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Size doesn’t matter, it’s what you do with it.
Try telling that to my wife!
I have but no luck. 
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To coin an oft used phrase - it is not how big it is but what you do with it that counts.
It was used upthread on Sep 10, 2023 at 5:45 PM by Solium.
If it is worth repeating, it is worth repeating, repeating. Take a look at Hollywood.
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And just to clarify I was replying to Doug Raynes orchestra sizes. I wouldn't want to offend anyone, at least not by accident.
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To respond to the original question, I don't know exactly, but I seem to remember in the 1990s there was a trend of orchestras in the 90-piece range...and it became sort of a bragging-rights thing for producers and directors if their orchestra was over 100. Whether it needed it or not!
Lukas
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To respond to the original question, I don't know exactly, but I seem to remember in the 1990s there was a trend of orchestras in the 90-piece range...and it became sort of a bragging-rights thing for producers and directors if their orchestra was over 100. Whether it needed it or not!
Lukas
Exactly right.
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Intrada and La-La Land frequently credit AFM musicians in their liner notes, so we know the size of orchestras for many films. Here are some examples:
The Caine Mutiny (1953) 50 musicians
The Robe (1953) 106 musicians
Hell and High water (1954) 96 musicians
Gunfight at the OK Corral (1954) 55 musicians
Giant (1956) 105 musicians
The Young Lions (1958) 57 musicians
The Miracle (1959) 84 musicians
House of Usher (1960) 50 musicians
The Great Escape (1963) 77 musicians
Flight of the Phoenix (1965) 77 musicians
As has been pointed out, just because there may be 96 musicians listed, doesn't mean they were all there at the same time. On a score like The Robe there would have been MANY sessions and the players were most likely not all the same. You can see plenty of photos of the Fox orchestra from that era and it ain't 96 players.
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Posted: |
Sep 14, 2023 - 5:53 AM
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By: |
Ron Pulliam
(Member)
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On the 1962 soundtrack box (re-recording) of "Mutiny on the Bounty", there is a notation that the score is being played by an "augmented" orchestra.
After having heard the fantastic true soundtrack issued by FSM, I find it could be true for much of that score. The original recoding issued on LP is pretty muddled.
Large orchestras, studio ones, went away in the late 1950s. That is when the musicians unionized and studios could no longer maintain a daily presence of musicians.
As I understand it, however, the musicians that had played as studio contractees continued to be hired to perform for the conductors under whom they had served and succeeded for many years.
MGM continued to credit the "MGM studio or symphony" orchestra on its albums, primarily because they considered those musicians to have been "theirs" for the recording.
We have the example of "The Hallelujah Trail" to point out that re-recordings with smaller groups could lead to scores being issued that were not identical to magnificent performances within the actual film score. Fewer musicans equalled fewer payouts to AFM.
Many folks have hit several of the nails on the head about such things. I have read somewhere that Alfred Newman did pre-recordings for "South Pacific" in the Fox recording studios with his studio orchestra. The next time he went there, that studio orchestra did not exist as an "entity". He got most of them back to perform for other scores, of course, including "The Diary of Anne Frank", but it was a new deal for everyone.
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The success of Star Wars of course brought about a renewed interest in big orchestras in the late 1970s.
A soundbite lie peddled by Star Wars fans at every opportunity in an attempt to make it stick.
Its simply not true.
Look at the big orchestra scores by Williams, Morricone, Bernstein, Goldsmith, Goodwin, among many many others in the 70s prior to Star Wars.
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