I know I posted this clip before, but to me it so perfectly encapsulates the pitiful desperation of revelry, the sense of dancing around the mouth of the grave that characterizes so many “festive” occasions – New Year’s, Mardi Gras, bachelor parties, Spring Break, Saturday night – and the encroaching desolation of the day after. We drink, we laugh, we dance, and then we stagger home like Alberto Sordi, lashed to a papier-mâché head.
Have a great Lent, everybody!
Poor Jerry Goldsmith. He wrote some of the great film scores of his time, including those for “The Sand Pebbles” (1966), “The Blue Max” (1966), “The Flim-Flam Man” (1967), “Planet of the Apes” (1968), “Patton” (1970), “Papillon” (1973), “Chinatown” (1974), “The Wind and the Lion” (1975), “MacArthur” (1977), “The Boys from Brazil” (1978), “The Great Train Robbery” (1979), “Alien” (1979, butchered in the sound editing), and “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” (1979).
For television, he wrote for “Dr. Kildare,” “The Twilight Zone,” “Gunsmoke,” “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” and “The Waltons.”
By the 1980s, the films began to get weaker. It seemed like Goldsmith was always getting tossed the projects John Williams passed on, or cheap knockoffs of Williams’ successes. By his final decade, he was stuck writing for such garbage as “The Mummy” (1999), “The Haunting” (1999), and “Looney Tunes: Back in Action” (2003). A notable exception was “L.A. Confidential” (1997), but rarely were his later projects up to his talent.
Goldsmith had a reputation for being able to compose at white heat, so he was frequently called upon to write replacement scores for films like “The River Wild” (1994), “Air Force One” (1997) and “The 13th Warrior” (1999). He composed and recorded the score to “Chinatown,” one of the best of the 1970s, in only ten days.
Incredibly, he was honored with only a single Academy Award, for his influential score to “The Omen” (1976). Goldsmith died in 2004, at the age of 75. If he were to come back today, he would mop the joint with all the Hans Zimmer clones of the world.
Happy birthday, Jerry Goldsmith. I sure does miss you.
#JerryGoldsmith
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.:
Planet of the Apes:
Patton:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdEy4GneZfw
Chinatown:
The Wind and the Lion:
The Omen (perfect for Lent):
Star Trek: The Motion Picture:
Fasnacht Day! That happy day when I’d blow into the house, an oblivious boy, and be arrested by the smell of freshly made doughnuts. I never understood when it would happen, or its significance. All I knew is that I’d come home one day to find my grandmother frying the most heavenly treats.
Why fasnacht? When I asked, my grandmother didn’t know. I suppose it’s something she did by rote. But go ahead and look it up on the internet. A fasnacht is a fried doughnut served up on Shrove Tuesday (Fat Tuesday, if you prefer), on the eve of Lent. I guess traditionally it was a way to clear out all the tasties that, as a good Christian, you’re not supposed to eat again until Easter. Be that as it may, I would think any good done by the fast would be offset by the indulgence of so much fried lard up front.
I miss those doughnuts. Now THOSE were doughnuts. The closest I’ve been able to find out in the real world are the Italian zeppoli. Not quite the same – and apparently the zeppoli can vary – but they have a similar, unhealthy, fried, powdered sugary goodness. If you find a light and puffy zeppola, it would bear little resemblance to my grandmother’s fasnachts, which were always quite cakey.
My grandmother was an undistinguished cook, but boy could she make fasnachts.
I know I’m mixing traditions, but “Laissez les bon temps roulez!”
“Mardi Gras” by American composer Edward Joseph Collins:
Roman Carnival antics by Giovanni Croce:
PHOTO: You’ll find fasnachts in all varieties, but these best resemble my grandmother’s recipe.
By my calculations, the Super Bowl should be over by about 10:00. Just in time for this week’s edition of “The Lost Chord.” Who do you think you’re fooling, anyway? You’re never going to get to sleep tonight, with that belly full of buffalo wings and blue cheese dip. So why don’t you pour yourself a nice, cold glass of water and kick back for an hour of music about Nordic enchanters?
We’ll hear selections from a Finnish film, from 1952, called “The White Reindeer.” Set in Lapland, it tells the tale of a lonely herder’s wife, who visits a local shaman and is transformed into a shapeshifting, vampiric white reindeer. The film was honored at the Cannes Film Festival with a special award for Best Fairy Tale Film, and at the Golden Globes as Best Foreign Film. Einar Englund wrote the score.
Icelandic composer Jón Leifs saw the play “Galdra-Loftr,” by Jóhann Sigurjónsson, in Reykjavik as a teenager in 1915. He determined at once to set it to music, and carried the idea with him for nearly a decade while he acquired the technique to make it so. Loftur Þorsteinsson, a semi-historical character, was kind of a Faustian figure, a student at the Latin school in Hólar in northern Iceland, whose fascination with black magic ended in tragedy. We’ll hear Leif’s “Loftr Suite.”
Finally, Gandalf, a beloved figure from J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings,” is said to have been inspired in part by the wizard Väinämöinen from “The Kalevala,” the Finnish national epic. Väinämöinen is familiar to music-lovers, perhaps, from his appearances in the works of Jean Sibelius, especially the symphonic fantasy “Pohjola’s Daughter.”
In 1996, Finnish composer Aulis Sallinen completed his Symphony No. 7, on a commission from the Gothenburg Symphony, which he subtitled “The Dreams of Gandalf.” The origins of the work were in a projected ballet inspired by “The Lord of the Rings.” However, the composer hastens to add that the symphony doesn’t actually depict any of the events in the story, but rather its atmosphere and its poetry.
The music is bound to be more enchanting than the Super Bowl. I hope you’ll join me for these “Blizzard Wizards,” this Sunday night at 10 ET, with a repeat Wednesday evening at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at wwfm.org.
PHOTO: Väinämöinen, inspiration for Gandalf, offers his own alternative to buffalo wings
In a career which has spanned 60 years, you’ve garnered 50 Academy Award nominations, 5 Academy Awards, 3 Emmys, 22 Grammys, and 7 BAFTA Awards.
You’re the composer for eight of the top 20 highest-grossing films of all time. You’ve written Olympic fanfares, the theme to NBC News, the theme to PBS’ “Great Performances,” and both themes to “Lost in Space.”
You’re the last in the line of the great Hollywood composers. You’ve also amassed an impressive body of concert music.
Thanks for the extended childhood, John. You’ve made life so much more bearable.
Happy birthday, John Williams, 84 years-old today.
#johnwilliams
The cast of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” joins Jimmy Fallon and The Roots for this “a cappella” salute:
John Williams records the “Great Performances” theme, in his signature black turtleneck:
Theme to “Lost in Space” (season three):
Olympic Fanfare and Theme (Los Angeles games, 1984):
PHOTO: Williams, with John Boyega and Daisy Ridley of “The Force Awakens”
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