Topic: Film (movie) Music

[Wanderer]

Isn't "King's Row" by Korngold, too?

Yes, it is.

[vandermolen]

Copland the Barbarian? 

 

[vandermolen]

Thanks for v interesting replies. I could have added many to my original list, especially Alien (Goldsmith), On the Waterfront (Bernstein), To Kill a Mockingbird (E Bernstein), Ben Hur (Rozsa), Clockwork Orange.

Others:

The Ghost and Mrs Muir/North by Northwest (Herrmann)

[eyeresist]

Vertigo, Psycho - Bernard Herrmann. Obviously.

Dune - Toto + a bunch of arrangers and "additional music" producers listed in the small print.

Starship Troopers - Basil Polidouris (a shame the compressed recording precludes more frequent listening)

Seahawk - Korngold. I first heard the suite in its great recording by Gerhard (sp?). The Gamba recording simply doesn't measure up.

Gone with the Wind - Steiner. I have this in a fine performance by a London pick-up orchestra. It's a shame it doesn't get more live performances, it's really grand Late Romantic stuff.

Star Wars - John Williams. A cassette of film music conducted by Williams was one of my entry points into classical music. Apart from the opening theme, there's Leia's Theme and the Imperial March, both excellent by any fair-minded estimation.

Solaris (remake) - I was very impressed by this in the theatre, but unfortunately wasn't able to get a hold of the CD at a reasonable price so ended up not bothering.

Overlanders - This is where I first heard of John Ireland. Terrific score and good movie, unfortunately not on DVD.

Outlander - Jerry Goldsmith. One of his less known scores but a sentimental favourite. Good subtle use of synthesiser (but be careful the bass in the opening music doesn't blow out your speakers).

Matrix - I don't know who wrote the orchestral music, but I just heard a "sound-alike" in an advertisement and immediately recognised those chromatic brass chords - good stuff.
 

[Bogey]

Matrix - I don't know who wrote the orchestral music, but I just heard a "sound-alike" in an advertisement and immediately recognised those chromatic brass chords - good stuff.
 

That would be Don Davis.  Who is that you might ask?  I do not know, but I have the cd sitting in front of me as I type and I recently tried to sell it back to a used cd shop.  Just not my thing.  However, if you need a pro copy, I would be more than happy to send it your way (free shipping, of course).  Just need a PM with an address.  References offered on request as well. 

[jochanaan]

Bernard Herrmann, The Man Who Knew Too Much.  Among the best uses of quasi-classical music in a movie.  (Herrmann also wrote the concert music used in the film and directed it onscreen. )

Jerry Goldsmith, Logan's Run.  I've always had a sneaking fondness for that film, including its music.

James Horner, Willow.

Philip Glass, Koyaanisqatsi.  A unique fusion of cinema and music.  (As I've said before. )

Plus a few "usual suspects:" Korngold's Robin Hood, Alexander Nevsky, the Star Wars flicks, Amadeus, and almost anything directed by Stanley Kubrick.

[sound67]

Bernard Herrmann, The Man Who Knew Too Much.  Among the best uses of quasi-classical music in a movie.  (Herrmann also wrote the concert music used in the film and directed it onscreen. )

No. The "Storm Cloud Cantata" for the climax was composed by Arthur Benjamin, who had also provided the score for Hitchcock's first version of the story in 1933. Herrmann decided he could not improve upon what Benjamin had done so he didn't write a new piece but just added a few bars. But that's indeed Herrmann on the podium in the Albert Hall climax.

Elmer Bernstein recorded the piece decades later with the RPO.

Thomas

[eyeresist]

That would be Don Davis.  Who is that you might ask?  I do not know, but I have the cd sitting in front of me as I type and I recently tried to sell it back to a used cd shop.  Just not my thing.  However, if you need a pro copy, I would be more than happy to send it your way (free shipping, of course).  Just need a PM with an address.  References offered on request as well. 

Thanks but no. I suspect it will be a case of perfectly good orchestral music married to a monotonous and overbearing techno-ish beat, rather like the X-Men soundtrack.


Re The Stormcloud Cantata, I believe Herrmann did thicken the orchestration for the second version. That's a brilliant sequence anyway, terrific marriage of music and image, what Hitchcock called "pure cinema".
 

[sound67]

Re The Stormcloud Cantata, I believe Herrmann did thicken the orchestration for the second version.

Hitchcock said so in his interview with Truffaut, and Steven C. Smith claims the same in his biography of Herrmann's, A Heart at Fire's Center. However, an analysis (on Wikepedia!) suggests otherwise. Unfortunately, it's only in German:

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_Clouds_Cantata

The writer claims that only one bar was added, and that even the 1934 conductor's score was used for the remake.

Thomas

[karlhenning]

References offered on request as well. 

Bill is the very model of discretion 

[eyeresist]

I just picked up "Boult conducts Ireland" (Lyrita), mostly for the Overlanders suite (ed. Mackerras!). I think it must have been Mackerras who added the banal ta-dah's at the end of each movement. I understand the suite plus off-cuts have appeared over a couple of Chandos CDs. I'd really like a disc of the complete movie score, as one feature I really enjoyed in the film was the way the march theme recurs throughout, and in epic form for the finale.
 

[Bogey]

The Ghost and Mrs Muir/North by Northwest (Herrmann)

Both great ones.

[sound67]

"The Ghost and Mrs Muir" was Herrmann's own favorite among his scores, probably because it overlaps (and shares some basic material with) the apple of Herrmann's eye, his opera Wuthering Heights.
 

Some other great scores:

Benjamin Frankel, The Battle of the Bulge

Jerry Goldsmith, Planet of the Apes

Jerry Goldsmith, The Sand Pebbles

Jerry Goldsmith, The Illustrated Man

John Williams, Born on the 4th of July

Henry Mancini, Lifeforce

R. Vaughan Williams, Scott of the Antarctic

Arnold Bax, Oliver Twist

William Alwyn, Odd Man Out

Philippe Sarde, Fort Saganne

Jean-Claude Petit, The Return of the Musketeers

Arthur Bliss, Things to Come

Georges Delerue, The Black Stallion Returns

Georges Delerue, Agnes of God

Maurice Jarre, The Bride

Bernard Herrmann, Beneath the Twelve-Mile Reef

Bernard Herrmann, White Witch Doctor

Bernard Herrmann, Cape Fear (1961)

Elmer Bernstein, The Magnificent Seven

Miklós Rózsa, Ben-Hur (1959)

Miklós Rózsa, Double Indemnity

Miklós Rózsa, Ivanhoe

Miklós Rózsa, Quo Vadis?

Alfred Newman, The Greatest Story Ever Told

Alfred Newman, The Song of Bernadette

Alfred Newman, The Robe

Franz Waxman, Prince Valiant

Franz Waxman, Sunset Boulevard

Franz Waxman, A Place in the Sun

Franz Waxman, The Story of a Nun

Franz Waxman, Taras Bulba

Franz Waxman, The Spirit of St. Louis

Franz Waxman, Objective: Burma!

Hugo Friedhofer, The Best Years of Our Lives

Hugo Friedhofer, One-Eyed Jacks

Bronislaw Kaper, Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)

Max Steiner, The Adventures of Don Juan

Max Steiner, The Fountainhead

John Corigliano, Revolution

Jerry Goldsmith, Papillon

Jerry Goldsmith, Islands in the Stream (his own favorite!)

Bernard Herrmann, The Three Worlds of Gulliver

Bernard Herrmann, Obsession (1976)

Bruce Broughton, Young Sherlock Holmes

Alex North, Spartacus

Alex North, Under the Volcano

Alex North, Dragonslayer

Leonard Rosenman, East of Eden

Leonard Rosenman, Rebel without a Cause

Leonard Rosenman, The Cobweb (Hollywood's first dodecaphonic score)

Leonard Rosenman, The Lord of the Rings (1979, light years ahead of Howard Shores' mediocrities for the Jackson trilogy!!!)

Christopher Young, The Nightmare on Elm Street II (positive proof that some of greatest scores are written for lousy movies)

Nino Rota, La Strada

Ennio Morricone, Sahara (yes, the Brooke Shields clinker)

Ennio Morricone, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Ennio Morricone, The Untouchables

Ennio Morricone, The Mission

Angelo Francesco Lavagnino, Venere Imperiale

Mario Nascimbene, The Vikings

Mario Nascimbene, One Million Years B.C.

Maurice Jarre, Lawrence of Arabia (which makes this bloated sand epic bearable!)

James Horner, Willow (for which he ripped off the theme of Schumann's Rhenish Symphony(!!!), but never mind)

James Horner, Brainstorm

Carl Davis, The French Lieutenant's Woman

Dmitri Shostakovich, The New Babylon

Dmitri Shostakovich, The Tale of a Priest and His Servant Balda

Dmitri Tiomkin, Gunfight at the OK Corral

Dmitri Tiomkin, The Fall of the Roman Empire

Benjamin Frankel, Cry of the Werewolf (England's first 12-tone score)

Virgil Thomson, Louisiana Story

Edmund Meisel, Battleship Potemkin

Arthur Honegger, Napoleon (1927)

Walter Ruttmann, Berlin: Symphonie einer Großstadt

Georg Haentzschel, Münchhausen (1942)

...

...

Again, too many great scores to mention. 

Thomas

[vandermolen]

Thomas,

What a great list! Many would be on my list too.

Re: Ghost and Mrs Muir, doesn't Herrmann's fine score for Jane Eyre also feature music from his opera Wuthering Heights?

On this topic, a little known but great score (or great theme music anyway) is Michel Legrand's for the Timothy Dalton, Anna Calder-Marshall version of Wuthering Heights. I remembered the theme for over 30 yrs until I bought the DVD and it is on a CD compilation of Michel Legrand's music (incidentally his recording of Durufle's Requiem is my favourite; a truly wonderful performance, unlike any other).

Rozsa's Double Indemnity, yes, a great score

Goldmith's Alien and Planet of the Apes are favourites too

Tora, Tora, Tora (Goldsmith?)

VW Scott Music+Lives of Joanna Godden (little known score...now on CD)

Alwyn's Odd Man Out is a wondeful score, truly symphonic. It reminds me of The Road to Calvary in Rosza'a Ben Hur and I think that it is one of Alwyn's greatest scores.

Bliss :Things to Come; great score.

Waxman: Bride of Frankenstein and Rebecca.

Malcolm Arnold's St Trinians is good fun.

[Frankler]

'Halloween' theme by John Carpenter

check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRxArCm6P88

[sound67]

'Halloween' theme by John Carpenter

check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRxArCm6P88

It's certainly very effective in the movie, but it's intrinsic musical quality is bordering on zero. "Good film music must be good music first" Jerry Goldsmith said, and I couldn't agree more. The scores listed above are superb in the movie, and make for musically rewarding listening independent from the films, too - which is, IMHO, what separates the wheat from the chaff.

Thomas

[Frankler]

It's certainly very effective in the movie, but it's intrinsic musical quality is bordering on zero. "Good film music must be good music first" Jerry Goldsmith said, and I couldn't agree more. The scores listed above are superb in the movie, and make for musically rewarding listening independent from the films, too - which is, IMHO, what separates the wheat from the chaff.

Thomas

I couldn't disagree more, tell me how Herrmann's theme to Cape Fear is that much more complicated?

[sound67]

You're kidding.

Carpenter's score is simplistic in the extreme. Herrmann's music is indeed based on short motivic cells (as opposed to the longer-winded leitmotives of Korngold et al) and often moves along 2-bar patterns (that's why he was so popular with film editors), but that doesn't mean it simple!

The orchestration, the treatment of those motiv cells and their employment in the context of drama are highly sophisticated. There is no comparison between the two.

[Frankler]

You're kidding.

Carpenter's score is simplistic in the extreme. Herrmann's music is indeed based on short motivic cells (as opposed to the longer-winded leitmotives of Korngold et al) and often moves along 2-bar patterns (that's why he was so popular with film editors), but that doesn't mean it simple!

The orchestration, the treatment of those motiv cells and their employment in the context of drama are highly sophisticated. There is no comparison between the two.

Even the Halloween theme has a small climatic point, you're right though . . .

[jochanaan]

I just remembered that I had neglected to include John Corigliano's Altered States in my original list!