Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Dimitri Tiomkin

Old World Composers Score the Wild West

Before American composers like Jerome Moross and Elmer Bernstein made the western distinctly their own, the task of scoring the genre fell largely to European émigrés. This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll take a look at some outside perspectives on how the West was won.

Literally the godson of Richard Strauss, Max Steiner (born on this date in 1888) came from Vienna, where he studied with Johannes Brahms and Robert Fuchs. In Hollywood, he wound up scoring such classics as “King Kong,” “Gone with the Wind” and “Casablanca.”

Among his over 300 film projects were a number of westerns. One of these was “They Died with Their Boots On” (1941), which starred Errol Flynn as George Armstrong Custer and Olivia de Havilland as Libby, the woman who becomes his wife. Steiner’s score features familiar folk material, some old-fashioned faux “Indian” music, and one of his characteristically lush love themes.

Dimitri Tiomkin (born in Ukraine on this date in 1894) was a pupil of Alexander Glazunov. He came to revolutionize the sound of the American West, when he wrote the music for “High Noon,” the first of his “ballad” scores. Advance word, based on an early screening for the press, was that the picture would be a failure. However, Tiomkin had such faith in the theme song, sung in the film by Tex Ritter, that he hired Frankie Laine to record it, and the record became a world-wide hit. In fact, his score is largely credited with having saved the film.

Tiomkin was recognized with two Academy Awards: one for Best Original Song, and one for the score itself. It was the first time a composer won two Oscars for his work on the same movie. It also changed the way western scores were done. In the 1950s, Tiomkin became THE western composer of choice. He produced a number of subsequent ballad scores, including that for “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” (1957). Asked how it was that a composer from Ukraine could write so convincingly for the American West, Tiomkin quipped, “A steppe is a steppe is a steppe.”

Another unexpected source of classic western music, Franz Waxman was born in Upper Silesia. He arrived in the U.S. by way of Germany. Nonetheless, as part of the composer’s varied and prolific output, he did indeed score a number of films in the genre, including “The Furies” (1950), a peculiar noir-western hybrid. Walter Huston, in his final film, plays a cattle baron who remarries and throws his empire into jeopardy. Barbara Stanwyck is his strong-willed daughter.

Hungarian-born composer Miklós Rózsa scored many films with historical settings – “Quo Vadis,” “Ben-Hur,” and “King of Kings,” among them. However, to my knowledge, his only western was “Tribute to a Bad Man” (1956). James Cagney stars as a rancher who doles out some frontier justice.

Finally, we’ll hear music by Ennio Morricone, from arguably the most operatic of all spaghetti westerns, “Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968). As a reaction to Tiomkin’s ballad scores and the neo-Coplandisms of Elmer Bernstein and the rest, Morricone brings his own quirky sensibility to bear on the classic western iconography. Get ready for indelible motifs for harmonica and banjo, but also an unexpectedly moving elegiac arioso, underscoring the close of the American West with the arrival of the railroad.

Doublecheck your train tables and wind your pocket watches. Old World composers go west this week on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Remember, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for those of you listening in the East. Here are the respective air-times for all three of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PM PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EASTERN)

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW! – Saturday on KWAX at 8:00 AM PACIFIC TIME (11:00 AM EASTERN)

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PM PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EASTERN)

Stream all three, at the times indicated, by following the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

May 10, 2024
Big Western Movie Music on Picture Perfect Radio

Having had the seat of my radio shows shifted to the West Coast, I can assure you it is a big country. Thankfully, the distance is handily overcome through the miracle of online streaming, the transcontinental railroad of the digital age.

This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll hit the sundrenched plains and wide-open spaces, with music from outsized movies set in the American West. Live large with selections from “The Big Country” (Jerome Moross), “The Big Sky” (Dimitri Tiomkin), “Big Jake” (Elmer Bernstein), and “Silverado” (Bruce Broughton).

With independence thrust upon me, my declaration is that it’s all BIG, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

See below for streaming information.

Keep in mind, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for the Trenton-Princeton area. Here are the respective air-times of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EDT)

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EDT)

Stream them here!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

June 30, 2023
Lost Worlds Movie Music on KWAX

It’s a shame you’ve got to stream all the way from the West Coast now to enjoy “Picture Perfect,” but there it is. Dropped from its natal station, the show can now be heard only in syndication (distributed exclusively by me). Stream it today on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon.

It seems only appropriate that the focus of such a fine show, so ignominiously dismissed, should be “Lost Worlds and Lands That Time Forgot.”

While the concept of the “Lost World” dates at least as far back as Plato’s Atlantis, it wasn’t until the Victorian Era that the idea really blossomed in the public consciousness. At the time, of course, lost civilizations were genuinely being discovered – which might help to explain, in part, the incredible of success of “King Solomon’s Mines.” The author, H. Rider Haggard, wrote the book on a bet that he could churn out an adventure story half as good as Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island,” which had been published two years earlier.

“King Solomon’s Mines” became the literary sensation of 1885. Its protagonist, Allen Quatermain, is a direct ancestor of Indiana Jones. The book inspired reams of sequels and at least five film adaptations.

The two best known of these starred Stewart Granger and Princeton-born Paul Robeson, respectively. Robeson, who played Umbopa, a king in disguise, received top billing in 1937. It’s music for THAT version that we’ll be sampling. There was no score for the 1950 Granger version, beyond some tribal drumming (although Miklós Rózsa did provide a cue for the film’s trailer). The score for the 1937 adaptation is by Mischa Spoliansky.

Haggard achieved another “Lost World” hit with “She,” first issued in book form two years later, in 1887 – another adventure about Europeans in Africa, who meet a seemingly immortal white queen, known as the all-powerful “She” or “She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed.”

“She” has been adapted to film six times. The 1965 version starred Ursula Andress, Peter Cushing, and Christopher Lee. The music is by Hammer Studios house composer, James Bernard. It’s nice to hear Bernard, who wrote mostly horror scores for the likes of Dracula and Frankenstein, provide something a little more nuanced for a change. She’s theme is so sensuous, it sounds as if it could have been cast off from Ravel’s “Daphnis and Chloe.”

Rudyard Kipling’s “The Man Who Would Be King,” published in 1888, was clearly influenced by the writings of Haggard. In this case, two British adventurers in India strike out for a remote corner of Afghanistan to set themselves up as kings. The story was made into one of the great adventure films of the 1970s, directed by John Huston, and starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine. That Christopher Plummer appears as Kipling himself is only icing on the cake. Maurice Jarre wrote the rousing score.

Finally, James Hilton’s “Lost Horizon,” published in 1933, imagines Shangri-La, a Utopian society nestled in a sheltered valley somewhere in the mountains of Tibet. A British diplomat is one of a handful of passengers who survives a plane crash to be taken into the lamasery.

“Lost Horizon” was made into a film twice. The less said about the 1973 version, a musical with songs by Burt Bacharach, the better. Frank Capra directed the classic 1937 version, which starred Ronald Colman, Jane Wyatt, and outstanding character actors of the day – actors like Edward Everett Horton, Thomas Mitchell, Sam Jaffe, and H.B. Warner.

The score, Dimitri Tiomkin’s first major contribution, was also one of his most ambitious. Seldom was it so obvious that he had studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory under Alexander Glazunov.

I say unto to you what my former employers said unto to me: Get lost! I hope you’ll join me for music for lost civilizations this week, on “Picture Perfect” – music for the movies – this Friday evening, now on KWAX!

See below for streaming information.

Keep in mind, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for the Trenton-Princeton area. Here are the respective air-times of my shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

PICTURE PERFECT – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EDT)

THE LOST CHORD – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EDT)

Stream them here!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

PHOTO: Connery (right) with the man who would be Caine

June 9, 2023
Max Steiner & Dimitri Tiomkin Birthday Film Scores

May 10th is bursting with birthday energy! Turn down the lights for a celebration of those two silverbacks of the silver screen, Max Steiner and Dimitri Tiomkin.

Steiner (1888-1971), the literal godson of Richard Strauss, was instrumental in transplanting the sound of fin de siècle Vienna to the realm of cinematic dreams. He composed over 300 film scores for RKO and Warner Brothers, earning 24 Academy Award nominations and winning three – for “The Informer,” “Now, Voyager” and “Since You Went Away” – though he is unquestionably better remembered today for his work on “King Kong,” “Gone with the Wind” and “Casablanca.”

Tiomkin (1894-1979), a pupil of Alexander Glazunov, was born in Ukraine. He settled in the United States, where he composed music for films in all genres, though in the 1950s he enjoyed particular success writing for Westerns, including the Academy Award-winning “High Noon.” When asked why this would be the case, that a composer born halfway around the world would have such a command of this distinctly American idiom, Tiomkin replied, “A steppe is a steppe is a steppe.”

Tiomkin was honored with four Academy Awards – three for Best Original Score (for “High Noon,” “The High and the Mighty” and “The Old Man and the Sea”) and one for Best Original Song (“The Ballad of High Noon”).

Here’s a transcript of his acceptance speech, delivered after being handed the Oscar for “The High and the Mighty” in 1955:

“Lady and gentlemen, because I working in this town for twenty-five years, I like to make some kind of appreciation to very important factor what make me successful to lots of my colleagues in this town. I’d like to thank Johannes Brahms, Johann Strauss, Richard Strauss, Beethoven, Mozart, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov. Thank you.”

You can watch it here:

Though Steiner and Tiomkin were both very well-connected in the wider musical world, comparatively speaking, neither left very much in the way of classical concert music. In 2019, Intrada Records put out a diverting 2-CD set of Tiomkin’s brightly-scored ballet music, dances composed in Paris for his wife, Albertina Rasch, in 1927-1932, prior to his work in film. It would be wonderful for afternoon drive-time – if only I had a live air shift! You can sample some of it by following the link. Already detectable is Tiomkin’s trademark snarling brass, in a number titled “Mars” (the second track in this YouTube playlist):

In 2020, Oxford University Press published a book by Steven C. Smith, “Music by Max Steiner: The Epic Life of Hollywood’s Most Influential Composer.” Read my impressions of this authoritative biography, unbelievably the first full-length treatment of Steiner’s life and achievements, here. Then get yourself a copy!

Also in 2020, while I was twiddling my thumbs, waiting to get back to work, I put together a Steiner-Tiomkin crossword puzzle. The clues not only allude to specifics of their respective lives and careers, but they should also be of ample interest, I hope, to classic movie buffs. So even if you’re convinced you don’t know a lot about music, do check it out if, like me, you happen to watch a lot of movies from the ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s.

To fill out the puzzle, follow the link and select “solve online” at the bottom of the page. You’ll then be able to type directly into the squares. Once you feel you’ve exhausted the puzzle, you’ll find the solutions by clicking on “Answer Key PDF.”

https://www.armoredpenguin.com/crossword/Data/2020.05/1007/10071219.977.html?fbclid=IwAR1pIAkaVZccK4LXQ5yTMtwJ7kzNlQeOPjgyn3Fkx4X4NcAvd1Cxp52iahw

Happy birthday to Max Steiner and Dimitri Tiomkin, two composers who enriched generations of movie lovers by keeping it “reel!”

Steiner’s “Now, Voyager”

Tiomkin’s “Land of the Pharaohs”

A great, two-part interview with Steiner:

Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQuNnzH6_g8
Part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmJLTn_6UOY

The official Dimitri Tiomkin website:

Welcome to DimitriTiomkin.com

PHOTOS (counter-clockwise from top): Screen credits for their work on “Lost Horizon” (1937); Steiner conducting; Frank Capra (in coat) with Steiner and Tiomkin on the podium; Tiomkin composing

May 10, 2023
Westerns from the Old World

Before American composers like Jerome Moross and Elmer Bernstein made the western distinctly their own, the task of scoring the genre fell largely to European émigrés. This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll take a look at some outside perspectives on how the West was won.

Literally the godson of Richard Strauss, Max Steiner came from Vienna, where he studied with Johannes Brahms and Robert Fuchs. In Hollywood, he wound up scoring such classics as “King Kong,” “Gone with the Wind” and “Casablanca.”

Among his over 300 film projects were a number of westerns. One of these was “They Died with Their Boots On” (1941), which starred Errol Flynn as George Armstrong Custer and Olivia de Havilland as Libby, the woman who becomes his wife. Steiner’s score features familiar folk material, some old-fashioned faux “Indian” music, and one of his characteristically lush love themes.

Born in Ukraine in 1894, Dimitri Tiomkin was a pupil of Alexander Glazunov. He came to revolutionize the sound of the American West, when he wrote the music for “High Noon,” the first of his “ballad” scores. Advanced word, based on an early screening for the press, was that the picture would be a failure. However, Tiomkin had such faith in the theme song, sung in the film by Tex Ritter, that he hired Frankie Laine to record it, and the record became a world-wide hit. In fact, his score is largely credited with having saved the film.

Tiomkin was recognized with two Academy Awards: one for Best Original Song, and one for the score itself. It was the first time a composer won two Oscars for his work on the same movie. It also changed the way western scores were done. In the 1950s, Tiomkin became THE western composer of choice. He produced a number of subsequent ballad scores, including that for “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” (1957). Asked how it was that a composer from Ukraine could write so convincingly for the American West, Tiomkin quipped, “A steppe is a steppe is a steppe.”

Another unexpected source of classic western music, Franz Waxman was born in Upper Silesia. He arrived in the U.S. by way of Germany. Nonetheless, as part of the composer’s varied and prolific output, he did indeed score a number of films in the genre, including “The Furies” (1950), a peculiar noir-western hybrid. Walter Huston, in his final film, plays a cattle baron who remarries and throws his empire into jeopardy. Barbara Stanwyck is his strong-willed daughter.

Hungarian-born composer Miklós Rózsa scored many films with historical settings – “Quo Vadis,” “Ben-Hur,” and “King of Kings,” among them. However, to my knowledge, his only western was “Tribute to a Bad Man” (1956). James Cagney stars as a rancher who doles out some frontier justice.

Finally, we’ll hear music by Ennio Morricone, from arguably the most operatic of all spaghetti westerns, “Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968). As a reaction to Tiomkin’s ballad scores and the neo-Coplandisms of Elmer Bernstein and the rest, Morricone brings his own quirky sensibility to bear on the classic western iconography. Get ready for indelible motifs for harmonica and banjo, but also an unexpectedly moving elegiac arioso, underscoring the close of the American West with the arrival of the railroad.

Better wind your pocket watches. Old World composers go west this week on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies. The train arrives this Saturday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

August 27, 2022

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