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....As Korngold once said, "a film composer's immortality lasts from the recording stage to the dubbing room."
I'm so glad I posted yesterday, Rozsaphile, just so that you could relay this wonderful line that I don't recall seeing before. (And for the gold star of course.*)
For those of us who love music as much as movies (maybe even a bit more, or more than a bit more), it's always disheartening to see the music not get the respect it deserves. Kind of the old question, why did you bother hiring me if you don't want what I do? Also thinking of Copland's The Heiress - where they insisted on tarting up his opening with the usual Hollywood schmaltz. Fer cryin out loud, schmaltz is NOT what you hire Copland for! Americana is NOT schmaltz.
But as has been pointed out repeatedly in this thread, Wyler's not apparently such a lover of music in film anyway. This is where the convention of film music seems to be quite an albatross around some filmmakers necks. I think a big reason why the pendulum has swung so far from the traditional approach in most of today's movies and tv shows - a reaction against having music, its own independent art form, compete in any important way with the movie.
I didn't meant to go on so much, but everything people write in this here thread - I really like William's latest addition - keeps bringing it out in me. 
*That's right, I'm going to keep that going as long as I can!
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The actors did not care about the praise he gave them as much as the results.
Yes, and despite what the gossip columnists and paparazzi project, that's what good actors are always about ... the work, the production, the art. Because it's a precarious profession, they must of course push themselves and publicise, and the press mistake that for the main goal. But no actor in any production gets tetchy about direction: they're filling out a vision.
The only exception to this is the inflated prima donna or the genius like Brando who knows when a director's choice is wrong.
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At 12:38, see Jascha Heifetz conduct Wyler on violin. Wyler was an amateur violinist, but it gives the lie to the notion he was some sort of musical moron:
https://youtu.be/ilAP7TcItJ8
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"Sorry about that, Preston, but hey, that's only a small subplot of 'Wild Rovers'!"
That's okay, William. I probably should have added a when I posted that. And with luck, I'll probably have forgotten all about it by the time I finally get to see WILD ROVERS.
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Plus, as Rozsa recalled it, he sat in on the recording sessions and actually questioned the maestro on why he used certain instruments and not others. There does seem to have been some kind of musical blind spot in his makeup.
We need to remember that he lost hearing in one ear, and had impaired hearing in the other, after whatever happened on Memphis Belle. He apparently couldn't make out bass sound.
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Posted: |
Feb 9, 2017 - 9:27 AM
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By: |
Morricone
(Member)
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Henry, you said, "The fact that Wyler’s career ended almost 50 years ago and yet BEN-HUR, THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, THE BIG COUNTRY, WUTHERING HEIGHTS and THE HEIRESS are still considered some of the greatest scores ever written gives the answer."
We already saw in the book that Wyler wasn't happy with Moross's score, but he had left to work on BEN HUR. Do you know if he ever said he was pleased with the scores from the other movies you mentioned?
Again, because he pushed himself and everybody else, praise was hard to get about ANYBODY for ANYTHING from him. (Although he would praise all these artists for the work they did away from him). In that way I read about passages of these scores he would fight about, like the main titles of THE BIG COUNTRY (I still have problems with the idea he wasn't pleased with the whole score).
I just revisited Miklos Rozsa's autobiography "A Double Life" and here are passages on BEN-HUR that say a lot.
I had been warned by colleagues in the music department that Wyler was a difficult man, but I didn't find him so. He made some suggestions which I accepted, some which I rejected. We worked well together, though once, in front of the full orchestra, I offered him my baton, which sent him back to the control room very quickly.
His [Wyler] idea was that, as the picture began with the birth of Christ, we should have the well known Christmas tune 'Adeste Fidelis' to make the public aware that this was the first Christmas. I argued that this was an 18th century tune, completely at variance with the specialized pseudo-archaic style I was trying to evolve for the film. He told me it didn't matter at all. We argued over this, in amicable terms, for months.
At last we got to the dreaded nativity scene. We played the simple carol-like music I had written. I could see conflict on Wyler's face, but at the end he came over and said, 'It's very lovely, isn't it?' 'Thank you Willy' I replied and that was the end of that.
Wyler never said anything about the music to me at the time, but I had spent about a year and a half on it; I felt I had done my very best and expected a reaction. None came.
BEN-HUR was shown in Dallas and was a sensation. There was a standing ovation in the cinema, which was very unusual. Wyler came up to me, embraced me, and said, 'Micki, you've written a great score.' 'But Willy, you've known this music for months and never said a word.' 'Ah,' he replied, 'but my wife's mother is a piano teacher here in Dallas. She knows everything about music. She just told me it was a great score!' Since then I have refused to listen to mother-in-law jokes.
I won my third Oscar for that score, and it is one I cherish the most. The music of BEN-HUR is very close to my heart. The first call of congratulation the morning after the Oscar presentation was from Wyler, and this is a fond memory.
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Some of these anecdotes do grow with the telling.
Re the 'Adeste FidelEs' (the 'i' may be a sic from Rozsa's book itself), we now take for granted how 'absurd' this would be.
YET would it? Had, say, Tiomkin been asked to do this, he'd probably have complied, and we might accept it as part of the deal. Chris Palmer pointed out that, in 'King of Kings', Rozsa 'having eschewed the form' in Ben-Hur, (of mediaeval carol-style), 'embraced it' in the 'Nativity' lullaby. After all, a mediaeval style is closer to antiquity than modern composition, and Rozsa used an almost 19th-Century Romantic style for that one nativity scene in BH.
And the 'classy' chops of the 'Adeste' would be within aesthetic acceptability. Maybe its constant use in churches might have wrecked its power, but it wouldn't be quite absurd, maybe a trifle Disneyesque. In 'No Minor Chords', Andre Previn embellishes the story to 'Silent Night' which WOULD have been ludicrous, but there's the lure of the needs of the raconteur skewing things.
MR needed 'obsessive' rules to help him with the blank page, but they can't really be universalised. People accept Newman's Baroque Palm Sunday music in 'The Robe', and Rozsa himself used a mediaeval Italian tune for the Vestals' dance in 'Quo Vadis?'.
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Posted: |
Feb 10, 2017 - 9:08 AM
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By: |
Howard L
(Member)
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At 12:38, see Jascha Heifetz conduct Wyler on violin. Wyler was an amateur violinist, but it gives the lie to the notion he was some sort of musical moron:
https://youtu.be/ilAP7TcItJ8
OK I decided to educate myself and watched the documentary. Well worth it. It confirms the feeling that Wyler was so into his directorial vision that an element like music not under his control left him something on the order of indifferent to it. He trusted in his vision, his instincts. He was that sure of his instincts. Fights with Goldwyn had left him defensive to second-guessing. His lack of verbal eloquence affected relationships with actors, a lack of aural eloquence affected his relationship to music in his film. It left him wary. So he was forced to trust a composer with his creation and trust, to who knows whatever extent if any, was not in his nature. That's not to say he would have preferred his pictures unscored. But all he could do was hope the composer wouldn't wreck it for him and the audience. So when the pictures did well and others praised Moross, Friedhofer, Rozsa, et al. then he'd chime in. And more out of a sigh of relief. This is not to say he was political, a fair-weather friend. This simply was him. It is evident that in time the frustrations of working with him evolved into deep respect for the end result. I suspect the feeling was mutual. At least that's the impression I got from the program.
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But when directors exhibit something on the order of hostility towards music, well, I wonder if they not "the film" compete with composers. And by "they" I mean egos i.e. pride won't allow the composer to share in the glory. Which is why I like what Sydney Pollack said in Moviola, something about the director taking his creation to the composer and saying, "Here, make this better." 
