Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Bernard Herrmann

Giant Movie Monsters Music from Godzilla to Kong

Super size me!

We’re thinking big this week, on “Picture Perfect,” with outsized thrills from movies featuring gargantuan creatures.

We’ll begin with “Godzilla” (2014), the most recent incarnation of the pop-cultural icon, originally a metaphor for the destructive power of nuclear weapons, but now seemingly more of a jack-of-all-trades restorer of natural balance. Either way, it’s generally man’s overweening pride that brings on the destruction. The composer for this latest version was Alexandre Desplat.

Then we’ll take a storm-swept hot air balloon to “Mysterious Island” (1961). Jules Verne’s novel becomes the framework for a series of battles between a band of castaways and giant creatures at an uncharted locale in the South Pacific. The great Ray Harryhausen provided the special effects – including giant bees, birds and crabs – and Bernard Herrmann underscored the outlandish situations to perfection.

Henry Mancini gained world-fame for his breezy melodies for “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and the “Pink Panther” films, but he got his start writing for B-movies of the 1950s. In “Tarantula” (1955), scientists conduct experiments on animals in order to develop a super food nutrient, as a preemptive strike against future overpopulation and world hunger. However, as the countryside becomes littered with cattle carcasses and pools of arachnid venom, clearly something has gone awry. Mancini collaborated on the score with 1950s science fiction maestro Herman Stein. Don’t go into it expecting “Moon River.”

Finally, we’ll hear selections from literally the 800-pound gorilla of giant monster movies, “King Kong” (1933). Oscar Levant memorably described “Kong” as “a symphony accompanied by a movie.” The music was certainly a great part of the film’s initial – and enduring – success.

Max Steiner’s concept and execution of the music for “Kong” was really the first of their kind. Thanks to “Kong” and other early efforts by Franz Waxman and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, a prototype of the Hollywood sound was formed, and the spectacular images onscreen, especially those characteristic of the fantasy and adventure genres, were expected to be accompanied by equally lavish and outlandish orchestras.

No doubt, Hollywood would have figured it out eventually, yet it’s very gratifying to say, if it weren’t for “Kong,” there would be no “Ben-Hur,” there would be no “Star Wars,” there would be no “The Lord of the Rings.” At any rate, “Kong” got there first.

I hope you’ll join me for these outsized musical adventures this week, on “Picture Perfect,” tonight at 6 ET, with a repeat tomorrow morning at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at wwfm.org.

October 16, 2015
Anderson & Herrmann American Music Legends

Today marks the birthday anniversaries of two composers who, in their own individual ways, gained fame through their invaluable contributions to American popular culture. Interestingly, both died 40 years ago.

Leroy Anderson (1908-1975), whose fluency in foreign languages (especially those of Scandinavia) made him an asset to the U.S. Army during the Second World War, was more or less staff composer for the Boston Pops.

His early work for the Pops was as an arranger. It was Arthur Fiedler who recognized his talent and began requesting original work. Good call. Anderson turned out to be the Irving Berlin of American light orchestral music, producing hit after hit after hit: “Blue Tango,” “The Typewriter,” and “Plink! Plank! Plunk!” among them. Johnny Mathis scored a gargantuan success with his vocal rendition of “Sleigh-Ride,” for over half a century a holiday staple. Anderson’s “The Syncopated Clock,” a favorite from the start, became further entrenched in the popular consciousness as the theme music for “The Late Show,” the late night movie, shown on CBS.

Bernard Herrmann (1911-1975) was staff conductor on CBS radio. In this role, he introduced American audiences to an impressive array of comparatively arcane music for the era, including works by Charles Ives, Nikolai Myaskovsky, Gian Francesco Malipiero, Edmund Rubbra, and Richard Arnell (Classical Discoveries’ Marvin Rosen!).

He fell in with Orson Welles, with whom he worked on radio shows like “Mercury Theatre on the Air.” When Welles went to Hollywood, he brought Herrmann with him to write the music for “Citizen Kane.” This led to decades of finely-crafted film scores, always orchestrated by Herrmann himself (an unusual practice in Hollywood) and always perfectly suited to the images on screen, or their psychological underpinnings.

Of course, Herrmann is best-known for his collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock, but he also wrote top-notch, ear-opening scores for producer Charles Schneer and special effects artist Ray Harryhausen (including that for “Jason and the Argonauts”). Amazingly, he won only a single Oscar, for his work on “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” in 1941. Herrmann died of a heart attack shortly after conducting the recording sessions for Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver,” in 1975.

Happy birthday, gentlemen! Thanks for the music.

June 29, 2015
Toy Movie Music Picture Perfect

Eesh. Two posts already today, and I forgot to mention “Picture Perfect!” What day is it, anyway? Holidays…

With everyone still reeling from Christmas, I thought I would present an hour of music from movies about toys, including selections from “Citizen Kane” (shhh, don’t give it away), with music by Bernard Herrmann; “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure” (it’s in the basement of the Alamo!), with music by Danny Elfman; “Toccata for Toy Trains” (Charles and Ray Eames love vintage toys), with music by Elmer Bernstein; and “Toy Story” (not much of a stretch there), with music by Randy Newman.

That’s toys everywhere this week, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies. I hope you’ll join me tonight at 6 ET, or for the repeat, tomorrow morning at 6; or that you’ll catch it later as a webcast at http://www.wwfm.org.

December 26, 2014
Madness and Piano Movie Music

This week on “Picture Perfect,” practice makes psychotic, as we listen to music from movies about madness and the piano.

Laird Cregar plays an unhinged pianist-composer, who, whenever he hears a loud, discordant sound, is compelled to commit murder, in the 1945 film “Hangover Square.” Bernard Herrmann wrote the moody, romantic score, which includes a piano concerto, played by Cregar’s character during the film’s conflagration finale.

Peter Lorre is an unstable musicologist who is haunted by the disembodied hand of a murdered pianist with a penchant for Brahms’ arrangement of Bach’s Chaconne, in “The Beast with Five Fingers,” from 1946. Max Steiner wrote the music. The piano is played on the film’s soundtrack by Victor Aller, the brother-in-law of Felix Slatkin, and therefore Leonard Slatkin’s uncle.

Alan Alda plays a frustrated pianist who falls in with a ring of Satanists, in “The Mephisto Waltz” from 1971. This time, Jerry Goldsmith blends Franz Liszt with amplified instruments and electronics to memorably eerie effect. Five years later, Goldsmith would win his only Academy Award for his music to “The Omen.”

Finally, Hans Conried plays a dictatorial pedagogue in “The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T,” released in 1953, which holds the distinction of being the only feature film written by Dr. Seuss. The film features outrageous production design (including a gargantuan keyboard for 500 enslaved boys) and whimsical songs.

The composer was Frederick Hollander, born in London. Hollander came to fame in Germany as Friedrich Hollander. His best-known international success was with “The Blue Angel,” with Marlene Dietrich, who introduced his song, “Falling in Love Again. With the rise of the Nazis, Hollander fled to the United States, where he worked on over 100 films.

Join me for madness and the piano this week, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Friday evening at 6 ET. In case you haven’t heard, the show will now repeat Saturday mornings at 6. (It ought to be a real treat to hear “The Mephisto Waltz” at that hour!) If you’re still not able to listen, you can catch it later as a webcast at http://www.wwfm.org.

October 23, 2014
Herrmann’s Halloween Fantasy Film Scores

Hallowe’en is fast approaching. This week on “Picture Perfect,” it’s high time we get the pumpkin rolling, with an hour of fantasy film scores of Bernard Herrmann.

Just about everyone has some awareness of Herrmann’s fruitful run with Alfred Hitchcock, a collaborative relationship which yielded scores to “Vertigo,” “North by Northwest” and “Psycho,” among others. Concurrently, Herrmann worked with producer Charles H. Schneer to create a series of classic films on fantastic subjects, featuring special effects by stop-motion maestro Ray Harryhausen. We’ll be listening to selections from two of these.

Jules Vernes’ novel, “Mysterious Island,” was a sequel of sorts to “20,000 Leagues under the Sea. “ During the American Civil War, a ragtag band of Union soldiers escape from a Confederate prison by hot air balloon. A storm sweeps them off to the titular island, where they encounter pirates, a castaway and an orangutan. Indeed Captain Nemo turns up late in the narrative, though no giant creatures, as in the film (made in 1961). Herrmann has a field day characterizing an enormous crab, bee and especially bird, for which he employs a fugue!

Harryhausen’s skeleton fight from Schneer’s “Jason and the Argonauts” (1963) stands as one of the all-time classic fantasy sequences, a dream marriage of visuals and music. Herrmann, who always provided his own orchestrations, was well known for putting together unique combinations of instruments the better to illustrate the special character of a given film. In the case of “Jason,” he went in the opposite direction he had taken with “Psycho,” stripping away the strings and concentrating instead on winds, brass and percussion.

On a somewhat gentler note, Herrmann scored the beautiful spectral romance, “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir” (1947), with Gene Tierney as a young widow who moves with her daughter to a seaside village, where she encounters the ghost of salty Captain Craigg (played by Rex Harrison). Of course, their banter leads to a hopeless attraction developing between them. Herrmann was a master at creating musical evocations of yearning, and his score for “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir” is full of romantic longing.

Criminally, for a composer whose career spanned over four decades, from “Citizen Kane” to “Taxi Driver,” Herrmann received only a single Oscar, for “The Devil and Daniel Webster” (released in 1941 as “All That Money Can Buy”). Walter Huston makes a meal of his role as Mr. Scratch in Stephen Vincent Benet’s recasting of the Faust legend, transferred to the New England countryside. Director Wlliam Dieterle, who had his roots in German Expressionism, creates some truly eerie visuals, and Herrmann’s score barn-dances deftly back and forth between dread and whimsy.

Join me for fantasy film scores of Bernard Herrmann this week on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Friday evening at 6; or catch it later as a webcast at http://www.wwfm.org.

October 16, 2014

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