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Tag: Memorial Day

WWII Film Scores for Memorial Day

While you’re sitting in traffic heading into your three-day weekend, take a moment to consider that you’ve got it easy compared to what Allied soldiers went through in Europe, the Pacific and North Africa to keep the world free from tyranny.

This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll have music from two films of the World War II era that exemplify Hollywood’s morale-boosting approach. “Sahara” (1943) pits Humphrey Bogart as a tank commander who defends a watering hole against a superior force of parched Nazis. “Objective: Burma!” (1945) drops Errol Flynn behind enemy lines to take out a Japanese radar station.

Neither film shuns the reality that war is hell (with some particularly suggestive gruesomeness in the latter), yet the filmmakers rose above the kind of nihilistic edge that underscores so many movies made today. When all was said and done, war movies in the 1940s sold America on hope and sacrifice and the promise of final victory.

The conflict cast a long shadow, and in the 1950s and ‘60s Hollywood continued to churn out WWII films at an impressive rate, selling tickets to the generation that had “been there.” “The Guns of Navarone” (1961) features Gregory Peck (exempt from service during the actual war because Martha Graham injured his back), David Niven (Lieutenant Colonel in the British Commandos at Normandy) and Anthony Quinn (born in Mexico and not naturalized until 1947) as a special unit of Allied military specialists on a mission to blow up some big Nazi guns trained over the Aegean Sea.

Efforts to get “Patton” (1970) off the ground had been in motion since 1953! The filmmakers wanted access to Patton’s diaries, but displayed horrible timing in approaching the late general’s family the day after the death of his widow. Not surprisingly, the family was completely turned off and withheld its cooperation. In the end Franklin J. Schaffner directed from a script by Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H. North. Patton’s colleague, Omar Bradley, served as an advisor on the film. (He’s played on screen by Karl Malden.)

“Patton” likely would have been a knockout on any level (Rod Steiger turned down the lead, much to his later regret), but it is really George C. Scott that pushes it over the top. And how much more over the top can it get than that opening monologue, assembled from Patton’s speech to the Third Army, delivered in front of an enormous American flag? Only a larger-than-life actor such as Scott could have done it justice and not been dwarfed by both the subject and the iconography. Scott won a much-deserved Academy Award for his performance – which he famously refused to accept.

I hope you can join me for equally outsized music by Miklós Rózsa (“Sahara”), Franz Waxman (“Objective: Burma!”), Dimitri Tiomkin (“The Guns of Navarone”) and Jerry Goldsmith (“Patton”), as we look forward to Memorial Day with classic films set during World War II, this Friday evening at 6 EDT, with a repeat Saturday morning at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at wwfm.org.

May 27, 2016
Copland’s Memorial Day Sonata

Memorial Day.

Aaron Copland dedicated his one and only Violin Sonata, composed in 1942 and 1943, to the memory of his close friend, Lieutenant Harry H. Dunham (a Princeton alumnus), who died in action in the South Pacific shortly after the work was completed.

Virgil Thomson wrote in the New York Herald Tribune, “I suspect it is one of the author’s most satisfying pieces… It has a quality at once of calm elevation and buoyancy that is characteristic of Copland and irresistibly touching.”

Here’s a performance by Louis Kaufman (who advised the composer on bowings and fingerings), with Copland himself at the keyboard:

Mov’t I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8kY1jO4Z34
Mov’t II https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKr4ZZrT3Sw
Mov’t III https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUvAi33DkXQ

PHOTO: Aaron Copland, American music’s secret weapon

May 25, 2015
Memorial Day Military Symphonies on The Lost Chord

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” in anticipation of Memorial Day, we’ll have two symphonies composed for the armed forces.

Morton Gould wrote his Symphony No. 4 for the United States Military Academy at West Point. It was his first large scale piece for symphonic band. The score calls for a “marching machine,” but the recording we’ll hear, issued on the Mercury label, employs the feet of 120 musicians of the Eastman School Symphony Band. Frederick Fennell directs the Eastman Wind Ensemble.

Samuel Barber composed his Symphony No. 2 in 1943, while he was serving in the U.S. Army Air Force. 20 years later, he revised and published the slow movement as a separate opus, titled “Night Flight,” and then jettisoned – and actually tried to destroy – the rest. The work was reconstituted after the composer’s death, and is now back in circulation. We’ll hear a recording with Marin Alsop and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

I hope you’ll join me for “Orchestrated Maneuvers” – American military symphonies for Memorial Day – tonight at 10 ET, with a repeat Wednesday evening at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast, at http://www.wwfm.org.

PHOTO: Corporal Samuel Barber with the score of his Second Symphony

May 24, 2015
Memorial Day Movie Music Valor and Sacrifice

It’s all about valor and sacrifice this week on “Picture Perfect,” as we anticipate Memorial Day.

Memorial Day has its roots in Decoration Day, established in 1868 to honor the Civil War dead. We’ll hear music from “Glory” (1989), inspired by the extraordinary courage of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw’s 54th Massachusetts Voluntary Regiment, an all African American outfit that distinguished itself in an impossible assault on Fort Wagner, near Charleston, South Carolina. The outstanding cast features Morgan Freeman, Matthew Broderick, and Cary Elwes, with an Oscar-winning performance by Denzel Washington. The poignant score is by James Horner.

(Incidentally, the movie will be shown on Turner Classic Movies: TCM tomorrow night at 10:30 ET, as part of its annual Memorial Day marathon.)

Gary Cooper had one of his best roles as “Sergeant York” (1941), based on the true story of Alvin C. York, who went from backwoods hell-raiser to devout pacifist. After a period of soul-searching, York was able to reconcile his strong moral convictions with the unfortunate reality that sometimes it really is necessary to fight. He went on to distinguish himself on the battlefield and become one of the most-decorated soldiers of the First World War. The folksy score, evocative of York’s Tennessee roots, is by Max Steiner.

In director Michael Cimino’s “The Deer Hunter” (1978), three men from a small Pennsylvania steel town serve in Vietnam, then struggle to cope with the war’s psychological impact. The harrowing film, especially memorable for its scenes of Russian roulette in a P.O.W. camp, won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. Christopher Walken was honored with the award for Best Supporting Actor. Stanley Myers wrote the music. We’ll hear his famous “Cavatina,” performed by guitarist John Williams, not to be confused with…

… composer John Williams, who provided one of his sparser scores for “Saving Private Ryan” (1998). Steven Spielberg’s war-is-hell narrative yet manages to honor the sacrifice of the fighting men of World War II. The opening – a sustained “you-are-there” battle sequence on Omaha Beach – is unforgettable. Remarkably, it is presented wholly without music, Williams preferring to allow the tension of the mise-en-scène to speak for itself. Spielberg picked up his second Academy Award for Best Director. The film, however, inexplicably, lost to “Shakespeare in Love.”

I hope you’ll join me for music from these cinematic meditations on the costs and consequences of war, as we honor the sacrifice of soldiers who died while serving in America’s armed forces, this evening at 6 ET, with a repeat Saturday morning at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast, at http://www.wwfm.org.

May 22, 2015
Memorial Day Remembrance Herrmann’s Fallen

It’s Memorial Day. Before you start in with the burgers and the quoits and the three legged-race and the gumboot toss and all that, remember how lucky we are, and those who laid down their lives believing they were doing something for the greater good.

Bernard Herrmann is most celebrated for his film scores, in particular those he wrote for Alfred Hitchcock, though he did much brilliant besides. Here’s a concert piece he wrote in 1943, called “For the Fallen,” in a fascinating historical document with the composer conducting the New York Philharmonic:

Here it is again in a modern performance, with more up-to-date sound:

Listen to both if you can. Happy Memorial Day.

May 26, 2014

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