.
But it changed for me with the release of things like the Varese releases of Sinbad, Vertigo, etc., and Intrada's Jason, etc. I began to love the longer presentations, whether I listened to them all at once or in chunks. Maybe because between the late seventies and the late nineties I had listened to a lot of minimalism, including early stuff like In C and Music in Twelve Parts, and Herrmann's music didn't feel too long in long lengths anymore.
Now what I most enjoy are Herrmann's chamber works, like the wonderful Alfred Hitchcock Hour volumes Varese released. I can listen to those all day long. Glad they are not LP lengths.
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I've experienced a sea-change in my Herrmann interactions. As a kid, the few LPs were my gateway (the Phase 4's, etc.), and LPs remained the listening mode through college and grad school. When I moved to NYC, and VCRs became practical, I taped the Herrmann movies that were available -- and added new LPs as they became available. The CD revolution seemed to open the flood gates for Herrmann releases -- and I spent countless hours listening to full score releases (either original or rerecordings). The Phase 4 suites when digitized, among other releases of suites, also remained in the mix. I added a few LDs with isolated scores back then -- the Pioneer special releases of Harryhausen, etc.
But then DVDs hit the market -- and I collected a lot of Herrmann's films. When blurays appeared, I added those to my collection.
Now, when I want to hear a Herrmann score, I almost always watch the film instead. Especially the Hitchcock/Herrmann and Harryhausen/Herrmann collaborations. I find that gives me the most satisfaction at this point in my life.
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I have been conditioned - for better or worse - to experience music in 15- to 20-minute servings, two servings per LP, for a total of generally 30- to 40-minutes per album.
This goes for all genres, and certainly film music.
For better or worse? For "worse", I'd say.
How can OnyaBirri listen to a 3-hour opera in one sitting if he's conditioned to absorb music in only 20-minute segmented "servings"?
Also, Onya hasn't mentioned the concert works by Herrmann that were distributed in the U.S.A. on the Unicorn label (initially on Pye Records in England).
Herrmann's opera on Wuthering Heights was issued in a boxed LP set around 1970.
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OnyaBirri avoids opera - 20minutes or three hours.
Seriously, Onya, I own dozens of 20th century operas on discs whose music could be described as dissonant, atonal or avant-garde.
Do you realize what you might be missing out on by avoiding opera?
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Not my bag. I have more than enough music for one lifetime.
Yeah, none of us can be limitless with respect to styles as well as quantities.
However, since you are not offering reasons for your opera avoidance, I'm hazarding guesses that the reasons are below:
operatic/classical singing repels your sensibilities
the stories from the better-known/famous operas are either too melodramatic or too tragic for your tastes.
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Instrumental only, you say. Are there any non-operatic forms of vocal music to which you do listen?
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Back to Herrmann: If I found his opera in the dollar bin - which would not surprise me - I would pick it up and spin at least a side or two. I doubt I would make it through the whole thing.
What is Onya's thoughts about the single LP on Herrmann's cantata Moby Dick?
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I've never stumbled across it nor heard it. It is the kind of album I would pick up for five bucks or under while browsing, but I would not seek out.
Hhmmm ... but, Onya, how does your mind decided on what kind of album it is if you've never heard of it before my post?
Are you marginalizing this Moby Dick LP because you are already familiar with the Melville novel and don't care for this particular literature?
Or is it because this album is being referenced by me as a cantata, and, in your judgment based on whatever listening experiences you've had in the past with choral compositions, you decide that this item could never be any priority for you?
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I thought the masters were "lost", or at least stereo masters. Do tell!! 
