Hammer house composer James Bernard (“The Curse of Frankenstein,” “The Horror of Dracula”) makes today’s “Composers Datebook.” To listen to the audio, follow the link and click the green button. As far as I’m concerned, it can’t be Halloween soon enough!
https://www.yourclassical.org/episode/2021/08/26/the-creeping-unknown
Citius! Altius! Fortius!
This week on “Picture Perfect,” to coincide with the Summer Games in Tokyo, we’ll get the blood pumping, with selections from Olympic opening ceremonies and television broadcasts.
Featured composers with include Leo Arnaud (a Ravel pupil, who worked on “The Wizard of Oz” and went on to write THE classic Olympic theme), Angelo Badalamenti (David Lynch’s composer of choice), Basil Poledouris (composer of “Conan the Barbarian” and “The Hunt for Red October”), and John Williams (‘nuff said).
In addition, there will be a suite from the Olympic documentary “16 Days of Glory,” by Lee Holdridge (recipient of seven Emmys and a Grammy),
We’ll be downing our Wheaties and going for the gold, on “Picture Perfect,” this Saturday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org!
FUN FACT: Today is also Arnaud’s birthday!
At last, an article about John Williams’ music for “Jaws” that looks beyond the shark theme. (Follow the link below.)
Granted, that two-note motive is destined for immortality, memorable in a way few other movie themes are, and will likely outlive anything else the composer ever wrote – even “Star Wars,” if you can get your head around that – but there is so much more to this masterful score.
The determined “shark cage” fugue, the high-spirited nautical theme, the neo-Baroque tourist music, all serve to elevate “Jaws” and lend it dimension. In other hands, this might have played as a straightforward horror film. Spielberg’s suspense-thriller is transformed in large part through its music into an exhilarating summer entertainment – a genuine good time at the movies.
Roy and I will discuss this seminal summer blockbuster, to kick off the Fourth of July weekend, on the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner, livestreamed on Facebook, this Friday evening at 7:00 EDT.
Be forewarned: the article at the link contains spoilers, and so will our show. (Also, it is advisable to avoid all sequels!)
An appreciation of John Williams’ “Jaws” here:
https://www.rogerebert.com/features/revisiting-john-williams-score-for-jaws-45-years-later
A definite high point from the film (you might want to watch the movie first, if you haven’t seen it):
Alas, Williams couldn’t save “Jaws 2,” but it was not for want of trying:
Atticus Finch may have been a model father, but he was also one of cinema’s most memorable attorneys. This week on “Picture Perfect,” a generous suite from Elmer Bernstein’s score for “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962) will cap an hour of music from movies about lawyers, judges, and courtrooms.
Ernest Gold, a composer best known for his Academy Award-winning work on “Exodus,” wrote the music for several courtroom dramas. We’ll begin with the theme to “The Young Philadelphians” (1959), a film starring Paul Newman as an ambitious young lawyer whose rise is complicated by various ethical and emotion hurdles.
That will be followed, without break, by the theme to “Inherit the Wind” (1960), the big screen adaptation of a play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, inspired by the events of the Scopes Monkey Trial. The film features Spencer Tracy and Fredric March, as fictionalized versions of Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, respectively, Gene Kelly as an H.L. Mencken-like newspaper reporter, and Dick York, of “Bewitched” fame, as the small-town school teacher who introduces his students to the concept of evolution.
Louis Calhern was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his turn as Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in “The Magnificent Yankee” (1950). Calhern had created the role of Holmes in the original Broadway production.” Emmet Lavery’s script was adapted from the historical novel, “Mr. Justice Holmes,” by Francis Biddle. The score is by Philadelphia-born David Raksin, best known for his music for “Laura.”
As a collaborator of Virgil Thomson, Orson Welles, Marc Blitzstein, and David O. Selznick, among others, and as founding director of the drama department at Juilliard, John Houseman could already look back on a lifetime’s worth of achievements, when he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, at the age of 71, for his performance in “The Paper Chase” (1973). Houseman plays the formidable Professor Kingsfield, Timothy Bottoms a first-year student in one of his classes at Harvard Law, and Lindsay Wagner, Bottoms’ love interest – who happens to be Kingsfield’s daughter. The music is by John Williams, written two years before “Jaws” and four years before “Star Wars.” Williams has a more varied resume than many would suspect.
Finally, just in time for Father’s Day, Gregory Peck assumes one of his most memorable roles, as defense attorney Atticus Finch, in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” based on Harper Lee’s beautiful coming-of-age novel. The book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1961. Peck won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1962. Elmer Bernstein wrote the music, one of his most moving scores.
We’ll be laying down the law (with a nod to Dad for Father’s Day) this week, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Saturday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
May 29 marks the birthday of one of my favorite composers: Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957). Thanks to a steady diet of Errol Flynn films, Korngold will forever be a part of the soundtrack to my life.
Korngold went from being one of Europe’s most astounding musical prodigies – his works admired by Mahler, Strauss and Puccini, and championed by Schnabel, Weingartner and Klemperer – to becoming one of Hollywood’s transformative film composers. He is a link from Old World opulence to New World fantasy, his music gracing a number of Warner Brothers’ classic historical adventures.
The best ones starred Flynn, and this week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll hear music from “The Sea Hawk” (1940) and “The Adventures of Robin Hood” (1938), as well as the mostly forgotten “Another Dawn” (1937). Flynn stars alongside Kay Francis and Ian Hunter (who would go on to play Richard the Lionheart in “Robin Hood”) in this love triangle involving pilots in a British desert colony.
The film may be an obscurity to all save classic movie buffs, but Korngold thought enough of his music that he salvaged the main title as the opening theme of his Violin Concerto, premiered by Heifetz in 1947.
It was an invitation from theatrical impresario Max Reinhardt that brought Korngold to Hollywood in the first place, for a cinematic adaptation of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (1935). The film stars James Cagney, Dick Powell and Olivia de Havilland, in her big screen debut, with Mickey Rooney an irrepressible Puck.
For the project, Korngold adapted the famous incidental music of Felix Mendelssohn, interweaving material from Mendelssohn’s symphonies and orchestrating some of the “Songs without Words.” Even so, the music bears the composer’s unmistakable stamp, as you’ll hear in the opening number, lifted from the “Scottish Symphony,” but infused with plenty of Korngoldian swagger.
I hope you’ll join me, as the playlist is all-Korngold this week, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Saturday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
Happy birthday, EWK!
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