He’s a reminder of what film music could be if only composers would be allowed to do their thing, instead of churning out yet another non-descript, inexpensive moan-and-groan that’s convenient to edit right up until the final print is struck. Somebody have the courage to let composers get back to composing, already. Maybe your movies will have more soul. For now, John Williams is the last of the lions.
Tag: Film Music
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Wagner’s Vision Amplified by Cinema
More than any other medium, the movies come closest to fulfilling Richard Wagner’s vision of Gesamtkunstwerk – a total work of art – the all-encompassing synthesis of artistic elements into a kind of “artwork of the future.”
Modern technology has made possible a total immersion of the senses of a sort that Wagner could only have dreamed of. In the right hands, the tools of cinema can handily eclipse the stagecraft the composer worked so hard to achieve at his specially-constructed Bayreuth Festspielhaus, conceived to present works like “The Ring of the Nibelung.” Wagner would have been amazed and delighted at the potential of film, and horrified by its frequent vulgarization.
One thing’s for certain: the Wagnerian concept of the leitmotif – of establishing associations in music between certain themes or thematic cells with onscreen characters, objects, and ideas – was a lesson not lost on film composers. Max Steiner, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and others shepherded the technique from the opera house to the silver screen, and the tradition has been kept alive by composers like John Williams and Howard Shore.
Of course, there have been many times when Wagner’s music was simply lifted or adapted for use in film, from at least Joseph Carl Breil’s appropriation of “Ride of the Valkyries” for the Klansmen in D.W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation” in 1915.
The power of cinema, with its synthesis of images, editing, sound, and music, can overwhelm the senses. Herbert von Karajan claimed that when he saw “Apocalypse Now” he was so caught up in the helicopter sequence that he didn’t even realize in the moment that he was listening to “Ride of the Valkyries,” a work he had conducted countless times.
Wagner’s legacy is a complicated one. Some filmmakers play to his more disturbing associations. Others poke fun at the grandiosity and portentousness of his music. Others still look past the shortcomings of the man to embrace the transcendence of his creations. Leonard Bernstein summed it up nicely, when he said, “I hate Wagner… but I hate him on my knees.”
Wagner may not have lived to see the movies, but the movies certainly “saw” him, and they carried his vision to undreamed of lengths. But for all that, few of them have been able to achieve his resonance.
Happy birthday, Richard Wagner.
Klansmen ride to “Rienzi” and “Ride of the Valkyries” in “The Birth of a Nation”
Charlie Chaplin’s balletic dream of world domination in “The Great Dictator”
Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd in “What’s Opera, Doc?”
“Ride of the Valkyries” in Fellini’s “8 ½”
Ken Russell’s eyebrow-raising “Lisztomania”
Schwarzenegger outruns Teutonic stereotype in “Running Man”
Trek to the vampire’s castle in Herzog’s “Nosferatu”
Lending gravitas to “Excalibur”
Brought to “The New World” by Terrence Malick
Illinois Nazis fall for “The Blues Brothers”
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Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco: A Musical Journey
Things had already been heating up for Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco for some time. His music was banned from radio and performances of his works were cancelled, well before the passage of Italian racial laws in 1938. Castelnuovo-Tedesco was a Jew living in Mussolini’s Italy. He finally emigrated in 1939, when Arturo Toscanini, who loathed fascism, sponsored the composer’s passage to the United States.
Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s music was embraced by Jascha Heifetz and Andrés Segovia, among others. His Violin Concerto No. 2, “The Prophets,” was given its first performance at Carnegie Hall, with Heifetz the soloist and Toscanini on the podium, in 1933. Its three movements are named for the Biblical figures Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Elijah.
I always make it a point to listen to this piece every year around Passover (which this year begins on Wednesday at sunset), but Castelnuovo-Tedesco is a composer whose music is unfailingly enjoyable in all seasons.
Furthermore, anyone who loves film music owes an incalculable debt to him. He wrote music for some 200 movies (including “And Then There Were None,” with Barry Fitzgerald, and “The Loves of Carmen,” with Rita Hayworth), and as a teacher, his students included André Previn, Nelson Riddle, Herman Stein, Henry Mancini, Jerry Goldsmith, and John Williams.
So thank you, and happy birthday, Mario C-T!
Violin Concerto No. 2 “The Prophets”
Segovia masterclass on the Guitar Concerto No. 1
Radio interview with Segovia and the composer
Toscanini conducts an adventurous program, including Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s “Overture to a Fairy Tale” (which, if I’m not mistaken, is the same as his “Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture”)
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Movie Concertos: Beyond the Warsaw Concerto
The craze for the romantic movie concerto likely achieved its delirious apotheosis with the “Warsaw Concerto” from the film “Dangerous Moonlight,” a 1941 potboiler about a fictional pianist who escapes Nazi-occupied Poland, enlists in the RAF and, while suffering from amnesia, attains glory as a fighter pilot during the Battle of Britain.
Richard Addinsell’s showstopper (arranged by Roy Douglas and performed on the soundtrack by Louis Kentner) is said to have yielded over 100 recordings. It certainly spawned numerous imitators.
This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll hear five other movie concertos, including three for piano, one for cello, and a virtuosic showpiece for violin and orchestra.
Tune in for the “Cornish Rhapsody” from “Love Story” (1944) by Hubert Bath; “Symphonie Moderne” from “Four Wives” (1939) by Max Steiner; and the “Concerto Macabre” from “Hangover Square” (1945) by Bernard Herrmann; also the Cello Concerto in C from “Deception” (1946) by Erich Wolfgang Korngold and the “Carmen Fantasy” for violin and orchestra from “Humoresque” (1946) by Franz Waxman.
Enjoy these concerted efforts for the silver screen, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Saturday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
Bait-and-switch trailer for “Deception”
Laird Cregar burning down the house in “Hangover Square”
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Dystopian Visions in Film Scores
If you think the world is in rough shape now, consider tomorrow.
This week on “Picture Perfect,” gaze into the crystal ball for an hour of dystopian visions – glimpses of a bleak future rendered hopeful, in large part, through music.
“Fahrenheit 451” (1966), based on the Ray Bradbury novel, presents a society in which books are outlawed by the state and burned as a means to control the masses. The title refers to the temperature at which paper will ignite. Oskar Werner and Julie Christie star in this Francois Truffaut-directed film. Composer Bernard Herrmann finds the heart at fire’s center.
A robot is left behind to clean up a long-abandoned Planet Earth, in “WALL-E” (2008), one of Pixar’s finely-crafted entertainments. This one has a serious subtext, about rampant consumerism and its impact on an earth made uninhabitable by the sheer volume of garbage. But there’s also a love story, as WALL-E pursues another robot into outer space, with fate-changing consequences. The inventive score is by Thomas Newman.
As dystopias go, Steven Spielberg’s “A.I.: Artificial Intelligence” (2001) is a little more unpleasant than most. “A.I.” grew out of an incomplete project of Stanley Kubrick. Based on Brian Aldiss’s short story, “Super-Toys Last All Summer Long,” the film stars Haley Joel Osment as a child-like android programmed to love, only to be rejected by his adopted family. Abrasive blood sport, unpleasant visions of a debauched city, and human extinction ensue. A great time is had by all!
Also, the film doesn’t know when to end. Oh, how I hate this movie.
That said, John Williams gives it his usual best. The voice of soprano Barbara Bonney graces the admittedly gorgeous soundtrack.
One of the landmarks of silent cinema, Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” (1927) is an eerily prescient vision of a world divided between the “haves” and “have-nots.” Once seen, the subterranean hell of the workers “hive” is not soon to be forgotten. So much of the film continues to resonate, even as its iconography is shamelessly recycled.
Gottfried Huppertz’s original score already adheres to the Straussian model of Golden Age film scores, with leitmotifs representing the characters and ideas. It’s a concept that became associated with Max Steiner and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and which has had an enormous influence on film composers down through the decades, all the way to John Williams and beyond.
Learn more about the challenges of writing such a complex score – which was performed live, with orchestra, at showings of the movie, even as the film was still being edited right up until its premiere – when listening to tonight’s show.
In the meantime, hang on to your humanity! Join me for these cautionary tales about totalitarian government, corporate control, and technology gone awry, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies this Saturday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
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