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Cody if you love Lavagnino and Shakespearean scores, you should still seek out a secondhand copy of the Alhambra album — it is the only way to get Lavagnino’s final score for Welles (The Merchant of Venice, in both the complete original recording and a modern suite performance) as well as his very first Shakespeare score for Welles (Othello) in its original recording (albeit only three cues, but they are superb and quite different from the re-recording released on Varese). I’m happy to pick up this new Quartet Falstaff but very happy to have the Alhambra Welles/Lavagnino collaboration disc too! I’ve only supplanted the Falstaff portion of that disc now, and I’m happy I don’t have to figure out a chronological playlist between it and the old CAM album (since they both contained cues that were not on the other).
By the way Cody, the film masterpiece was put out in a superb DVD/Blu-ray edition on The Criterion Collection. If you shop at a Barnes and Noble (or at their online store) this month, you can get the release for 50% off!
https://m.barnesandnoble.com/w/dvd-chimes-at-midnight-orson-welles/3861140
Yavar
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I’m happy to pick up this new Quartet Falstaff but very happy to have the Alhambra Welles/Lavagnino collaboration disc too! I’ve only supplanted the Falstaff portion of that disc now, and I’m happy I don’t have to figure out a chronological playlist between it and the old CAM album (since they both contained cues that were not on the other).
In the case of FALSTAFF it is almost impossible to make a chronological sequencing according to how the tracks appear in the film itself. Welles in his final edit of the film did not always adhere to the originally planned sequencing of the M numbers (the score has 54 such M numbers) and sometimes made quite liberal use of the music. Therefore parts of tracks get repeated several times in the film, parts of other tracks are not used at all and other parts appear in places where they should not according to the M numbered sequencing of the recording sessions.
Disc 2 of the Quartet edition now offers a more or less chronological sequencing of all the M numbered tracks which can be found on the master tapes. However, also with alternate tracks (often not that different from the regular ones, sometimes only a bit shorter or longer) and a few double takes (for example track 4) put in between which I myself had rather put into a bonus section to avoid redundancy.
The tracks on the old CAM CD - which are now on Quartet disc 1 - on the other hand are fully out of chronological order. And often several shorter cues have been edited together on that album - for example "Ricercare rusticano" consists of these M tracks: M 11 (1:04 minutes) + M 7 (0:47) + M 50 (0:50). And two or three of the dances have been almost doubled in length by looping a large part of the cue (this was done for example in the tracks "Danza di taverna" or "Allegre cornamuse").
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I read that Orson Welles during post-production on Falstaff called Lavagnino to provide a replacement score.
The music written for Falstaff previous to Lavagnino was purportedly an avant-garde score by a Spanish modernist.
Does anybody know who that composer was?
No names were mentioned, so I could only guess. My thoughts are on either Cristóbal Halffter or Luis de Pablo.
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I read that Orson Welles during post-production on Falstaff called Lavagnino to provide a replacement score.
The music written for Falstaff previous to Lavagnino was purportedly an avant-garde score by a Spanish modernist.
Zardoz, are you sure about that?
I have read that Lavagnino was called by Welles to Spain at the end of 1965 when the director was still working on the editing of the film. And at that time the film still had a duration of about three hours which Welles then had to cut down to about two hours. So it is hard to believe and rather unlikely that at that time already another score should have had been composed.
Here is also an interview with Welles´assistant Juan Cobos who only talks about a temp track with German records of medieval music which Welles had at first used, but nothing at all about another score by a Spanish composer:
"One day while working on the editing of Chimes at Midnight, Welles asked me: “Who did the music for my Othello?” I told him “Francesco Lavagnino,” so he called Lavagnino in Italy and invited him to write the music for Chimes at Midnight.
As you know, we had money troubles while finishing Chimes at Midnight, but in Italy the record companies would pay for everything to do with the recording of the music, the orchestration and everything else, because they kept all the rights. So when the Spanish producer of Chimes was running out of money, it was fortunate Welles used Francesco Lavagnino again, as it meant the producer wouldn’t have to pay for the expense of recording the score with a complete orchestra.
We already had a temporary soundtrack that was mostly made of German records I had brought when we were in Paris. Orson told me to get all the medieval music I could find and sent me to the Champs Élysées to buy any suitable records. I brought all these German recordings of medieval music that were used for the temp track. Then afterwards, Lavagnino took the medieval music and reworked it into his own score for the movie. But right up until the last moment, Welles was working in the editing room with a transcription of the German recordings and then with the music Lavagnino composed for the film."
https://www.wellesnet.com/angelo-francesco-lavagnino%E2%80%99s-magnificent-score-for-orson-welless-chimes-at-midnight/
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Zardoz, are you sure about that?
I'm not sure about any details - or even if the music was modern - but this anecdote by Orson Welles is referred to by Jordi Grau in the CD notes for Quartet's Historia de una chica sola.
In these notes, I also learned that Lavagnino's nick-name was 'Checco' (pronounced Kekko) which is short for Francesco in Italian.
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I'm not sure about any details - or even if the music was modern - but this anecdote by Orson Welles is referred to by Jordi Grau in the CD notes for Quartet's Historia de una chica sola.
In these notes, I also learned that Lavagnino's nick-name was 'Checco' (pronounced Kekko) which is short for Francesco in Italian.
I have just checked the liner notes of the HISTORIA DE UNA CHICA SOLA CD again and indeed Jorge Grau mentions that Welles told him this anecdote about a Spanish composer. Still it is unclear whether that was true or not. For me it seems a bit unlikely - above all as Juan Cobos in my posting above reports how the producer went out of money on FALSTAFF when the shooting was finished so that he certainly couldn´t pay an additional Spanish composer and the orchestra recordings.
So it is a strange story.
You can find the "Checco" name also in the booklet of our Welles/Lavagnino CD. We put several interviews with Lavagnino at the end of this CD and the last one was about the music for MERCHANT OF VENICE. The English translation is in the booklet and Welles also called Lavagnino by his nickname Checco when they met in Rome in 1969:
"Oh my Checco, I want to embrace you. How are you?"
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Any chance Stefan of Alhambra re-issuing their CD after Quartet sells out ?
I don´t think that this will happen. Above all as there are now such big problems with licensing anything from Sugar in Italy.
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