March is Early Music Month. While the concept may seem quite remote from the world of film music, this week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll endeavor to tie in with four scores that employ melodies and modes of the Middle Ages.
We’ll hear selections from “Becket” (1964), by Laurence Rosenthal. In the film, based on a play by Jean Anouilh, Richard Burton plays the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Peter O’Toole, King Henry II. The music is reliant on chant, with a quotation from the familiar Gregorian melody, “Dies Irae” (“Day of Wrath”), occurring fairly early in the action.
Then we’ll hear music from “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (1939), by Alfred Newman. This time based on a novel – “Notre Dame de Paris,” by Victor Hugo – the film features Maureen O’Hara as Esmeralda and Charles Laughton as Quasimodo, with Cedric Hardwicke, Thomas Mitchell, Edmond O’Brien, and Harry Davenport in the supporting cast. The project was one of nine scored by Newman that year, which many historians regard as Hollywood’s finest. Again, the composer evokes the era through sacred choral passages and secular dances.
“The Warlord” (1965) starring Charlton Heston, Richard Boone and Rosemary Forsyth, is the tale a knight who falls in love with a peasant woman, and in order to keep her, claims his right of “droit du seigneur” – his prerogative to spend the first night with any new bride among his serfs. She falls in love with him, and all hell breaks loose.
It was an unusual project for the composer, Jerome Moross, who is best-known for the kind of breezy Americana sound employed in his best-known score, that for “The Big Country.” Here, he evokes the 11th century with an underscore that, again, takes its inspiration from authentic music of the era.
Finally, we’ll turn to “The Lion in Winter” (1965), adapted from a play by James Goldman, an historical drama set at the Christmas court of Henry II – again, as in “Becket,” played by Peter O’Toole. Henry spars with his estranged wife, the temporarily paroled Eleanor of Aquitaine (played by Katherine Hepburn), in a familial power struggle, which also involves their three sons, played by Anthony Hopkins, Timothy Dalton and Nigel Terry.
The film was the winner of three Academy Awards, including one for Best Original Score. The composer was John Barry. Yet again the music is steeped in that of the Middle Ages, yet given a distinctly modern edge.
I hope you’ll join me for these cinematic forays into Early Music, on “Picture Perfect,” this Friday evening at 6 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
Early Music America
While you’re waiting, here’s the cast of SCTV in “The Man Who Would Be King of the Popes” – which employs music from “The Lion in Winter!”
PHOTOS: Peter O’Toole as dueling Henrys, in “Becket” (top, with Richard Burton) and “The Lion in Winter” (with Katharine Hepburn)
