Classic Ross Amico

Tag: John Williams

Milton Babbitt a surprising composer

In reading an interview with John Williams in The New Yorker only a few months back, I was amused to discover that he and Milton Babbitt enjoyed a friendship of sorts. I guess Babbitt was a Bernard Herrmann fan. Who knew?

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/the-force-is-still-strong-with-john-williams

Babbitt, who was born in Philadelphia on this date in 1916, was a fixture at Princeton University for many years. It’s telling that he joined both the music and mathematics faculties there. Later, he also served on the faculty of the Juilliard School.

He gained widespread notoriety for his essay published under the title “Who Cares If You Listen?” The provocative slant was actually the result of an editorial decision. Babbitt’s original title had been “The Composer as Specialist” – not likely to generate nearly as much controversy.

Broadly speaking, while he frequently composed in a serial style, his music is fairly lucid, without undo congestion, and with a minimum of soul-crushing dissonances. On the contrary, he often achieved a paradoxical simplicity under the guise of complexity.

In the 1960s, Babbitt became interested in electronic music, apparently more for its rhythmic precision than for any unusual timbral considerations. I find it endearing to learn that he was also fond of jazz and musical theater. He himself was a saxophonist. In 1946, he penned a musical, “Fabulous Voyage,” a retelling of Homer’s “The Odyssey.”

Babbitt was the recipient of an honorary Pulitzer Prize in 1982. He died in Princeton in 2011, at the age of 94.

Listen here for “Penelope’s Night Song” from “Fabulous Voyage”:

“Composition for Twelve Instruments” (1948):

“Reflections” (1974) for piano and synthesized tape:

Milton Babbitt on electronic music:

January 10, 2021
Johnny Williams Before the Blockbusters

Before “Harry Potter.” Before “Jurassic Park.” Before “E.T.” Before “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Before “Superman.” Before “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Before “Star Wars.” Before “Jaws.” Before even John Williams… there was Johnny Williams.

Well before Williams became America’s most famous living composer, he was busy honing his craft as an orchestrator, an arranger, a session pianist, and a composer in the bush league of television. This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll hear some of “Johnny” Williams’ music for “Lost in Space.”

Also on the program will be selections from “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour” by Bernard Herrmann, the theme from “Wagon Train” by Jerome Moross, and a medley of well-known television music by Jerry Goldsmith.

Movie composers think inside the box, on “Picture Perfect,” this Saturday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

December 5, 2020
Film Composers on TV Picture Perfect

The music is big… it’s the PICTURES that got small.

This week on “Picture Perfect,” it’s an hour of music from television scores by composers better known for their work in film.

Bernard Herrmann began his film career right at the top, with “Citizen Kane” in 1941. He is perhaps best recognized for his scores for the films of Alfred Hitchcock, many of which have gone on to become classics, including those for “Vertigo,” “North by Northwest,” and especially “Psycho.”

Less well known is his work on the television series “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour,” which ran from 1963 to 1965. Herrmann composed music for 17 of the episodes. He was also responsible for suggesting Hitchcock’s signature tune, Charles Gounod’s “Funeral March of a Marionette,” which appears throughout the series in Herrmann’s own arrangement.

Jerome Moross, Herrmann’s friend since childhood, had also enjoyed his share of success on the silver screen. Moross is best-remembered for having written the score for “The Big Country.” Nobody wrote western music quite like Moross. So it’s hardly surprising he would be asked to contribute to twelve episodes of “Wagon Train.”

When someone noticed that the “Wagon Train” theme bore a striking resemblance to some of Moross’ music written for the film “The Jayhawkers,” two competing studios were kind enough to look the other way.

Unlike Moross and Herrmann, who were both well-known by the time they ventured into television, John Williams was still very much on his way up. Williams, then billed as “Johnny,” was active in the movies throughout the 1960s, but his film projects at the beginning were mostly undistinguished, with titles like “Daddy-O,” “Gidget Goes to Rome,” and “John Goldfarb, Please Come Home.”

Of course, he worked as a musician on more reputable projects, appearing as pianist on the soundtracks of “The Big Country,” “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Charade.” He also worked as an orchestrator on “The Guns of Navarone.”

But what provided much of Williams’ bread-and-butter throughout the ‘60s was his work on television series like “Checkmate,” “Gilligan’s Island,” and – for our purposes this week – “Lost in Space.” Happily, that “Williams sound,” so beloved by fans of “Stars Wars,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and “E.T.,” was already in place.

Finally, Jerry Goldsmith may have been a little bit ahead of Williams in the ‘60s, in terms of being offered more substantial films, but he too worked in television, providing scores for “Have Gun, Will Travel,” “The Twilight Zone,” and “Dr. Kildare.” We’ll conclude the hour with a medley of familiar Goldsmith television themes, with the composer conducting the London Symphony Orchestra.

You’re invited to think inside the box, as film composers write for television this week, on “Picture Perfect,” this Saturday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

December 4, 2020
Thanksgiving Music WWFM

This week on “Picture Perfect,” it will be a much-needed reality check, as we pause to give thanks for the blessings of family, community, and country. Join me for selections from “The Cummington Story” (Aaron Copland), “Field of Dreams” (James Horner), “The Best Years of Our Lives” (Hugo Friedhofer), and “Lincoln” (John Williams). We’ll tune out the noise and focus on what’s really important for Thanksgiving, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Saturday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

PHOTO: Homer’s homecoming in “The Best Years of Our Lives”

November 21, 2020
Airport Movie Music on Picture Perfect

This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’re ready to take flight, at our new time – Saturday at 7 pm – with music from movies about airports and airplanes.

In the original “Airport” (1970), producer Irwin Allen established the prototype for disaster movies of all stripes by placing an all-star, aging cast in spectacular peril. Burt Lancaster! Dean Martin! George Kennedy! Jean Seberg! Jacqueline Bisset! Helen Hayes! The list goes on and on, longer than the longest runway. The bongo-laden theme is by veteran film composer Alfred Newman,” from the last of his over 200 scores.

Another movie with something of the same feel is “The V.I.P.s” (1963), allegedly inspired by the real-life love-triangle of Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier, and Peter Finch. The story is set at London Heathrow Airport, where flights are delayed because of a dense fog. The film was written by Terrence Rattigan and the parts cast from another laundry list of stars, including Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Louis Jourdan, Maggie Smith, Rod Taylor, and Orson Welles, with Margaret Rutherford in an Academy Award-winning performance. The music is by Miklós Rózsa.

By contrast, Steven Spielberg’s “The Terminal” (2004) is an (intentionally) comic take on the predicament of a hapless Eastern European who finds himself in a kind limbo, trapped in an international arrivals terminal in New York, after his country erupts into civil war, so that his passport and other documentation are no longer valid. His plight mirrors that of real-life Mehran Karimi Nasseri, an Iranian who lived for 17 years in a terminal at Charles de Gaulle Airport.

Tom Hanks plays the unfortunate traveler, who makes the terminal his home, and Catherine Zeta-Jones the airline attendant with whom he strikes up a relationship. The music is by regular Spielberg collaborator John Williams, and I think you’ll find it quite different from the Williams known for his work on “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones.”

Finally, we’ll turn to the Alfred Hitchcock thriller “North by Northwest” (1959), a film in which Cary Grant encounters love and danger in, on, and from a variety of planes, trains, and automobiles. Planes are particularly significant. During the course of the film, it’s revealed that the title is in reference to a Northwest Airlines flight; Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint) must do all she can to avoid getting on a plane with Phillip Vandamm (James Mason); and of course, Roger Thornhill (Grant) flees from a strafing crop duster. Bernard Herrmann’s opening fandango propels us into the adventure.

Rush more to Rushmore. Departure time is this Saturday evening at 6:00 EDT, on “Picture Perfect” – music for the movies – on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

September 12, 2020

Tag Cloud

RECENT POSTS