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Posted: |
Jul 16, 2013 - 10:14 AM
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By: |
Jones895
(Member)
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Please forgive me if this has been raised before but I was wondering if there's an explanation for the fact that almost all Italian film music labels release scores without track titles. It's a practice that seems to have begun in the mid-90s. Before that, I don't remember coming across it. Unless of course there is a valid reason, it's a very unfortunate trend, in my view. I'm sure I'm not the only one who appreciates having an appropriate title being allocated to a track. If a cue is called - for example - “Swingin' Easy In Tanganyika” (Bacalov - L'AMICA)...it makes it a lot easier to recall than an endless, bland, list of titles like “LA LEGGE DELLA VIOLENZA Seq. 7” etc. Some will say, no doubt, “it's the music that counts”. True, of course...but it's not the only thing that counts.
Why was it possible to give track titles in the past and it isn't now? Is it a legal /copyright issue perhaps? I would be very interested to know. At any rate, I'm glad that it hasn't been adopted retrospectively in the cases of scores released, originally, back in the 60s and 70s. Just think if, instead of having the title “L'estasi dell'Oro” (The Ecstasy Of Gold) to recall, you had to remember this amazing cue as :- IL BUONO, IL BRUTTO, IL CATTIVO Seq. 20!
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I dont know the answer but i would imagine that it was easier to name ten LP tracks of usually different or more varied themes to 26 cd tracks where 7 themes are only minimal change alternates of the same theme. Dunno.
Also, italian printers are notorious for fcikung up english spelling and making a hash of numbering, even when proof-reading marks are sent they are ignored, so maybe cd producers gave up and opted for the easy route?
Maybe stefan or someone wil tell us?
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Posted: |
Jul 16, 2013 - 5:58 PM
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By: |
ToneRow
(Member)
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Hi, Jones895.
I can't speak for those labels, and feedback from album producers is likely the only authentic source of information regarding this matter.
Nonetheless, my understanding is that the Italian film industry (up until the mid-1970s) had made movies as if they were silent films. That is, natural sounds and voices from shooting footage was not recorded during the film-making process. Voices, sound effects, music, etc. were all "looped" later on during the post-production dubbing.
It's this procedure (which was quite different from the American and British film studios) which provided composers opportunities to create themes, motifs, etc. without the precise restrictions of synchronizing music with onscreen content.
Italian composers made numerous takes/versions of single themes during the recording sessions to have, in the can, multiple choice tapes with which producers, editors, directors, & so on could select the version they wanted in the final prints.
These multiple takes are the bulk of the content within the Italian soundtrack albums.
If an LP was released at the time of film distribution, typically (I think) the composer had input as to which version should be included onto the album and this is probably why each track/band on each record was individually titled. It was, after all, an album designed for listening.
With the passage of time, many of the people involved with the original recordings have passed away and current producers deal with the archival material (50+ years on, in some cases) without the benefit of personal recollections or thoroughly documented information.
... these are all my guess, anyway, but I do think one needs to understand how the Italian entertainment industry operated in the past in order to grasp the background a bit better and not to compare such too much with American soundtracks with highly detailed and informative notes & music analysis & so forth.
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So there you have it. Extra Money. Complication. And time.
And on a run of 500 when this is the first time its come up after about 15 years - maybe it means 493 happy customers each time that werent bothered if it said Companeros track 17 or The Penguin shoots some soldiers!!
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If there are, they wont have track titles!!
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Nonetheless, my understanding is that the Italian film industry (up until the mid-1970s) had made movies as if they were silent films. That is, natural sounds and voices from shooting footage was not recorded during the film-making process. Voices, sound effects, music, etc. were all "looped" later on during the post-production dubbing.
It's this procedure (which was quite different from the American and British film studios) which provided composers opportunities to create themes, motifs, etc. without the precise restrictions of synchronizing music with onscreen content.
Italian composers made numerous takes/versions of single themes during the recording sessions to have, in the can, multiple choice tapes with which producers, editors, directors, & so on could select the version they wanted in the final prints.
These multiple takes are the bulk of the content within the Italian soundtrack albums
It is certainly not true that the Italian film industry had made movies as if they were silent films before the 70s. They even had soundstages during the 30s as you can read here in this statement from the Criterionforum:
"Cinecitta certainly maintained soundstages throughout the 30s - and probably used the Dekla Klangfilm system, which other masters like Renoir and Carne in France used. (see Max Ophul's magnificent La Signora di tutti from 1936.) The war left a considerable level of destruction on Italy (just as the bombing of Billancourt in France by the Allies totally fucking blew away virtually many of the negatives of 30s French cinema), but I think the Italian reliance on post-synching comes down to two things. One was the convenience for a cheaper shoot (fewer takes) and, by the fifties, the chance to make multiple language versions of titles. Remember Europe, including the UK, was in a state of total deprivation after WW2 - particularly France and Italy."
http://www.criterionforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2638
When you write that Italian composers "wrote numerous takes/versions of single themes" and there were no restrictions of synchronizing you certainly speak of a system which Morricone had introduced during the mid-60s in many cases and which worked well for him and then for other composers because the whole concept of film scoring of course throughout the world changed during that time. But it is certainly not true for the pre-Morricone period with its symphonic Golden Age style which was not that dissimlilar to the working habits in Hollywood.
As you know I have worked on various Lavagnino CDs with original material from the 50s and have heard those mastertapes with all the speaker announcements (i.e. with all the announcements of the "M" track numbers) myself. Each cue had been assigned a special place in the film, it was not something chosen freely which could be put in such a scene or another scene and nobody cared about it, and the music had to be exactly synchronized with the onscreen content. It is quite simply not the case that for example Lavagnino wrote mulitple takes or versions of his themes, but each cue had to be assigned to a specific scene. There was not that liberty which Morricone later had who introduced something completely new in his working relationship with Sergio Leone. This was another generation. Italian scores during the pre-Morricone period for the most part did not function in this way at all.
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Yeah thanks stefan and josh and tone row, all interesting stuff.
Once again though the weirdness of italy baffles those that like things in neat boxes.
Its something you have to get used to and accept.
Learn to Love the beauty and genius, dont get irritated by the vagueness !!
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