Films about Classical Music, Composer Biopics et al. (Strictly Classical)

[Roasted Swan]

I was cast as Salieri in my College's production of the play. The theatre majors were somewhat vexed with the Department chairwoman, but she wanted a musician in the role and she had me coached in the part.

The film of Amadeus still works very well I think.  I never quite understood why Tom Hulse was cast with such an obvious American accent but in the DVD extras apparently it was to emphasise how much of an outsider Mozart was in the well-spoken (ie 'proper' English) Austrian court.  I still don't know why Simon Callow in the film as Emanuel Schikaneder also has a naff American accent.....  I did wonder whether he was parodying Hulse out of some kind of envy that he'd got the title role instead of Callow who was brilliant in the National original.....

[Cato]

Oh Boy!  A memory was dredged up, when I saw this topic!


An old Walt Disney short about Tchaikovsky!


One scene in particular has remained in my memory, and in the YouTube comments, the same scene struck several other people when they were children.


The boy Tchaikovsky, tortured by music in his head which will not go away, is prevented from playing the piano, and so plays his music on the window instead.

[Karl Henning]

Oh Boy!  A memory was dredged up, when I saw this topic!


An old Walt Disney short about Tchaikovsky!


One scene in particular has remained in my memory, and in the YouTube comments, the same scene struck several other people when they were children.


The boy Tchaikovsky, tortured by music in his head which will not go away, is prevented from playing the piano, and so plays his music on the window instead.

I don't believe I'd ever seen this before.

[Cato]

I don't believe I'd ever seen this before.

Probably few people under 70 know anything about this curiosity!     It was an episode of the Walt Disney television show (in 1959).

Somebody in the YouTube comments said it was included as an "Extra" with the Disney movie Sleeping Beauty on DVD/Blu-Ray.

[Cato]

Probably few people under 70 know anything about this curiosity!    It was an episode of the Walt Disney television show (in 1959).

Somebody in the YouTube comments said it was included as an "Extra" with the Disney movie Sleeping Beauty on DVD/Blu-Ray.

Trivia: Grant Williams, playing the adult Tchaikovsky, was part of the stable of 20/30-something actors at Warner Brothers in the '50's and '60's, (James Garner being the most successful, others less so e.g. Peter Brown, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Clint Walker, Jack Kelly, Edd "Kookie" Byrnes, et al.

The latter was known for his pile of hair: "Kookie, Kookie, lend me your comb!" was a playground chant for a while! 

[mahler10th]

THE HANS ROTT SCREENPLAY

Once upon a time (2009) I decided to write a screenplay about Hans Rott, the now forgotten composer child from Vienna.  I liked his single Symphony, and thought it a tragedy that he was so maligned by the Vienna establishment of his day and died in madness.  So in a neverending series of cascades and crescendos like his fourth movement, I set out to write some of his life.
Oh my.
I had a 120 page script within 6 months.  It was terrible.  Non linear jumbled mess. Really, REALLY bad.  For some years after this, on and off, I tried to rewrite it, changed things, added scenes, took away scenes, this, that...in the process I was helped by a Member here in GMG, who sent me by POST from the USA photocopies, translations and a great deal of other things related to my Hans Rott research.  I still have all that research, and I value it very much.
Anyway, I kept coming back to it from time to time - in June 2021, I decided to finsih the bugger once and for all.  So I did.  I 'completed' the damn thing on 21.12.2021.  At last it was done!  I sent it away to Berlin Associates - they replied thus:

Dear John,
Many thanks for sending us your work and apologies for such a delayed reply. Your work was actively considered by the team but unfortunately, we will not be offering you representation at this time.
Please note that our agents take on very few new clients as we typically represent writers for the duration of their careers. A rejection from us says more about our current workload than our judgement as to your potential & talent!
Thanks again and all best wishes for the future."

Well, that was a nice rejection note, but I wonder about the comma between 'unfortunately' and 'we' in the second sentence!  Three months after this, I did a full voiced reading of it, and...well...it sucked.  Some events were not foreshadowed or placed in logical order.  The dialogue was absoloutely wrong, sounding forced and contrived, almost written with a middle English accent, not even close to how things were said in Vienna 1870 at all.  Even worse, whilst I was tidying it up in Novemeber 2021, I happened upon a documentary on TV about Auschwitz survivors and the music they made.  Two things happened from my watching that Documentary.  I decided to change my tune on Messiaen, and I would explore him more fully than the Turangalila Symphony which until then I found completely unapproachable and even unlistenable. 
The other thing I learned from that TV show was about Richard Wagner.  I knew he was anti-semite back in the day, but I did not realise just HOW agressively anti-semite he was.  So I decided to portray Wagner with that trait, and rewrote the only scene in which Richard Wagner appears.  That was a BIG mistake.  First of all, it had no part in the actual story.  It didn't need to be referenced.  There was no need for it in the story.  But my fury at Wagner had me rewrite his single scene with Bruckner as a CLEAR and DAMNABLE anti-semite, because he WAS.  I had Wagner saying anti-semetic things about Mahler which had no place, just because I wanted to extract revenge on Wagner for being a despicable person.  I wanted people to HEAR him saying repulsive things.  Wagner supported a Judaic genocide and WROTE about it - it had to be revealed - people needed to know!
No they didn't.  Not in this Screenplay anyway. 
It was totally wrong.  So three months after submitting it to one of the UKs biggest agencies for representation, I immediately took out the references and anti-semite remarks by Wagner.  The danger through igniting such an incendiary subject in the script became clear, it was there for no reason. I am certainly NOT anti-semetic, though my Wagner dialogue could easily be turned against me...So I rewrote Wagner again.
On the run up to getting it finished also, I had no idea how to finish the thing.  Would I put in the final Hospital scenes?  Would I have a link to a visit from Freud in the Hospital?  Will I have him die?  Over the years the Script had become a very hard slog - I needed an end page.  So here we go, I got that through identifying who in Vienna was responsible for issuing State funding of musicians in 1880, found the guy, and had him rather than Johannes Brahms put a stop Hans Rotts ambition to become a State sponsored musician.  It was a convoluted end, and most unsatisfactory, but it was the only one I could come up with.

In conclusion, that was the hardest and longest write I've ever done in the Screenplay format.  "The Symphony" is probably the worst thing I've ever written, despite my wanting it to be one of the better works in my oeuvre.  It was troublesome, hard writing, hard re-writing, hard to arrange, and I despise it.  I really do.  It is much MUCH easier to write an original story than a bio-pic.  On top of that, I am NOT a musician, I gave up Violin for Batman on TV, and I played the Cello a bit, but eventually dropped that in favour of football (soccer).  What a silly boy I was in youth!  So I was not always certain I was getting things musically right in the script...There's a scene in the script where Hans (Rott) is playing a Grand Piano under the direction of Krenn which is so musically niaeve that for musicians, the word laughable is probably what comes to mind.  I even had the venerable old Bruckner throwing students books around the place in disgust at musical process.  The whole bloody thing is STILL a mess (dialogue, etc), because I haven't went back to it, and I don't currently plan to.

That's the Hans Rott story.  I might go back to it, but I don't see that happening.  The Hans Rott screenplay is now DEAD.  But, you know, if you know about this kind of thing, you're welcome to have a PDF copy, just PM me.  In January 22 I sent copies to my research fellow in the US, he's in GMG, you might know him, and I even had the gall to send it to a fully fledged classical composer, also in GMG, you might know him too! 
I have accepted the ridiculousness of someone like me trying to write about someone in Vienna in the late 1800's.  Some of it is definitely well written, but MOST of it...well, it's not going anywhere, so ANYONE is welcome to it.

[Cato]

THE HANS ROTT SCREENPLAY


 
I have accepted the ridiculousness of someone like me trying to write about someone in Vienna in the late 1800's.  Some of it is definitely well written, but MOST of it...well, it's not going anywhere, so ANYONE is welcome to it.

Greetings John!

Check your e-mail addresses! 

[JBS]

The film of Amadeus still works very well I think.  I never quite understood why Tom Hulse was cast with such an obvious American accent but in the DVD extras apparently it was to emphasise how much of an outsider Mozart was in the well-spoken (ie 'proper' English) Austrian court.  I still don't know why Simon Callow in the film as Emanuel Schikaneder also has a naff American accent.....  I did wonder whether he was parodying Hulse out of some kind of envy that he'd got the title role instead of Callow who was brilliant in the National original.....

Outsider status would apply to Schikaneder, I should think, so the logic of American accent=outsider would work there.

[T. D.]

...
There is an obscure Italian film called Basileus Quartet that, better than any other film I've seen, portrays the excitement, drudgery and psychology of being part of a chamber-music group.

I saw that in a cinema back circa 1984 and enjoyed it.

In the curiosity category Werner Herzog's Gesualdo film Death for Five Voices, from which I expected much, enjoyed for a while, but by the end found bogus.

[Madiel]

Outsider status would apply to Schikaneder, I should think, so the logic of American accent=outsider would work there.

The primary logic of the American accent is whether or not the particular actor was capable of some other accent.

[Roasted Swan]

Outsider status would apply to Schikaneder, I should think, so the logic of American accent=outsider would work there.

Good point - and I much prefer the idea that the acting choice is animated by Art than Envy!

[Daverz]

Has anyone seen this one?

Based on the life of Myslivecek.

[Jo498]

The primary logic of the American accent is whether or not the particular actor was capable of some other accent.

I am afraid so. I never liked that movie very much. Maybe I'd be a bit more relaxed about it today. Because regardless of the accent there is no basis for Mozart being an "outsider" at the court or among the nobility. He had been among such society since he was a child and I doubt he would have had a country bumpkin's manners or accent, compared to the Viennese upper crust, neither in German nor in French or Italian.

[Daverz]

I should probably watch Amadeus one of these days, I've only seen clips.  I gather that it makes Salieri out to be a hack as well as a murderer, but what music of his that I've heard has been very attractive. So historical fantasy, then, but it must be better than Ridley Scott's miserable Napoleon.

[Jo498]

It's a well produced movie. The core idea of the jealous Salieri (and divine genius vs. hard work) goes back to legend and a play by Pushkin. I don't know if this is in the original play (I doubt it) but Shaffer/Foreman made Mozart not only into a superior genius but the special offense for the stiff Salieri is that Mozart as portrayed by Hulce is also a ridiculous childish jokester and horny satyr.

While the real Mozart was fond of ribald and scatological jokes, this was a) fairly common at the time and b) strictly in private (letters) and there is AFAIK no indication at all that he would have been a clownesque groper and prankster in public.
(I cannot avoid the comparison with other 1980s stuff (comedies like "Police Academy") where one has today the impression that the sexual liberation of the previous decade now shows itself mostly in tasteless jokes and lots of (accidental?) groping of breasts and buttocks.)

[Roasted Swan]

I should probably watch Amadeus one of these days, I've only seen clips.  I gather that it makes Salieri out to be a hack as well as a murderer, but what music of his that I've heard has been very attractive. So historical fantasy, then, but it must be better than Ridley Scott's miserable Napoleon.

The original play by Peter Schaeffer was never intended to be historically accurate.  It was a "what might have happened" fiction based on the rumour that Salieri in his deathbed claimed to have murdered Mozart.  It's great fun and very well written and the film looks just glorious with so many original Prague locations used.  The film is very well acted too and the large amount of music played by Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martins is glorious.

[Florestan]

I am afraid so. I never liked that movie very much. Maybe I'd be a bit more relaxed about it today. Because regardless of the accent there is no basis for Mozart being an "outsider" at the court or among the nobility. He had been among such society since he was a child and I doubt he would have had a country bumpkin's manners or accent, compared to the Viennese upper crust, neither in German nor in French or Italian.

This, in spades. Leopold Mozart was and educated and cultured man, well-versed in court-and-nobility manners and speech, and surely imparted his knowledge to Wolfgang.

As for Amadeus, it's okay as a piece of fiction. The big problem is that many, if not most, people who see it are not in a position to sift facts from fictions on the topic and are left with the completely false impression that such was the real Mozart who was poisoned by Salieri. Both points are nonsense on stilts.

[Roy Bland]

I don't know if it has dubbed in english

[Florestan]

Its inevitable limitations notwithstanding, I remain fond of Jas Lapine's Impromptu. And, to be sure, it amuses me to reflect that my first sight of Hugh Grant on the screen was in the role of Chopin.

The most historically inaccurate (cringe-inducingly so, actually) film on Chopin is A Song to Remember.

[Roasted Swan]

This, in spades. Leopold Mozart was and educated and cultured man, well-versed in court-and-nobility manners and speech, and surely imparted his knowledge to Wolfgang.

As for Amadeus, it's okay as a piece of fiction. The big problem is that many, if not most, people who see it are not in a position to sift facts from fictions on the topic and are left with the completely false impression that such was the real Mozart who was poisoned by Salieri. Both points are nonsense on stilts.

My sense of the "outsider" is more a question of genius rather than understanding the in and outs of society.  So simply put Mozart is operating on a level of creative brilliance that no-one else can even possibly understand.  Hence the great speech when Salieri curses God for giving him enough talent to recognise the genius in Mozart and thereby be aware of his own (Salieri's) limitations.  Of course the wider understanding that this is a fiction which happens to have a starting point in historical fact.  Probably if the central characters were Eddie Mozart and Bill Salieri folk would be less exercised and just enjoy the cracking story......