Ever wonder why “Jason and the Argonauts” (1963) ends where it does? Because Medea gets the final cut!
Seriously, how can you possibly top a duel with seven meticulously-animated skeletons? The three-minute sequence took stop-motion virtuoso Ray Harryhausen 4 ½ months to complete.
But nobody seems to care that Jason never does get around to retaking the kingdom of his father. Learn more about Medea’s grisly solution to seemingly everything during last night’s discussion about this beloved classic.
We’ll be off next Friday, but next Sunday Roy will be joined by a very interesting panel, as the topic with be a new book about the seminal sci-fi-horror-dark fantasy television series “The Outer Limits,” focused specifically on the unforgettable episode “Nightmare” (1963).
Zooming in to talk about it will be Dave Rash (who put together the book), Dominick Stefano (son of scriptwriter and series creator Joseph Stefano), David Frankham (who has a substantial role in the actual episode), and Michael L. Schuman (whose critical assessment of the episode is included in the book).
The conversation is guaranteed to be “out there.” Join Roy and company for a chat about “The Outer Limits,” on the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner, livestreamed on Facebook, next Sunday evening, August 7, at 7:30 pm EDT!
BONUS! For anyone who loves Bernard Herrmann’s music for “Jason and the Argonauts,” I’ll be featuring a substantial selection from it on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Saturday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org!
Remember: in the summer, it’s important to stay “hydrated.”
On the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner, we’re enlisting a crew of hirsute, out-of-shape fighting men (including a 39 year-old Hercules, who looks, at best, to be in his late 50s) for a journey to the far-side of the world in our quest for the Golden Fleece and a discussion of “Jason and the Argonauts” (1963).
Everything that you loved about this movie as a kid still holds up: the vindictive, fruit-loving harpies, an oversized bronze automaton in serious need of WD-40, destruction by crumbling cliff-faces narrowly averted by tuna-tailed Triton, and sinister skeleton warriors sprung nonsensically from hydra’s teeth. Also, Nancy Kovack (a.k.a. Mrs. Zubin Mehta) and Honor Blackman!
Roy and I will do our best to emulate the perfect alchemy of Ray Harryhausen and Bernard Herrmann this week, when we talk about “Jason and the Argonauts.” Are we stop-motion animation, or is it just Roy’s internet connection? Pour yourself a tall glass of water and join the conversation in the comments section. We livestream on Facebook, this Friday evening at 7:30 EDT!
The only composer crankier than Carl Ruggles was probably Bernard Herrmann. Everyone recognizes Herrmann as the genius film composer he was, but whenever he was in front of an orchestra, he made it his mission to champion works by neglected composers.
Ruggles, the cantankerous American modernist, was the creator of a handful of meticulously-crafted, uncompromising works. His complete, authorized output can be accommodated on two LPs. We know this, because Michael Tilson Thomas recorded just about everything for the Columbia Masterworks label in 1980.
Ruggles’ method was described by musicologist Charles Seeger as “dissonant counterpoint,” a system wherein all the traditional rules of counterpoint are reversed, so that dissonance, rather than consonance, is the norm. The very practice smacks of contrarianism!
Not surprisingly, Ruggles was beloved by Charles Ives. When someone had the audacity to boo one of Ruggles’ works at a concert given in 1931, Ives berated the critic as a sissy: “Why can’t you stand up before fine, strong music like this, and use your ears like a man?!”
Ruggles also created hundreds of paintings. In contrast to the agonizing process of composition, his paintings were usually tossed off in an afternoon. They were deemed good enough that he was invited to hang shows and even sold many of his canvases.
Ruggles died in 1971, about three months after this Herrmann interview was broadcast. He was 95 years-old.
Herrmann got his start in the medium of radio in 1934, when he was hired as a conducting assistant at CBS. It wasn’t long before he was providing original music and serving as musical director of its resident orchestra. Among his duties there was providing incidental music for Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre broadcasts. In fact, he was in front of the orchestra for possibly radio’s most notorious hour, Welles’ hysteria-inducing adaptation of “The War of the Worlds.”
As would ever be the case, Herrmann did nothing by halves. Then only in his 20s, he possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of both music and literature, and filled his programs with works by Ives, Henry Cowell, Gian Francesco Malipiero, Alexander Gretchaninov, Nikolai Myaskovsky, Hermann Goetz, Joachim Raff, Niels Wilhelm Gade, Richard Arnell, Lord Berners, Edmund Rubbra, and countless others. Even Schoenberg and Webern could be heard over CBS during those years.
Herrmann had known Ives personally since he was in his teens. He had discovered the composer’s “114 Songs” in the New York Public Library and was instrumental in shopping them around, even introducing them to Aaron Copland.
He was also unfailingly outspoken. Once, when CBS president William S. Paley balked at one of his proposals, Herrmann snapped, “You’re assuming the public is as ignorant about music as you are.” That’s just the kind of guy Herrmann was. Totally tactless, but usually right. After that, he was given near-unlimited freedom over musical programming at CBS.
It had always been Herrmann’s ambition to be recognized as a great conductor. Leopold Stokowski was his hero. While he never realized that ambition, it was not for want of trying.
During the conversation at the link above, Herrmann draws an unexpected connection between Ruggles and “Moby Dick.” Herrmann was an enormous admirer of Melville’s magnum opus, setting it as a cantata in 1936-38, also predating his career in film. It was given its debut at Carnegie Hall in 1940, with Sir John Barbirolli conducting the New York Philharmonic. Herrmann dedicated the work to Ives.
So as to leave you with a bit of Herrmann’s film music, here’s one of the composer’s personal favorites, and another piece that breathes the sea air – his score for the 1947 film “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.”
Happy birthday, Bernard Herrmann. Would it kill you to smile on your special day?
Before Bernard Herrmann emerged as a film composer of genius, he was music director at CBS Radio. There, he not only wrote incidental music for Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater (he would follow Welles to Hollywood in 1941 to write his first film score, for “Citizen Kane”), he also programmed and conducted broadcast concerts that were heavy on new, unusual, and neglected repertoire.
Herrmann was a staunch Anglophile for his entire life. There’s no way he would have ignored the Vaughan Williams sesquicentenary. Shame on you, American orchestras! In the 1960s, when he was fired by Hitchcock from “Torn Curtain,” and he had had enough of Hollywood in general, he made London his permanent home. But already in the 1940s, he was guest conducting the Hallé Orchestra, at the invitation of Sir John Barbirolli. He also guest conducted the London Symphony Orchestra, and made a number of recordings with the London Philharmonic and National Philharmonic Orchestras, including some stunning albums of his film scores.
English music featured regularly on Herrmann’s concerts. Here’s an attractive piece by Cyril Scott for the first full day of summer. You may recognize the English folk song on which it is based, “Early One Morning,” a cheerful enough melody somewhat at variance with its melancholy subject matter (a jilted lass lamenting the loss of her lover).
Despite having left a sizeable output of orchestral, chamber, and instrumental works, Scott is largely remembered, if at all, for his piano miniature “Lotus Land.” Another good summer piece, come to think of it. In my library, I have a copy of Scott’s book, “Music: Its Secret Influence Throughout the Ages,” inscribed by the composer to Eugene Ormandy.
Here, John Ogdon is the pianist, and Bernard Herrmann conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Enjoy Cyril Scott’s “Early One Morning.” The big tune begins to coalesce around the four-minute mark.
This week on “Picture Perfect,” prepare to get “lost.” We’ll have an hour of music from fantasy films set in lost worlds.
In “King Kong” (1933), filmmaker and entrepreneur Carl Denham hires a ship to an uncharted island, known only from a secret map in his possession. There the crew discovers the titular gorilla and other outsized and should-be-extinct creatures. Kong is abducted from his natural habitat – and you know the rest. The composer, Max Steiner, pulls out all the stops. “Kong” was one of the first films to demonstrate how truly powerful an orchestral soundtrack could be.
Then we travel to the earth’s core, courtesy of Jules Verne, and “Journey to the Center of the Earth” (1959). James Mason is the professor who leads the expedition. The film sports one of Bernard Herrmann’s most outlandish soundscapes, the orchestra consisting of winds, brass and percussion, but also cathedral organ, four electric organs, and an obsolete Renaissance instrument called the serpent. Watch out for that giant chameleon!
“One Million Years B.C.” (1966) is a guilty pleasure if ever there was one. Produced by Hammer, the studio that gave us all those repugnant yet somehow delicious Peter Cushing-Christopher Lee horror team-ups, the film features special effects by the legendary Ray Harryhausen and an equally legendary fur bikini, worn by Raquel Welch. The music is by Mario Nascimbene, who wrote one of my favorite scores for Kirk Douglas, for “The Vikings.” We’ll be listening to the film’s climactic volcano sequence.
As he did with the Indiana Jones films, director Steven Spielberg turned to B-movie source material for his visual inspiration for “Jurassic Park” (1993), based on the novel by Michael Crichton. The herky-jerky dinosaur effects of yore are replaced by state of the art computer-generated effects, in the story of a safari park on a remote island gone wrong.
Sure, we’ve come a long way from Raquel Welch getting carried off by a pteranodon, but admit it, we all still want to see people fight dinosaurs. Instead of fudging history, now we can feel superior by fudging science. “Jurassic Park” plays on the most recent scientific thinking, with DNA extracted from mosquitoes trapped in amber, cloning, and the theory that dinosaurs were not lizards, after all, but rather birds. The music is by long-time Spielberg-collaborator, John Williams.
I hope you’ll join me for music for these “Lands That Time Forgot,” this Saturday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwm.org.
