The Princeton Symphony Orchestra was kind enough to include a reminder of my recent PSO Soundtracks talk, “Picture Perfect: Music and the Movies,” in their E-newsletter earlier this week. The presentation was given at Princeton Public Library on October 8th. If you missed it and have been hoping to catch the video, it’s been archived here:
https://www.princetonsymphony.org/bravo/programs/soundtracks-talks
Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man!
This week on “The Lost Chord,” with Hallowe’en lurking like a mad clown astride a vampiric spider around a Caligari corner, we’ll seek our thrills in the comparative safety of three American experiments in controlled terror.
Wander the creepy cornfields of the overactive imagination with music by George Crumb (“A Haunted Landscape”), Morton Gould (“Jekyll and Hyde Variations”), and Dominick Argento (“Le Tombeau d’Edgar Poe”).
All three composers have fairly local connections. Crumb, born in Charleston, West Virginia, on October 24, 1929, made his home outside Philadelphia for some 57 years. He died in Media, PA, in 2022. Argento, born in York, PA, on October 27, 1927, died in Minneapolis in 2019. Gould, born in Queens on December 10, 1913, died in Orlando in 1996.
These tricksters were treated to the Pulitzer Prize for Music – Crumb in 1968, Argento in 1975, and Gould in 1995.
Walk softly around three spine-tingling exercises in American Gothic. Join me, if you dare, for “Grave Endeavors,” on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW! – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT
Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!
This week on “Sweetness and Light,” we’ll be cutting holes in Mom’s best sheets for a light music trick-or-treat. Join me for 13 ghostly premonitions of a holiday I am happy to say I never outgrew.
We’ll enjoy Halloween songs, selections from Halloween film scores, Halloween piano miniatures, and Halloween light music classics about a haunted ballroom, an ostracized imp, and a devil’s ride, all lovingly curated by you-know-who. Nothing too terribly terrible. It’s all in good fun. There will be no cowering before this disarming parade of spirits, reanimated corpses, witches, bogeymen, demons, and necromancers!
I’ve carefully examined all the candy for pins and razor blades, so you mustn’t hesitate to indulge. It will be Smarties® and peanut butter cups for breakfast, when you join me for “Sweetness and Light,” 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:
Aaah-OOOOOO!
We all know the sound. That crazy, trilled electronic whistle that dips into a whoop. Or it starts in a trough and shoots up into the super stratosphere. It’s the sound of UFOs and mad science. It’s the sound of the theremin.
This week on “Picture Perfect,” we anticipate a hands-off Halloween with selections from four films enhanced by Leon Theremin’s visionary instrument.
“The Thing from Another World” was one of two seminal science fiction scores written in 1951. (The other was Bernard Herrmann’s “The Day the Earth Stood Still.”) On the soundtrack, the theremin acts as a musical counterpart to James Arness’ rampaging humanoid carrot. This was unquestionably composer Dimitri Tiomkin’s wildest hour; he never wrote anything like it again.
“The Thing” and “The Day the Earth Stood Still” may have been the most influential, but “Rocketship X-M” was the first. The film was rushed into production to beat George Pal’s “Destination Moon” to theaters in 1950. It was shot in just 18 days! The unlikely plot has the crew of a moon expedition blown off course to Mars. Interestingly, the composer was none other than Ferde Grofé – he of the “Grand Canyon Suite” fame.
Far more reputable, but still not wholly comfortable with its science, is Alfred Hitchcock’s “Spellbound,” from 1945. Gregory Peck plays an amnesiac, who may or may not have committed murder, and Ingrid Bergman is the psychoanalyst who falls in love with him. The film is of greatest interest for its production design, which features dream sequences conceived by Salvador Dali, and for its score, by Miklós Rózsa.
Hitchcock disliked the music – he thought it got in the way of his direction – but Academy voters disagreed, and the score earned Rózsa the first of his three Academy Awards.
Closer to our own time, Howard Shore incorporated the theremin into his Mancini-esque music for “Ed Wood,” released in 1991. The film is Tim Burton’s love letter to the grade-Z director of “Plan 9 from Outer Space.” “Plan 9” is widely regarded as the worst movie ever made (worse even than “Rocketship X-M”).
Make contact with the theremin – its distinctive, extraterrestrial timbre, you’ll recall, conjured without physical touch – on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
FUN FACT: On three of the four movies from which scores we’ll be sampling (“Spellbound,” “Rocketship X-M,” and “The Thing”), the original thereminist was Samuel Hoffman. Hoffman played in dozens of Hollywood films in the 1940s and ‘50s. By day, he worked as a podiatrist!
Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW! – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT
Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!
WOWZERS! If you can wrangle a ticket – and hit a restroom beforehand (since the performance runs 90 minutes without break) – do not miss the Verdi Requiem with The Philadelphia Orchestra this weekend. Last night’s performance was nothing short of sublime. Chorus and orchestra were impeccable and the execution riveting. Riccardo Muti, Philadelphia’s former music director (from 1980 to 1992), returned after many years to remind everyone just how thrilling he could be in the right repertoire. Muti brought an authority to the podium that, for good or bad, seems to be notably lacking in these days of chummy, everyman conductors. The audience welcomed him with a standing ovation and was unusually attentive throughout. Cell phones remained silent, perhaps for the fear of God (both literally and metaphorically). The last time Muti conducted in Philadelphia was in 2005. Speaking as someone who’s already cleared the bar on monumental, bladder-challenging concerts of both Bruckner and Mahler in Philadelphia this season, I have to say that this one was on another level entirely. An absorbing, at times overwhelming experience.
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