Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Saints on Screen: The Music of Faith in Film

This week on “Picture Perfect,” the saints go marching in.

We’ll begin with a suite from “The Song of Bernadette” (1943), one of Jennifer Jones’ finest hours. Jones was honored with an Academy Award for her performance (the film was nominated in 12 categories). Franz Werfel’s novel tells the story of Bernadette Soubirous, a Lourdes peasant prone to visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Igor Stravinsky made several attempts to break into Hollywood, but he could never keep up with the grinding schedule. He took a crack at scoring the “Apparition of the Virgin” scene, but then thought better of it. The project went to Alfred Newman, who won his third Oscar (of nine). Stravinsky’s music would be recycled in the second movement of his “Symphony in Three Movements.”

The story of Joan of Arc has been translated to film many times. In the case of “Saint Joan” (1957), Otto Preminger adapted the play by George Bernard Shaw. Newcomer Jean Seberg was cast in the title role. Her inexperience brought her in for a sound critical drubbing. Even an old hand like screenwriter Graham Greene was not immune to critical barbs for the liberties he took in reworking Shaw’s play. Despite all that, the score, by Russian-born English composer Mischa Spoliansky, is lovely.

By contrast, the film of “A Man for All Seasons” (1966), after the play of Robert Bolt, was lavishly praised, especially Paul Scofield’s performance as Sir Thomas More (for which he received an Academy Award for Best Actor). The film won six Academy Awards in all, including that for Best Picture. The period-inflected score is by Georges Delerue.

I suppose it’s impossible to get through Easter without some Biblical bombast, so why not go all out with “Quo Vadis” (1951)? Henryk Sienkiewicz’s international bestseller incorporates into its narrative Saints Peter and Paul, but the really interesting characters are the cynical Petronius (Leo Genn), who knows how to throw a party, and the quite mad Nero (Peter Ustinov), who plays the lyre even as Rome burns.

Miklós Rózsa’s score has been much-lauded for its attempt at historical authenticity (the incorporation of contemporaneous Greek, Hebrew, and Sicilian melodies), though its popularity has been eclipsed, somewhat, by that of his work on “Ben-Hur” and “King of Kings.” “Quo Vadis” is really the film in which Rózsa lays out the blueprint for a decade or more of big screen piety. Bernard Herrmann called it “the score of a lifetime.”

I hope you’ll join me in taking some time off for good behavior. That’s “Lives of the Saints,” on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Saturday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

PHOTO: Jennifer Jones and the Lourdes’ prayer

April 8, 2023
Penderecki’s Utrenja Holy Saturday’s Haunting Masterpiece

While there are plenty of Vespers settings by classic composers to maintain a solemn and reflective atmosphere appropriate to the delayed gratification of Easter Sunday, few works for Holy Saturday are as engaging – or as challenging – as Krzysztof Penderecki’s “Utrenja.”

Penderecki, who emerged from the 1960s as an icon of the avant-garde, here performs a delicate balancing act. The heavy weather of tone clusters and quicksilver cacophony disperses for hurricane’s eye interludes of hypnotic tonality. The overall impression is eerie as can be, but also affectingly mysterious. It’s a ritual both time-honored and timeless.

The text is based on the Orthodox liturgy for Holy Saturday, for the lamentation for Christ’s death, and the Easter Sunday morning service commemorating the Resurrection.

The two parts were first performed separately. “The Entombment,” composed in 1970, was dedicated to Eugene Ormandy, who recorded it with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Temple University Choir; “The Resurrection,” was composed in 1971. Both parts were commissioned by West German Radio.

Audience response to the joint premiere in 1971 was tumultuous, likely as much for extramusical considerations as for the music itself. The performance took place only days after the putdown by Polish armed forces of the Gdansk shipyard riots, sparked by precipitous inflation, that resulted in 44 people killed and over 1000 injured. Polish art and politics have frequently been familiar bedfellows.

Penderecki’s “Utrenja” has long since joined his “Polish Requiem” and “St. Luke Passion” as a milestone of modern Polish music. Not music for every day, perhaps, but if you’re feeling a little adventurous, put it on and just go with it. Afterward, you can always listen to Rachmaninoff’s “Vespers,” if you want.

Petrifying Penderecki:

Reassuring Rachmaninoff:

IMAGE: “Mourning from Chomranice,” by an artist identified as the Master of Mourning, c. 1440

April 8, 2023
Barber’s Adagio Good Friday Service

Among the musical selections at church this afternoon for today’s Good Friday observance: Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings!

April 7, 2023
Syberberg’s Parsifal A Hilarious Opera Odyssey

It was sometime around 1983 or ’84 that my best buddy from high school and I determined to catch a screening of Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s “Parsifal” at Lehigh University. Neither of us knew much about the opera at that point, but we both loved the film “Excalibur” and were at the very least familiar with the mystical prelude Wagner had composed.

As my friend climbed into the car, he enthused, “I think we’re in for a real treat. Listen to this!” Then he read to me the synopsis from Milton Cross’ “Complete Stories of the Great Operas.” When he reached the part where Parsifal snatches Klingsor’s spear out of midair, destroying his power, we were both like, “Whoaaa.” We were primed for some serious action!

When we arrived, we learned that the film was being presented in an auditorium with a raked floor. I remember it was raked, because at some point during the screening, an empty bottle of spirits rolled past our feet, clanking against the chair legs.

The film was shown the old-fashioned way, employing a 1970s-style high school movie projector, so that periodically the tail leader would run out and the lights would have to be switched on, so that the reels could be changed. Along the way, there were also a few technical difficulties, significantly padding the film’s already four-hour-plus running time.

Anyway, it was excruciating – which is to say, we enjoyed ourselves immensely. There was so much to laugh at and groan through. The actor who played Klingsor was totally out of shape. When he raised his spear, he must have had an aneurysm or something, because instead of hurling it like a javelin, as described by Milton Cross, he simply tumbled into a ravine. We were especially amused by the revelation toward the end that the entire production was supposed to have taken place inside a gigantic bust of Wagner. Or more accurately, his death mask.

Otherwise, Syberberg’s was a fairly straightforward interpretation, though curiously he chose to have actors stand in for the singers on the film’s soundtrack, a decision I can’t say made it any less silly. Oh yeah, there was also a passage, just before the death mask revelation, that had knights processing down a long stone hallway, lined with swastika flags (???). Obviously, this was a work of genius.

By the time it finally ended, and someone switched on the lights for probably the sixth or seventh time, we staggered out of the building, wearing conspiratorial grins, only to discover a fog had rolled in. It was now ludicrously late. Driving back on Route 22 was like crossing the North Sea in a dragon boat.

I arrived home around 2:00 in the morning, and my mother was on pins and needles. What happened? What had we gotten up to? I shared a mercifully abridged account of our Wagnerian adventure. We were not dead in a ditch. Nor were we rotting in a jail cell. We were watching “Parsifal.”

I think of this every year on Good Friday, since the Good Friday Spell of Act III is one of the high points of the opera and frequently excerpted. Naturally, this entails a Google search to see if the film has been posted online. In previous years, I’ve come up with only a stray clip, but this year the angels are with me, as I find someone has posted the entire film on YouTube in two parts.

Of course, last year, I finally broke down and purchased the rare, out-of-print DVD from eBay.

This Good Friday is very good indeed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZSlOFjgjwk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLNShPJdTYQ

April 7, 2023
Joseph Ryelandt Composer of Faith

It seems only appropriate that Joseph Ryelandt’s birthday anniversary would fall around Holy Week – this year on Good Friday, as a matter of fact – as he was an artist whose devout beliefs were central to every aspect of his existence and creativity.

Born in Bruges in 1870, Ryelandt was raised to value culture, tradition, and faith. He was unhindered by financial concerns for the first half of his very long life. World War I, however, badly affected his finances. The father of eight children himself, he took up teaching out of necessity at the age of 54. He did so with some hesitation, but was relieved to find it truly rewarding. He was appointed director of the Bruges Conservatory in 1924.

While his academic and creative work evidently brought him enormous satisfaction, life at home was saddened by the gradual decline of his wife’s health. She died in 1939. Ryelandt composed very little during the Second World War. A few chamber works followed, and then he abandoned composition altogether. He devoted his retirement to literature – writing poetry and reading the world’s classics. He died, following a brief illness, in 1965, at the age of 95.

Of all of his works, he considered his five oratorios the most important, though he composed much else, including six symphonies (the first of which he destroyed). None of the symphonies were performed until 1960. It was then that the Symphony No. 4 received its belated premiere, on a concert in celebration of the composer’s 90th birthday.

Ryelandt’s Fourth Symphony was composed in 1912-1913, on the very eve of World War I. Like nearly everything he wrote, the symphony is an outgrowth of his personal faith. The text of the triumphant chorus that concludes the work is from the Credo, as heard in the traditional Catholic Mass. Earlier in the piece, a choir of tenors sings a text from Thomas à Kempis’ “The Imitation of Christ.”

Whether or not you find it appropriate for Good Friday, which after all is a somber observance, I leave it to you. The piece does conclude in a blaze of glory.

Happy birthday, Joseph Ryelandt, and a blessed Good Friday to those who observe it.

April 7, 2023

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