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Posted: |
Nov 14, 2019 - 5:06 PM
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By: |
Last Child
(Member)
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probably mentioned already but search engine kept giving me an error. Saw this listed on Soundtrackcollector which provides the composers and film titles:
http://www.soundtrackcollector.com/title/116620/Charlie+Chaplin+-+The+Complete+Soundtracks#78429
https://www.keyproduction.co.uk/blog/2019/charlie-chaplin-the-complete-soundtracks-12-cd-box-set-and-booklet/
Le Chant Du Monde, in collaboration with the Chaplin Office, have released a collection of Charlie Chaplin’s film soundtracks. The iconic actor first began his career as a young boy on stage and abandoned his education to support himself in odd jobs whilst still trying to pursue his acting ambition. He eventually toured with the prestigious Fred Karno music hall troupe, thanks to his brother who was one of the company's key performers.
Charlie Chaplin went to blossom into his career in cinema starring in, directing, producing and even composing the music for many celebrated films such as The Kid, The Circus, A Woman of Paris, City Lights, Modern Times, The Great Dictator, Limelight and more.
Charlie Chaplin The Complete Soundtracks will be released 25th October.
12 CDs
The Complete Soundtracks includes 12 CDs housed in a cardboard sleeve wallet. Each sleeve/wallet has a black and white print of key Chaplin film stills illustrating the soundtracks within, with a matt varnish finish. Each CD has a white on body with Charlie Chaplin printed on them in different poses with his signature cane, baggy trousers and hat. The main packaging is a rigid upright box with a lift off lid and has a matt laminate with an anti-scratch finish.
62 Page Booklet
The 62-page booklet is a perfect bound book with a matt varnish finish. The booklet includes information on Chaplin's film music, song lyrics, as well as rare photographs and documents from the Chaplin archives.
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CC getting the C & C treatment.
If Thor purchases this 12-CD set, then Last Child will eat his shoe!
(don't let Kev McGann get his hands on this box; he'll whittle its contents down to 77 minutes to fit onto only 1 CD.)
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Are these from original tapes or are these re-recordings? If the former, color me amazed as I didn't think the tapes for Chaplin's scores still existed.
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Thanks for the heads up! Also, looks like each album is up for sale on iTunes. Just downloaded a few tracks. Nice to finally have one of my favorite cues from The Circus. The final track "The Circus Leaves Town", such a beautiful end to this cue, which ends the movie. 
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Are these from original tapes or are these re-recordings? If the former, color me amazed as I didn't think the tapes for Chaplin's scores still existed.
I was wondering that too. It seems like a pretty incredible collection (and it would be great to finally own 1972's Oscar-winning score for Limelight; The Gold Rush and The Great Dictator were also nominated).
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As an aside to this, it also a hoot to read David Raksin's autobiography in which he discusses his work with Chaplin at length.
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I just got the set and am listening to its first disc, which is City Lights - and it's fantastic - a little shrill, which could have been helped a bit in the mastering, but the music is great and it sounds pretty incredible given its age. And the bass is shockingly present and good. I'll check out the ones that people think are "composite" releases to see if there are indeed sfx.
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I just got the set and am listening to its first disc, which is City Lights - and it's fantastic - a little shrill, which could have been helped a bit in the mastering, but the music is great and it sounds pretty incredible given its age. And the bass is shockingly present and good. I'll check out the ones that people think are "composite" releases to see if there are indeed sfx.
Great. I'll wait until you give your imprimatur before plunking down for this set. I'm sure it has been said before Bruce, but you are without a doubt a National Treasure (especially with regards to your famed musically refined sense of hearing).
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Some updates, as it will take a day or two to get through everything. Well, someone above called it - while City Lights is fine (too shrill, but the music is great), and Modern Times doesn't have much in the way of anything BUT music, but is filled with really irritating distortion. The Gold Rush is fine. And then disaster hits, with The Great Dictator and Monsieur Verdoux, both filled with sfx and dialogue and really annoying volume dips and shifts, which should tell you all you need to know. Sadly, same thing with Limelight and A King in New York. I then skipped to The Circus, since that's all music. But there's no rhyme or reason to this set - the mastering here is about 8db hotter than anything else. A shame, as there was a perfectly fine and very rare LP release of this score - where's THAT?
I'm guessing the rest of the silents will be of similar stripe. This needed a great mastering engineer to sort all this out and clearly didn't have one. Sorry for getting hopes up based on City Lights, but, it's not looking good and at this point I'd say save your dough.
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Posted: |
Dec 19, 2019 - 11:45 AM
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By: |
Jim Lochner
(Member)
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A few things to note about this set…
It was put out by the Roy Export office in Paris, which is responsible for all licensing of Chaplin’s films from 1918 onwards (except for A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG…more on that later). In the 7 years I was researching and writing “The Music of Charlie Chaplin,” I relied on the Chaplin office (for lack of a better phrase) for literally everything—private access to the digitized archives http://www.charliechaplinarchive.org/en (which are now public, thank god) as well permission to view all of Chaplin’s physical papers, which includes the original scores and other music documents, all of which are housed in Montreux, Switzerland (well, technically, Clarens). The one thing I did not have access to was most of the original tapes. When I was in Paris in October for the launch of “The Sound of Charlie Chaplin” exhibition at the Philharmonie de Paris, I once again hung out with my peeps from the Chaplin office and got a little more insight into what went into this box set.
First, it’s not truly complete. From LIMELIGHT on, cues were reused with little to no variation (especially as Eric James and Eric Rogers came on board), so the set was edited down for a better listening experience and certain cues that were duplicates were eliminated so you wouldn’t have multiple versions of the exact same cue over and over again.
Another thing that keeps it from being complete is the lack of the COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG score. Since this was a Universal picture, Chaplin never owned the rights to this film as he did everything else from 1918–1976. And NBC/Universal wasn’t willing to work with the Chaplin office to license the score, not even the soundtrack album, which is a re-recording. (The album is still available digitally, though hopefully they’ve fixed the wow at the very beginning of the first track.) The NBC/Universal situation is no surprise. When I tried to license music examples for my book, it took me 8 months of being shunted around from one studio nonentity to another and another 3 months of negotiations. But the fee they wanted for basically 8 bars of melody line for 5-6 themes was so outrageous I just said forget it.
The tracks that are included on the set, even when sfx are included, are based on the master tapes. As to the sound quality, as others have noted, it varies greatly. Basically, you get the quality of what you hear when you watch the film. If it’s prominent in the film, then the sound will be better. If it’s dialed down in the film, it's dialed down in the set. Frustrating, but it is what it is. I agree that a remastering would have been great. But this is a small, two-person operation at the Chaplin office. I didn’t ask about a budget when we discussed the set, but I would assume there probably wasn’t much of one.
So what you get is all there is (minus the dupes) sans remastering. I was thrilled when the Chaplin office first started rolling out these soundtracks digitally a few years ago. Even after living with these scores day to day for years working on the book, the release of certain scores like A KING IN NEW YORK were a revelation because the score was completely butchered in the film thanks to the cuts made for the US release in the ‘70s. While I wish more tracks from MONSIEUR VERDOUX (a highly underrated score) were included, the original tracks just weren’t available and the Chaplin office didn’t want to rip from the DVD (though I think a few tracks were done that way here and there in the set…can’t remember) and have the music fighting with the dialogue.
Timothy Brock's recording of Modern Times (obviously not in the set) is a full reconstruction of David Raksin and Edward Powell’s arrangements and orchestrations. You’ll hear things you can’t hear in the recording from 1935, due to the limitations of the period. And since it was recorded live to picture, it matches Alfred Newman’s tempos from the film, which IMO is always a plus. As for the Carl Davis recordings, while I’m pleased at how much he has championed Chaplin over the years, these are Davis’ arrangements for big symphony orchestras. So enjoy them for the lushness of the playing and the clean sound, but they’re not accurate representations of Chaplin’s music (e.g., CITY LIGHTS was written for a dance band of approximately 36 players, not a 60+ full orchestra).
If you’re a fan of Chaplin’s music, and can live with the sound anomalies, then I think this box set is an essential purchase. They don't bother me but, again, I've lived with my daily for a loooooong time. But some of the issues are due to the sloppy orchestral playing in certain of these recording sessions. A s*** oboe sound would still sound like s*** even if the sound was cleaner. This set does include some nice bonus tracks that give you a window into Chaplin compositional processes such as him and Ray Rasch composing “It’s Love” from LIMELIGHT or Chaplin doodling at the piano. (He recorded a lot during his working sessions and his piano playing is much more accomplished than just three fingers, as many of his musical associates have claimed).
So that’s my (more than) two cents. And there endeth my long-winded contribution to this thread.
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Want to be clear that orchestral playing is not a problem for me in this set. The problem for me is the erratic sound, all the up and down shifts that could have been normalized by any mastering engineer, etc. It's a real lost opportunity, but as a Chaplin fanatic, yes, an essential purchase for me. But warnings must be given.
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