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Quite good.
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Homage to Bernstein? Part of the “Quigley Down Under” theme (the best part) was essentially lifted from Bernstein’s “Sons of Katie Elder”. I saw “Quigley” in the theatre with a friend who is musically unschooled, and afterward, he sang: “Quigley, Quigley Down Under....” to the “Katie Elder” theme, showing that he had instantly recognised the truth.
In addition, I found the Ragtime elements totally anachronistic in a film that was set in the 1870s.
Basil Poledouris did vastly better Western work on “Lonesome Dove”; though that the first part of the melody at the beginning of the main theme was the same as the song “Let’s Fall in Love”, but in this case the similarity does not degrade the accomplishment.
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Without any ready way to add music score examples to forum messages, it is difficult for me to prove my assertion here. But listen to the main theme of “Quigley Down Under” until you get to the showy “Bernsteinesque” section, and then put on the main theme of “Sons of Katie Elder”, and you will hear some identical melody, in a very similar orchestration. Elmer Bernstein must have shook his head (good-naturedly, I should imagine) when he heard it.
There have been many Western scores in Bernstein’s style, often with the rhythmic pattern he introduced to Westerns. Some have been excellent, and some poor. A few essentially lift the harmonic “counter-melody” of “The Magnificent Seven”. But “Quigley Down Under” really went too far, in my opinion. And worse still, it causes musically attentive viewers of the film to recall the better score, to the detriment of the overall experience.
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Posted: |
Jun 11, 2008 - 11:03 PM
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By: |
Ray Worley
(Member)
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I just got out both CDs and played the main themes back to back, several times.
Similar orchestrations? Absolutely
Similar styles? Of course.
"Identical melodies"? Absolutely not.
I am a very musically attentive film goer. I immediately thought "Bernstein" when I saw Quigley in a theatre. I did not think "Katie Elder" because the tunes are NOT THE SAME.
Since there is no way to post musical notation here and I don't have access to the written scores anyway, I can't cite examples. Perhaps someone with formal musical training can chime in here?
BTW, I have no argument with the opinion that Bernstein is a superior composer of Western film scores. I wouldn't trade a single Bernstein Western for Quigley or Lonesome Dove (well, maybe Wild Wild West) Fortunately, I don't have to and it doesn't mean Poledouris' scores aren't fine, original scores. At least in Quigley's case it makes a fairly mediocre Western seem better than it is. To digress, Lonesome Dove is a different case because it's one of the finest Westerns ever made, movie or TV, and it probably wouldn't have mattered even if the score had been mediocre.
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Posted: |
Jun 11, 2008 - 11:20 PM
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By: |
Michael24
(Member)
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Superb score! I still need to pick up that expanded release, if it's still available.
I agree, I think that movie could have been a series.
Several years ago, Tom Selleck was on THE TONIGHT SHOW and commented that he had gotten more fan mail about QUIGLEY than even MAGNUM P.I. While talking about QUIGLEY, someone in the audience shouted out "Do a sequel!" Selleck replied, "Don't worry, we're looking into it." Unfortunately, we've yet to see one, and it seems less likely to happen nowadays, or would probably be a TV movie if it does happen. Which wouldn't be too bad, since the last couple of Selleck/Simon Wincer collaborations have proved to be some fine TV movies.
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It is difficult to describe music in words. I do not claim that the entire melody of “Quigley Down Under” is the same as that of “Sons of Katie Elder”. It is one section. In “Quigley”, there is a point at which the music suddenly becomes “bold and brassy”, and enters the Bernstein style. There is a very prominent figure moving from step III (mediant) on the major scale, stepwise down to step I (tonic), then leaping back to step III, then the stepwise motion down again, in Bernstein’s characteristic Western rhythm. This rapid stepwise descent through the interval of a major third (mostly the third between tonic and mediant) is one of the fundamental elements of “Katie Elder”, and after the rising part of that theme (“Elder”), the figure occurs with the leap back up to the upper note, as in “Quigley”.
In an abstract sense, one might say that the melodic similarity, in terms of the number of notes involved, is not very significant. But this figure is used in exactly the same way in both scores, with exactly the same sensibility, with the same rhythm, with similar orchestration, at a prominent point in the theme, and as a setting for a Western film. The chances that “Quigley” would have incorporated that figure, had “Katie Elder” not been in existence, seem to me to be exceedingly small. It is possible that the quotation was somewhat subconscious, since Bernstein’s Western style has suffused the genre for decades, and Mr Poledouris might not have been aware that he was making a direct quotation of a figure he had heard in a very similar context.
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Posted: |
Jun 12, 2008 - 9:50 PM
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By: |
Ray Worley
(Member)
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one might say that the melodic similarity, in terms of the number of notes involved, is not very significant.
I can agree with this line 100% Everything else, not so much.
I still have big issues with the way you originally stated your assertion. To say that parts of the theme of Quigley were "essentially lifted" from Katie Elder is just plain wrong. To say that in part it had an "identical melody"....not true. It's simply making a mountain out of a molehill. One can find literally thousands and thousands of examples where a short string of notes out of a larger work sound similar in theme and orchestration to another. And the more I listen to these two scores, the more I sense differences in those particular passages, not the similarities.
Less than 1% of the Quigley score makes me think of Bernstein...99% sounds like nothing but Basil Poledouris in top form. The tiny part that sounds like Bernstein is "similar" to Katie Elder but is not "identical" and is not a "lift". For all we know, it is possible the producers even asked for something that sounds like Bernstein (who you can argue sounds like Copland sometimes). My opinion is that Basil produced an original, tuneful, very enjoyable score that only for a few brief seconds may remind one of Elmer, intentional or not.
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You are right that the majority of the “Quigley” score and theme is not in the Bernstein mode. However, the part that is in that mode is the most prominent part of the main theme, and the section I described is melodically identical to the figure in “Katie Elder”, with the rest being in the same style. The identical part is brief but extremely striking and very clearly inspired—albeit quite possibly unconsciously—by the earlier composition.
I confess that my initial message in this thread was rather dismissive. I never liked the “Quigley” score (even the film, in my opinion, had but two merits: Tom Selleck, and his Shiloh Sharps model 1874 rifle in .45-110 calibre). I found the Ragtime elements grating and out of place. The fact that the “brassy” section of the theme was derived from “Katie Elder” was not at all its principal fault (again, I hasten to add, in my subjective opinion). On the contrary: that was my favourite part, due to my partiality to Bernstein’s Western style. My message made it appear as if the similarity to “Katie Elder” was a serious defect, which is not what I meant. But I do consider that part of the theme more an accomplishment of Elmer Bernstein than of Basil Poledouris. I think that if Poledouris had intended a homage to Bernstein, he would have composed a theme in Bernstein’s style, but without actual figures from the latter’s scores.
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