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Somehow I never warmed to that score... until now!
Gave it another chance and loved ever second of it.
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To what extent does the Barry estate (or Laurie Barry) own the music recordings and the manuscripts? Don't they belong to the studio and/or production company that paid for said recordings and compositions?
Well, I'm sure the estate was entitled to keep private copies, but I think you are right, she doesn't technically own the music.
But she's not obliged to give out their private copies for anyone's use either.
Barry was once asked about this and he said on completion of recording a score, you were always supposed to submit the written scores to the studio for them to file as their property, but he said he never did and they rarely chased it.
In the few cases where they did, like Robin and Marian, the studio does have them.
Cheers
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Posted: |
May 18, 2020 - 5:07 PM
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By: |
Alex Klein
(Member)
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Thanks Stephen, that does make sense. I suppose the artists themselves are generally better at taking care of their legacy than the studios. However, the families of these composers often don't seem to appreciate the value these works hold for others (even if we are a shrinking minority), which is a pity.
At some point Barry's heirs are gonna have to do something with the scores, besides keeping them as food for weevils. The question is when.
On the plus side, Barry's music usually isn't hard to transcribe, and he even stopped arranging his own music in the 1970s, so I suspect most of his scores are written on six staff paper (you can actually spot this paper on Barry's piano in some of the last interviews he granted).
Thus, if the studios own the music, then a professional arranger/orchestrator can be hired to produce faithful transcriptions of the music and publish the books for sale and for personal study.
Alex
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Great thread, with lots of interesting background information.
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The Legend of The Lone Ranger - which was another Lew Grade production, and scored by John Barry, HAS received a soundtrack release, even though the soundtrack received a Golden Raspberry!
But the thing about that, Andrew, is that although the LONE RANGER album master survived for an eventual CD reissue decades later, the full score remains apparently lost.
Barry's original RAISE THE TITANIC recordings are a real loss to posterity (the music is the single biggest reason why that film manages any emotional resonance). Unfortunately, there's a long history of complete film tracks from pictures released by independent or non-studio distributors disappearing. Consider all the MIA scores for United Artists titles from the 1950s-'60s. All of a score that used to be financially necessary for a distributor to save and store was the volume-fluctuating mix for a film's music/effects track, over which dialogue in different languages could be laid. It was a blessing that Jerome Moross received a mono tape of his BIG COUNTRY score, and an outright miracle that somebody fulfilled Elmer Bernstein's request for a stereo tape of THE GREAT ESCAPE... even though Elmer never received it in his lifetime. If not for those 1/4-inch tapes made for their composers, UA -- a production company without studio facilities -- never saved the film tracks, and so we would never have them today.
I don't know it as fact, but my guess is that the complete BOYS FROM BRAZIL score survived because 20th Century-Fox took it for distribution -- compared to Avco Embassy for RAISE THE TITANIC. Different priorities and capacities for preservation.
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SWIT was produced by Universal, so this means that they saved tapes in their archives.
And RTT was mostly British production (ITC). And looks like that they didn't care about tapes. And that's bit ironic, as they also did Saturn 3 or Boys from Brazil or Capricorn One. And for them tapes survived 
None of those tapes came from ITC though. We also had an option Salamander but they didn't have tapes either.
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Thanks for correcting the record (no pun) on LEGEND OF THE LONE RANGER, JB Fan. I didn't buy the Intrada release and therefore haven't read the booklet notes... or recall that detail from their online description. Even though the album has a couple of cues I love, I hadn't played the LP in so many decades that I couldn't justify buying the CD. (Sorry, Roger. I was a first-night buyer for BOYS FROM BRAZIL, though.)
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The tax situation in the UK led to what we then called "the brain drain" where the best talent & skills were leaving the UK. And this included John Barry.
In John Barry's case, it was a bit different though.
Most people who left the UK to escape the tax rates left in good standing with Her Majesty's tax collectors, whatever they were called then, and could return to England to work for limited periods.
This is why Roger Moore could continue to play James Bond.
If the same was true of Barry, he could have scored The Spy Who Loved Me and For Your Eyes Only.
However, Barry did not leave in good standing. In fact, he left in a hurry having lost a high profile court case which resulted in writs for huge sums, which he did not settle, and that meant he might even have been arrested if he returned.
Barry could not return to the UK until the writs were settled, in 1982, I believe.
The reason he could score Moonraker was that was an Anglo-French co-production, which meant the film could be scored in France rather than the UK.
Cheers
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