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Tag: Exodus

Jewish Film Music for the High Holy Days

This week on “Picture Perfect,” to coincide with the Jewish High Holy Days, we’ll have music from movies and television series informed by aspects of the Jewish experience.

We’ll begin with “Exodus” (1960), based on the bestselling novel by Leon Uris, about the founding of the State of Israel. The book is said to have been the biggest seller in the United States since “Gone with the Wind.” The film was directed by Otto Preminger. Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint lead an all-star cast. Ernest Gold’s stirring music was recognized with an Academy Award and is probably his best-known achievement.

Barry Levinson’s semi-autobiographical “Avalon” (1990) explores the immigrant experience and, for better or worse, the assimilation of a Jewish family into American culture. Alongside his work on “The Natural,” Randy Newman’s score is probably one of his best-loved.

The balance of the hour will be devoted to music from two acclaimed television scores: one for the NBC miniseries “Holocaust” (1978), written by the esteemed concert composer Morton Gould, and the other, the PBS series “Heritage: Civilization and the Jews” (1984), by Emmy Award-winning composer John Duffy.

I hope you’ll join me for a “new year” sampler of films about the Jewish experience this week, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Saturday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

October 1, 2022
Kilar’s Exodus Passover and a Klezmer Motif

Chag Sameach! Passover begins at sunset.

Wojciech Kilar (1932-2013) is probably best-known in this country for his film scores. He composed music for well over 100 movies, gaining a toehold in international cinema fairly late in his career. American audiences may recognize his work for “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (1992), “The Portrait of a Lady,” (1996), and “The Pianist” (2002).

But in his native Poland, he was also a major concert composer, of the same generation as Krzysztof Penderecki and Henryk Górecki. My own first exposure to Kilar was on a concert of the Philadelphia Orchestra, given back in 1987, when Witold Rowicki conducted a fascinating work titled “Krzesany” (1974), a symphonic poem evocative of a Polish mountain dance that employs aleatoric elements.

In 1979-81, Kilar composed “Exodus,” a 23-minute crescendo, after the manner of Ravel’s “Boléro,” only crowned by the entrance of a chorus, which sings “Domine ecce venit populus tuus” (“Lord, behold, your people come”), in a spirit of mounting exultation.

Though it is by no means film music, its genesis was in Kilar’s research in writing music for Peter Lilienthal’s film, “David” (1979). The composer stumbled across a klezmer motif in a Jewish songbook, and it basically took him over. He dedicated the finished piece to Krzysztof Zanussi, another filmmaker.

Interestingly, Kilar’s “Exodus” did enjoy a brief vogue in the movies, in trailers, such as the one for “Schindler’s List.”

You can view a live performance of it here:

Be sure to stick around for a golf clap from the clergy at the end (except for the guy at the far end of the pew, who seems to have genuinely enjoyed it).

Marc Chagall, “The Train Crossed the Red Sea” from “Exodus” (1966)

April 15, 2022
Ernest Gold: Exodus Oscar Winner

While Ernest Gold embarked on his career as a composer of symphonies, his heart was always in the world of Max Steiner. Gold was born Ernst Sigmund Goldner, in Vienna, 100 years ago today.

If you missed my tribute to Gold Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” on WWFM – The Classical Network, the show is now posted as a webcast. On the program is his String Quartet No. 1, his song cycle “Songs of Love and Parting,” and two of his most famous film themes – those for “Exodus” and “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.” The songs are performed by Gold’s wife of 19 years, Marni Nixon, the soprano who “ghost voiced” for a number of the musicals’ leading ladies, in films like “The King and I,” “My Fair Lady,” and “West Side Story.”

https://www.wwfm.org/post/lost-chord-july-11-unalloyed-gold

As an addendum, it’s only within the last year or so that I discovered Gold’s Piano Concerto, written when he was 17 years-old. The recording appeared on a CD with George Antheil’s music for the film “Dementia.” Gold worked as an orchestrator on a number of Antheil’s films. When Antheil fell ill and was unable to follow through on a commitment to score “On the Beach,” Gold stepped up. The music earned Gold an Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe.

In all, Gold would be nominated by the Academy four times. He was recognized with an Oscar for his powerful contribution to “Exodus” in 1960. Here’s another nice Gold tribute:

Eddie Harris riffs on “Exodus”:

Not really my cup of tea, but “Fight for Survival” from “Exodus” was sampled (a string passage, reversed) by Moby, great-great-great nephew of Herman Melville (!), for his song “Porcelain.”

All that glitters is Gold. Happy birthday, Ernest Gold!

PHOTO: With Bobby Darin, Sandra Dee, and his “Exodus” Oscar

July 13, 2021
Ernest Gold Hollywood’s Viennese Master

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’re on the quest for Gold – Ernest Gold, that is.

July 13 marks the composer’s centenary. Gold, who won an Academy Award for his work on “Exodus” in 1960, wrote nearly 100 film scores, including those for “The Defiant Ones,” “Inherit the Wind,” and “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.” He was perhaps Hollywood’s last major musical link with Old Vienna.

Though from the start his ambition was to write for film like his hero, Max Steiner, for a time he eked out a livelihood in New York, where he had settled following the Anschluss in 1938. There, he found work as a piano accompanist and a writer of popular songs. He used the income to formally study harmony and orchestration. He wrote a symphony in 1941. It was never performed in his lifetime, though his Piano Concerto made it to Carnegie Hall. It was damned by the critics for sounding like movie music, but Gold embraced the endorsement, packed his bags, and struck out for the West Coast. Eventually he would secure a foothold at Columbia Studios, where he worked with directors like Stanley Kramer and Otto Preminger.

Despite his love of film, he never lost his enthusiasm for composing absolute music. The result was a piano sonata, a Symphony for Five Instruments, and one of the works I’ll be featuring this evening, his String Quartet No. 1 from 1948. It had been Gold’s intention that it would be a very serious piece, of an uncompromising, modernist bent. But he soon struck up against a mental block and realized that the only way to go was to write from the heart.

For 19 years, Gold was married to Marni Nixon, the second of his three wives. If you’re a fan of screen musicals of the 1950s and ‘60s, you probably know that Nixon dubbed the singing voices of lead actresses in films like “The King and I,” “West Side Story,” and “My Fair Lady.”

Gold wrote his “Songs of Love and Parting” expressly for Nixon in 1963. The texts were drawn from a variety of sources, the better to convey the universality of love and the heartache of separation, including poetry by James Thomson, William Shakespeare, Robert Burns, Emily Dickinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

In the few minutes remaining at the end of the hour, we’ll also have time for a couple of Gold’s classic film themes. I hope you’ll join me for “Unalloyed Gold,” a remembrance of Ernest Gold in advance of his centenary, this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

July 11, 2021
Jewish Film Music for the High Holy Days

This week on “Picture Perfect,” to coincide with the Jewish High Holy Days, we’ll have music from movies and television series inspired by aspects of the Jewish experience.

We’ll begin with “Exodus” (1960), based on the bestselling novel by Leon Uris, about the founding of the State of Israel. The book is said to have been the biggest seller in the United States since “Gone With the Wind.” The film was directed by Otto Preminger. Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint lead an all-star cast. Ernest Gold’s stirring music was recognized with an Academy Award and is probably his best-known achievement.

Barry Levinson’s semi-autobiographical “Avalon” (1990) explores the immigrant experience and, for better or worse, the assimilation of a Jewish family into American life. Alongside his work on “The Natural,” Randy Newman’s score is probably one of his best-loved.

We’ll round out the hour with music from two acclaimed television scores: for the NBC mini-series “Holocaust” (1978), written by the esteemed concert composer Morton Gould, and Emmy Award-winning music from the PBS series “Heritage: Civilization and the Jews” (1984), by John Duffy.

I hope you’ll join me as we celebrate the Jewish experience this week, on “Picture Perfect” – music for the movies – this Friday evening at 6 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

September 22, 2017

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