When the plan is to get a jump on Independence Day, but it’s also Bernard Herrmann’s birthday – and you don’t have a film music show on Saturday – what’s one to do? Why, include Herrmann’s score for “Williamsburg: The Story of a Patriot” on “Sweetness and Light,” of course!
“Williamsburg: The Story of a Patriot” (1957) is the longest continuously-exhibited film of all time, shown at the Colonial Williamsburg Visitor Center for over five decades. (Screenings were interrupted during the pandemic, but have resumed, now with four shows daily.) Peppered with recognizable patriotic tunes from the Revolutionary era, the charming score includes quotations from “Yankee Doodle” and the William Billings hymn “Chester.”
The music will be the centerpiece on this morning’s program, as we anticipate the Fourth of July and light some candles on a red, white and blue birthday cake for Herrmann, who also wrote the music for “Citizen Kane,” “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” “Psycho,” “The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad,” and “Taxi Driver.”
In addition, we’ll have some selections on patriotic airs by Dudley Buck and Louis Moreau Gottschalk, a festive work for band, “Celebrating the Fourth,” by Princeton-area composer Samuel A. Livingston, “Fireworks” by Jerry Goldsmith, and an incendiary performance of a march by John Philip Sousa, in transcription for solo piano.
I’ve always had an INDEPENDENT streak (having been born on the FOURTH myself), so I’ve taken the LIBERTY to PURSUE HAPPINESS, even if it is still June. Feel FREE to join me for an hour of flag-waving and sparklers on “Sweetness and Light,” music calculated to charm and to cheer, this Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PDT, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Stream it, wherever you are, at the link:
PHOTOS: Herrmann fuels his genius, with stills from “Williamsburg: The Story of a Patriot,” starring Jack Lord!
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