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 Classical Oregon!
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Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT
Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!
https://kwax.uoregon.edu
Tag: Franz Waxman
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Waxman and Heifetz Toast the New Year
Franz Waxman, of course, was one of the great film composers. His music can be heard in “The Bride of Frankenstein,” “Rebecca,” “The Philadelphia Story,” “Sunset Boulevard,” “A Place in the Sun,” “Rear Window,” “Peyton Place,” “The Spirit of St. Louis,” and dozens of others.
It was customary that Waxman and his family would get together with their neighbors, the Jascha Heifetzes, to welcome the new year with an evening of chamber music. Other guests on these occasions would include violist William Primrose and cellist Gregor Piatigorsky.
Mainstream classical fare would dominate the festivities until the countdown to midnight. With the turn of the year, the musical selections would become a bit more frivolous.
Waxman composed his “Auld Lang Syne Variations” in 1947, for one such gathering. This party piece sends up the traditional New Year’s anthem in the styles of several well-known composers.
Feel free to play along and test your musical knowledge. You’ll find further clues in the work’s subtitles, listed below the video on YouTube. One can only imagine Heifetz stepping out in “Chaconne à Son Gout.”
Happy New Year! -
Hitchcock’s Other Composers Beyond Herrmann
Alfred Hitchcock’s most celebrated musical collaborator was Bernard Herrmann. Herrmann scored just about every one of Hitch’s films over the span of a decade, enhancing the impact and memorability of such classics as “Vertigo,” “North by Northwest,” and “Psycho.” But Hitchcock also worked with a number of other notable composers.
This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll cast some light into Herrmann’s shadow with selections from “Rebecca” (Franz Waxman), “Strangers on a Train” (Dimitri Tiomkin), “Spellbound” (Miklós Rózsa), and “Family Plot” (John Williams).
Herrmann goes on hiatus, and the suspense is killing us, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT
Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!
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Sweetness & Light Solo Instrument Showcase
This week on “Sweetness and Light,” musicians step out to strut their stuff in a collection of lighter works for solo instrument and orchestra.
Some of the pieces will be well-known, some perhaps not. We’ll enjoy a trumpet overture derived from a film score by Franz Waxman, a scherzo by the swashbuckling pianist and composer Henry Charles Litolff, a polka for bassoon and orchestra evocative of a grumpy old bear by Julius Fučík, and more.
A highlight will surely be a cello concerto by Arthur Sullivan, later of Gilbert & Sullivan fame, that was destroyed by fire but reconstructed decades later, largely from memory, by Sir Charles Mackerras.
One is the loneliest number, as the old song goes. So put your hands together for soloists stepping into the “light music” spotlight, on “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EST/8:00 PST, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Stream it, wherever you are, at the link:
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King Arthur Movie Music on KWAX
This week on “Picture Perfect,” the Once and Future King of film music shows continues on KWAX, with selections from movies inspired by the legends of King Arthur.
The legends provide so much grist for “Prince Valiant” (1954), based on Hal Foster’s enduring comic strip, set in the days of Arthur, though Val himself is a Viking prince of the kingdom of Scandia. Janet Leigh plays Princess Aleta, James Mason the villainous Sir Brack, Victor McLaglen Val’s Viking pal Boltar, and Sterling Hayden a preposterous Gawain. For the title role, Robert Wagner dons the signature page-boy haircut. The score, by Franz Waxman, is every bit as vivid as the film’s Technicolor, and a clear prototype for the exuberant, leitmotif-driven music of John Williams.
“The Mists of Avalon” (2001), adapted from Marion Zimmer Bradley’s novel, takes the ingenious approach of retelling the Arthurian stories from the perspective of the oft-marginalized female characters. The revisionist approach breathes fresh life into the familiar tales, so that the book was greeted with critical and popular acclaim upon its release in 1983. A television miniseries, starring Julianna Margulies, Angelica Huston and Joan Allen, was produced for TNT, with music by Lee Holdridge.
“First Knight” (1995) features an unlikely cast of Sean Connery as Arthur, Richard Gere as Lancelot, and Julia Ormond as Guinevere. The film is unique, to my knowledge, in being based on the writings of medieval French poet Chrétien de Troyes, as opposed to the more frequently-employed source, Sir Thomas Malory.
The score is by Jerry Goldsmith. It was actually a bit of a rush job for Goldsmith, who stepped up at the very last minute to replace Maurice Jarre. Jarre had been approached to write music for what was originally a three-hour cut of the film. However, he only had four weeks in which to do so. Goldsmith, very well-known for his ability to write at white heat, was able to complete the score, and record the music in the allotted time.
“Knights of the Round Table” (1953) may lack the gravitas and grit of “Excalibur” – in my opinion, the most powerful of the Arthurian films – but it does sport some undeniably satisfying 1950s spectacle. The glossy and pat MGM production stars Robert Taylor as Lancelot, Ava Gardner as Guinevere, and Mel Ferrer as Arthur. The fine score is by Miklós Rózsa, from the height of his “historical epic” phase.
It’s more than just a knight at the movies. Polish up on music for the films of King Arthur, on “Picture Perfect,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
For streaming information, see below.
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!
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