v4n4 Cov Revise - FILM SCORE MONTHLY

R E T R O S P E C T I V E

22 A Valiant EffortTravel back to 1954 for a peek at Franz Waxman’s triumphant effort to create the score for Prince Valiant.By Doug Adams

24 Franz, OffscreenA review of two notable non-film compositions.

28 Waxing PoeticAn examination of the themes and motives that make Valiant a model for films of heroes, princesses and villains.

F E A T U R E S

17 What’s on Your Mind?We conclude our look back on the best and worst of 1998 with a compilation of reader picks from our exclusive poll.By You, with commentary by Jeff Bond

43 Sounding Off on SoundtracksA report on a fascinating conference of film music pros and the state of the art. By James Miller

R E V I E W S

30 Super-Hits of the Late ’70sOur massive listener’s guide to the works of Jerry Goldsmith continues, from The Wind and the Lion thru Star Trek: The Motion Picture.By Jeff Bond

30 Somewhere in TypeTwo (count ‘em, two!) John Barry biographies have arrived—here’s the comparative analysis.By James Southall

CONTENTSA P R I L / M A Y 1 9 9 9

Franz Waxman took a silly ‘50sspectacle and made a musical

monument. page 22

The evolution of laser releasestakes its inevitable course.

page 11

The spy-sound of the ’60s returnscourtesy this lady’s vocal chords.

page 45

D E P A R T M E N T S

2 Editor’s PageThe Original Prequel

4 NewsStar Wars: Facts, Rumors and Hearsay

5 Record LabelRound-upWhat’s on the way

6 Now PlayingMovies and CDs in release

7 ConcertsLive performances around the world

9 Upcoming FilmAssignmentsWho’s writing what

11 LaserphileTake Your Paws Off My Discs, You Damn Dirty Laserphile!

14 DownbeatMostly New and Unreleased

35 ScoreReviews of the latest releases, including The Towering Inferno, Rushmore, Payback, 8mm, Playing by Heart, and more.

44 Score InternationaleFrom Rome, with Love

48 RetrogradeCharles Gerhardt, 1927-1999

39 FSM Marketplace

46 Reader Ads

Film Score Monthly (ISSN 1077-4289) is published monthly for $36.95 per year by Lukas Kendall. 5455 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 1500, Los Angeles CA 90036-4201. Periodicals postage paid at Los Angeles, CA and additional mailing offices.

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F i l m S c o r e M o n t h l y 1 A P R I L / M A Y 1 9 9 9

ON THE COVER: FRANZ WAXMAN FLANKED BY HIS OSCAR AND

GOLDEN GLOBE FOR SUNSET BOULEVARD. COMPOSER PHOTO

©1999 JOHN W, WAXMAN COLLECTION, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

V O L U M E 4 , N U M B E R 4A P R I L / M A Y 1 9 9 9

STAFF

EDITOR & PUBLISHERLukas Kendall

MANAGING EDITORJeff Bond

DESIGN DIRECTORJoe Sikoryak

CONTRIBUTING WRITERSDoug AdamsMarie AsnerJohn BenderRobert E. BensonAndy Dursin Tim KurkowskiMark LenekerDaniel SchweigerJames Southall

PUBLISHING CONSULTANTDigital Film & Print, Inc.

THANKS TOB.A. Vimtrup

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A P R I L / M A Y 1 9 9 9 2 F i l m S c o r e M o n t h l y

E D I T O R I A L

This column will continue my confes-sional from Vol. 3, No. 9, ourKorngold issue. The short story: I

did not grow up being exposed to film musicfrom the Golden Age of Hollywood, but Iknow a huge percentage of our readers did,and now it’s your turn to luxuriate in yourfavorite subject matter. This month thatmeans Franz Waxman and one of his great-est scores, Prince Valiant, which we are now

releasing on CD.I know many of you have been

listening to Prince Valiant (in themovie) for decades. I’ve been lis-tening to it for only a few months,during the production of ouralbum, but let me put it this way:when we planned our 1999 coverstories, Vol. 4, No. 4 was going tobe a Star Wars prequel issue,except that The Phantom Menaceis under lock and key. (We’ll doour Star Wars coverage later thissummer.) Then we figured, what’sthe real “prequel” to JohnWilliams’s Star Wars scores, usingthe word to mean predecessor,

antecedent, etc.? It’s all the great symphon-ic music of the Golden Age of Hollywood:Korngold’s The Adventures of Robin Hoodand The Sea Hawk, and this dynamic fairytale of knights, swords and princesses:Waxman’s Prince Valiant.

If you flash back to late 1976 and early1977, when John Williams was first tacklingGeorge Lucas’s space opera, Valiant had tobe one of the scores on his mind, especiallyconsidering that Williams was probablyhanging around 20th Century Fox at thetime it was made (1953/54). The movie is nomatch for Star Wars, but has many of thesame elements: hero, princess, two-faced vil-lain, mentor, sword fights and a code ofhonor. Waxman’s music evokes them allwith clear leitmotivs inside a romantic, tra-ditionally European structure.

In my Korngold editorial, I suggested thatmany younger listeners are turned off ofGolden Age material simply because of itsinferior sound quality. Prince Valiant did notsurvive 45 years unscathed: some of theshort fanfares are missing, and we’ve had toput a nine-minute block at the end of the CD

due to deterioration. However, by and largethe stereophonic sound is miles from thescratchy compression that most peopleexpect from material of this age. Forgetabout the echoey, soft acoustics of most re-recordings: this performance has life andsize. It sounds like a movie soundtrack, notlike an antique record or a weak studiorecreation.

So, we’re thrilled. Our resident musicolo-gist, Doug Adams, has tackled the linernotes, and he came up with so much materi-al that we’ve turned it into this issue’s coverstory—with thanks to a few legendarynames. Also deserving of gratitude is John W.Waxman, keeper of his father’s legacy; heloaned us the many astounding composerphotographs reproduced in this issue.Finally, to anyone who has ever complainedabout delays in the 20th Century FoxClassics Series over this entire decade, knowthat this studio has done more than anyother to preserve its musical heritage, withdozens of scores released on Arista, VarèseSarabande and now FSM, and many moreinternally “saved” for future release by NickRedman. Look: Prince Valiant! Who wouldhave thought? If you’re happy now, wait untilour Alfred Newman release this summer.

There’s only one cause for sadness in all ofthis exciting work, and that’s the passing ofconductor Charles Gerhardt (see obituary,pg. 48). Gerhardt was almost single-handed-ly responsible for the pre-Star Wars renais-sance in film music in the 1970s, with hishistoric series of Classic Film Scores albumsfor RCA Victor (produced by GeorgeKorngold). Prince Valiant opened theWaxman volume, one of the main reasonswhy this music is known today. We are dedi-cating our Valiant CD to this late, greatmusician.

I always get misty-eyed when I’m fortu-nate enough to help bring something greatfrom the past both to the people who love it,and to a whole new audience. On behalf ofall of my collaborators... please shower uswith affection. Thanks,

Lukas Kendall

The Original PrequelOR, HOW I STOPPED WORRYING AND LEARNED TO LOVE THE GOLDEN AGE

Calling all music lovers—Prince Valiant’s score

is off da hook!


Star Wars:Facts, Rumorsand Hearsay

The Star Wars EpisodeOne: The PhantomMenace CD will be

released on May 4 worldwide bySony Classical. It will be one discwith 17 tracks, mastered with24-bit technology. The first trackis “Star Wars Main Title and theArrival at Naboo” (3:02, featur-ing the original Star Wars themeover the opening crawl) and thelast track is “Augie’s GreatMunicipal Band and EndCredits” (9:37). At presstime itwas unknown whether or notthere would be a single releasedin April.

Reportedly, the score in thefilm is over two hours long. JohnWilliams told TV Guide, “Thescore is probably 90 percent new,but there are some quotations ofolder material in it, references tocharacters that we know and

ones that we suspect we mightknow.” In particular, (spoiler!) 8-year old Anakin Skywalker’stheme is a subtle variation of“The Imperial March.”

The music was recorded fromFebruary 5 to 18 at Abbey Road,Todd-AO Scoring Stage, Londonwith a 100-piece orchestra and88-piece choir. (The choral lan-guage? Sanskrit.) At presstime,information was just beginningto come out about the music invarious newspaper and televi-sion stories. We’ll add to theoverkill next issue; watchwww.filmscoremonthly.com.

ALIEN DVD news

Due June 1 from 20thCentury Fox Home

Entertainment is a 20thAnniversary Edition DVD ofAlien, featuring a 68-minute doc-umentary on the film and someexciting isolated music tracks: 1)all-new commentary by directorRidley Scott; 2) the soundtrack inFrench; 3) Jerry Goldsmith’soriginal score as written andrecorded, and placed in the movieas the composer intended; 4) theedited musical score (withtracked Freud cues) as it appearsin the film, plus productionsound in-between. This meansfor the first time you can hear allof Goldsmith’s music for themovie, and also compare his orig-

inal spotting of the picture (withtons of unused music) with thefinal edited soundtrack. Time toget a DVD player! The package(produced by Sharpline Arts) willalso contain theatrical trailers,storyboards, deleted scenes andouttakes.

Overseas Notes

Italian record producer SergioBassetti has located at the

RCA vaults in Rome the originalmaster tapes to EnnioMorricone’s masterpiece, OnceUpon a Time in America (1969).He will produce an expanded edi-tion of the soundtrack with bet-ter sound for RCA, with the “Mr.Choo Choo” theme among theseven previously unreleasedtracks. Also coming soon is IlGiornalino di Gian Burasca(Nino Rota).

Another Italian producer,Claudio Fuiano, has found themaster tapes to San Babile Ore20: Un Delito Inutile, aMorricone score from 1976. A CDis in the works.

Coming from producersRoberto Zamori and LionelWoodman in April is Leonor/LaBanchiera (two Ennio Morricone

scores on one CD). The pair havemore Morricone and Italian west-ern releases planned for laterthis year.Look for all of these imports from thesoundtrack specialty dealers: ScreenArchives (202-364-4333), Intrada(510)-336-1612), STAR (717-656-0121), Footlight Records (212-533-1572) and Super Collector (714-636-8700) in this country..

You Can Learn aThing or Two

“Film Music: An ItalianPerspective” is a New

York University class beingtaught in Florence, Italy nextsummer (June 28-July 16).Contact Brane Zivkovic [email protected], orTisch International Programs at212-998-9175.

UCLA ExtensionEntertainment Studies alwaysoffers a variety of classes in filmcomposition, music supervision,music editing and more. It’s toolate to sign up for the spring1999 semester, but call the schoolat 310-825-9064 and get on themailing list for future terms. See espa.unex.ucla.edu. FSM

NEWS

Ernest Gold, 1922-1999

Ernest Gold passed away on March 17 of complications from a stroke.

Gold was most famous for his score for Exodus (1960), for which he

won an Academy Award and two Grammys; among his other credits are

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, On the Beach,The Secret of Santa

Vittoria, Inherit the Wind,Witness for the Prosecution,The Pride and the

Passion,The Defiant Ones and Judgment at Nuremberg. Gold was born in

Vienna on July 13, 1921 and emigrated to New York with his family in

1938 after the Nazi annexation of Austria. He came from a musical fami-

ly and wrote a full-length opera when he was 13. He began his film scor-

ing career in the mid-1940s when he was in his 20s. His last features

were Tom Horn (1980) and Safari 3000 (1982), after which he had largely

retired from film scoring.

Awards Roundup

This year’s music-related Oscar winners are Nicola Piovani for Life Is

Beautiful (Best Dramatic Score), Stephen Warbeck for Shakespeare in

Love (Best Comedy or Musical Score), and Stephen Schwartz for “When

You Believe” from The Prince of Egypt (Best Song).

The “Razzie” award winner for Worst “Original” Song of 1998 is “I

Wanna Be Mike Ovitz!”from Burn,Hollywood,Burn!, by Joe Eszterhas and

Gary G.Wiz.

In the U.K., nominees for BAFTA’s Anthony Asquith Award for

Achievement in Film Music are: Elizabeth (David Hirschfelder), Hilary

and Jackie (Barrington Pheloung), Saving Private Ryan (John Williams)

and Shakespeare in Love (Stephen Warbeck).

James Horner picked up three Grammys in this year’s awards, as his

song “My Heart Will Go On” from Titanic (performed by Celine Dion,

lyrics by Will Jennings) won for Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and

Best Song Written for a Motion Picture or for Television. John Williams’s

Saving Private Ryan won for Best Instrumental Composition Written for a

Motion Picture or for Television; the stage recording of The Lion King

(produced by Mark Mancina) won for Best Musical Show Album.

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Airwolf Pushed back toMay from the AirwolfAppreciation Association is a2CD set of Airwolf TV music bySylvester Levay and UdiHarpaz. The first disc features23 cues adapted and performedon synthesizers from variousepisodes, and the second fea-tures composer SylvesterLevay’s own, suite-form adapta-tions of his music. The release is limited to 500 copies;write Mark J. Cairns, 246 ComberRoad, Lisburn, County AntrimBT27 6XZ, Northern Ireland, or seehttp://www.janmichaelvincent.com/airwolf/themes.

Aleph Forthcoming on LaloSchifrin’s label: May 25: TheOsterman Weekend (1983, SamPeckinpah’s final film). Alsocoming are Mannix (1969 TVsoundtrack album plus somenewly recorded tracks) andVoyage of the Damned (1976).See www.alephrecords.com orwww.schifrin.com.

Atlantic Due April 20:Message in a Bottle (GabrielYared score album). August 17:Anywhere but Here (various, newCarly Simon and Traci Chapmansongs). September 14: Three toTango. Unscheduled: On AnyGiven Sunday (various, newOliver Stone football movie).

BMG Classics Forthcomingare Elmer Bernstein’s newrecordings of The MagnificentSeven and The Great Escape(The Royal Scottish NationalOrchestra, prod. RobertTownson).

Brigham YoungUniversity Lost Horizon (com-plete 1937 Dimitri Tiomkinscore) is imminent. This hasbeen mastered from acetatesdonated to BYU’s film musicarchives. Order from Screen ArchivesEntertainment, info below.

Castle CommunicationsDue June 21 are five more

Roy Budd CDs: The Wild Geese(1979), Kidnapped (1971), Flightof the Doves (1971), The StoneKiller (1973) and The MarseillesContract (1974).

Citadel Due May: AmityvilleDollhouse (Ray Colcord). Thesecond volume of Citadel’s newlyrecorded Shostakovich filmmusic series will be out in June.

Compass III Planned butunscheduled is an expandedscore-only CD to TomorrowNever Dies (David Arnold).

CPO This German classicallabel has recorded ErichWolfgang Korngold’s completeadapted score (his first filmassignment) for the 1935 WarnerBros. film of A MidsummerNight’s Dream. This is mostlyMendelssohn, but with signifi-cant transitional material byKorngold. The release date isunscheduled.

Decca Due in April inEngland only is a CD of JohnBarry’s (largely unused) score toPlaying by Heart, representingthe music as Barry intended itfor the picture. It will be market-ed not as a soundtrack, but as ajazz album.

DRG Due April 20: EnnioMorricone—Jean-Paul Belmondo(2CD set with music from TheProfessional, The Outsider andThe Burglars).

May 18: Ennio Morricone:Cosa Nostra Films (compilationfrom EMI/Beat catalogs), EnnioMorricone: Thriller Collection(2CD set, EMI/Beat), SpaghettiWesterns, Vol. 3 (2CD set, EMI),The Taming of the Shrew (NinoRota).

June 15: Ennio Morricone:Main Titles, Vol. 2 (2CD set,EMI/Beat), Ennio Morriconewith Love, Vol. 2 (EMI/Beat),

Spaghetti Westerns, Vol. 4 (2CDset, Beat), Luis Bacalov: IlPostino and Other Themes.

Fifth Continent Due laterthis year is a DTS 5.1 CD of TheBest Years of Our Lives (HugoFriedhofer), playable only onDTS equipment.

GNP/Crescendo Still forth-coming is Seven Days (ScottGilman), UPN TV series. Also inthe works is a CD of RussellGarcia’s Fantastica space musicconcept album (not a sound-track) from the 1950s.

Hammer Due April isHammer Comedy Film MusicCollection, with themes from Onthe Buses, Holiday on the Buses,Mutiny on the Buses, Man Aboutthe House, George and Mildred,Nearest and Dearest, Love ThyNeighbor, Rising Damp, That’sYour Funeral, I Only Asked andFurther Up the Creek.

Due September is HammerFilm Music Collection Volume 2,with themes from Dracula A.D.1972, The Lost Continent,Frankenstein and the Monsterfrom Hell, Slave Girls, To theDevil a Daughter, Crescendo,Fear in the Night, Satanic Ritesof Dracula, Demons of the Mind,Rasputin the Mad Monk, Plagueof the Zombies, One MillionYears B.C., Dracula Has Risenfrom the Grave, The AbominableSnowman, Curse of the Werewolf,Frankenstein Created Woman,

Straight on Till Morning, TheOld Dark House, The Mummy’sShroud, The Witches, Vengeanceof She, Quatermass II, Pirates ofBlood River, and Journey to theUnknown.Hammer’s CDs are available in theU.S. exclusively from Scarlet Streetmagazine, PO Box 604, Glen RockNJ 07452; ph: 201-445-0034; seewww.hammerfilms.com andwww.scarletstreet.com

Hollywood June 1: Summerof Sam (various).

Intrada Due May is the“Excalibur” series recording ofJason and the Argonauts(Bernard Herrmann, 1963), withBruce Broughton conducting theSinfonia of London. Also comingthis spring is Durango (MarkMcKenzie).

Due summer is Heart ofDarkness (Bruce Broughton),orchestral soundtrack for com-puter game.Intrada has a new address as of April 1: 2220 Mountain Blvd, Suite 220, Oakland CA 94611; ph: 510-336-1612; fax: 510-336-1615;www.intrada.com.

Koch Due April is a MiklósRózsa solo piano album. June:Erich Wolfgang Korngold filmmusic album (Juarez, The SeaWolf, Elizabeth and Essex),recorded in New Zealand. July:Korngold songs CD. September:Franz Waxman chamber musicCD (St. Clair Trio), includingmany film pieces. To be record-ed is a Korngold CD featuringthe composer’s complete musicfor piano.

Marco Polo John Morganand William Stromberg’s nextrecording projects in May are aRoy Webb CD featuring musicfor Val Lewton films (The CatPeople, I Walked with a Zombie,Bedlam, The Seventh Victim,The Body Snatcher); and amore complete recording ofGhost of Frankenstein (Hans J.Salter), filled out with cuesfrom Man-Made Monster andBlack Friday, and all of theoriginal music composed forSherlock Holmes and the Voiceof Terror (Frank Skinner).

In the can and coming soon:

FSM Classics

In case you didn’t notice,this month’s CD release is

the first in our Golden AgeClassics series: Prince Valiant(1954) by Franz Waxman. See,well, the entire issue for moreinformation.

Next month, if all goes well,will feature our John BarrySilver Age Classics release.(Here’s a hint: the movie takesplace in the past.) Composersfor future SAC and GAC CDsinclude Elmer Bernstein,Alfred Newman and JerryGoldsmith. Send us your sug-gestions; contact info, pg. 2.

Record Label Round-UpAll the albums you’ll be waiting for

Devotion (Erich WolfgangKorngold), Mr. Skeffington(Franz Waxman), and TheEgyptian (Bernard Herrmannand Alfred Newman, 71 minutes,with choir).

Forthcoming from Swiss pro-ducer/conductor Adriano in1999: Georges Auric: Suites forFilms by Jean Cocteau (Orphée,Les parents terribles, Thomasl’imposteur, Ruy Blas) and Auric:Suites from Lola Montez, Notre-Dame de Paris, Farandole. Andin the year 2000: Auric: Suitesfrom Rififi, La SymphoniePastorale, Le Salaire de la Peur;and Dmitri Shostakovich: TheFall of Berlin (complete originalversion), with suite from TheMemorable Year 1917.

Milan April 13: GoodbyeLover (John Ottman). May 18:Besieged. Molly has been can-celed.

Pendulum Forthcoming butunscheduled is a limited editionCD (2,500 copies) of DestinationMoon (Leith Stevens, 1950). Alsocoming is How to Save a

Marriage/Le Mans (MichelLegrand).

PolyGram Due April 20: AMidsummer Night’s Dream(Simon Boswell plus opera). May4: The Mummy (JerryGoldsmith). May 18: Loss ofSexual Innocence (Mike Figgis).

Forthcoming from PolyGramin England is a 2CD set of thethree Miklós Rózsa albums fromthe 1970s, Miklós RózsaConducts His Great Film Music.

Prometheus Due at the endof April is Breakout (JerryGoldsmith, 1975 CharlesBronson film), a 3,000-copy lim-ited edition.

Razor & Tie Due April 27:Reds (various).

RCA Victor April 13:eXistenZ (Howard Shore). May18: Endurance (John Powell).

Reel Sounds Due June 1 isDesert Blue (various).

Rhino Due May 4 is a 2CD

set, The Lion’s Roar: Classic M-G-M Film Scores 1935-1965 (37films total, see Vol. 3, No. 10 forlist of premieres). July 6: MiklósRózsa at M-G-M, a 2CD set fea-turing extended suites fromMadame Bovary (1949, 17:28),Ivanhoe (1952, 20:03), Knights ofthe Round Table (1952, 11:58),Beau Brummel (1954), Valley ofthe Kings (1954, 13:24),Moonfleet (1955), Green Fire(1954), The King’s Thief (1955),Tribute to a Bad Man (1956),Diane (1955), Lust for Life(1956), The World, the Flesh andthe Devil (1959) and King ofKings (1961).

Due in August is a 2CD set ofSuperman: The Movie (JohnWilliams, 1978). This will featureeverything heard in the movie(over an hour of previously unre-leased music) plus rare alter-nates and unused cues; it isbeing produced by Nick Redmanand Michael Matessino.See www.rhino.com.

Rykodisc Upcoming in TheDeluxe MGM Soundtrack Seriesof United Artists Films:

April 27: The Battle of Britain(Ron Goodwin/Sir WilliamWalton) and A Bridge Too Far(John Addison).

June 8: The Missouri Breaks(John Williams) and Heaven’sGate (David Mansfield). Heaven’sGate will include previouslyunreleased music. Also due June8: Jazz in Motion: MGMSoundtracks Presents GreatMovie Jazz (selections from TheMisfits, Two for the Seesaw,Paris Blues, The FortuneCookie).See www.rykodisc.com.

Screen ArchivesEntertainment Forthcomingfor late spring is Distant Drums,a 2CD set of four Max Steinerscores for United States Picturesfilms mastered from acetateslocated at Brigham YoungUniversity. Contained areDistant Drums (1951), Cloakand Dagger (1946, main and endtitles), South of St. Louis (1949)and My Girl Tisa (1948, 13 min-utes); 24-page booklet. Comingafter this will be a CD ofSteiner’s score for Pursued


NOW PLAYINGFilms and CDs currently in release

Affliction Michael Brook CitadelAmong Giants Tim AtackAnalyze This Howard ShoreBaby Genuises Paul ZazaCentral Station Jaques Morelenbaum, Antonio PintoMilanCookie’s Fortune David A. Stewart RCA VictorThe Corruptor Carter Burwell Varèse SarabandeThe Deep End of the Ocean Elmer Bernstein MilanEd TV Randy Edelman Reprise**Forces of Nature John Powell DreamWorks*Hilary and Jackie Barrington Phelong Sony ClassicalThe King and I Rodgers & Hammerstein Sony ClassicalLife Is Beautiful Nicola Piovani VirginLock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels David A. Hughes & John Murphy Maverick**The Matrix Don Davis Maverick*, Varèse SarabandeThe Mod Squad B.C. Smith Elektra**The Out of Towners Marc Shaiman MilanPayback Chris Boardman Varèse Sarabande**The Rage: Carrie 2 Danny B. HarveyRavenous Michael Nyman & Damon Albarn VirginShakespeare in Love Stephen Warbeck Sony ClassicalShe’s All That Stewart CopelandTango Lalo Schifrin Deutsche GrammophonTrue Crime Lennie NiehausA Walk on the Moon Mason Daring Sire

*song compilation **combination songs and score

R E C O R D L A B E L R O U N D - U P • F I L M S I N R E L E A S E


(1947, noir western).Order from Screen ArchivesEntertainment at PO Box 5636,Washington DC 20016-1236; ph:202-364-4333; fax: 202-364-4343;http://www.screenarchives.com.

Silva Screen Due inApril are U.S. editions ofRambo: First Blood Part 2(Jerry Goldsmith, 1985,expanded) and Zulu: The FilmScores of John Barry (newlyrecorded compilation). Thislatter album was released inthe U.K. as a 2CD set, but itwill be only one disc in theU.S.

Sonic Images April 20:Christopher Franke: Epic(includes unreleased filmthemes and new age).

May 11: The Snow Files, acompilation of Mark Snowmusic mostly from movies ofthe week, but including someX-Files selections (one CD, nottwo).

May 18: Babylon 5: TheGathering (ChristopherFranke, TV movie).

June 15: Babylon 5: River ofSouls (Christopher Franke,TV movie).

Also coming is TheFabulous Ice Cream Suit(Mader).

Sony Coming on SonyClassical (besides Star Wars):May 18: The Red Violin (JohnCorigliano; Joshua Bell, vio-lin). June 15: CinemaSerenade 2, a new recordingconducted by John Williams(Itzhak Perlman, soloist) ofGolden Age film themes,many newly arranged byWilliams. September 7: LastNight (Alexina Louie and AlexPauk).

Due in May is a 26CD boxset to celebrate the end of themillennium, featuring allkinds of music from the Sony-label catalogs. Didier Deutschis assembling two soundtrackdiscs to be included in the box;the volumes will later bereleased separately.

Super Tracks The next (continued on page 8)

JOHN WILLIAMS will conductseveral performances with theBoston Pops in Symphony Hallduring May and June: May 23 at7:30 PM; a concert called“Classic Film Music” on May 26,27 and 28 (including music fromThe Phantom Menace—ItzhakPerlman will be the soloist onthe 27th); May 29; May 30 (OldTimers Night, also featuringconductor Harry Elllis Dickson);June 3 (TECH Night at Pops);June 4; June 6; June 10; June11 (Harvard/Radcliffe 25thReunion Night); and June 12.The Perlman concert will mostlikely be broadcast and filmed topromote the Sony Classicalalbum, Cinema Serenade 2.

Williams will conduct theBoston Symphony atTanglewood on July 11 in hisnewest concert work as well asLeonard Bernstein’s SymphonicDances from West Side Storyand Mendelssohn’s violin concer-to, with Gil Shaham as soloist.

At Tanglewood, Williams willbe one of several composersworking with composition fel-lows of the Tanglewood MusicCenter; last summer he conduct-ed a film scoring seminar withseveral Tanglewood students.

On July 17, Williams will con-duct the Chicago SymphonyOrchestra at the RaviniaFestival.

As part of the annualTanglewood on Parade concerton August 4, Williams will con-duct music from The PhantomMenace. Williams will also con-duct a Pops concert atTanglewood on August 30.

Williams will conduct theCleveland Orchestra at theBlossom Festival in concerts ofhis own music on August 27and 28.

On October 1, Yo-Yo Ma willperform Williams’ cello concertowith the National SymphonyOrchestra under the direction ofLeonard Slatkin. Also on theprogram at the Kennedy CenterConcert Hall will be Arvo Part’sFratres for twelve cellos and theDvorak cello concerto.

JAMES HORNER’s plannedTitanic concerts at London’sRoyal Albert Hall in May havebeen postponed. Previously, aTitanic concert had beenannounced for the HollywoodBowl, and it was also canceled.The London concert may berescheduled at the BarbicanTheatre; watch www.filmscore-monthly.com.

LALO SCHIFRIN Upcomingconcert appearances for LaloSchifrin are a Jazz Meets theSymphony performance inNurnburg, Germany, April 25;“A Tribute to Duke Ellington” at

UCLA’s Royce Hall in LosAngeles, April 30; a premiere ofa new Schifrin commission atthe Violoncelles Festival inBeauvais, France, May 3-12; thepremiere of Schifrin’s Latin JazzSuite with the WDR Jazz Bandfeaturing Jon Faddis and DavidSanchez in Cologne, Germany,June 18 and 19; and a filmmusic concert in Jerusalem,Israel on June 28.See www.schifrin.com for moreappearances and late updates.

LAWRENCE NASH GROUPÉ’s“Fantasy for Orchestra” will bepremiered by the San DiegoSymphony (who commissionedthe piece) on May 21, 22 and 23.Also on the program are worksby Leonard Bernstein andStravinsky. Call 619-235-0804.

HOLLYWOOD BOWL TheHollywood Bowl’s summer sea-son features film music aplenty:

July 13: Prokofiev’s ViolinConcerto and Ivan the Terrible(with film).

July 16, 17: Michel Legrand isguest artist with John Mauceriand the Hollywood BowlOrchestra in a celebration ofFrance: “Bastille Day at theBowl” (with fireworks).

July 23, 24: John Williamsconducts the Los AngelesPhilharmonic in a film musicconcert.

August 6, 7: Jerry Goldsmithconducts the Los AngelesPhilharmonic in a film musicconcert—his first in Hollywood,including a world premiere com-missioned for his 70th birthday.

August 8: “Bugs Bunny onBroadway II” with GeorgeDaugherty conducting WarnerBros. cartoons live to film.

August 26, 27: “Movie Night”with John Mauceri and theHollywood Bowl Orchestra.

September 7: Filmharmonicscreening/performance of 1001Nights (David Newman).

September 15: Tribute toHenry Mancini with JohnnyMandel and Quincy Jones (andthe Clayton-Hamilton JazzOrchestra).Call 323-850-2000.

(continued next page)

FILM MUSIC CONCERTSSoundtrack performances that you can attend—all around the world


ROUND UP(continued from page 7)promotional CD being pressedfor the composer’s use—butwith limited availability to col-lectors—is Joel Goldsmith’s TheUntouchables (TV), expected inMay. There will also be a promoCD of The Incredible Hulk (TV,Joe Harnell) later this year.

Due in late April from SuperTracks and available commer-cially is Fatal Error (RonRamin, TBS movie).See www.supercollector.com.

TVT Forthcoming butunscheduled is the Buffy: The

Vampire Slayer TV soundtrack.

Varèse Sarabande DueMay 4: The Matrix (Don Davisscore album), Noah’s Ark (PaulGrabowsky). May 18: AmazingStories, a new recording con-ducted by Joel McNeely andJohn Debney featuring themain and end titles (JohnWilliams), “The Mission”(Williams) and “Dorothy andBen” (Georges Delerue).

Forthcoming in RobertTownson’s Film Classics series,performed by the Royal ScottishNational Orchestra unlessnoted: 1) Citizen Kane (BernardHerrmann, cond. McNeely). 2)

Color, Rhythm and Magic:Classic Disney Instrumentals(light jazz versions of variousDisney songs, arranged by EarlRose). 3) Back to the FutureTrilogy (Alan Silvestri, cond.Debney). 4) Battlestar Galactica(Stu Phillips conducting hisown music). Citizen Kane hasbeen held up over the past yearbecause it is still not fullyrecorded.

Next up in the Fox Classicsseries is a 2CD set of The Songof Bernadette (Alfred Newman,1943). Varèse’s Herrmannrelease from the Fox archivesnow looks like it will be TenderIs the Night coupled with A

Hatful of Rain on one CD, withother Herrmann material possi-bly to follow.

A fifth Franz Waxman:Legends of Hollywood CD willbe recorded for future release(cond. Richard Mills).

Virgin Due in June is ascore CD to the 1998 Psychoremake, featuring DannyElfman and Steve Bartek’sadaptation of BernardHerrmann’s classic music.

Walt Disney Due May isTarzan (Mark Mancina, songs).

FSM

ALFRED HITCHCOCK TheNew York FILMharmonicOrchestra will present “Musicfrom the Films of AlfredHitchcock” at Carnegie Hallon October 13, in collaborationwith New York University’sTisch School of the Arts’Department of CinematicStudies. The concert will beconducted by John Mauceriand will feature music byBernard Herrmann, FranzWaxman, Dimitri Tiomkin andothers. It will be part of aweek-long celebration of AlfredHitchcock’s work.

See www.NYFO.com.

Concert ListingsThe following are concerts fea-turing film music pieces aspart of their programs. Thanksgo to John Waxman of Themes& Variations (http://tnv.net)for this list; he provides scoresand parts to the orchestras. Don’t be a fool! Due to thelead time of this magazine, itis possible some of this infor-mation is too late to do anygood. Always confirm the con-cert with the orchestra’s boxoffice; call local information orlook on the Internet.

Alabama May 8 & 16,Phoenix S.O.; Gunfight at theOK Corral (Tiomkin), Mask of

Zorro (Horner).California June 5, Lone PineFilm Festival; Concert of music

for films shot at Lone Pine:Happy Trails, Bonanza, WagonTrain, Charge of the Light

Brigade, Nevada Smith,Brigham Young, Star Trek V, TheShadow, Around the World in 80Days.

Florida April 25, Agnes ScottCollege, Decatur; Fahrenheit 451(Herrmann).

Illinois April 25, NorthAurora S.O.; On DangerousGround (Herrmann).

Michigan May 13, 14, 15 &16, Detroit S.O.; Erich Kunzelcond. “Tribute to HenryMancini” concert.

Oklahoma May 23, TulsaS.O.; The Natural (R. Newman).

Pennsylvania May 8 & 9,Lancaster S.O.; Carmen Fantasy(Waxman).

Texas May 14 & 15, AmarilloS.O.; Shakespeare in Love(Warbeck), Psycho (Herrmann).

Utah May 13 & 14,Southwest S.O., St. George;Independence Day (Arnold), Huntfor Red October (Poledouris),Mask of Zorro (Horner).

Belgium May 3, Mons-musiques, Mons; Psycho(Herrmann).

France June 24, OrchestraRegionale du Basse, Normandy;Psycho (Herrmann).

Japan April 25, Shivesi S.O.;Addams Family Values(Shaiman). FSM

For a list of silent film music con-certs, see www.cinemaweb.com/lcc

R E C O R D L A B E L R O U N D - U P • F I L M S I N R E L E A S E

BERNARD HERRMANN RETURNSA suite of tributes and homages

John Williams may be the world’s most famous film composer,but before him, there was Bernard Herrmann, who continuesto be the film composer taken most seriously in the academic

and art worlds.A multi-media artist named

Douglas Gordon has created apiece of installation art that goeslike this: The Paris Opera Houseorchestra performed BernardHerrmann’s complete score toVertigo (1958). Gordon filmed inclose-up the conductor, JamesConlin, the entire time. The artinstallation consists of going intoa room and watching this film(which is all around you) of theconductor’s face while you hearthe music. And it’s really a close-up: sometimes you’re watching just his ear, or just his hands, andso on. Cool! The first installation of the exhibit is at the AtlantisGallery, The Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, East London, fromApril 1 through May 3. Admission is free.

A revised version of the ballet, Macguffin or How Meanings GetLost, is touring the U.S. for 21 performances from April throughJune. The ballet has been choreographed by Neal Greenberg andadapted from Herrmann’s score to Psycho (1960); performing is noless than Mikhail Baryshnikov. Watch www.filmscoremonthly.comfor further announcements.

RKO 281 is a new HBO film about the making of Citizen Kane,and will feature Bernard Herrmann portrayed by an actor in asmall scene. Herrmann’s music will reportedly be featured in thefinale; the production is otherwise being scored by John Altman.


Breaking NewsBasil Poledouris will score For

the Love of the Game, the Sam Raimi filmstarring Kevin Costner as an aging majorleague baseball pitcher in a perfect game.

John Williams will score the massiveJuly 4 weekend movie of 2000: BicentennialMan, starring Robin Williams as an androidwho wants to become human (i.e. Data: TheMotion Picture).

James Horner will produce analbum of top acts performing the classicsong, “Mean Man Mr. Grinch,” which meanshe will almost certainly be scoring theupcoming live-action The Grinch Who StoleChristmas (starring Jim Carrey) as well.Horner has been working on a ballet inIreland with the Riverdance ensemble.

John Ottman will score The X-Menfor Bryan Singer, but it has yet to be deter-mined if he will edit the picture as well, ashe did for Singer’s The Usual Suspects andApt Pupil. Ottman is pursuing film scoringfull-time, and editing a movie would takehim out of that loop for up to a year.

A title song performer has yet to be chosen forthe upcoming James Bond movie, The WorldIs Not Enough, but David Arnolddoes figure to play a role in the title songthis time (unlike Tomorrow Never Dies), as awriter and/or producer.

The Wild Wild West will feature a soundtrackalbum headlined by Will Smith, but com-poser Elmer Bernstein haswritten at least one song to be performedon screen by Kevin Kline’s character.

Hans Zimmer is the composer forRidley Scott’s Gladiator, and not Vangelis,as erroneously reported on the Internet.

John Morgan and BillStromberg have scored twosequels to the Trinity and the Bomb docu-mentary: Atomic Journeys and Nukes inSpace (60 min. each). They shouldreleased on DVD this year.

Current AssignmentsMark Adler The Apartment Complex,

Sterling Chase.Eric Allaman Breakfast with Einstein, True

Heart.Ryeland Allison Saturn.John Altman Legionnaire (Jean-Claude Van

Damme), Town and Country (WarrenBeatty, Diane Keaton, d. Peter Chelsom).

Craig Armstrong Best Laid Plans.David Arnold The World Is Not Enough (new

James Bond movie).Luis Bacalov The Love Letters.

Burt Bacharach Isn’t She Great?Angelo Badalamenti A Story of a Bad Boy

(co-composed w/ Chris Hajian), ArlingtonRoad.

Lesley Barber History of Luminous Motion(Good Machine), Mansfield Park (Miramax).

Nathan Barr Hair Shirt (Neve Campbell).Tyler Bates Denial.Christophe Beck Thick as Thieves (Alec

Baldwin), Coming Soon (Mia Farrow),Guinevere (Miramax, Gina Gershon).

Marco Beltrami The Florentine, Deep Water(d. Ole Borneadal).

David Benoit Perfect Game (Edward Asner).Elmer Bernstein The Wild Wild West (Will

Smith, d. Barry Sonnenfeld), Angel Face: TheStory of Dorothy Dandridge (d. MarthaCoolidge, HBO), Bringing Out the Dead (d.Martin Scorsese), Chinese Coffee (d. AlPacino, replacing Howard Shore).

Peter Bernstein Susan’s Plan.Edward Bilous Minor Details, Mixing Mia,

Naked Man.Wendy Blackstone Life Beyond Earth (PBS

documentary).Chris Boardman Bruno (d. Shirley MacLaine).Simon Boswell Dad Savage, Alien Love

Triangle, Warzone (d. Tim Roth), AMidsummer Night’s Dream, The Debtors(Michael Caine, Randy Quaid).

Christopher Brady Castle in the Sky (Disneyanimated), Hal’s Birthday.

John Brion Magnolia (d. Paul ThomasAnderson).

Michael Brook Getting to Know You.Bruce Broughton Jeremiah (cable biblical

epic, theme by Morricone).Carter Burwell Mystery Alaska (Disney),

General’s Daughter (John Travolta, d. SimonWest), Being John Malkovich (d. Spike Jonze).

Wendy Carlos Woundings.Teddy Castellucci Big Daddy (Adam Sandler).Stanley Clarke Marciano. Alf Clausen Gabriella.George S. Clinton Austin Powers 2: The Spy

Who Shagged Me, Astronaut’s Wife (JohnnyDepp, Charlize Theron).

Elia Cmiral Stigmata.Serge Colbert Red Tide (Casper Van Dien).Bill Conti Inferno (Jean-Claude Van Damme).Stewart Copeland Made Men (indie),

Simpatico (Jeff Bridges, Nick Nolte).Billy Corgan Stigmata (demonic possession,

w/ Elia Cmiral).John Corigliano The Red Violin (Samuel L.

Jackson).Burkhard Dallwitz Supernova (d. Walter Hill,

sci-fi, MGM).Mychael Danna Ride with the Devil (Ang Lee,

Civil War film, Jewel), The Confession (AlecBaldwin, courtroom drama), Felicia’sJourney (d. Atom Egoyan).

Mason Daring 50 Violins (Wes Craven), AWalk on the Moon.

Don Davis Loran Alan Davis The LastPrediction (indie), Retribution (d. RichardVan Vleet).

John Debney Dick, Elmo in Grouchland,Inspector Gadget, Lost and Found (comedy).

Joe Delia Time Served.

Alexandre Desplat Restons Groupes.Pino Donaggio Up in the Villa (Kristin Scott-

Thomas).Patrick Doyle East and West (d. Regis

Wargnier).Anne Dudley Pushing Tin (d. Mike Newell).John Du Prez Labor Pains.The Dust Bros. Fight Club (d. David Fincher).Danny Elfman Instinct (Anthony Hopkins),

Hoof Beat (Black Stallion-type movie),Legend of Sleepy Hollow (d. Tim Burton),Anywhere but Here (d. Wayne Wang).

Evan Evans Table for One (Rebecca DeMornay), Tripfall (Eric Roberts, John Ritter).

Shayne Fair & Larry Herbstritt TequilaBodyshot.

Christopher Farrell Foreign Correspondence(Wil Wheaton).

George Fenton Anna and the King (JodieFoster, Fox).

Frank Fitzpatrick Lani Loa (Zoetrope).Stephen Flaherty Bartok the Magnificent

(Anastasia video sequel).Robert Folk Inconvenienced.David Michael Frank To Serve and Protect.John Frizzell The White River Kid (Antonio

Banderas).Michael Gibbs Gregory’s Girl 2.Richard Gibbs Book of Stars, Muppets from

Space (songs).Elliot Goldenthal Titus (Shakespeare, d. Julie

Taymor).Jerry Goldsmith The 13th Warrior, The

Mummy, The Hollow Man (d. PaulVerhoeven), The Haunting of Hill House (d.Jan De Bont).

Joel Goldsmith Shiloh 2.Mark Governor Blindness (d. Anna Chi).

John Altman Vendetta (HBO, d. NicholasMeyer), RKO 281 (HBO, John Malkovich,James Cromwell).

Craig Armstrong The Bone Collector (d.Philip Noyce).

Angelo Badalamenti Holy Smoke.Steve Bartek Another Goofy Movie (Disney).Michael Brook Buddy Boy.Paul Buckmaster Mean Street.Gary Chang Locked in Silence (Showtime).Edmund Choi The Castle (Miramax).Stanley Clarke The Best Man (replacing

Terence Blanchard).Michel Colombier Dark Summer.Bill Conti The Thomas Crown Affair (Pierce

Brosnan, remake).Mason Daring Limbo (d. John Sayles).John Debney End of Days, Komodo

(Anaconda sequel or rip-off—you be thejudge!).

Joe Delia Ricky 6, Fever.Patrick Doyle Love’s Labour’s Lost (Kenneth

Branagh, musical comedy).George Fenton Chicago: The Musical

(Charlize Theron, d. Nick Hytner).Joseph Julian Gonzalez Price of Glory.Joel Goodman Cherry (romantic comedy,

Shalom Harlow).Richard Hartley Victory.James Horner The Grinch Who Stole

Christmas (Jim Carrey).James Newton Howard The Sixth Sense,

Dinosaurs (Disney animated), RunawayBrides.

Quincy Jones III Lighted Up.Trevor Jones Cleopatra (Hallmark TV minis-

eries).Benoit Jutras Journey of Man (IMAX).Laura Karpman Annihilation of Fish.Greg Kendall Next to You (Melissa Joan

Hart).Wojciech Kilar The Ninth Gate (Johnny Depp,

d. Roman Polanski).Daniel Lanois All the Pretty Horses.

Evan Lurie Joe Gould’s Secret.Hummie Mann After the Rain.

Stuart McDonald Diaries of Darkness.Mark Mothersbaugh Camouflage.John Ottman The X-Men (d. Bryan Singer).Basil Poledouris Kimberly (romantic come-

dy), For the Love of the Game (KevinCostner baseball movie, d. Sam Raimi).

Graeme Revell Gossip.Eric Serra Joan of Arc (d. Luc Besson).Patrick Seymour Simian Line (William Hurt).Jamshied Sharifi Muppets from Space.Ed Shearmur Blue Streak.Alan Silvestri What Lies Beneath (Harrison

Ford, Michelle Pfeiffer horror comedy), CastAway (Tom Hanks, Helen Hunt)—both d.Robert Zemeckis.

Mark Snow Crazy in Alabama (d. AntonioBanderas).

Ernest Troost A Lesson Before Dying (DonCheadle).

John Williams Bicentennial Man (d. ChrisColumbus).

Debbie Wiseman The Lighthouse.

Upcoming AssignmentsWho’s working on what for whom

The Hot Sheet New Assignments


Paul Grabowsky Noah’s Ark (Jon Voight,miniseries).

Stephen Graziano Herman, U.S.A.Harry Gregson-Williams Earl Watt (Pate

Bros.).Rupert Gregson-Williams Virtual Sexuality.Andrew Gross Be the Man (MGM, Super

Dave movie), Unglued (Linda Hamilton,quirky indie film).

Larry Groupé Sleeping with the Lion,Deterrence (Timothy Hutton, d. Rod Lurie),Four Second Delay.

Dave Grusin Random Hearts (Harrison Ford,Kristin Scott Thomas, d. Sydney Pollack).

Richard Hartley All the Little Animals (U.K.indie), Peter’s Meteor, Rogue Trader, MadAbout Mambo.

Richard Harvey Captain Jack (Bob Hoskins).Chris Hajian Lowlife (d. Mario Van Peebles),

Story of a Bad Boy.Todd Hayen The Crown, The Last Flight.John Hills Abilene.Lee Holdridge Family Plan (Leslie Nielsen),

No Other Country.James Newton Howard Snow Falling on

Cedars (d. Scott Hicks), Mumford (d.Lawrence Kasdan).

Steven Hufsteter Mascara (Phaedra Ent.).David Hughes & John Murphy The

Bachelor (romantic comedy, Chris O’Donnell,Renee Zellweger).

Søren Hyldgaard The One and Only (roman-tic comedy).

Mark Isham Where the Money Is, Imposter(Miramax, d. Gary Fleder).

Alaric Jans The Winslow Boy (David Mamet).Maurice Jarre A Taste of Sunshine (Ralph

Fiennes).Adrian Johnston The Debt Collector, The

Darkest Light, The Last Yellow, Old NewBorrowed Blue.

Trevor Jones Frederic Wilde (d. RichardLoncraine), Titanic Town (d. Roger Michel),Notting Hill (Hugh Grant), Animal Farm (d.John Stephenson).

Jan A.P. Kaczmarek Aimee and the Jaguar(Germany, d. Max Faerberboeck), Lost Souls.

Michael Kamen Iron Giant (Warner Bros.).Laura Karpman Dash and Lilly (d. Kathy

Bates, A&E).Brian Keane New York (Ric Burns, epic docu-

mentary), The Babe Ruth Story (HBO).Rolfe Kent Election, Don’t Go Breaking My

Heart (Anthony Edwards), Oxygen.Brian Langsbard First of May (indie), Frozen

(Trimark).Russ Landau One Hell of a Guy, Nowhere

Lane.Chris Lennertz Lured Innocence (Dennis

Hopper, Talia Shire), Pride of the Amazon(animated musical).

Michael A. Levine The End of the Road (d.

Keith Thomson), The Lady with the Torch(Glenn Close, d. David Heeley).

Christopher Libertino Spin the Bottle (d.Andrew Michael Pascal).

Daniel Licht Splendor (d. Gregg Araki),Execution of Justice (Showtime).

Frank London On the Run, Sancta Mortale,The First Seven Years.

Mader Too Tired to Die, Row Your Boat,Claudine’s Return, Morgan’s Ferry (KellyMcGillis).

Mark Mancina Tarzan: The Animated Movie(Disney, songs by Phil Collins).

Hummie Mann Good Night, Joseph Parker(Paul Sorvino), A Thing of Beauty.

David Mansfield The Gospel of Wonders(Mexico, d. Arturo Ripstein), Tumbleweeds(indie).

Mark Mothersbaugh Drop Dead Gorgeous(New Line).

Anthony Marinelli God Said Ha! (JuliaSweeney), Physical Graffiti, The Runner.

Jeff Marsh Burning Down the House, WindRiver (Karen Allen).

Phil Marshall Rupert’s Land, Gotta Dance, KissToledo Goodbye.

Brice Martin Indian Ways (d. Tom Hobbs),Chaos (d. Chris Johnston).

Cliff Martinez Wicked (d. Michael Steinberg),The Limey (d. Steven Soberbergh, TerenceStamp, Peter Fonda).

Richard Marvin U-571 (MatthewMcConaughey, d. Jonathan Mostow,Universal).

Dennis McCarthy Letters from a Killer (d.David Carson).

John McCarthy Boy Meets Girl.Gigi Meroni The Good Life (Stallone, Hopper),

The Others, The Last Big Attractions.Cynthia Millar Brown’s Requiem.Randy Miller Ground Control.Sheldon Mirowitz Say You’ll Be Mine

(Justine Bateman), Autumn Heart (AllySheedy), Outside Providence (Alec Baldwin).

Charlie Mole An Ideal Husband (MinnieDriver).

Fred Mollin The Fall.Andrea Morricone Liberty Heights.Ennio Morricone The Legend of the Pianist on

the Ocean (d. Giuseppe Tornatore), ThePhantom of the Opera (d. Dario Argento).

Tom Morse Michael Angel, The Big Brass Ring.Deborah Mollison Simon Magus (Samuel

Goldwyn).Mark Mothersbaugh Drop Dead Gorgeous

(Kirsten Dunst, Denise Richards, New Line).Jennie Muskett B Monkey.Roger Neill Big Man on Campus.Ira Newborn Pittsburgh (Universal).David Newman Broke Down Palace, Never

Been Kissed (Drew Barrymore), Bofinger’sBig Thing (d. Frank Oz).

Randy Newman Toy Story 2.Thomas Newman The Green Mile (Tom

Hanks, d. Frank Darabont).John Ottman Goodbye Lover, Lake Placid.Van Dyke Parks My Dog Skip, Trade Off.Shawn Patterson The Angry Man.Jean-Claude Petit Messieurs les enfants,

Sarabo, Sucre Amer.Nicholas Pike Delivered.Robbie Pittelman A Killing, The Dry Season

(indie).Michael Richard Plowman Laser Hawk

(Mark Hamill, Canada), The Wild McLeans(western), Tom Swift (3D animated, DanaCarvey), Noroc (France).

Steve Porcaro A Murder of Crows (CubaGooding, Jr.).

Rachel Portman Untitled 20th Century FoxIrish Project, Cider House Rules.

John Powell Endurance (documentary), FreshHorses (DreamWorks).

Zbigniew Preisner Dreaming of JosephLees.

Trevor Rabin Whispers (Disney), The DeepBlue Sea (d. Renny Harlin).

Robert O. Ragland Lima: Breaking theSilence (Menahem Golan).

Alan Reeves To Walk with Lions.Graeme Revell Three to Tango, Idle Hands,

Pitch Black (PolyGram), Untitled MichaelMann Film (Al Pacino).

David Reynolds Warlock (sequel), George B,Love Happens.

Stan Ridgway Melting Pot (d. Tom Musca, CliffRobertson), Error in Judgment (d. Scott Levy),Desperate but Not Serious (d. Bill Fishman),Spent (d. Gil Cates Jr., Rain Phoenix),Speedway Junkie (Darryl Hannah).

David Robbins The Cradle Will Rock (d. TimRobbins).

J. Peter Robinson Waterproof (Lightmotive),Detroit Rock City (Kiss movie).

Gaili Schoen Déjà Vu (indie).John Scott Shergar, The Long Road Home,

Married 2 Malcolm (U.K. comedy).Marc Shaiman The South Park Movie,

Kingdom of the Sun (Disney animated),Story of Us (d. Rob Reiner).

Theodore Shapiro Six Ways to Sunday(Debbie Harry, Isaac Hayes), The Prince ofCentral Park (Kathleen Turner, Harvey

Keitel).Shark East of A (d. Ami Goldstein, David Alan

Grier), The Curve (d. Dan Rosen), Me & Will(Patric Dempsey, Seymour Cassel).

James Shearman The Misadventures ofMargaret.

Howard Shore XistenZe (d. David Cronenberg).Lawrence Shragge Frontline (Showtime).Rick Silanskas Hoover (Ernest Borgnine).Alan Silvestri Stuart Little (animated/live-

action combination).Marty Simon Captured.Michael Skloff Cherry Pink (d. Jason

Alexander).Mike Slamer & Rich McHugh Shark in a

Bottle.Michael Small Elements (Rob Morrow).Neil Smolar The Silent Cradle, Treasure Island,

A Question of Privilege.Darren Solomon Lesser Prophets (John

Turturro).Scott Spock Free Enterprise (William Shatner,

d. Robert Meyer Burnett).David A. Stewart Cookie’s Fortune (d.

Robert Altman).Michael Tavera Girl, Excellent Cadavers

(HBO), One Special Delivery (PennyMarshall), American Tail IV (direct to video).

Mark Thomas The Big Tease.Joel Timothy Waiting for the Giants.Colin Towns Vig.John Trivers, Elizabeth Myers Norma Jean,

Jack and Me.Ernest Troost One Man’s Hero (Tom

Berenger), The Island of Skog (animated),Miss Nelson Is Back (animated).

Brian Tyler Final Justice, A Night in Grover’sMill, The Forbidden City (d. Lance Mungia),Simon Sez (action).

Chris Tyng Bumblebee Flies Away.Michael Wandmacher Twin Dragons

(Dimension), Operation Condor 2.Don Was American Road (IMAX).Wendy & Lisa Foolish.Michael Whalen Romantic Moritz.Alan Williams Angels in the Attic, Cocos:

Island of the Sharks (IMAX), Princess andthe Pea (animated feature, score and songsw/ lyrics by David Pomeranz).

David Williams The Day October Died,Wishmaster 2.

John Williams Star Wars: Episode One—ThePhantom Menace (d. George Lucas).

Debbie Wiseman Tom’s Midnight Garden.Peter Wolf Widows (German, animated).Gabriel Yared The Talented Mr. Ripley (Matt

Damon, d. Anthony Minghella).Christopher Young Killing Mrs. Tingle, In Too

Deep (Miramax).Hans Zimmer Gladiator (d. Ridley Scott,

Roman movie), The Road to El Dorado(DreamWorks, animated). FSM

U P C O M I N G F I L M A S S I G N M E N T S

What are most of these things? Hell ifwe know. Due to the volume ofmaterial, this list only coversfeature scores and selected high-profile television and cable projects.

Composers, your updates areappreciated: call 323-937-9890,or [email protected]

Both DVD and laserdisc have offereda bounty of treats for movie buffsin early 1999, not only in the

expected new releases, but also in a handfulof reissues and announcements of titles withsoundtrack-specific content.

It used to be enough for a laserdisc to havea trailer contained as a bonus supplement;now, we feel gypped if a new title lacks delet-ed scenes, featurettes, commentaries (andsometimes isolated score tracks) and more,even on the most mundane of movies.Meanwhile, the lower DVD price has contin-ued to hold, luring in new consumers. Can itget any better than this? With the amount ofnew releases promised for ‘99, it looks like itcould.

NEW RELEASESPlanet of the Apes series Fox/Image Entertainment THX laserdiscs, soldseparately, $34.98 each

First and foremost among the titlesreleased in early ‘99 is a laserdisc bonan-

za: the long-awaited, remastered widescreeneditions of Planet of the Apes and its foursequels, courtesy of Image Entertainment.After having been screened last summer dur-ing AMC’s 30th anniversary tribute to theseries—and released in a videotape box set—the new transfers represent the definitivevideo presentation for one of the most popu-lar sci-fi/fantasy series ever made, if not themost ambitious in ideas and scope.

It’s curious that, even after four sequels, alive-action television series (plus an animat-ed one), and decades of discussion, the origi-nal Apes (1968) remains a classic that haslost none of its potency or enter-tainment value. CharltonHeston’s gritty performance asTaylor, the astronaut crashed on aworld run by primates, has beenmocked for its scenery-chewingdrama, but he’s ideal and givesthe movie the strong, stubbornprotagonist the audience needs toidentify with considering the far-fetched plot. Roddy McDowalland Kim Hunter’s performancesas a pair of sympathetic ape scien-tists, and Maurice Evans’s Dr.Zaius, also remain firmly etchedin memory, as does JohnChambers’s outstanding, award-

winning make-up design.Having grown up watching the films on

video (and all the TV episodes that wererepackaged and shown as movies like Life,Liberty, and the Pursuit of Justice on thePlanet of the Apes!), I found the timeliness ofthe film, over 30 years after its initialrelease, to be surprising, particularly sincesome of the social satire in the sequels direct-ly addresses the moods and politics of theWatergate era.

Not so in the original Planet of the Apes,where the commentary in the script byMichael Wilson and Rod Serling is insightfuland thought-provoking. The reversal of manwith beast, the whole notion of evolutionbeing turned upside-down, and even howreligion and science clash, are all addressedin their screenplay, and yet the dialogue is

intelligent and rarely heavy-hand-ed. Only in the young ape Lucius’sproblems with “the older genera-tion” does the film become dated.And of course, it is technicallyblessed with Jerry Goldsmith’ssensational score and magnificentproduction values. Even aftermultiple viewings, the raw inten-sity of “The Hunt”—withFranklin Schaffner’s directiondrawing in the viewer—is some-thing to behold.

Goldsmith’s score, and theoriginal stereophonic sound-track, have been transferred intoDolby Digital for Image’s

laserdisc release, which includes a sterlingnew THX-certified transfer, more accurate-ly letterboxed than the now-ancientCBS/Fox letterboxed disc that’s almost adecade old. The power of the soundtrackisn’t, obviously, on the level of today’s elab-orate stereo mixes, but it’s still satisfying.The movie’s amusing theatrical trailer—with Charlton Heston introducing the castin and out of makeup—is included as anappetizer before the film starts.

After jettisoning a subplot that wouldhave shown sexy, mute slave girl Nova(Linda Harrison) to be pregnant at the endof the original film (a sequence that wasfilmed but cut), producer Arthur P. Jacobsalso threw away possible sequel ideas fromboth original Apes author Pierre Boulle andco-screenwriter Rod Serling when the timecame to make a sequel. Jacobs and associateproducer Mort Abrahams eventually settledon British writer Paul Dehn to script a fol-low-up, originally entitled “Planet of theApes Revisited,” before it was determinedthat one major plot element in Dehn’s treat-ment—involving a half-human, half-apehybrid—would be discarded for fear that theinter-species mating would earn the film aPG rating, unfriendly to its family audience(you had to work to get a PG back then, obvi-ously). That, plus considerations involvingthe effectiveness of the make-up design,resulted in a script that constantly under-went changes, even as filming began.

Despite all the rewrites and revisions, it’s

By Andy Dursin

Despite all of therewrites,revisions,and star

tantrums, it’samazing tobehold the

finished film.

T H E L A S E R P H I L E


Get Your Paws Off My Discs,You Damn Dirty Laserphile!

Director Franklin Schaffner and Charlton Heston onlocation at the Fox Malibu Ranch for Planet of the Apes.

still hard to believe that what ended up on-screen in Beneath the Planet of the Apes(1970) couldn’t have been better than it is.Here, James Franciscus substitutes forHeston and the movie’s first half is a dullchase picture with Franciscus’s Brent, anastronaut sent to rescue Heston, andHarrison trying to find the missing hero and

avoid the gorilla army pursuing them. Oncethey do, they stumble upon a race of under-ground mutant humans who live in thedestroyed remains of New York City andworship the last surviving atomic bomb.

Directed by Ted Post, Beneath has inter-esting art direction and an excellent use ofmatte paintings, but its script lacks the intel-ligence of the original and is far more rou-tine. The political allusions to Vietnam, withthe chimps staging a sitdown protest of thegorilla army’s desire to conquer theForbidden Zone, are obvious and the movieitself feels like it was the result of having toomany cooks brewing the stew. It’s also one ofthe most relentlessly dour genre films you’relikely to find, particularly as the mutantstake over the action in the final third and thecharacters you’ve cared about for the betterpart of two entire films are killed off.Leonard Rosenman’s score has some intrigu-ing passages but generally comes across asbeing less effective than Goldsmith’s work,even though it treads over most of the samethematic ground. And what else can you sayabout an ending (suggested by CharltonHeston) with narrator Paul Frees describingthe end of the world, fading to black whilethe credits next roll in stone silence? Talkabout a desperate way out!

At least the disc’s picture and soundtrackare both superlative. Like the original,Beneath was shot in Panavision and thetransfer is richer and more consistent thanthe original CBS/Fox letterboxed laserdisc.Rosenman’s score, meanwhile, is a bit tooloud in relation to the dialogue, but thesoundtrack—originating from a stereo

remix (the film was theatricallyreleased in mono)—is otherwise

quite effective. The movie’s trailer, inciden-tally, includes snippets of Taylor and Novathat were cut from the finished film.

Fortunately, writer Paul Dehn redeemedhimself with Escape from the Planet of theApes (1971), which brought RoddyMcDowall and Kim Hunter’s original apesinto the then-present day as time travelers,

courtesy of Chuck Heston’s crashed shipfrom the original movie. Mixing social com-mentary with humor in the structure of apolitical thriller, Don Taylor’s film is awell-written and acted sequel, and theswitch in roles—with McDowall andHunter undergoing the same mental teststhat they put Heston through in the origi-nal—is both clever and increasingly dis-turbing, particularly when the governmenttries to execute the pair’s offspring for fearthat it will create the ape civilization thatthe members from future Earth represent.

Jerry Goldsmith’s score, which mainlyunderscores the comedic aspects of the filmwith a “mod” sound during the first half, andbecomes harsh and dissonant as the tonechanges in the second, works well and theTHX transfer on Image’s laserdisc is againan improvement on its CBS/Fox predecessor.Curiously, Escape is the only one of the fourApes sequels to retain its original mono-phonic soundtrack, most likely because thereare few action sequences and a stereo remix-ing may not have been worth the trouble.(Whatever the case may be, Image workedwith the materials that Fox gave them, whichhappened in this case to be mono.)

The downbeat conclusion of Escape setsthe stage for the tough, action-mindedConquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972),which some Apes fans regard as the best ofthe sequels. J. Lee Thompson took over thedirectorial reigns to chronicle how the apebaby from the preceding film—now a matur-ing adult named Caesar (McDowall again)—leads a simian revolt against the humanswho have enslaved them by recalling the

‘60s riot and protest movement. The onlyfilm in the series to earn a PG rating (it’s farmore explicit than any of the others),Conquest is straightforward and a bit melo-dramatic at times, and yet there’s a rawpower and edge that’s hard to ignore.Certainly it stands alone in relation to theother pictures in the series, if nothing else,because of its intense and angry tone.

Popular saxophonist Tom Scott was 23when he scoredConquest, anassignment thatcame after Scottworked on vari-ous televisionsoundtracks andcop shows,i n c l u d i n gIronside, in thelate ‘60s. WhileScott’s score isless thematic,and far morepercussive, thanthe Goldsmithand Rosenman

efforts, it works because it fits the needs ofthe film—ragged, disjointed and downrightprimal. The soundtrack is remixed for stereoand the laserdisc’s transfer, from the origi-nal Todd-AO 35 elements, is again striking.Director Thompson initially wanted to drainmost of the color out of the film, but settledon a militaristic design without primary col-ors, and the results give the film a distinc-tive, cold look.

Although widely viewed as the weakestentry in the series, the fifth and final Apesfilm, Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973),isn’t quite as terrible as some sources wouldhave you believe. True, the screenplay byOmega Man writers Joyce and JohnCorrington (Paul Dehn’s services were notretained on this picture, although he is cred-ited with the story) isn’t on a level with thebest in the series, but at least the manner inwhich the tone and message of the picturehearken back to the original film is effectiveand at least modestly entertaining.

Abandoning its immediate predecessor’sviolent tendencies, Battle is both geared tobring the story full circle, and also—for thefirst time in the series—to end in a cautious-ly hopeful finale, with Caesar’s efforts forpeace echoing the concluding words spokenby the Lawgiver (John Huston, in a cameo),the deity of ape civilization. Roddy McDowallis back again, and while the long-promised“final confrontation” between the apes andmutant humans underwhelms because ofbudgetary restraints, the moving conclusiondoes work, since it’s clearly meant to relateto our own society—we have the power to dogood, get along, and fight injustice, but


T H E L A S E R P H I L E

The series’ approach ranges fromthe timelessness of the original

(left) to era-specific references (likeBlack Power) in Conquest (right).

whether we will or not is up to us. The futureisn’t written in stone, and it is here where theambitions of the filmmakers results in a sat-isfying resolution to the series.

Certainly, Leonard Rosenman’s score—superior to his work on Beneath—is a majorasset, lending an emotional resonance to theclimax and adding a rousing “March of theApes” for McDowall and company, not unlikehis theme from The Lord of the Rings. Theletterboxed transfer of this Panavision filmmarks the first time this movie has beenreleased on laserdisc domestically, and bothits framing and the remixed stereo sound-track are crisp and effective.

Trailers for each film are included onrespective discs, which Image had pressed inJapan to ensure the best possible quality.While additional supplemental materialwould have been appreciated (economic con-siderations kiboshed the hopes of addingAMC’s outstanding documentary, Behindthe Planet of the Apes, onto one of the discs),this is still the best way to enjoy the five-pic-ture series in its original widescreen propor-tions. Until that long-planned remake/sequelcomes about (if ever), these lasers willremain state of the ape, err, art. And get yourstinkin’ paws off me, you damn dirty ape!

The Searchers Image/Warner laserdisc, $39.95Remastered and packaged as a SpecialEdition laserdisc, this is a somewhat disap-pointing presentation for arguably JohnWayne’s finest film, and certainly one of thegreatest westerns of all-time.

However, neither the picture transfer northe sound are that much of an improvementon Warner’s earlier letterboxed release, andthe 33-minute documentary, produced byNick Redman, is filled with pricelessarchival clips—but an unfortunate tendencyto get sidetracked by erratic editing (closelyresembling, of all things, the opening ofDavid Fincher’s Seven!) and disjointed nar-ration, which will prove more of a distrac-tion than an asset for most viewers.

If you have the original laser release orrecent DVD issue of that package, wait forthe remastered DVD next year—or justhang on to what you already have.

News and NotesRandy Newman’s score from Pleasantville(New Line DVD, $24.98) will be isolated inDolby Digital sound, and will includeNewman’s comments whenever his scoreisn’t running on-screen. Mark Isham recent-ly did this on New Line’s “PlatinumEdition” DVD of Blade, giving listeners therare opportunity to hear Isham talk abouthow his score was utilized by the filmmak-ers, and the ever-troublesome task of havingto write around preselected songs. Also

scheduled for such treatment is Rush Hour,with isolated Lalo Schifrin score, and com-mentary by Schifrin and director BrettRatner.

Image’s United Artists Horror CollectionVol. 2 (MGM/Image laserdisc, $99.98) laserbox-set will contain isolated, monophonicmusic and effects tracks for its four fea-tured films: The Neanderthal Man (1953,Albert Glasser), The Vampire (1957, GeraldFried), Curse of the Faceless Man (1958,Fried again), and Doctor Blood’s Coffin(1961, Buxton Orr). The four-disc set willbe released in late April.

Recent isolated stereo DVD scores

include the already-withdrawn limitedpressing of Tomorrow Never Dies SpecialEdition (MGM, $34.98), with a brief DavidArnold interview that appears to have beenculled from a British documentary, andQuest for Camelot (Warner, $24.98), withmusic by Patrick Doyle.

Other new announcements of note,albeit without any isolated scores: The TenCommandments (Paramount, $29.98) willcontain a remixed Dolby Digital sound-track spotlighting Elmer Bernstein’s clas-sic score; and Universal’s planned JanuaryDVD release for the Special Edition of 1941

(continued on page 47)


RICHARD HOROWITZThree Seasons

The independent feature Three Seasonsfollows four strangers in Saigon who are

slowly being alienated by the encroachmentof Western culture into the “New Vietnam.”Filmed in Vietnamese using Vietnameseactors by director Tony Bui, the film is thefirst American movie shot in the countrysince the war. Like Ernest Troost on OneMan’s Hero (below), composer RichardHorowitz was brought onto the film by aneditor.

“I had a friend named Gabrielle Cristainiwho was the editor on The Sheltering Skyand The Last Emperor, and she was up fordoing this and recommendedme,” Horowitz explains. Horowitzwrote original North Africanmusic for director BernardoBertolucci’s The Sheltering Sky,collaborating with RyuichiSakamoto on some of the score.His career as a musician and com-poser goes back several decadesand he has worked with artistssuch as Brian Eno, David Byrne,Suzanne Vega, and John Hassel, atrumpet player whose transla-tions of North Indian vocals werepart of the roots of minimalism inthe ‘60s.

Horowitz almost wound up

becoming a director: “I directed a film in1969 called Fourth Person Singular that wasvery influenced by Bergman with very darkcharacters and was very psychological, and Ieventually decided to go back to music anddidn’t want to have anything to do with visu-als. And any time anyone would ask me to doa film score I would say no, that you had tolisten to my music with your ears and notwith your eyes, because visuals are cheap.”

Preferring to develop his own musicalvoice, Horowitz avoided doing any film scor-ing until he was 40 and took the job on TheSheltering Sky. For Three Seasons he hascreated a glittering, hypnotic score that onlyhints at the conventions of the genre, for the

most part creating a sonic worldall its own. “The intention was tomake everything I do sound com-pletely unique, have a very strongidentity and yet have all thesestrong neuron connections towhat you might imagine thisother world might be like.”Taking the historical colonizationof Vietnam by the French as ajumping-off point, Horowitzattempted to interpretVietnamese music as it might bewritten by a French composer.“This combination of looking atthe score through this impres-sionist sensibility of Satie or

Debussy, given the history of Vietnam Ithought was appropriate. You focus on onething and you have a certain inspirationwith that and then that translates intosomething else, so even though I’m not anexpert in Vietnamese music they felt that Iwould have the sensibility to use this instru-mentation the same way I’ve worked onother things and pull it off.”

Part of the job of scoring the film includedfiguring out what sounds not to use. “Onething that I was asked not to do was to usetoo many harps or flutes, because Tony feltthat that had been done before and was tooreferential. And I had my own hesitationsabout being referential in terms of theWestern orchestral palette too, like stringsand piano. So we had to work through todefine and express certain things withoutsounding like a cliché.”

Horowitz also blended source elementsinto the score. “There was a song that theyused that I liked a lot, the Do Ai song whichI completely deconstructed; I used somemelodic fragments from that at the end ofthe film. I wanted to use melodic elementsfrom the song as thematic material for thecentral characters and then have all thethemes weave together at the end under-neath the final version sung by the chorus.Vietnamese music has the expressive qualityof blues. There is an intrinsic feeling of com-passion and a tangible logic to the phrasingof the ancient instruments.”

Part of the glistening, metallic texturesHorowitz creates are produced by tradition-al Vietnamese gongs and finger cymbals.“There’s a temple and automatically youthink of gongs in a temple, and this general,overall exquisitely static, languid pacing tothe film, and somehow having these gongsreally reinterpreted the meaning of tempofor me, and they instilled this sense of poem-time into every glance and every gesture inthe film. I was able to evoke that with thesegongs and create this very slow-pacedrhythm that carried this thing along in another-worldly way.” —Jeff Bond

TREVOR JONESTitanic TownMollyNotting Hill

When asked what kind of film music helikes to compose, Trevor Jones’s

response is “Big music!” It’s hard to think ofanyone who wrote “bigger” music last yearthan the non-stop orchestral climaxes ofDark City and Desperate Measures. Thenthere was the mythical sound of Lawn Dogs,The Mighty and Merlin, scores which casttheir spell with a notable combination of P

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Join us as we

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Mostly New and Unreleased

D O W N B E A T

A Vietnamese spectacle: Tony Bui’s Three Seasons.


synthesizers, symphonies, guitars and har-monicas.

The start of 1999 finds Jones with aGolden Globe nomination for his Mightytheme song (co-written and given voice bySting) and upcoming scores for TitanicTown, Molly and Notting Hill. Titanic Townhas Jones approaching an IRA-themed sub-ject once again, but on a more intimate scale.Molly re-teams the composer with directorJohn Duigan (Lawn Dogs) in a Charly-likestory about a simple woman-turned-super-genius. Notting Hill is a Julia Roberts-HughGrant comedy that gives Jones an eagerlyawaited chance to work with the creativeteam of Four Weddings and a Funeral.

“Molly is guitar-oriented. I recorded ithere, and I loved doing it,” Jones commentswith typical good humor. “It featuresacoustic guitars and an orchestra. NottingHill uses a medium-sized orchestra, withstrings, brass, pianos and guitars. Beyondthat, I can’t remember much about thosescores! The only reason I survive in thisindustry is because I have no memory. I gofrom one horrendous experience to the next!All I know is that the scores I did seemed likegood ideas at the time.

“I have an insatiable appetite to work,”Jones continues. “The whole objective is toimprove on the last score. I’ve tried to touchon every genre of film, and choose somethingthat’s completely opposite from the lastscore I’ve done. After Notting Hill, which isa romantic comedy, I’ll do something verydramatic.”

Though he works in England, TrevorJones was born in South Africa. For a youngboy caught in the racist society of the time,the cinema’s fantasy world not only gaveJones an escape, it gave him something hewanted to be a part of. “My reason for want-ing to become a musician in the first placewas to score movies, so I left South Africa at17 with a scholarship to the Royal Academyof Music in England.”

Jones spent 12 years training at his pro-fession. His first job was for the BBC as amusic librarian. “It gave me a fantasticinsight to all kinds of music. But I was lis-tening to music from 9 to 6 for four years,and that’s pretty intense! It got to me after awhile. When I went to Cambridge for mypost-graduate degree, my professor designeda course especially for me. I studied rock,folk, jazz and ethnic music for four years.Then I went to film school, where the impe-tus was to make sure the music was loud,and that the audience would hear it.”

Jones’s bombastic cues in Dark City havecertainly ensured this. Alex Proyas’s mind-blowing fantasy was also remarkable for itscontinuous use of music, a score that was asmuch a part of the environment as the archi-tecture. But with Jones’s unique touch, the

music always remained hypnotic. “I didn’twant people to know what kind of instru-ments I was using on Dark City. They wereconfused if it was orchestral or synthesized.That’s because I tried to fuse those sounds,and to get the most sonic range from them.

“When I score a film, I want my music tobring out the meaning of a scene. It has tohave an identity, so people will relate to it.Television is more difficult, because the ten-dency is to score it constantly. Merlin hadcommercial breaks every 15 minutes, and Ihad to hold the audience’s attention for thatduration. They’re being continuously takenout of the story, and I have to get themstraight back into it. So the result is non-stop music. This has been happening a lot infilms, which haven’t been scored continu-ously like this since the heyday of Hollywoodin the 1930s and ‘40s. The scores today dowhat TV does, which is to say, ‘This is howyou’re feeling at this second.’ I try to makethe audience use their intellect.”

Jones also takes pride in being namedChair of Music at Britain’s National Filmand Television School. Not only does hewant to inspire budding composers, but hehopes to build a bridge between Americanand English attitudes towards film music.“When I’m scoring in Britain for theEuropean market, there’s a lot less music,and it’s a lot harder. The cues are slower andshorter. I find that quite challenging,because I’m using music as a language offilmmaking, not as a tool to push peoplethrough a movie. But I also realize that I’ma composer for hire, and I’ve got to writewhat people want me to. The challenge ishow to be an artist in a commercial environ-ment. Film music is a fantastic, oddball job,because it allows you to be both.”

Of primary interest to Jones’s fans is hisnew record label, Contemporary MediaRecordings. “I’ve remastered all of the stuffI did on analog tapes to the digital format. Soall of the scores that I did in my misspentyouth sound incredibly clean. Now I’ll begoing to the record companies to find outwhich of my scores I can put out.” Some ofJones’s first releases might be dialogue-freeversions of Angel Heart and MississippiBurning.

While the composer realizes the populari-ty of Cliffhanger and Mohicans, he seemsgenuinely unaware that a devoted fan basehas been salivating for the release of suchscores as Excalibur and The Dark Crystal. “Ijust sit in a little room on the other side ofthe world, and write music,” he says. “Inever actually believed that anyone wantedmy old scores. To find out that they do isvery flattering.”

And what does the future hold? After hav-ing scored so many climaxes where mythicalworlds are destroyed and reborn, there’s one


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subject that Trevor Jones is eager to tackle.“I’d like to score the Bible!” he laughs. “It’sgot some amazing dramatic elements, andI’ve always wanted to do a Moses theme.”

—Daniel Schweiger

ERNEST TROOSTOne Man’s Hero

One Man’s Hero is an historical epicabout the Mexican-American War and

a group of Irish-American fighters called TheSaint Patrick’s Brigade. The movie’s directoris Lance Hool. “Lance had been trying to getthis movie made for 20 years,” composerErnest Troost notes. “At one time JohnWayne was connected to it. It’s pretty anti-American in a lot of ways and shows a sordid

part of American history, so the studios havenot felt that it was very commercial.” WithJohn Wayne permanently unavailable, thefilm’s lead character, John Riley, is portrayedby Tom Berenger.

Troost was able to latch onto a currentlypopular film music conceit that’s actuallyappropriate in this case. “They were lookingfor an Irish direction,” he admits, “which isinteresting with all the Irish music inmovies, but this is a movie where Irishmakes sense for the subject matter. Thewhole opening of the movie is kind of a mon-tage of the Irish leaving Ireland during thePotato Famine, so I wrote kind of an adagiofor strings with Uillean pipes. And that ada-gio, or a variation of it, is presented at theend when the survivors are executed. Also,one of the central characters is namedPaddy; he kind of represents the innocent inthis movie, and he plays a recorder periodi-cally throughout the movie. That theme isvery simple and kind of child-like, and that’sinterwoven throughout the big orchestral

cues later in the movie.”Most of Troost’s battle scene cues are sur-

prisingly lyrical, with choral underpinnings.“They wanted all the battle scenes to bemore of an emotional beat as opposed to justplaying the action. The music is adding anemotional dimension rather than pumpingup the action.” One exception is the cue“Pesadumbre,” a tougher, harder-edgedpiece. “‘Pesadumbre’ is actually a guerrillagroup attacking a Mexican town, so it mademore sense to play that as action.”

Troost found ways of presenting his mate-rial in less-than-obvious ways. “‘DefeatedMarch’ is another variation of Paddy’stheme. The only place you hear that on theCD is the execution, where you suddenly geta recorder with an Irish drummer, and theneverybody joins in. That theme is put

through a variation on‘Defeated March’ in aminor key. I think in a lot ofthe big cues like the execu-tion and the whipping, Itend to come up with a lotof cues and then put themthrough a lot of variation—weave them in and out ofthemselves and intertwinethem with other themes, soit’s almost like Paddy’stheme became kind of thespiritual perspective of thewhole thing. That added athird dimension.”

When asked how he gotthe job on One Man’s Hero,Troost came up with anincreasingly commonanswer: the film’s editor gothim onboard. While that

may seem a roundabout route to a film scor-ing assignment, Troost explains why itmakes perfect sense: “I think an editor likesit when a composer can come in and make allthose cuts go away. They’re seeing all thatbecause they work with it that way, so if youcan make their work flow and help the moviein any way they like it.” —Jeff Bond

EDMUND CHOIThe Castle

When the independent Australiancomedy The Castle was bought by

Harvey Weinstein’s Miramax for distribu-tion this May, the call went out to find acomposer to tackle the job of re-scoring thefilm. Initially, the soundtrack contained afew original pieces and a library of orches-tral cues. Miramax, wanting to make thefilm their own, called upon young talentEdmund Choi for the task.

Choi is best known for his work done incollaboration with director M. NightShyamalan, whom he met in college. He

scored the director’s acclaimed first film,Praying with Anger, and when the script forWide Awake was sold to Miramax, Ed wasthe first member of Shyamalan’s team tocome aboard. His subsequent score wasbeautiful—at turns sad, innocent and mis-chievous—and caught the attention of thewell-known Gorfaine/Schwartz Agency, whosigned him last summer.

Scoring sessions for The Castle took placeat Manhattan Center Studios in New YorkCity this past January. Choi’s challenge wasan interesting one: rescore the film utilizinghis original themes but following the spot-ting cues—and often the instrumentation—of the existing soundtrack. “We didn’t devi-ate all that much from the style of the orig-inal score,” Choi explains, “I just made themusic my own. If it had a solo guitar we’dstick to that; if it had a huge, soaring themein one area we’d stick to that but use mytheme instead. We followed the cues about90% of the time. Obviously, I could tailor itmore to the scene, whereas before they hadslapped in a library cue and hoped it wouldsync up.”

Choi’s “tailoring” consisted of using an84-piece ensemble—the majority of the NewYork FILMharmonic Orchestra—resultingin a rich, sonorous sound that brings tomind the Ralph Vaughan Williams arrange-ments of Irish and English folk songs. Thiswas complemented by some fine woodwindand brass passages and acoustic guitar over-dubs. “It’s amazing to have an orchestrathis size, but Harvey Weinstein is a manwho will put the money on the screen,” Choiexplains, though he is quick to add that therecording probably would not have takenplace had it not been for the low-budgetunion scale. The recording hall, an ornateballroom converted for scoring use, providedrich acoustics and prompted Choi to remarkthat the mixing wouldn’t require the often-needed addition of heavy reverb.

“Jane Kennedy [the producer of bothscores] was incredibly trusting of me,” Choisays. “Any time you work with someonewho trusts you it makes your job so mucheasier. You never feel like you are under thegun or under the microscope. Every day Iwrote the score was a relaxing one.” Choi,at age 28, not only wrote but nearly fullyorchestrated and conducted the sessionshimself. Often the sessions were as muchan aerobics class as soundtrack recording:Choi would conduct each track, then dashupstairs to hear playback in the booth,amid checking in with the producers foroverall approval. He doesn’t forget theplayers, either: “It’s a tradition of mine tobuy the players lunch the first day of scor-ing.” It looks like Choi’s talent willundoubtedly keep Hero Boy in business.

—Mark Leneker FSM


D O W N B E A T

Composer/conductorEdmund Choi (in white)

flanked by hisengineering staff:

Steven Webber,Lawrence Manchesterand Roy Fischer Clark;The Manhattan Center

Studio scoring stageand orchestra.

returned to normal and moviescores dipped back below theradar for everyone but readers ofFSM. James Horner’s highlyanticipated follow-ups to his dou-ble-Oscar winner (Deep Impact,The Mask of Zorro and MightyJoe Young) used the composer’snotoriety for promotion (everyavailable Horner CD seemed tohave a “From the Oscar-winningcomposer of Titanic” stickeraffixed to it), but while the newalbums sold respectably, nonegenerated the kind of break-outsuccess Titanic achieved.

Just as there was no runawayfavorite in this year’s BestPicture Oscar race, readers’choices for score of the year weredivided among a diverse pack offront-runners, with most peoplepredicting a win for JohnWilliams’s Saving Private Ryaneven though many didn’t thinkmuch of the score. So withoutfurther ado, here’s what youthought about 1998:

Best New ScoreTHE TOP TEN

1. Mulan Jerry Goldsmith 19%2. Saving Private Ryan

John Williams 18%3. The Mask of Zorro

James Horner 16%4. Pleasantville Randy Newman 12%5. The Horse Whisperer

Thomas Newman 8%6. Small Soldiers Jerry Goldsmith 6%7. The Truman Show

Burkhard Dallwitz/Philip Glass 5%8 The Prince of Egypt

Hans Zimmer 4%9. Dangerous Beauty

George Fenton 4%

10. The Thin Red Line Hans Zimmer 4%Honorable Mentions: Rush Hour(Lalo Schifrin), Les Miserables (BasilPoledouris), Gods and Monsters(Carter Burwell), Stepmom (JohnWilliams).

Jerry Goldsmith’s Mulan andJohn Williams’s Saving PrivateRyan were neck and neck in thiscategory, with Horner’s Mask ofZorro and Randy Newman’sPleasantville not far behind.Placing surprisingly high wasGoldsmith’s Small Soldiersscore, a brief Varèse album for amovie that justabout completelytanked last sum-mer. HansZimmer’s double-threat of ThePrince of Egyptand The Thin RedLine were fresh inreaders’ memories,but so was themuch lower-pro-file DangerousBeauty fromGeorge Fenton. While Life IsBeautiful had a good showing inthe “will it get an Oscar?” cate-gory, it barely registered here,but several other scores chosenby readers as the year’s worst(Patch Adams, Armageddon,Godzilla and Deep Rising) atleast registered a couple of voteseach.

Best Composer1. Jerry Goldsmith 35%2. John Williams 19%3. James Horner 17%4. Randy Newman 16%5. Hans Zimmer 12%

The holy triumvirate of JerryGoldsmith, John Williams andJames Horner reigned supremeagain this year, althoughGoldsmith’s heavier output puthim in the top spot by an unusu-ally wide margin. Williams stillgenerates tremendous loyalty,but didn’t help himself with alow output (two scores) and aspectacularly successful film(Saving Private Ryan) that didnot strongly feature his music.After the controversial Titanicsmash, James Horner impressed

readers with The Mask of Zorro(and to a lesser extent MightyJoe Young), while RandyNewman’s work on A Bug’s Lifeand Pleasantville brought histypically superb work back intofocus with fans. Hans Zimmergenerated interest with ThePrince of Egypt and The ThinRed Line, Danny Elfman’s workon A Simple Plan and Psychobrought him notice, and GeorgeFenton got a lot of mileage out ofDangerous Beauty. Even TrevorRabin rated a vote here... andBernard Herrmann got four. Yougo, Benny!

OKAY, READERS—TIME TO SLIP INTO YOUR TUXES, EVENING GOWNS AND BORROWED JEWELRY AND STRUT

DOWN THE AISLE FOR FSM’S ANNUAL READER’S AWARDS AND NO-PRIZES. AFTER YEARS

OF SUFFERING, ANDY DURSIN FINALLY BROKE DOWN AND BEGGED

US NEVER, EVER TO MAKE HIM DO THE READER’S POLL

AGAIN, SO THAT WEIGHTY BURDEN HAS BEEN PASSED ON TO

ME, ALONG WITH RUNNING TO THE DELI EVERY DAY FOR

LUKAS’S SANDWICHES.

AFTER TITANIC RAISED THE WORLD’S CONSCIOUSNESS OF

FILM MUSIC AT THE BEGINNING OF THE YEAR, THINGS LARGELY

FSMREADER’S

POLL

what’s on yourmind?THE BEST AND

WORST OF

1998

Compiled and

Commented On by

Jeff Bond


The Number One Composer with his Number One Score.

Best Record Label1. Varèse Sarabande 44%2. Rykodisc 27%3. FSM/Retrograde 14%4. Sony Classical 8%5. Marco Polo 7%Varèse Sarabande won this cat-egory by a wide margin on thestrength of an ambitious seriesof re-recordings, but Rykodisc’swide-ranging series of reissueswon them reader hosannas(“becoming invaluable,” notedone), and guess what? Our ownSilver Age Classics CD seriesplaced a respectable third, fol-lowed by Sony Classical fortheir Williams and Horneralbums and Marco Polo forfinally getting out some ofJohn Morgan’s and BillStromberg’s great re-record-ings.

Best New Album of Older Score 1. Close Encounters of the Third Kind

33%2. The Living Daylights 20%3. The Magnificent Seven 18%4. The Greatest Story Ever Told 14%5. Taxi Driver 13%I don’t think readers could haveasked for a more beautifulalbum than the expanded CloseEncounters of the Third Kind,rescuing John Williams’s mag-nificent 1977 epic from its earli-er slice-and-dice Arista LP(although you have to keepVarèse’s reissue of the Aristaalbum if you want the originaledited-together end title music).The expanded 007 score TheLiving Daylights (John Barry)and the first-ever release ofElmer Bernstein’s originalsoundtrack recording of TheMagnificent Seven fromRykodisc followed, with Ryko’slong-coveted 3CD set of AlfredNewman’s The Greatest StoryEver Told almost tying withHerrmann’s Taxi Driver(Arista’s second triumph of theyear) for fourth place. Just out-side of the top five were FSM’sreleases of The PoseidonAdventure and Fantastic Voyage.

Best New Recording1. Superman: The Movie 26%2. The Trouble with Harry 26%3. Body Heat 17%

4. The 7th Voyage of Sinbad 16%5. Somewhere in Time 8%6. Midway 6%7. Viva Zapata! 6%

At least three persons putour Fantastic Voyage album inthe “Best New Recording” cat-egory, which we like to think is

a comment on its superb soundquality. Varèse Sarabandeswept this category with theirpopular 2CD set of Williams’sSuperman: The Movie andHerrmann’s The Trouble withHarry tying for first place withreaders, followed by Barry’s

Body Heat, Herrmann’s The7th Voyage of Sinbad, Barry’sSomewhere in Time, Williams’sMidway and Alex North’s VivaZapata! A bit farther down thelist: Danny Elfman’s mostlyunreleased re-recording ofPsycho, the only recording on

As you absorb and casti-

gate this year’s round-up

of reader picks and pans,

let’s take a look at prognostications

of years past.That’s right, tough

guy—FSM’s writers and editors

aren’t the only ones who get to live

with their mistakes (as well as

uncanny foresight) for years after

the fact. Here are the Reader’s

Choices of the past four years,

along with our insightful Monday

morning quarterbacking. Note how

our completely arbitrary tabulation

system gets overhauled on a yearly

basis....

1997 (Vol. 3, No. 3)Titanic James Horner 19%L.A. Confidential Jerry Goldsmith 15%The Edge Jerry Goldsmith 14%

4. Air Force One Jerry Goldsmith 10%5. Seven Years in Tibet John Williams 9%6. Amistad John Williams 8%7. Starship Troopers Basil Poledouris 8%8. Tomorrow Never Dies David Arnold 7%9. Rosewood John Williams 7%10. Crash Howard Shore 5%Talk about a round-up of the usual

suspects: the only unexpected

entry here is Howard Shore’s

gleaming Crash. It’s interesting

that Goldsmith’s L.A. Confidential

placed nearly as high as Titanic,

while Goldsmith’s quite similar

City Hall (1996) barely caused a rip-

ple among fans—being connected

to an Oscar-nominated movie can’t

hurt. And Goldsmith’s score to the

box-office dud The Edge itself

slightly edged out the composer’s

massive Air Force One action score,

one of the biggest box-office hits of

the year. Starship Troopers also

showed up on readers’ lists of the

year’s worst: a good number of fans

took exception to FSM’s unmitigat-

ed promotion of the score before it

hit theaters. I fear it will fall to later

generations (and later, more fascis-

tic governments) to proclaim the

true brilliance of Paul Verhoeven’s

$100 million satire.

Oscar FalloutHorner’s Oscar win for Titanic, one

of the biggest-selling orchestral

soundtracks ever, was hardly a sur-

prise—but Anne Dudley’s win for

The Full Monty was.

1996 (Vol. 2, No. 2)This was the year before we figured

out how to do percentages, but the

year after we decided not to show

“point” tallies anymore (revealing

our teeny-tiny samplings). So,

sorry:

Mission: Impossible Danny ElfmanThe Ghost and the Darkness Jerry GoldsmithStar Trek: First Contact Jerry GoldsmithMichael Collins Elliot GoldenthalSleepers John WilliamsThe English Patient Gabriel YaredThe Hunchback of Notre Dame Alan MenkenFargo Carter BurwellHamlet Patrick DoyleMulholland Falls Dave GrusinThe Spitfire Grill James HornerTwister Mark MancinaThe Phantom David NewmanThe Portrait of a Lady Wojciech Kilar

Does anyone remember what

Sleepers sounds like? While it

seems to take either a blockbuster

action/sci-fi movie (i.e., even a

mediocre Star Trek movie like First

Contact) or an Oscar-nominated

prestige film to get Jerry

Goldsmith noticed by the public,

Williams can score a Tidy Bowl

commercial and get an Oscar nom-

ination. Similarly, is anyone still

listening to the Oscar-winning The

English Patient? Give me Wojciech

Kilar’s haunting Portrait of a Lady

or Elliot Goldenthal’s impressive

Michael Collins any time.Winner of

the posterity sweepstakes? It’s

Carter Burwell’s Fargo, which bril-

liantly accompanied a film that’s

on its way to becoming a Wizard of

Oz-like cult touchstone.

Oscar FalloutThe English Patient takes home the

Oscar, and another score that

slipped below the radar of fans,

Rachel Portman’s Emma, becomes

the first score to win a woman a

Best Original Score Oscar.

1995 (Winter 1996, #65/66/67)First Knight Jerry Goldsmith 45 ptsBatman Forever Elliot Goldenthal 33 ptsA Little Princess Patrick Doyle 26 ptsNixon John Williams 24 ptsMurder in the First Christopher Young 18 ptsBraveheart James Horner 16 ptsDon Juan DeMarco

Michael Kamen 15 ptsApollo 13 James Horner 13 ptsPowder Jerry Goldsmith 13 ptsJudge Dredd Alan Silvestri 11 ptsHow to Make an American Quilt

Thomas Newman 10 ptsThe Scarlet Letter John Barry 9 ptsWaterworld James Newton Howard 9 pts

Just in case you think it takes a

good movie to generate a beloved

film score, check out the first-rate

bombs included here: Judge Dredd,

The Scarlet Letter and Waterworld.

Goldenthal’s Batman Forever was a

stunning breath of fresh air in ‘95,

but the stench of Batman and Robin

may have fans looking back at

Danny Elfman’s caped crusader

scores with a bit more fondness.

Interestingly, the most influential

score here is buried in the middle

of the pack: Horner’s Braveheart,

which presaged the Gaelic influ-

ences of Titanic and is far more

popular with the general public

than any of the other works listed

here, although Michael Kamen’s

“Have You Ever Really Loved a

Woman?” tune from Don Juan


What Were We Thinking?A Look at Reader’s Choices of the Decade, andWhether or Not We’re Still Listening to Them...

by Jeff Bond

this list that was actually used ina movie.

Best New Compilation1. 20th Century Fox:

Music from the Golden Age 36%2. Dirty Harry Anthology 17%3. The Essential Jerry Goldsmith 16%

4. The Power and the Glory 11%5. The Best of the West 10%6. Others 10%Some readers seemed confusedabout the definition of the word“compilation,” apparently rea-soning that it meant the samething as “composition”—hence,

Saving Private Ryan wound upgetting more than a few votes asthe best “compilation” of theyear. Otherwise, Nick Redman’sFox sampling on VarèseSarabande, Music from theGolden Age, beat out other com-ers by a wide margin, with Lalo

Schifrin’s Dirty Harry Anthology(on his Aleph label), SilvaScreen’s The Omen: TheEssential Jerry Goldsmith, PonyBoy’s The Power and the Glory:Music from NFL Films andRykodisc’s Best of the West collec-tion following.

DeMarco rates a mention in that

department. Goldsmith’s big,

romantic First Knight (his first com-

pletely acoustic film score in

years) managed to transcend the

tanking of the film itself with fans.

Oscar FalloutThe year of Il Postino! Oscar nomi-

nations for Apollo 13 and Braveheart

foreshadow Horner’s victory of

1997. After The Lion King won yet

another Best Score

Oscar for a Disney

animated musical,

the scoring category

was finally split into

Dramatic and

Musical/Comedy cat-

egories, building fan

anticipation about

whether James

Horner would win his

first Oscar (he and Williams each

received double nominations).

Film music nerds were crushed

when Luis Bacalov, a foreigner,

took home the statue for Best

Dramatic Score; Pocahontas (Alan

Menken and Stephen Schwartz)

predictably won for Best Comedy

or Musical Score.

1994This was the year where John

Williams didn’t do any film scores,

and it looks like we forgot to do the

readers’ poll too. Maybe Bad Girls

would have won—or The Shadow.

(Angie?)

1993 (Winter 1994, #41/42/43)Jurassic Park John Williams 49 ptsSchindler’s List John Williams 49 ptsRudy Jerry Goldsmith 41 ptsThe Age of Innocence

Elmer Bernstein 16 ptsThe Man Without a Face

James Horner 15 ptsTombstone Bruce Broughton 13 ptsSommersby Danny Elfman 12 ptsGettysburg Randy Edelman 11 ptsThe Piano Michael Nyman 10 ptsBatman: Mask of the Phantasm

Shirley Walker 9 ptsNeedful Things Patrick Doyle 9 ptsThe Three Musketeers

Michael Kamen 7 ptsAn embarrassment of riches. Like

his collaborator Steven Spielberg,

John Williams effortlessly strad-

dled the disciplines of popular and

“important” filmmaking in what

has to stand as the best year their

teaming ever had. Jurassic Park

may not represent the artistic pin-

nacle of

Spielberg’s

commercial

filmmaking or

Williams’s

subtlety, but it

was a stagger-

ing special

effects mile-

stone brilliant-

ly mounted by

the director, and Williams’s score

is his last great adventure movie

album (at least until The Phantom

Menace opens). Schindler’s List

meanwhile turned the worldwide

box-office records of Jurassic Park

into an afterthought.

Lost in the shuffle was an equal-

ly influential score, Goldsmith’s

Rudy, which has since become one

of the great movie trailer music

staples; Elmer Bernstein’s elegant

collaboration with Martin

Scorsese, The Age of Innocence;

Bruce Broughton’s stupendous

anti-Silverado western score,

Tombstone; and Danny Elfman

finally breaking out of his comic

book and comedy mold with an

adept dramatic score for

Sommersby. Michael Nyman and

Randy Edelman scored tremen-

dous popular successes with The

Piano and Gettysburg, albums that

still sell pretty well today

(Gettysburg was recently expanded

and repackaged). Shirley Walker’s

Batman: Mask of the Phantasm

remains a more enjoyable listening

experience to these withered ears

than any of the other Batman film

scores except for Danny Elfman’s

bristling original, and in fact the

only joker in the deck here seems

to be Michael Kamen’s The Three

Musketeers, which doesn’t stand up

well against the composer’s other

period epics like The Adventures of

Baron Munchausen and Robin

Hood: Prince of Thieves.

Oscar FalloutHey—where were the Disney ani-

mated scores? Nominated were

two period movies of the type tradi-

tionally beloved of the Academy

(Bernstein’s The Age of Innocence

and Richard Robbins’s The

Remains of the Day), and two law-

and-order thrillers (James Newton

Howard’s The

Fugitive and Dave

Grusin’s unusual

piano-only score

for The Firm), but

John Williams’s

win for the stun-

ning Schindler’s

List was a fore-

gone conclusion.

Perhaps better

remembered is the big dance num-

ber Debbie Allen choreographed

highlighting the score nominees....

1992 (Feb./March 1993, #30/31)Far and Away John Williams 37 ptsBasic Instinct Jerry Goldsmith 30 ptsBram Stoker’s Dracula

Wojciech Kilar 17 ptsBatman Returns Danny Elfman 14 ptsAlien3 Elliot Goldenthal 11 ptsThe Last of the Mohicans

Trevor Jones/Randy Edelman 10 pts1492 Vangelis 10 ptsAladdin

Alan Menken/Howard Ashman 9 ptsCool World Mark Isham 8 ptsHoney, I Blew Up the Kid

Bruce Broughton 8 ptsJohn Williams’s Far and Away

received 37 points... 20 from Andy

Dursin and 17 from Paul MacLean.

Just kidding. I must be the only one

alive who finds Far and Away one of

the most obvious and forgettable

John Williams efforts ever—but I

have to wonder how often this CD

appears in the normal listening

rotation of Williams fans seven

years later. Similarly, does anyone

out there remember the score to

Cool World? Elliot Goldenthal’s

Alien3 was the real find here, while

both Goldsmith’s Basic Instinct and

Wojciech Kilar’s Holst-like score

for Bram Stoker’s Dracula remain

huge influences on trailer music

and contemporary film scores.

Oscar FalloutThe handwriting was on the wall by

1992: any Disney animated score

written by Alan Menken was going

to win the Oscar.

Menken’s domi-

nation of this cat-

egory led to the

splitting of the

Best Score nomi-

nations into

Dramatic and

Musical/Comedy

segments a few

years later. Of

course, now it’s being recombined

into one for 1999.While Far and

Away, Last of the Mohicans, Chaplin

and Dracula were mentioned as

possibilities, only Barry’s Chaplin

rated a nomination. Goldsmith’s

popular Basic Instinct, not touted

by fans as Oscar material, did

receive a nomination.

It’s interesting to note that in

these pre-Titanic days, James

Horner’s negatives far out-

weighed his positives with fans,

and the composer’s three high-

profile efforts of the year (Patriot

Games, Thunderheart and

Unlawful Entry) were the front-

runners for Worst Score of the Year

according to readers. FSM

See pp. 41-42 for ordering informationif you’re interested in any of thebackissues referenced here.



Oscar GuessesDRAMA1. Saving Private Ryan

John Williams 83%2. Life Is Beautiful Nicola Piovani 13%3. The Horse Whisperer

Thomas Newman 4%COMEDY1. Mulan Jerry Goldsmith 33%2. The Prince of Egypt

Hans Zimmer 33%3. Shakespeare in Love

Stephen Warbeck 15%4. A Bug’s Life Randy Newman 7%5. The Truman Show

Burkhard Dallwitz/Philip Glass 7%6. Pleasantville Randy Newman 5%

No surprises here: few peoplevoted for anything other thanWilliams’s Saving Private Ryanin the Dramatic Score category,despite numerous readers statingthat they didn’t think it was thebest score of the year. Only LifeIs Beautiful rated more than acouple of votes out of the othercontenders. In theComedy/Musical category JerryGoldsmith’s Mulan tied for firstplace with Hans Zimmer’s ThePrince of Egypt, with StephenWarbeck’s Shakespeare in Loveplacing third... which may

explain why Warbeck’s scorecould win after Goldsmith andZimmer split their votes amongAcademy members (will the JerryGoldsmith Oscar curse ever belifted?). By the way, Pleasantvilledid get a nomination—but not inthe category readers suspected.

Best Unreleased Score1. Godzilla David Arnold 48%2. Psycho Bernard Herrmann,

arr. D. Elfman/S. Bartek 20%3. The Spanish Prisoner

Carter Burwell 16%4. T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous

William Ross 8%

5. Quest for Camelot Patrick Doyle 8%The most heavily-hyped movie

of the year failed to prompt ascore release, making DavidArnold’s Godzilla the favoriteunavailable score for readers.Although it took less than half ofthe monster film’s votes, DannyElfman’s take on Herrmann’sPsycho score was the second-most-desired release, followed byCarter Burwell’s The SpanishPrisoner, Bill Ross’s T-Rex andPatrick Doyle’s Quest forCamelot.

HALL OF SHAMEWorst New Score1. Armageddon Trevor Rabin 20%2. Saving Private Ryan

John Williams 17%3. Deep Impact James Horner 15%4. Godzilla David Arnold 12%5. The Man in the Iron Mask

Nick Glennie-Smith 10%6. U.S. Marshals Jerry Goldsmith 6%7. Halloween H20

John Ottman/Marco Beltrami 5%8. Patch Adams Marc Shaiman 5%9. Simon Birch Marc Shaiman 5%10. Sphere Elliot Goldenthal 5%While anything involving anasteroid seemed to be what read-

ers wanted tohear less of thisyear, SavingPrivate Ryan alsoplaced surpris-ingly high, indi-cating readerambivalenceabout the wayJohn Williams’sscore was spottedand how it func-tioned in StevenSpielberg’s WWIIepic. David

Arnold’s Godzilla score seemedto make its mark in every cate-gory, with about as many peoplevoting it the worst of the year asthere were readers who wantedto own it on CD. John Ottman’sHalloween H20 was singled outby a few readers, seeminglymore because of the heresy ofcreating an orchestral take onJohn Carpenter’s early synthscore than anything else.

Also rating a mention wereJerry Goldsmith’s work on U.S.Marshals (Andy Dursin notedlast issue what an improvementJerry’s Star Trek: Insurrection

action music was over his U.S.Marshals score... am I crazy, orare the action licks inInsurrection and U.S. Marshalsalmost exactly the same?), MarcShaiman’s sentiment-heavy dou-ble-threat of Patch Adams andSimon Birch, and Nick Glennie-Smith’s introduction of the rockvamp to 18th century France inThe Man in the Iron Mask.

Worst Composer1. Trevor Rabin 24%2. “Team Zimmer/Media Ventures”14%3. Marc Shaiman 10%4. “Horner” 10% 5. John Williams/John Carpenter/

Mark Isham/Nick Glennie-Smith/Graeme Revell 7% each

23 composers were singled outfor abuse here, but before theydecide to flee for the hills, anyfilm composers reading thisshould note that most nameswere suggested by but a singleperson. So you’re not dealingwith hordes of enemies here—just a few crazed loners. TrevorRabin’s noisy Armageddonmade him the high-profile tar-get, but just about every majorname came in for abuse: noteposition #5, which is occupiedby (among others) the world’sfavorite film composer, JohnWilliams, who was singled outby at least one person for a dis-appointing ‘98 output. In fact,with votes for Jerry Goldsmith,Danny Elfman (probably fordaring to re-record Psycho),Carter Burwell, Howard Shoreand Randy Newman, anyone inthis category is in pretty goodcompany. At least reader DavidMoraza had the decency to say“Sorry!” after voting for MarcShaiman. One additional note:people who don’t like JamesHorner always seem to refer tohim as just “Horner.”

Worst Record Label1. Sony 42%2. TVT 21%3. Rhino 20%4. DreamWorks 14%5. Everybody Else 3%Sony took this category purelyon the strength of its three-yeardelay of Star Trek: The MotionPicture... does this mean they’llwin Best Record Label next yearfor finally releasing it? TVT got

a few votes, although whetherfor their pop-single-heavyreleases of scores like Lost inSpace and Dark City or for theirSci-Fi’s Greatest Hits compila-tion is unclear. Readers weremore concrete about some otherchoices: Arista got a vote for thepackaging of Close Encounters,Tom Linehan of West Roxbury,MA slammed GNP/Crescendo(“Hire a proofreader, guys!”)and Sonic Images (“No moreBabylon 5 CDs!”), andPolyGram was severely scoldedby one reader for not releasingMonsignor... in related news,the nation of Japan wasmaligned for failing to winWorld War II. Then there wasRykodisc, nominated by an irateKyle J. Adamczak of Gainesville,NY “for the incompetent mixingof vocals on A Funny ThingHappened on the Way to theForum and for not separatingthe absolutely dreadful dialogueinto its own tracks on the all-talk, little-music release Equus.”

SELF-REFLECTION AWARDSBest FSM Articles1. John Williams Buyer’s Guide

Vol. 3, No. 1, 2, 4 38%2. Korngold Biographer Interview

Vol. 3, No. 9 25%3. Philip Glass/Minimalism

Vol. 3, No. 2 11%4. Watch the Record Stores (CE3K)

Vol. 3, No. 4 9%5. Bruce Broughton/Lost in Space

Vol. 3, No. 4 9%6. Titanic Essays Vol. 3, No. 3 9%Hmm... people seem to like thisJohn Williams guy. Just asWilliams’s Saving Private Ryanwas a shoo-in for the BestDramatic Score Oscar, our volu-minous John Williams Buyer’sGuide attracted the lion’s shareof reader votes for best FSM fea-ture, with Bill Whitaker’s ErichWolfgang Korngold bio piece andDoug Adams’s look at PhilipGlass following closely behind,and our look at the expandedreissue of Close Encounters, theBruce Broughton Lost in Spaceinterview and Nick Redman’sand Doug Adams’s Titanicessays rounding out the pack.

Worst FSM Article1. Foreign Scores/

Score Internationale 50%

Most Popular Guy, and his schizophrenically-received score.

2. Sound of Scuzzlebutt (South Park) Vol. 3, No. 7 21%

3. Mail Bag 14%4. Laserphile 14%Votes here were pretty evenlydistributed, with only JohnBender’s Score Internationalebreaking loose from the pack assomething that parochial-mind-ed, isolationist readers wereloathe to explore. (Too bad!)Other articles that attractedreader ire were anything elsethat varied from FSM’s routine:the South Park cover storyreceived just slightly more nega-tive responses than positiveones, while reader RonaldBluhm wrote: “It wasn’t reallythat bad, but I simply couldn’tcare less about your feature onNFL’s Greatest Hits” (Vol. 4,No. 1—hate that next year,guys).

Our always abrasive Mail Bagand Andy Dursin’s Laserphilegot singled out by a few people(maybe that’s because laserdiscsare dead, Andy!). One readerbitched about “negative bitch-ing,” while someone else aptlysingled out our “unabashedlyglowing Prince of Egypt feature”(Vol. 3, No. 10). And despite thefact that “Film” is the firstword in “Film Score Monthly,”certain readers found any dis-cussion of films per se asopposed to music in the maga-zine infuriating. “Hate the filmreviews... just review musicplease,” one reader noted, whileanother singled out ourDownbeat feature, in which weinterview composers about theirwork on specific film projects:“Magazine is about music, notthe movie.” Maybe we shouldstart warning composers to stoptalking about the movies they’vescored during interviews.

Best Writer1. Jeff Bond 36%2. Doug Adams 19%3. Lukas Kendall 19%4. John Bender 14%5. Andy Dursin /

“Everybody but Jeff”/Nick Redman/Bill Whitaker 3% each

I put this down to a simplePavlovian response on the partof many readers who just seemy name all over the maga-zine—either that or you like

me... you really like me! FSM’slower-ranked writers can takethe “Everybody but Jeff” voteas solace (my wife thought thatwas hilarious). And while JohnBender received an outsizedshare of flack for his excellentScore Internationale columns,Peter Avellino of Los Angeleswrote: “All respect to Mr. Bond,but I love the new ScoreInternationale, since I’ve reallygotten into sleazy ‘60s Italianmusic lately, and I hope this col-umn continues for a long time.Lukas’s Psycho editorial flat-outkicked ass.”

Best Cover1. Erich Wolfgang Korngold 2. Vol. 3, No. 9 38%3. South Park Vol. 3, No. 7 17%4. Sci-Fi Spectacular Vol. 3, No. 4 17%5. Titanic Vol. 3, No. 3 17%6. John Williams Vol. 3, No. 1 10%

Golden Age fans came out ofthe woodwork to praise ourKorngold bio cover, while SouthPark, our Lost in Space/CloseEncounters Sci-Fi cover andTitanic formed a three-way tiefor second place (although onereader voted for “Everything

but South Park”). Our inaugural“This Is Your Life, Johnny”buyer’s guide cover rounded outthe top-five.

Creative Essay QuestionMany readers pointed out themediocrity of 1998’s film scoresas opposed to its bountiful slateof reissues, new releases ofolder scores and re-recordings,which most readers found farmore enjoyable than the newscores being written. “This wasa year in which the reissues andre-recordings of older scoresclearly outdid the new scores,”wrote Ronald Mosteller of Vale,NC. Several also noted that vet-eran composers like Goldsmith,Williams and Horner, while notdoing the greatest work of theircareers, were still writing moreconsistently interesting scoresthan the up-and-comers, whooften seemed hard-pressed todifferentiate their work fromeveryone else’s.

“This was not a good year forfilm scores,” [email protected]. “There were only a fewgood scores and most of themcame from accomplished com-posers such as John Williams,Jerry Goldsmith, James Hornerand Randy Newman. HansZimmer, Nick Glennie-Smithand the rest of the new waveproduced mostly crap—not evenworth mentioning.”

Brian McVickar had this tosay: “It seems to me thatHorner feels satiated by hisOscar win and has now decidedto rediscover the allure of hisorchestral acrobatics of yester-year, evident in Zorro andMighty Joe. Goldsmith hadanother solid year; maybe not asriveting as 1997, but it yieldedsome wonderfully texturedscores that were still highlyindividualistic for their respec-tive films.”

Here’s some advice that fellon deaf ears: “It would be betterand more open for your maga-zine to talk about scores whichare not necessarily from anAmerican movie. Try to knowwhat there is outside America!”implored Laurent Le Marchandfrom France. Laurent, trytelling this to all the readerswho dissed “Score

Internationale.” Someone named Roman

expressed this common senti-ment: “Let someone else thanJeff Bond write reviews of JerryGoldsmith scores; he alwayslikes them, doesn’t matterwhether they are the same asthe last time or not (though hecan point out his opinions clear-ly).” I wish Roman would pointout this opinion clearly to JerryGoldsmith, who thinks I’m thescum of the earth for dissingsome of his scores.

Matthias Wiegandt ofGermany wrote: “Being 33 andin contradiction to yourKorngold issue preface, I loveGolden Age music the most andwould like to see those peopleinterviewed who are still living,such as Irving Gertz or HermanStein. And when does the timecome for essays about Roy Webband the most underrated com-poser of the whole Golden Age,Daniele Amfitheatrof? Do it!”

Meanwhile, Peter Sergides, ofSan Ramon, CA had this some-what less altruistic idea: “Iwould like to see more readerads in the magazine. After all,the magazine is geared towardcollectors of motion picturemusic.”

Finally, Rod Dicks ofTumwater, WA had this to say:“I’m sure glad you guys droppedmost of the four-letter wordsand the Sharon-Stone-styleback-stabbing that has nothingto do with film scoring!”

Rod, since when do four-letterwords and Sharon-Stone-styleback-stabbing have nothing todo with film scoring? FSM


Loved it (above), hated it (below).Well, some did, anyway...

MAIL BAGSo much for tallying your opinions.

Next month Mail Bag returns andwe will present your comments,raves and rants without numericquantification.

Send your pronouncements to:FSM Mail Bag5455 Wilshire Blvd, Suite 1500Los Angeles CA 90036-4201

or e-mail us at:[email protected]

And don’t forget to check out ourcomplimentary Film Score Daily atwww.filmscoremonthly.com


The arts have always reflected thesocial conditions of their respective histories.Film music in the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s wasjust beginning to edge across the linebetween creative infancy and establishedmaturity. Composers understood thedemands and peculiarities of the medium,but no avenue had yet been exhaustinglyexplored. Artistically, it was an age of discov-ery, an age of un-jaded sincerity and opti-mism, and, in many circles, an age of unpar-alleled support. In short, it was a world dia-metrically opposed to everything the youngFranz Waxman had known.

Franz Waxman (1906-1967) arrived inHollywood in 1934. He had previously beenliving in Paris—a self-imposed exile from the social,political and artistic turmoil of his native Germany.American film music promised to offer him artistic free-dom, and the young composer responded with some of themost rich and bewitchingly passionate music Hollywoodhad yet heard. His sound was rooted in European refine-ment, which, when pollinated with the extroversion ofAmerican cinema, created the buoyant, detailed soundthat now defines this era. The stops of artistic oppressionhad been pulled, and Waxman let himself soar.

Waxman’s first big break came in the form of James Whale’s 1935 The Bride of Frankenstein. (He scored a fewEuropean films and arranged for the Jerome Kern/Oscar

Hammerstein musical, Music in the Air,prior to this.) While the Universal mon-ster movies had previously been trackedwith excerpts of classical pieces—whichgave them a chilling if dispassionate air—Waxman chose to create a vigorously orig-inal score. He lent it a touch of hisEuropean grace, his forward-looking sen-sibilities, and his emotive heart. Bride ofFrankenstein was a smash success, andWaxman’s massive contribution was evi-dent. In a platitude befitting Whale’smovie, Waxman brought the film to life.From there, he never looked back. Duringhis nearly 40-year career in Hollywood,Waxman established himself as one of theearly giants of film music.

“I knew Franz for one hell of a longtime,” remembers David Raksin. “I

admired him—he was one of the best of all.” Composer Elmer Bernstein seconds the notion: “I always

credit Franz Waxman with being one of the [greatest] influ-ences on me. He was a very forward-looking composer. If youlisten to his body of work, he was the most adventurous of allthe European composers. Miklós Rózsa was a great compos-er, but Miklós Rózsa, in his film music, was not nearly asadventurous—rhythmically and harmonically—as wasWaxman. He was an extremely energetic man and you findthat in his music. There’s a tremendous rhythmic energy.But that came very much from his personality. He was some-body who just kept learning his whole life.”

• A R E T R O S P E C T I V E B Y D O U G A D A M S •

AValiant Effort

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AValiant Effort

Franz Waxman Composing Prince Valiant

Franz Waxman (with son John,seated) on the 20th Century Fox

recording stage during sessionsfor The Virgin Queen (1955)

following Prince Valiant.

Franz’s son, John Waxman, states, “I think that myfather was such a chameleon that it didn’t matter if it

was [music for] gangs on the streets of New York,knights in Camelot, or contemporary drama. He wasat home in all those idioms.”

Waxman’s remarkable success with The Bride ofFrankenstein landed him a position as a music direc-tor for Universal Pictures. He held the post for a fewyears, but eventually felt he needed to spend moretime writing his own music, so he signed a compos-ing contract with MGM studios, which lasted from1936 to 1943. MGM kept him busy with films likeFury, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and CaptainsCourageous, and lighter fare such as The Ice Folliesof 1939 and Marx Brothers at the Circus. Hoping towork exclusively on dramatic films, Waxman relocat-ed once again, signing, this time, with Warner Bros.Warner Bros. was an enormous studio, however, andas glad as they were to have him, he was still a juniormember of the triumvirate of Max Steiner, ErichKorngold and Franz Waxman.

As the century hit its midpoint, Waxman madehis presence unmistakably felt with a one-twopunch for Paramount: he earned both the 1950 and

1951 Academy Awards for best film score (then“Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture”) for SunsetBoulevard and A Place in the Sun, respectively. Thisnewfound clout allowed Waxman to operate as a basi-cally independent composer, and he never again signeda long-term contract with a studio.

During this same time-frame, Waxman began tobranch out into the concert world as not only a compos-er, but as a conductor and organizer. In 1947 he estab-lished and funded the Los Angeles Music Festival. Thisyearly event ran from 1947 until 1966 and attracted aworld’s worth of prominent composers and performers.The festival saw the premieres of modern-day classicssuch as Stravinsky’s ballet, Agon and Sir WilliamWalton’s War Requiem. Waxman himself conducted theAmerican premiere of Prokofiev’s 7th Symphony.

David Raksin remembers the concerts fondly, butrecalls that not everything always went perfectly. “Onetime [Waxman] was supposed to have Oscar Levant playthe Shostakovich 2nd Concerto for Piano, and Oscar was


Franz,Offscreen

Two non-film worksReviewed by Doug Adams

The Song of Terezin ★★★★ 1/2FRANZ WAXMANDecca 460 211-2 • 13 tracks - 57:00

If works like Prince Valiant best repre-sent the film music side of FranzWaxman’s life, and chamber works

like Goyana (below) represent the concertmusic side, then perhaps The Song ofTerezin best represents who Waxman wasas a person. Says John Waxman, “If youlisten to The Five Sacred Trees of JohnWilliams or The Song of Terezin by FranzWaxman, you might learn more about thesoul of the composer than by listening totheir most famous film scores.”

The Song of Terezin is the latest in theDecca series Entarete Musik, a collectionof works either written by composers whohad their work suppressed by Nazism—many of whom died in concentrationcamps—or by the survivors of Hitler, nowhonoring the victims. (Terezin, itself, wasthe site of the Nazis’ “showcase” camp—afront used to make it appear they werekind to their captives while, surreptitious-ly, they were killing them or exportingthem for execution elsewhere.) JohnWaxman relates, “This was [FranzWaxman’s] memorial to those people andto that period... This series is so importantthat, unless all the composers on theEntarete Musik list are recorded, Hitlerreally wins the war, because then he reallydid kill these people off. Whether theirmusic is good, bad, or indifferent is irrele-vant—we should record this music, have alisten, and see if future generations willwant to embrace it. Give it the chance itdidn’t have.”

Franz Waxman composed The Song ofTerezin in 1964, just three years before hepassed away. For his forces, Waxman elect-ed to use children’s choir, full adult cho-rus, a mezzo-soprano soloist, full sympho-ny orchestra, and text from I Never SawAnother Butterfly—a collection of poemswritten by children imprisoned during theHolocaust. As his son recalls, Waxmanwas in ill-health as he was composing the

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MASTER OF VERSATILITY:Three diverse pictures

from Waxman’s oeuvre.

A Valiant Effort


work. “He had the flu. He had it for aboutsix weeks, in New York, in the winter. Andit was during that time that he wrote mostof the piece.” Waxman would persevere andcomplete his commission on schedule,marking the first of several occasions onwhich this piece would seemingly inspirethe defeat of adversity.

For the work’s premiere, Waxman askedmezzo-soprano Betty Allen to perform withthe Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra underStanislaw Skrowaczewski. Allen, a young,attractive black woman, was in Californiavisiting her sister at the time, so the two ofthem set off in a convertible for a cross-country road trip—not an entirely safeproposition in the mid-1960s. Waxman him-self was encouraged by the work to journeyto Germany. Recalls John Waxman, “Ithink he was very proud of this piece,because when he was ill, just before hedied, he decided that he really had to go toPrague and see Terezin for himself.”

In a way, the final movement ofWaxman’s Terezin adopted an autobio-graphical touch. “The last lines became thisincredible metaphor for him. ‘We want tolive...’ That was also what he was strug-gling with, his own illness... He wanted tolive; he wanted to work; he did not want todie.” In a concluding coincidence, Waxmanwould conduct his work at the final concertof the final year of the Los Angeles MusicFestival. It was first and only time he pre-sented the work under his own baton, andit was the last time he would ever conduct.

Decca’s new recording features theRundfunk Symphony Orchestra, Choir, andChildren’s Choir, and Della Jones as themezzo-soprano soloist, yet it is Waxman’smusic that is the centerpiece. His trade-mark brilliant colors abound, as does hisirrepressible lyricism, but here his voicetakes on a passion and gravity unlike anyof his other works. The writing veersbetween angrily pleading protests and asort of pensive hopefulness, as if seeking aplacement for the Nazis’ atrocities amongthe world’s greater scheme—even if nonewill ultimately be found.

Stylistically, The Song of Terezin findsWaxman at his most modernistic, but hismost accessible. Even at their extremes, hisexperimental gestures (oftentimes recallingthe kaleidoscopic fluidity of Alban Berg)remain grounded in a sense of drama-basedbalance and architecture. The eight-move-ment work (totaling nearly 40 minutes) iswithout any formal structure, but this onlyhelps it come across as less a collection of

sequences than aseries of perpetu-ally unfurlingideas, each dissolv-ing and developinginto the next.Tonally-basedexpressivenessgives way to angu-lar twelve-tonerows. A Beethovenquote is upset byeerie octave dis-placements thatgive it a floating, disembodied ambiance.Steady low string passacaglias are brokenby violent eruptions of dissonant brass.Even the finale movement ends with a dis-quieting shiver that is at once remorseful,fearful, angry, and none of these. Perhapsthe work’s greatest strength is the incredi-bly wide trough of musical and emotionalterritory it navigates. It never wears itsintentions or its machinations on its sleeve.It’s a work of incredible polish and passion,and an undeniably important 20th centurycomposition.

Also included on this disc is composerEric Zeisl’s Requiem Ebracio, a more tradi-tionally choral/symphonic work incorporat-ing Eastern scales. In a tragic coincidence,Zeisl lost both his parents in the Terezincamp, making the pairing on disc particu-larly fitting.

Goyana ★★★★FRANZ WAXMANKoch International Classics 3-7444-2H120 tracks - 71:21

Koch’s Waxman album leads off withits titular work, Goyana: a collec-tion of four sketches for strings,

percussion and solo piano. The four shortmovements are based on a quartet ofFrancisco Goya paintings, and FranzWaxman perfectly captures the exoticcharm of the Spanish artist with an intrigu-ing blend of melodic and texture-basedstyles. Of particular note are the coloreffects Waxman achieves in combining mal-let percussion instruments with piano(expertly performed by Christina Ortiz):religioso chimes and block piano chords in“The Miracle of St. Anthony” and high-reg-ister xylophone and spidery piano arpeggiosin “The Witches’ Sabbath.” At times,Waxman’s harmonic sense displays a densi-ty not unlike early Schoenberg or lateRichard Strauss, but his distinct orchestra-

tions and recurringemphasis on diaton-ic and whole-toneconstructions notonly adds to theaccessibility, butmarks the piece asWaxman’s own.

Following are thelight-hearted—andvaguelyShostakovich-like—“The CharmBracelet for

Chamber Orchestra” (heard here in a 1990version completed by Arnold Freed) andthe more muscular Sinfonietta for StringOrchestra and Timpani, which incorporatesthe timpani as a third low string voicerather than a reinforcing device.

“Tristan and Isolde” Love Music forViolin and Piano; Auld Lang SyneVariations for String Orchestra, Violin andPiano; and Roumanian Rhapsodie No. 1 inA Major for Violin and Orchestra showcasethe playing of violinist Mark Kaplan. Of thethree, Auld Lang Syne best displays thepersonal wit and detail Waxman brought tohis writing. In its four movements, the clas-sic New Year’s Eve tune is injected with thespirit of five composers: Mozart, Beethoven,Bach, and a Shostakovich/Prokofiev hybridentitled “Hommage to Shostakofiev.” TheRoumanian Rhapsodie—written for butultimately cut from the film, Humoresque—most resembles the Waxman of the filmworld with its buoyant, folksy lyricism.Kaplan’s most virtuosic playing is heardhere, though he never strays from thewarm, romantic heart of the piece.

Rounding out the disc are two moresoloist-centered works. Introduction &Scherzo for Cello and Orchestra was tohave been Waxman’s cello concerto, but hepassed away before completing the work.The few existing minutes present an excit-ing series of expertly scored rhythmicmotifs, which, sadly, Waxman was neverable to expand upon. The disc finishes witha trumpet and orchestra arrangement ofWaxman’s classic “Carmen” Fantasie.Trumpeter Rodney Mack’s dexterous per-formance retains the rustic charm of themore traditional violin setting, but with acharismatic forcefulness unique to this ver-sion. As on The Song of Terezin, the perfor-mances (here by the Orquestra Simfonicade Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya),under the perceptive baton of LawrenceFoster, are uniformly excellent. FSM

in one of his regressive moods—he was just frightened todeath,” Raksin remembers. “People never understoodthat, but he had this hideous stage fright which hit himsometimes, and he had a hell of a time conquering it. So,Franz sent his [assistant], Maxim Gershunoff, to Oscar’shouse to get him. Oscar, at first, didn’t want to come, butfinally he agreed to. And, even though Oscar was in hispajamas and bathrobe as usual, [Gershunoff] talked himinto bringing his full dress suit. So they went [to the con-cert hall], and Oscar announced to Franz that he was

unable to play andhe apologized.Franz said, ‘Allright, Oscar, don’tworry. I’ll play it.’So Franz got readyto go out to play,and he looksaround and next tohim stands Oscarin his full dresssuit! And he cameout and played thehell out of it!”

With visibilitycame popularity,and soon Waxmanfound himself witha league of ardentadmirers—amongthem Alfred

Newman. Newman, of course, was the immenselypowerful head of music at 20th Century Fox, anda fine composer in his own right. “Al and Franzhad a huge respect for each other,” notes filmmusic historian (and author of an upcoming bookon the Newman family), Jon Burlingame. Sinceits inception in 1934, Darryl F. Zanuck had beenthe head of 20th Century Fox. In 1939 Zanuckbrought Newman on board as his music director,and there was no one whose musical opinion themovie mogul held in higher regard. “Al Newmanwas a power to be reckoned with on the [20thCentury Fox] lot in a way that few music directorsin the history of Hollywood have been,” saysBurlingame. “If there was an issue, it was Al whohad Darryl Zanuck’s ear.”

Newman’s duties required him to oversee themusical progress of each Fox project. This meant

that composers had far more contact with him than withdirectors, producers, etc. Elmer Bernstein worked at Foxduring this period. “It’s hard to realize, but way back inthe ‘50s, we didn’t have as much contact with filmmak-ers as you have now,” he says. “When I worked at Fox—when Alfred Newman was running the Fox music pro-gram—my greatest contacts were with Alfred Newman,not the filmmakers. Alfred Newman was the go-between.If you had musical problems you could ask his advicebecause he was, himself, a superb composer. Those rela-tionships were very different in those days.”

Additionally, Newman’s was the last word in assigningcomposers to projects. “Al would not always take the ‘A’

pictures for himself, although he did a lot,” statesBurlingame. “If Zanuck wanted Al to do a particular pic-ture, then Al would do it. But Al would often assign othercomposers to do ‘A’ pictures if he knew that those com-posers were right for the material. The two primaryexamples that come to mind are Bernard Herrmann andFranz Waxman.” Waxman was set up with a flexible butsignificant two-pictures-per-year deal at 20th CenturyFox. It wasn’t an exclusive contract, but it told Waxmanthat his work would be taken seriously at the studio.

Among the first pictures Waxman was offered by Foxwas the biblical epic The Egyptian (1954). This wasDarryl F. Zanuck’s pet project, so naturally he first askedAlfred Newman to score the film, but Newman had hishands full with the musical extravaganza There’s NoBusiness Like Show Business. (In fact, Alfred Newmanwas so overwhelmed by the project he eventually enlistedthe assistance of his brother, Lionel.) Zanuck suggestedthat Waxman get the project. Waxman, however, refusedthe offer. He had previously accepted an invitation to con-duct around Europe that summer. On top of that,Leonard Bernstein had asked him to conduct the IsraelPhilharmonic. “They were just starting out,” recallsJohn Waxman. “He felt it was important to help them.”So, The Egyptian chores were split between AlfredNewman and Bernard Herrmann, and Waxman was leftin need of a project to fulfill his Fox contract.

A ROYAL OPPORTUNITYIt was around this time that two Fox projects crossedWaxman’s desk. One was a biblical show entitledDemetrius and the Gladiators, a sequel to 1953’s TheRobe. The other was director Henry Hathaway’s PrinceValiant. Valiant was a costume drama/action adaptationof the popular Prince Valiant comic strip. It stared RobertWagner as the title character, a pre-Psycho Janet Leigh asthe heroine, and James Mason as the duplicitous villain.It would call for a robust score steeped in leitmotivic ref-erences, British pastiches, and a sense of robust, extro-verted expression. Waxman accepted.

Waxman’s involvement on Valiant began the same wayall of his projects did. He read the script and occasionallywatched a scene or two with the director and producer.When the entire film was done shooting, he gatheredwith the director, producer (Robert L. Jacks), and AlfredNewman for the first full viewing. There they decided onthe feel of the score—the dramatic texture—but not thespecifics. Spotting and thematic decisions were saved forthe second and third viewings. “My father always camehome after seeing a picture, and he would tell us about itafter dinner,” remembers John Waxman. “[He wouldsay], ‘Oh I think such-and-such,’ or ‘I’m not sure,’ or‘This is where I’m going to go.’”

Screening number four involved orchestrators EdwardB. Powell and Leonid Raab. Leonid Raab, Waxman’s reg-ular orchestrator, had worked with the composer sincehis MGM days, beginning in 1936. Edward B. Powell was“the number one orchestrator at Fox,” says JonBurlingame. “He was Al Newman’s right-hand man.Eddie was not only a gifted musician, but one of thegreatest orchestrators in the history of Hollywood.”Powell, who had worked with such musical luminaries as


STAR WARS: JamesMason as evil SirBrack (top right) vs.Janet Leigh as goodprincess Aleta.

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A Valiant Effort

George Gershwin, was renowned for his talent withstrings. Even today, musicians often reference the“Powell String Sound” in conjunction with this period.(Waxman in particular was so impressed with Powell’swork that he eventually bought a house in Malibu to benear his collaborator.)

With his orchestrators, approach—and of course, hislucky pad of yellow Paramount music paper—in hand,Waxman began his work on Prince Valiant. “He took hisfilm music extremely seriously, and was extremely dedi-cated to it,” asserts Elmer Bernstein. “And [he] was veryquick to defend it. In that sense, he had a competitivenature—he wanted to be the best.” Serious-minded or not, Waxman was no stranger togenre demands, and he had no problem withdeveloping adaptations of his own style.Valiant solicited not only Waxman’s intuitive-ly poetic, Romantic style, but an unusuallyheavy emphasis on leitmotifs. No less than sixmajor character themes and a handful ofrecurring motifs were to lace the score [seesidebar]. Cleverly, Waxman used his themesnot only to reflect the screenplay’s characteri-zations, but to expand upon them. SirGawain’s theme, for example, gently mocksthe experienced knight’s self-importance witha slightly-too-sovereign set of string chords; itadds a touch of comic grace to SterlingHayden’s somewhat literal-minded portrayal.Additionally, James Mason’s fine work as SirBrack is scored with Waxman’s Dark Knighttheme—a musical giveaway prefiguring thefilm’s dramatic second-act revelation that thetwo characters are one and the same.

Completed, the Prince Valiant score con-veyed a sense of rugged elegance. It was brashand heraldic, but it never skimped on intelli-gence and detail. Most of the work was com-posed for full orchestra, but Waxman constantly separat-ed his ensemble into small colorful panes, keeping the tex-tures rich but clear. The film’s landscapes were bathed inlight British woodwinds and strings, the rousing chasestwisted their way down kinetic, percussive rhythmicdevices, and the heroism and gallantry of knighthoodcame alive in lush brass chorales. The score also main-tained an excitingly modern sense—hoary traditions werebrought up to date with odd harmonic structures, wirycomplex rhythms, and unusual instrumentations; one cue(“The Singing Sword”) even includes an electric violin.

AN UNEXPECTED PAIRINGIn retrospect, it should have been an odd coupling ofstyles and settings. Prince Valiant told the tale of KingArthur and the Knights of the Round Table. It was set inancient Camelot. Late Romantic music was centuriesahead (and considerably more sophisticated) than any-thing historically specific to this project. Yet, not only wasthis music the norm for a film such as this, it was asmashingly good symbiosis. Prince Valiant was precededby such scores as Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s TheAdventures of Robin Hood and The Sea Hawk. Korngoldlaid much of the musical groundwork for these ripe cos-

tume dramas. John Waxman recalls that many of the Foxmusicians felt the Prince Valiant score was veryKorngoldian.

“I don’t think my father set out to do something inthat direction, because it was not his style,” he says.“But, the subject matter really lent itself. There werethese characters all set in England, there was swordfighting, all the obvious elements were there. So, being aclassically trained composer (not unlike Korngold), myfather used the same techniques.” It wasn’t a case ofWaxman aping Korngold’s style, it was a case of him fol-lowing a successful blueprint. The Prince Valiant main

theme, for example, is a rip-roaring combination ofclimbing violin runs, clamorous brass eruptions, jovialxylophone lines, and the kind of innate lyricism thatmarks the finest of Waxman’s work. It was the samecombination of styles and attitudes that Korngold pio-neered for these films, but it was Waxman’s originalassemblage—it was his composition.

Still, why should this work so well in a knights-in-armor costume drama? Like Korngold, Waxman’s musichad its roots in the European concert hall. It was the stuffof the upper classes, old European money, and the estab-lishment. (This is not to insinuate that this music was theexclusive domain of the well-to-do, but that it was per-ceived of as an illustrious—and non-disposable—form ofmusical culture, separate from folk music traditions.) Inaddition to providing cohesion, the music lent import—afeeling of consequence that transcended the story of thefilm. Not only were the characters, their actions and situ-ations important, but it was important that the audiencewatched these events. The thematic usage, which wasgenerally based on tuneful, often pastiche melodies, onlyhelped get the point across—it made the musical struc-ture more accessible while elevating familiar forms. So,not only was it artistically pleasing, it reinforced (and fan-


With Oscar Levantrehearsing for the WestCoast premiere of DimitriShostakovich’s SecondPiano Concerto at the LosAngeles Music Festival,June 2, 1958.

John Williams’s Star Wars scores areprobably today’s best-known examples ofleitmotif scores, where major characters

and story points have memorable themesbefitting their roles. With anywhere from afew notes to a long melody, the composercaptures the essence of the hero, villain, loveinterest, etc., and works their themes in andout of the score as the story dictates, alteringtempo, instrumentation and dynamics. Thetradition comes from Wagnerian opera, andit was utilized by Franz Waxman for a verydifferent Wagner—Robert Wagner—inPrince Valiant.

Fans of Star Wars should be intrigued byhow Waxman establishes his own musicaluniverse for the Camelot knights, usingmuch the same philosophy as Williams’s forthe Jedi knights. Although the themes mayseem effortless, they are all carefully con-structed to convey the right “messages” foreach character.

1) PRINCE VALIANT THEMEValiant’s leitmotif represents the focal pointof Waxman’s score. As such, it goes throughall sorts of machinations—major keys, minorkeys; brass, winds, string orchestrations; tri-umphant, tragic settings; etc. Waxmanbuilds his theme around two flexible ele-ments: a descending octave interval (whichmakes the theme distinguishable in just twonotes, and without inferring any certainmode) and an ascending/descending scale fig-ure (which can be set in any mode and retain

a recognizable shape). Interestingly, thereseems to an alternate version of the themewritten, but consistently crossed out, in theconductor’s scores [1a].

2) BOLTAR’S MOTIFBoltar is a friendly Viking allied with Valiantand his family. Although only used in twoscenes, this theme goes along way in depict-ing his friendly, seafaring nature. The tunehas its origins in the hornpipe (a composi-tional/dance style associated with sailors)music of Britain, and even utilizes the tradi-tional Scottish-snap rhythm (see bar 1, beat4). It’s usually set for solo horn or trumpet.

3) MYSTERY THEMECoincidentally a near dead-ringer for JerryGoldsmith’s theme from The Shadow, thisshort motif outlines and slightly ornamentsa minor arpeggio to represent the mysteriesof Valiant’s quest. It’s especially associatedwith King Aguar’s (Val’s father) Viking trou-bles. Its triadic—and often brass-based—nature gives it a regal yet ominous color. Seealso its close relative, The Dark KnightTheme [5].

4) THE EVIL VIKINGS’ MOTIFThis five-note motif represents the hordes ofevil Vikings, and eventually comes to repre-sent their leader, Sligone. Although brief, thepitches suggest two triads—one minor, onediminished. This gives the final pitch both acadential stress and an unresolved impres-

sion. The end result is a nasty musical snarlthat is viscerally compelling, but without anysort of intellectual conclusion. A perfectmusical counterpart for the single-mindedheathen Vikings.

5) THE DARK KNIGHT/SIR BRACK THEMEThis fully developed theme comes in two

segments. The first is the tune itself, anothersecond-inversion minor triad-based melodywhich is like an elaboration on [3], theMystery Theme. (Not surprisingly, theMystery Theme is usually used to foreshad-ow the non-specific threats against Val’sfamily.) Additionally, Waxman often adds alower neighbor tone a half-step below andjust before the final pitch to give the theme adiminished quality not unlike [4], the motiffor the Evil Vikings, with whom Brack hasstruck up an alliance. The Brack/DarkKnight theme, however, conveys a greatersense of purpose than does the Vikings’—hence the lower neighbor’s upward resolu-tion. This tune is second only to the Valianttheme in occurrence, and it goes throughmore variations than any other. Of particularnote is its tri-tonal treatment in the cue enti-tled “The First Chase.” The second segmentof The Dark Knight/Sir Brack Theme is acompound meter, galloping accompanimentfigure that is often used by itself, particularlyin a timpani/bass drum setting.

6) SIR BRACK’S “HERO” THEMEThis set of chords is used twice in associationwith Sir Brack’s assumed heroism andknightly honor. Brack, of course, is also theDark Knight, thus the theme is purposelymisleading. Its close relation to the materialwe hear under the first sightings of Camelot


tastically decorated) established musical values.On the flip-side, the film provided the context necessary

for experimental musics Waxman tended towards.Waxman’s Valiant score brought polytonality, shockinglydissonant sonorities, and odd meters into the mainstreamat a time when such elements were regularly reserved forthe auspices of the concert hall. But, the drama realignedthe aesthetics of the music. It made sense to hear the BlackKnight’s motif in three overlapping keys because (a) he wasevil, (b) he was mysterious, and (c) he was wildly stabbinga lance at our hero! It was a perfect marriage of elementsin that each gave the other a sense of accessibility and pro-vided it room to grow. The drama could be all the more out-landish when grounded in the regality of concert music,and the music could be as abstract as it needed in order toportray the outlandish events.

Prince Valiant recorded at Scoring Stage One at 20thCentury Fox in November of 1953. “It was a pleasure for a

The eponymous prince(Robert Wagner) and SirGawain (Sterling Hayden)face the Knights of theRound Table.

Waxing Poetic:Themes at work in Valiant By Doug Adams

A Valiant Effort

assists in the deceit.

7) SIR GAWAIN’S THEMEA rich and self-important theme for SirGawain, who has more honor than couth.Waxman often sets the theme in classicallystyled contrary motion for strings—therefined guise most likely a sarcastic poke atthe knight’s rough exterior.

8) ILENE’S LOVE THEME: Probably the most British of all of Waxman’sPrince Valiant themes, this bittersweet tunerepresents Aleta’s sister, Ilene, and her unre-quited love for Sir Gawain. Harmonically,Waxman allows major and minor triads tosift into one another, which gives the themea romantic yet melancholic mood. Themelody is usually scored for solo instruments(oboe and viola, in particular) to underplayand mute its passion.

9) ALETA’S THEMELike most adventure scores’ female themes,this is Aleta as referenced through Val. Inother words, it’s not so much a depiction ofher character as it is an expression of Val’sromantic inclinations towards her. Waxmantreats this material as an adjunct of Valiant’sown theme. (In fact, Aleta’s is the B theme ofthe Main Title cue—a classic structure forthe genre reproduced in Williams scores suchas Superman and Raiders of the Lost Ark.)Musically, both themes begin with a largeopen-intervalled figure (Valiant’s a descend-ing octave, Aleta’s an ascending minor sev-enth). This not only allows Waxman to easilysuperimpose other material (minor seventhsexist in all sorts of functional-tonality-basedharmonies), but to reference the theme withjust two pitches. FSM


composer to come work at 20th Century Fox,” saysBurlingame. “You knew you had the kind of solid, funda-mental support for your creative vision as a composer andan artist because Al [Newman] would back you on creativedecisions. Plus, you had a fabulous contract orchestra ofthe best musicians in town and that scoring stage had asound that’s never been duplicated since.”

John Waxman was 13 in 1953, and attended the PrinceValiant recording sessions after school. “I loved going toFox,” he recalls, “particularly because it was such a won-derful studio to visit... I think [my father] enjoyed workingat Fox, particularly because the orchestra was so terrificand the caliber of player was at such a high level. He knewthat when he went to Fox, he would really have a wonder-ful orchestra to play his music. That was always great fora composer.”

Today, Prince Valiant is regarded as one of Waxman’strue masterworks. It resides on the same mantle as The

Bride of Frankenstein, Captains Courageous, A Place inthe Sun, Demetrius and the Gladiators and Taras Bulba,and has inspired over four decades worth of large-scaleorchestral film scoring. Historically, it stands as a toweringtestament to the attitudes and abilities of film music’sGolden Age. FSM

Composer David Raksin is currently writing a book, If I Say SoMyself. Elmer Bernstein keeps a busy schedule teaching andcomposing. He’s currently working on Martin Scorsese’s Bringingin the Dead, Al Pacino’s Chinese Coffee, and Barry Sonnenfeld’sThe Wild Wild West. John Waxman is the founder of Themesand Variations (http://tnv.net), a business which makes availableto orchestras and facilitates new recordings of music from filmand television. Jon Burlingame is writing The Newmans ofHollywood, due from Schirmer Books in 2000. Doug Adams is afrequent contributor to Film Score Monthly and can be reached [email protected]

Musical Examples1 PRINCE VALIANT THEME

1A PRINCE VALIANT THEME (ALTERNATE)

2 BOLTAR’S MOTIF

3 MYSTERY THEME

4 THE EVIL VIKING’S THEME

5 THE DARK KNIGHT/SIR BRACK THEME

6 SIR BRACK’S “HERO” THEME

7 SIR GAWAIN’S THEME

8 ILENE’S LOVE THEME

9) ALETA’S THEME

z


Super HitsTHELate‘70sBy Jeff Bond Additional Reviews by Douglass Fake

OF

J E R R Y

G O L D S M I T H

B U Y E R ’ S

G U I D E

P A R T

T H R E E

The late ‘70s saw Jerry Goldsmith take on a much

higher profile after languishing in television during

the early part of the decade. In the aftermath of

Isaac Hayes’s Shaft, major-league film composers

found themselves scurrying for cover in an era whenmovie producers increasingly looked to pop songs fortheir films. But in 1975 Goldsmith burst back onto thebig screen with a vengeance on John Milius’s epic adven-ture The Wind and the Lion, an Oscar-nominated andpopular effort that was only overshadowed by StevenSpielberg’s Jaws at the box-office.

Increasingly Goldsmith was sought out for more spec-tacular productions as the post-Jaws blockbuster men-tality took hold, and the composer expanded the scope ofhis efforts with scores like Logan’s Run and TheCassandra Crossing. Although his Wind and the Lionscore lost out to John Williams’s Jaws at the Oscars, in1976 Goldsmith was to win his first (and so far only)

Academy Award for his chilling choral horror score forRichard Donner’s supernatural thriller, The Omen. Inthe wake of the Oscar win, more big productions cameGoldsmith’s way, and he was as likely to provide out-standing scores for garbage like Damnation Alley,Damien: Omen II and Irwin Allen’s The Swarm as hewas for more respectable fare like MacArthur, Islands inthe Stream and The Great Train Robbery.

Goldsmith practically defined the modern action scorewith his hammering music for the Peter Hyams thrillerCapricorn One, suspense with his eerie, disturbing scoreto Michael Crichton’s Coma, and got a permanent ham-merlock on science fiction with his brilliant scores forLogan’s Run, Alien and Star Trek: The Motion Picture—in a way Goldsmith was repeating the Renaissance hehad achieved at the end of the ‘60s with scores likePlanet of the Apes, The Illustrated Man and Patton. Yetthe composer still found time to score TV movies likeContract on Cherry Street and Babe, often winningEmmy awards in the process.

Thanks to Intrada’s Douglass Fake and author JonBurlingame, we’ve been able to include information on

some of the more obscure Goldsmith efforts (mostly TVmovies) of the period—good luck tracking these down(many are quite well done) on broadcast TV or video.This is one of Goldsmith’s greatest periods, which iswhy many of the ratings are at the upper range of oursystem:

●●●● A must-have. One of Goldsmith’s finest worksthat unquestionably belongs in every soundtrack lis-tener’s collection.

●●● Highly recommended. Close to being a classic,and a worthy album out of which you’ll get a greatdeal of replay mileage.

●● Recommended with reservations. A score thatachieves its goals within the movie but makes forless-than-gripping listening in album form.

● If you buy this, Jerry Goldsmith will hate you becauseyou’re collecting his albums like bottle caps.

Caboblanco (1980) ●● 1/2Prometheus PCD 127 (Belgium) • 12 tracks - 39:35This peculiar rehash of ideas from Casablanca starringCharles Bronson in the Bogart role was barely released in1980 and made a quick exit to pay cable, whereGoldsmith’s rolling, Herrmannesque title music, with itsSpanish/Polynesian flavor, and some crisp and raucousjungle chase cues could be appreciated only by insomni-acs. The Prometheus soundtrack album was releasedover a decade after the film, and while it’s leavened bysource cues (more than 13 minutes of the album aretaken up by arrangements of Roy Noble’s “The VeryThought of You” and a Goldsmith/Carol Heather collabo-ration called “Heaven Knows”) it’s well worth having. Bythe way, Carol Heather is Carol Goldsmith, the compos-er’s second (and current) wife.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) ●●●●Columbia/Legacy C2K 66134 • 18 tracks - 65:04Considering how much television work Goldsmithdid in the ‘60s, it’s amazing that he never scoredan episode of the original Star Trek. (Goldsmith’sname was on a short list of desired composers forthe series pilot, but he was unavailable at thetime.) Between the composer’s undisputed mas-tery of the science fiction genre (having just comeoff Alien) and his prior collaboration with RobertWise on The Sand Pebbles, his assignment to StarTrek: TMP was an obvious choice, and the resultwas one of the composer’s most spectacular, imag-inative and popular scores.

Ranging from brassy, syncopated bombast (with anunforgettable opening march) to the Herrmannesquemystery of the composer’s music for V’ger, the score isa series of orchestral showpieces that was initiallyreleased on a great-sounding, digitally edited LP. Thelong-delayed Sony reissue finally offers up previouslyunreleased music like the Vulcan planet and shuttlecues, but also neglects terrific music like theEnterprise’s first rendezvous with V’ger (“MeetV’ger”) and Goldsmith’s remarkable, first-draft takeson “The Enterprise” and Spock’s shuttle arrival. TheOscar-nominated score lost out to Georges Delerue’s ALittle Romance... anybody remember that one?

Alien (1979) ●●● 1/2Silva Screen FILMCD 003 • 10 tracks - 35:32The climax of Goldsmith’s avant garde writing of the‘70s, this bone-chilling sci-fi horror score was sliced anddiced beyond recognition by Ridley Scott and his editors,replacing some of Goldsmith’s cues with leftovers fromthe composer’s 1962 Freud score and Howard Hanson’sSymphony No. 2. Even in its butchered form,Goldsmith’s score retains its power to make the fleshcrawl, but his original work is even more disturbing andimaginative. Whether due to his bad experience on thisfilm or just the natural development of his style,Goldsmith never again wrote such a completely uncom-promising and dark score.

The Great Train Robbery (1979) ●●● 1/2Memoir CD MOIR 601 • 10 tracks - 27:58This is a brilliantly uncharacteristic period score full ofsprightly energy and percolating with the rhythms of thesteam locomotives around which the story is set.Goldsmith always seems to have great fortune writingmusic for Sean Connery films, and this has to rank nextto The Wind and the Lion at the top of the heap. It is cur-rently available only on an out-of-print CD from theMemoir label, coupled with The Wild Rovers—the trackand running time information above refers only to theGreat Train Robbery half of the disc.

Players (1979) ●● 1/2If you thought Goldsmith scored his first on-screenorgasm in Basic Instinct, you owe it to yourself to rentthis glamorized study of a studly tennis player (Dean PaulMartin) and his hot-blooded affair with Ali MacGraw.There’s at least one heavily scored sex scene and some ter-rific, energetic tennis music that lays groundwork for StarTrek: The Motion Picture, of all things... Goldsmith saw inthe tennis scenes a lot of excitement and created stirringorchestral allegros that added sweep and color, particular-ly in the “winning” montage. His love theme forMacGraw and Martin, for piano and strings, is typicallyrich and flowing in a major key. The theme for MaximilianSchell, darker and minor-keyed, is scored for solo trumpetin a Chinatown-esque fashion.

Damien: Omen II (1978) ●●●Silva Screen FILMCD 002 • 10 tracks - 34:20A heavier, fuller-sounding adaptation of Goldsmith’soriginal Omen score, Damien is essentially the samemusic, but it does feature a spectacular, driving newopening (with a diabolically bouncing electronic rhythm)and cues like “Sleepless Night” that add atmosphericnew material to the brew.

Capricorn One (1978) ●●●GNP/Crescendo GNPD 8035 • 12 tracks - 39:36Goldsmith’s seminal action score coalesced ideas he’dtoyed with in Logan’s Run, Twilight’s Last Gleaming andjust about every other ‘70s movie into a brutally efficient,unadorned style marked by a bellicose, martial title cue ofbrass, strings, bells and percussion—trombones blat anostinato of a minor-sixth interval in alternating 6/8 and5/8 bars. The rest of the score has lonely trumpet solosemphasizing the isolation of the film’s betrayed astronaut


heroes; grumbling, moody suspense cues; and propulsive,virtuoso action set pieces—especially when Telly Salvalas(?) emerges as a cropdusting pilot to rescue the hero.

Interestingly, Goldsmith’s orchestration stylechanges between the film’s dry, spare sound and thelush, rich and full arrangements made for the re-recorded Warner Bros. soundtrack album; Goldsmith’spost-Capricorn One scores mostly feature this bigger,heavier sound. GNP/Crescendo’s CD couples the albumrecording of Capricorn One with the 1981 Outland—the track and running time information above refersonly to the Capricorn One portion. (The film sound-track is unreleased.)

Coma (1978) ●●●Bay Cities BCD 3027 • 10 tracks - 37:01Michael Crichton made hospitals scary in this thrillerwith Genevieve Bujold unraveling a conspiracy to usecomatose patients for body parts. Goldsmith returned tohis Bartók roots late in the decade for this clangy, per-cussive suspense score, notable for its spotting (there isno music for the first 45 minutes of the film), nerve-wracking cadaver room cues and dissonant piano perfor-mances. The Bay Cities CD revives the original MGMalbum, including source cues like “Disco Strut” (yeah!)...but the pop-flavored love theme arrangement is actuallyused in the movie.

The Swarm (1978) ●●● 1/2Warner Bros. BSK-3208 • 10 tracks - 36:28 (LP only)It’s uncertain whether John Williams, producer IrwinAllen’s composer of choice, was ever asked to work onthis hilariously incompetent film about killer bees. Atany rate, Goldsmith (who hadn’t worked for Allen sincescoring a second-season episode of Voyage to the Bottomof the Sea in 1965) took the job, produced a stupendousaction score, and valiantly went down with the ship. Asin so many of Goldsmith’s projects, the Warner Bros.soundtrack album remains the only artifact of thismotion picture that anyone would ever care to remem-ber.

Interestingly, Goldsmith’s title cue blends the puls-ing rhythms of Capricorn One with the moody fluteplaying associated with his theme for the TV detectiveseries Barnaby Jones. The brash, buzzing bee attackmusic anticipates effects the composer would lateremploy in Alien; Goldsmith takes the old “Flight of theBumblebee” concept to a massive, fortissimo conclu-sion. “Bees Inside” still ranks as one of the most excit-ing action cues the composer has ever written, and hisexuberant end title music (heard over shots of lab-coat-ed scientists dancing around like idiots after defeatingthe bees) is equally memorable.

So far Warner Bros. has neither released their albumon CD nor licensed it to anyone else—a shame, sincethere’s around 90 minutes of music in all, blasting withGoldsmith action mania. Good inside gag: the maintheme starts B, low E, high E—get it? “B-E-E?”

The Boys from Brazil (1978) ●●● 1/2Masters Film Music SRS 2001 • 4 tracks - 39:03Goldsmith received another Oscar nomination for thistongue-in-cheek thriller score (but lost out to Giorgio

Moroder’s influential Midnight Express), setting thedoings of a group of aging Nazis led by Dr. Josef Mengele(Gregory Peck hamming it up in a rare villain role) to thetune of a brutally menacing Viennese waltz. It’s a heavy,dark and dense score that’s also fiendishly funny.

The original LP featured a lengthy “suite” of edited-together cues as the lone track on side one; side two fea-tured a song (“We’re Home Again”) and two additionalcues, including the memorable death-by-Doberman send-off for Peck’s Mengele. This is reproduced on the CD,which is an act of archaeology to get nowadays, a 1989limited edition from Masters Film Music sold throughthe Varèse Sarabande CD Club. A Japanese reissue(same music) is equally scarce.

Magic (1978) ●●●Tribute to Jerry Goldsmith SPFM 101 • 6 tracks - 16:41Richard Attenborough’s sexed-up take on WilliamGoldman’s post-Twilight Zone novel of a troubled ven-triloquist’s apparent possession by his dummy receivedan ingeniously disturbing score from Goldsmith, whogave voice to scary anthropomorphosized dummy “Fats”with a maddening, see-sawing harmonica motif and icycool strings. One brilliant cue develops a lyrically beauti-ful love theme and sends it in headlong collision with the“Fats” harmonica motif, foreshadowing the film’s down-beat conclusion. (Goldsmith also provided music for aterrific television teaser ad for the film.)

This was one of four scores included on the Societyfor the Preservation of Film Music’s Tribute to JerryGoldsmith CD given to attendees of a 1993 dinner hon-oring the composer; track info above refers to theMagic portion.

Twilight’s Last Gleaming (1977) ●●Silva Screen FILMCD 111 • 13 tracks - 38:33Goldsmith supplied a gritty and percussive military scorefor this tale of a mad general (a tired Burt Lancaster)who takes control of a nuclear missile silo. This fits per-fectly between Capricorn One, The Cassandra Crossingand The Swarm—the action cues are thrilling—butthere are a few draggy, effects-oriented suspense cuesthat bog down the album, as does the sub-par playing bya German orchestra.

This was released in 1992 as a commercial release bySilva Screen, and a 500-copy limited edition from theGoldsmith fan club in England—the same disc in differ-ent packages.

Contract on Cherry Street (1977) ●●● 1/2TV movieThis is an above-average TV-movie thriller with FrankSinatra emerging from acting retirement to play a NYCcop who takes on the mob after his partner is killed. Nowit’s personal... Goldsmith wrote 50 minutes of musicemphasizing complex trombone and piano rhythms thatsurfaced in his subsequent (and more visible) score forCapricorn One. The lengthy car chase is one ofGoldsmith’s longest and most exciting action cues;Goldsmith is often admired for his action scores, and thisis one of his best.

Particularly notable is the instrumental color: Withinthe large orchestra Goldsmith abandoned trumpets,


horns and tuba, but added an entire choir of trombones.The resulting sound is often pounding and intense, par-ticularly in the action music. Trombone is also promi-nent (playing against strings) in the warmly melodicmain and end titles.

Damnation Alley (1977) ●● 1/2This pathetic “adaptation” of Roger Zelazny’s hypnot-ic, post-apocalyptic novel was, incredibly, 20th CenturyFox’s follow-up to their release of Star Wars.Nevertheless, Goldsmith’s score to Damnation Alley isoutstanding, with terrific cues for the film’s ridiculous“Landmaster” all-terrain vehicle that almost convinceyou that you’re watching an exciting movie. It also fea-tures a gorgeous, Logan’s Run-style finale. While thescore remains unreleased, the main and end titles (4:11worth) were re-recorded by Goldsmith for his VarèseSarabande Frontiers album (VSD-5871).

High Velocity (1977) ●● 1/2Prometheus PCD 134 (Belgium) • 11 tracks - 33:53A glum, low-budget adventure filmed in thePhilippines, High Velocity was actually made in 1974but sat on the shelf for a few years. Goldsmith’s score(released on a great-sounding Prometheus CD in 1994)is spare and moody, with some similarities to UnderFire in its lyrical moments, albeit with the edgy, per-cussive effects of Goldsmith’s Chinatown-era. Onemotif for piano surfaced 15 years later in Basic Instinct;the opening is similar to Medicine Man, with a lengthytropical piece.

Islands in the Stream (1977) ●●●Intrada RVF 6003D • 13 tracks - 51:17This score to an adaptation of an Ernest Hemingwaynovel filmed by longtime Goldsmith collaboratorFranklin Schaffner is long held up as Goldsmith’s per-sonal favorite composition. It contains some marvelouspassages, in particular a lengthy, complex and brightlylyrical marlin fishing sequence and a post-Jaws sharkattack sequence which Goldsmith scored with aggres-sive South Seas rhythms á la Jerome Moross’s TheSharkhunters.

Goldsmith’s re-recording of the score for Intrada(done during his sessions in Budapest for Lionheart)suffers from a languid feel and the elimination of a cli-mactic action cue which would have broken up analbum that sometimes feels redundant. The originalsoundtrack (a spectacular recording) is unreleased.

MacArthur (1977) ●● 1/2Varèse Sarabande VSD-5260 • 11 tracks - 33:37Goldsmith returned to the military biopic with thisstudy of the WWII and Korean war general (a bespec-tacled Gregory Peck) who eventually let his ego get himfired by President Harry S. Truman. Goldsmith’ssupercharged Sousa-style military march is tough to sitthrough on CD (the brass sonics will scrape youreardrums clean), but the score’s quieter moments aregorgeous, including an impressive low string reading ofthe traditional Japanese tune “Cherry Blossoms”arranged by Goldsmith.

The Omen (1976) ●●●Varèse Sarabande VSD-5281 • 12 tracks - 35:10This is it: still the lone Oscar-winner in Goldsmith’srepertoire, and while it’s an incredibly influential, dis-tinctive horror score, you’ll be hard-pressed to find any-one who thinks it’s the composer’s greatest work. Oftenridiculously identified as a rip-off of Orff’s CarminaBurana (hey, Orff didn’t invent Latin chants), the orig-inal score in the trilogy is an astringent, Stravinskianchamber-style work with truly creepy subtle momentsmixed in with the more spectacular grand guignol-styleset pieces. The complete score is isolated in stereo onFox’s most recent laserdisc of the picture.

The Last Hard Men (1976) Music from Goldsmith’s 1966 Stagecoach and 1969 100Rifles score was tracked into this late-era ChuckHeston western about the pursuit of a gang of rapists(does this make the title a pun?) when LeonardRosenman bowed out of the project. Goldsmith wroteno original music for it.

The Cassandra Crossing (1976) ●●●RCA OST 102 (Italy) • 11 tracks - 35:04Goldsmith wrote a great, driving action score with adistinctly European sound for this bizarre conspiracymovie about a passenger train full of botulism-infectedvictims hurtling toward a fateful appointment with abig and poorly constructed mountain bridge. Goldsmithcontributed a sweeping, melancholy theme for stringsand electric harpsichord (also warbled as a song on thealbum) with some heavy electric bass accents, and anumber of spectacularly propulsive action cues full ofwild rhythmic changes and odd meters... the mostthrilling of which, “Helicopter Rescue,” plays out dur-ing the transfer of a large, infected St. Bernard dogfrom the train to a helicopter. The only downside of thisscore is a sub-par performance, recorded in Italy;Goldsmith is credited with his own orchestrations.

Logan’s Run (1976) ●●● 1/2Bay Cities BCD 3024 • 12 tracks - 41:33One year before Star Wars changed all the rules, thisdrab Michael Anderson adaptation of the pop sci-finovel was the state-of-the-art in filmed science fic-tion. Now it looks like one long disco dance sequence,but there are a few good scenes scattered about and ifyou lose interest in the plot you can always stare long-ingly at the young Jenny Agutter. Goldsmith’s spec-tacular score ranges from a syrupy, lyrical maintheme (lyrics: “As we follow the sun...”), to mesmeriz-ing (and enjoyably cheesy) electronic passages, tosome of the most vibrant, thrilling action music in thecomposer’s repertoire (“Intensive Care” and “You’reRenewed” almost qualify as modernistic ballet) andtwo evocative illustrations of the futuristic outdoors(“The Sun” and “The Monument”). The Bay CitiesCD of the original MGM LP is a must-have, but thisscore deserves an expanded album.

Breakheart Pass (1976) ●●●This unusual period thriller about an American secretagent on a train full of munitions in the 1860s boasts


one of the most spectacular fight scenes ever filmed(between Charles Bronson and boxer Archie Moore, ontop of a snow-covered boxcar traveling over high moun-tain trestle bridges) and one terrific Goldsmith score. Theunforgettable title theme sails a thrilling bridge out overa wonderful honky-tonk piano riff, and there are tons ofpercussive traveling music built around mechanistic,locomotive-inspired rhythms. The suspense cues are dry,but the title music and action material warrant an album.

Take a Hard Ride (1975) ●●●Tribute to Jerry Goldsmith SPFM 101 • 7 tracks - 16:53Goldsmith must be one of the only major Hollywood filmcomposers to have a blaxploitation period western underhis belt, but if there’s a rule about the composer’s output,it’s that all Jerry Goldsmith western scores rule, dude!Opening with a deceptively modest piccolo figure, thescore explodes into a rip-roaring western theme and fea-tures a boatload of wonderful, Stravinskian rapid-fireaction cues as well as beautiful, reflective lyrical cues forguitar, flute and strings. Available in an excellent suiteon the Goldsmith SPFM Tribute CD, this awaits a moreaccessible (and longer) official release.

Medical Story (1975) ●●TV themeGoldsmith wrote the theme for this would-be competitorto Chad Everett’s Medical Center, but orchestratorArthur Morton handled the score itself. Goldsmith’ssudsy romantic theme gains a lot of excitement from arepeating perfect-fourth horn bookend that will remindsome of his Oscar fanfare.

Breakout (1975) ●● 1/2While Goldsmith’s scores for Sean Connery are alwaystalked about, no one seems to recall that his music forthe fine films of Charles Bronson has been almost asgood, albeit flying much farther below the radar of theaverage video-renter of today. Breakout involves Bronsonas a daredevil pilot hired to get political prisoner RobertDuvall out of a Mexican prison. It’s in the style of HighVelocity and other South-of-the-Border efforts from thecomposer, and like many Goldsmith scores of the periodhas never been available in any form.

Archer (1975) ●●TV series themeBrian Keith starred in this series as Lew Archer, the pri-vate dick created by Ross McDonald, which ran for aboutthree months on NBC. In contrast to the time-honoredgumshoe setting, Goldsmith’s theme is almost totallyelectronic for its first third (actually foreshadowing hisapproach to a lot of Runaway) before launching into arobust, brassy adventure theme.

Adams of Eagle Lake (1975) ●●TV series themeThis is a short-lived television series with Andy Griffithreprising the sheriff character he created in the 1974television movie, Winter Kill. The drama only ran for ahalf-season before being replaced. Goldsmith scored thetitles, basing them on his trumpet solo theme from theearlier movie, reminiscent of Breakheart Pass.

Babe (1975) ●●●TV movieGoldsmith won one of numerous Emmy Awards for hissensitive, bucolic score for this biopic about Olympic ath-lete Babe Didrickson (Susan Clark). Goldsmith’s titlemusic was spun out from piano and guitar solos, eventu-ally taken up in full flower by strings in a manner notunlike that of The Other.

A Girl Named Sooner (1975) ●●●TV movieStarring Lee Remick and Richard Crenna, this was a ten-der and touching story of an abandoned child beingraised in the backwoods of Indiana by a childless couple.Goldsmith imbued the TV movie with his customaryskill, keeping his half-hour of music sensitive, simple andwarm, with harmonica adding to the outdoor color, andwidely spaced strings accompanying the gentle melodies.Interestingly, the main theme bears a striking resem-blance to one Goldsmith wrote for a 1972 episode of TheWaltons (titled “The Love Story”).

The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975) ●●●This is a creepy supernatural film with Michael Sarrazinpossessed by the soul of a murder victim from years ear-lier. Goldsmith’s score is a highlight of his supernaturaloeuvre, with a weird and moody title melody put througha series of increasingly fluid, half-heard variations amidreams of eerie, disturbing electronic effects. It’s far moremusically accessible than something like The MephistoWaltz, but equally experimental.

Ransom (1975) ●●Silva Screen FILMCD 081 • 7 tracks - 24:12An obscure Sean Connery thriller, Ransom is no Windand the Lion, but it does boast a rich, extended and pow-erful theme for horns that gets a workout in both thefilm and the album. Also featured: some cool, sneakywriting for harpsichord and orchestra and a lengthy“flight” pursuit cue that opens up into some surprising-ly jazzy lyricism. Silva Screen’s CD couples the scorewith The Chairman, both from inferior sources; trackinfo above refers to the Ransom portion.

The Wind and the Lion (1975) ●●●●Intrada MAF 7005D • 14 tracks - 38:44Goldsmith’s Oscar-nominated score for this SeanConnery-Candace Bergen romantic period adventureremains one of his finest, most rousing and wildlyromantic compositions ever, and it would have surelywon an Oscar in 1975 had it not been for a little moviecalled Jaws. From Goldsmith’s exultant, barbaric titletheme to the frenetic opening action cue (“TheHorsemen”) to what still may be the crowning achieve-ment in the composer’s action scoring repertoire(“Raisuli Attacks”), The Wind and the Lion is a perfectmatch of old-fashioned Hollywood pageantry andGoldsmith’s unerring sense of cultural oddity. Availableon a great-sounding Intrada CD, no fan of Goldsmith’soutput should be without this score.

Next Issue: Jerry Goldsmith: The Watergate Years!


The Towering Inferno and OtherDisaster Classics ★★★ 1/2VARIOUSVarèse Sarabande VSD-580712 tracks - 69:35

This is the first in a newbatch of highly anticipated

re-recordings produced byVarèse’s Robert Townson. Theproject apparently began underthe baton of the departed JoelMcNeely (who conducts TheTowering Inferno, Twister,Independence Day and TheSwarm) and finished under JohnDebney (who tackles Earthquake,The Poseidon Adventure andTitanic), although the remainingcues (from Dante’s Peak, Volcanoand Outbreak) are the originalfilm recordings released byVarèse.

The Towering Inferno (1974)was probably the first theatricalfilm to showcase the beginningsof John Williams’s blockbusterstyle, and he wrote a bustling,high-energy main title thatremains one of the most rousingand enjoyable works in the com-poser’s oeuvre. Townsonserendipitously recorded the onlythree tracks I ever used to listento on the old Warner Bros. LP:“Main Title,” “Planting theCharges and Finale” and theglitzily romantic end title, “AnArchitect’s Dream.” “Plantingthe Charges” is a great, slowlypulsing and lengthy suspense cuewhich takes the brooding lowbrass textures and modernisticeffects of Williams’s underscore toThe Poseidon Adventure and addsa compelling rhythmic structure.As in all the Varèse re-recordings,the sound is rich and spectacular,but there are occasional, jarringmissteps in the performance andat least a couple of what appearto be mis-transcribed notes.

Following the generous 19:42of Inferno, everything on the CDis available elsewhere: MarkMancina’s opening to Twisterbursts with rapid-fire energy as it

attempts to convince us (alongwith director Jan DeBont’ssweeping helicopter shots of theKansas countryside) that weshould be very excited about com-peting groups of tornado chasers.John Williams had a double doseof disaster in 1974, also supplyingmusic for Mark Robson’sEarthquake, a film that made TheTowering Inferno look like a workof artistic genius. Williams musthave about had it with the genreby then, because his Earthquakemain title theme is a virtualreplay of the melody from hisTowering Inferno end title—withsome pop backbeats that aren’twell handled by the RoyalScottish National Orchestra.

Jerry Goldsmith had the dubi-ous honor of scoring the film thatbroke Irwin Allen’s box-officewinning streak, The Swarm(1978). Joel McNeely’s take onGoldsmith’s exultant, rhythmicend title music is excellent, large-ly matching Goldsmith’s originalalbum performance. JohnDebney’s recording of Williams’stitle music to The PoseidonAdventure gets off to a greatstart, but lacks the power ofWilliams’s original version. Thenext three original cues fromDante’s Peak, Volcano andOutbreak effectively capture thehigh points of those scores (I likeAlan Silvestri’s growling horneffects from Volcano), and JoelMcNeely’s recording of “The DayWe Fight Back” from DavidArnold’s Independence Dayappears to have at least a few sec-onds of introductory music notheard on the original album.Finally, for anyone who hasn’thad enough of Titanic yet, there’sa lengthy suite of material fromthat film conducted by Debney.

Williams fans will have to havethis CD for his three disasterscores, particularly for the other-wise unavailable-on-CD musicfrom The Towering Inferno.

—Jeff Bond

Payback ★★ 1/2CHRIS BOARDMAN & VARIOUSVarèse Sarabande VSD-600311 tracks - 36:23

Payback is based on the samebook as John Boorman’s

Point Blank, which starred LeeMarvin. The new film stars MelGibson and features a scorewhich is a remake of DavidShire’s brilliant The Taking ofPelham One Two Three. Ideclared a self-moratorium ongriping about temp tracks a whileback. It’s become the most boringtopic in the world: every compos-er seems to be forced to copysome other piece of music at somepoint, and there doesn’t seem tobe anything to be done about it.Also, when you accuse someone ofborrowing a specific piece ofmusic from the temp these days,it’s just as pos-sible thatthey’re borrow-ing from atracked cuethat is itself afourth-removedcopy of someother cue thatfound itselftracked into afilm a fewyears earlier.

Payback is a special case,because for once we’re not talkingabout a copy of some alreadyredundant piece of programmusic (Horner’s “Bishop’sCountdown” from Aliens, forexample), but something that stillranks as a fresh and distinctivepiece of music. David Shire’s pul-sating, serial jazz title music toJoseph Sargent’s The Taking ofPelham One Two Three is indeli-ble and instantly recognizableonce it’s been experienced. ChrisBoardman’s version features tex-tures that are more metallic inspots, but the overall recreation isspot-on, with a minor-third bassostinato, pulsating rhythm sec-tion, and very idiosyncratic lines

for brass and saxes.It’s been pointed out that FSM

is partially responsible for thePayback score because wereleased the CD of Pelham, thusexposing contemporaryHollywood to the music (itshowed up in a trailer for the BillMurray comedy Larger ThanLife—from a subway thriller toan elephant movie). And it’s truethat we pine for the days whenfilm scores sounded like Pelham,and wouldn’t be appalled if acomposer or director heard theCD and said, “Hey, that would bea cool way to score a movietoday.” But there’s a differencebetween being inspired by some-thing and simply ripping it off.The point of making people listento this stuff is to show that allfilm scores don’t have to sound

the same, that there are infinitestylistic avenues to go down.While it would have been cool tosee someone do somethinginspired by Pelham, when therecreation is this close, I reallybelieve David Shire deserves acredit. Chris Boardman did agreat job of rearranging Shire’sideas, and the rest of the score atleast attempts to go off in otherdirections (there’s 14:51 of ithere, coupled with classic r&bhits). But it’s sad to realize thatpeople will walk out of this movie,very probably talking about itsgreat theme music, and they willnever know who was actuallyresponsible for it. —J.B.

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John Barry: A Sixties Theme by EDDI FIEGELConstable Publishers (London),ISBN 0-09-478530-9, 262 pp., £16.99

John Barry: A Life in Music by GEOFF LEONARD, PETE WALKER & GARETH BRAMLEYSansom & Company (Bristol), ISBN1-900178-86-9, 244 pp., £24.99

Biographies of John Barry arelike the number 18 bus—you

wait all your life for one toappear, and then two come alongat once. John Barry: A SixtiesTheme by Eddi Fiegel and JohnBarry: A Life in Music by GeoffLeonard, Pete Walker andGareth Bramley were publishedjust one week apart. The formertakes a gossip-column approachto the composer’s high-flying lifein the ‘60s, while the latter takesa more dignified look at hiscareer as a whole. Eddi Fiegel is

a radio journalist in Britain whoclaims to have followed Barry’swork with fascination from anearly age, while Leonard, Walkerand Bramley are the well-knownBarryphiles behind the Play ItAgain record label, which hasreleased much Barry (and other)music on CD.

Barry has led a fascinating life,and been immersed in cinemaand music virtually from thewomb. His father owned a chainof cinemas in the NortheastEngland, and Barry was at homein the projection box by histeens; concurrently, he developeda keen interest in classical music,and then jazz. It was only natur-al that the young John BarryPrendergast, as he was at the

time, would want to combinehis two main interests and emu-late his heroes, Erich WolfgangKorngold, Max Steiner, FranzWaxman and BernardHerrmann. He never wanted tobe anything other than a filmcomposer.

He took a roundabout routeto get there, though; at thetime, Britain still had aNational Service, wherebyyoungsters were drafted intothe army at the age of 18 for atwo- or three-year stint. Duringthis period, Barry formed aband with his friends in thearmy; it was clear even at thisearly stage that he had talentas both an arranger and com-poser, and upon his discharge,he persuaded his father to givehim financial backing to formthe John Barry Seven, his jazzgroup.

After dubious success withBarry on vocals, the deci-

sion was made to “go instru-mental,” and the Seven achievedphenomenal fame in the U.K.,performing both covers of stan-dards and original works byBarry. The band also got a lot ofwork accompanying singers ofthe time, both well-establishedand up-and-coming. One of thesewas the young Adam Faith,whose singing career blossomedin the late ‘50s with Barry’sassistance. Eventually, Faith wascast in a film, Beat Girl (1959),and it was only natural thatBarry should be asked to providethe music—and so his first filmscore was written.

Up until this point in his life,the two books are fairly consis-tent in their approach; but here,things begin to differ. A Sixties

Theme goes on to paint a luridpicture of Barry’s life for thenext ten years, detailing his vari-ous affairs and marriages (mostnotoriously to the actress JaneBirkin) while barely mentioninghis various film scores. A Life inMusic, on the other hand, sticksmuch more rigidly to analyzinghis film commissions whileeschewing private biographicalstories, right up to Swept fromthe Sea (including a fascinatinginsight into Corina Brouder, whoprovided the haunting vocal forthat score, and with whom Barryplans to work again) andMercury Rising.

Both tomes will be greatlyinteresting to fans of the compos-

SOMEWHERE IN TYPETwo Reviews by James Southall

ONE MAN, TWO STORIESA Sixties Theme dishes personal

details of Barry (pictured with JaneBirkin) while A Life in Music hews

more to the professional side—bothmake fascinating reading.


The Deep End of the Ocean★★★ 1/2ELMER BERNSTEINMilan 73138 35873-29 tracks - 30:07

What a joy it is to have anambassador of good taste

score a contemporary movie.Elmer Bernstein scored his firstmovie in 1950. That’s when mydad was two years old—forget

about me. Nearly 50 years later,Bernstein is still going strong,and while his career has had itsups and downs, his inimitablestyle has meshed with more gen-res of film than most composerscould ever dream of. Likeketchup, it generally tastes thesame, but it goes on some impor-tant foods no matter when orwhere you eat them.

The Deep End of the Ocean isthe latest in Bernstein’s oeuvre of

scores for childhood. Here,Michelle Pfeiffer is a mother whosuffers the loss of her child, onlyto be reunited with him yearslater. The opening theme has amaudlin quality that unfortu-nately recalls an afternoon soap,but the album soon proceeds toclassic Bernstein passages, atturns wondrous, joyous, sus-penseful and sad, as pioneered solong ago on To Kill aMockingbird.

If there’s one problem, it’s thatthis music feels alien to the socialworld of children today. In To Killa Mockingbird, the melodiescame effortlessly out of theDepression-era setting, as if theywere tunes the children them-selves would sing (and actually,they do). Here, Bernstein’s ges-tures evoke a delicate innocence,but it feels like one the charactersthemselves would not know.Either that, or the movie is little

S C O R E

more than a weak melodrama.In any case, so many com-

posers today are so bland andboring. Just hearing 30 seconds ofa Bernstein score makes you real-ize that it doesn’t have to be thatway. Composers should findscales, chords, colors and combi-nations thereof that they maketheir own, and write music worthhearing. Anyone who passes upMilan’s CD solely because of itshalf-hour length (it’s a U.S.-

recorded work, so the short run-ning time is for financial reasons)is an idiot—the CD ends justwhen it’s getting boring, and soyou listen to it again.

—Lukas Kendall

8mm ★★★ 1/2MYCHAEL DANNACompass III COM 011020 tracks - 50:09

Whatever you might thinkof Joel Schumacher as a

director (please, let’s not get intoit), he at least deserves credit forgiving Elliot Goldenthal somemajor assignments and for apply-ing composer Mychael Danna tothis latest (roundly reviled) “psy-chological thriller.” Danna tendsto apply specific ethnic instru-mentation and techniques to thefilms he scores in order to allowus to view the movie’s subjectmatter through a different per-spective, and the approach hasadded immeasurably to films likeThe Ice Storm and The SweetHereafter.

8mm is pure melodrama,however, and here the effectshave uncomfortable associa-tions. Seven scribe AndrewKevin Walker is again out toexplore the nature of evil, andDanna’s score has the same trag-ic gravity that Howard Shorebrought to Seven and TheSilence of the Lambs. As NickCage’s detective moves from therarefied atmosphere of his client(as gloomily depicted in theopening cues “The House,” “TheCall” and “The Film”) to thegritty underworld of crime andporn (“Missing Persons,”“Hollywood”) Danna brings theMoroccan effects he’s chosen forthis film to the fore. “MissingPersons” is an exciting, elegantcue, with the wild Moroccaninstrumentation and percussionbacked by a slithering carpet oflow strings surging and coilingbeneath the ethnic dances. Thecomposer takes the action-moviecliché of walls of high-octane,kodo-style percussion into aninteresting new direction withthe effects he brings to bear inthe climactic “Rainstorm,” whichfeatures shrill, whistledMoroccan war chants.

But is Danna using the aliensound of Middle Eastern musicas a corollary for evil, alienation,“the Other,” the multi-ethnicmakeup of Los Angeles, or what?Somehow I can’t believe it’s theformer, but Schumacher’s filmdoesn’t have much more to sayother than that families are goodand evil is bad. This is really themost conventional film thatDanna has scored, and theresults make for a lengthy andinvolving album (courtesyCompass III), if you can avoid

being thrown off the scent by theMoroccan elements. —J.B.

Playing by Heart ★★★JOHN BARRY & VARIOUSCapitol CDP 7243 4 97991 2 713 tracks - 58:31

Playing by Heart is a relation-ships drama set in Los

Angeles which teases and eventu-ally reveals the connectionsbetween a sizable cast of dis-parate characters. The filmattracted stellar actors—SeanConnery, Gena Rowlands, GillianAnderson, Anthony Edwards,Madeleine Stowe, Jon Stewart,Dennis Quaid, Angelina Jolie,Ryan Philippe—and is somewhatgiven over to them with manytalky and actor-y scenes.

Musically, Playing by Heartstraddles no less than fourworlds. First off, there are thecontemporary pop songs whichshould be enjoyed by ordinaryhumans (performers includeBonnie Raitt and Moby), thesame way they come in and out ofthe movie as source music. Then,there is the Chet Baker jazzworld, represented on the CD by“Everything Happens to Me,”meant to evoke the film’s themesand atmosphere, and alluded to inthe film’s dialogue. Third are sev-eral airy and upbeat cues byChristopher Young—added lateinto the picture, and not appear-ing on the album—and fourth isthe distinct and bittersweet worldof John Barry.

This last component should beof the most interest to FSM’sreaders. Although originally tout-


er. Fiegel’s is better as a casualread-through (it is fascinating toread about the company Barrykept, including Michael Caineand Terence Stamp) whileLeonard’s will have greaterlongevity as a reference manual.The former certainly benefitsfrom having access to Barry fornew interviews and anecdotes,but the authors of the latter aregreater authorities on the com-poser and have drawn on moreresources to attain their goal ofproviding the ultimate referenceguide. The two books’ attitude tocriticism is markedly different:Fiegel basically refrains from anykind of negative musical criticism(which is hardly surprising, giventhat the book is “authorized”),which becomes tiresome, whileLeonard, although he doesn’tactually criticize things per se,quotes from reviews written atthe time of many of the scores toprovide opposing viewpoints onthe materials. On the other hand,Leonard’s work seems almostafraid of revealing personaldetails of Barry’s life, giving it ascrapbook-like feeling, whileFiegel dives into the deep end ofthat pool headfirst.

As far as pictures go, A SixtiesTheme contains about a dozenpages of black-and-white photoswhich have mostly been seenmany times before, and concen-trate on Barry’s earliest days,while A Life in Music has literal-ly hundreds of photographs andalbum covers, over half in color,and many of which have neverbeen seen, right up to the com-poser’s triumphant London con-cert in April 1998. It alsoincludes an extraordinarily com-plete discography, something thatmust have taken months of

painstaking research to com-pile—every piece of Barry musicever released is listed. Fiegel’smerely contains a half-completefilmography.

There is an undoubted differ-ence in focus between the

books, but serious Barry fans areurged to pick up both. A SixtiesTheme provides 250 pages ofcelebrity anecdotes, while A Lifein Music has 250 (twice-as-large)pages of musical and historicalinsights. This gulf in class is com-pensated in part by a differencein price—the latter biography ismore expensive.

It is difficult to believe in thisday and age, but John Barry wasenormously famous in the 1960s;he really was treated like a rockstar. No other film composer hasever come close to this level offame and it is doubtful that anyever will again. (Sure, everyone’sheard of John Williams, but howmany times have you seen pic-tures of him getting off of planesor drinking in bars?) These days,Barry has drifted back into therelative anonymity of his peers,but with new movies, concertsand concept albums on the hori-zon he promises to keep active.Ultimately there will be a needfor a true biography combiningviews of his personal and profes-sional lives, as only one composerbiography has thus far done—Steven C. Smith’s BernardHerrmann: A Heart at Fire’sCenter. Until then, these twobooks are more than most fanscould ever dream of having. FSM

John Barry: A Life in Music is nowavailable in the U.S. from FSM; seepg. 40. John Barry: A Sixties Themeis as yet unavailable on these shores.

ed as a return to Barry’s jazzroots, the score is more a continu-ation of his classic melding (sinceBody Heat) of a jazz rhythm sec-tion with orchestra, as mostrecently accomplished in the lasttrack of his concept album, TheBeyondness of Things. Specialmention must be made of theexquisite soloists: Chris Botti(trumpet), Mike Lang (piano) andLeland Sklar (bass). Two trackscan be found on Capitol’s songcollection: “Remembering Chet”(4:28), a minor-moded andsomber composition, and the con-cluding “End Game” (4:44),which shifts to major and soarsaloft on a quintessentially Barryconstruction of melody and sim-ple—and perfect—chord changes.

Playing by Heart consists ofmany slice-of-life snapshots, butfrom time to time somebodystumbles onto a larger issue—there’s an encounter, revelation,or expression (not to mention acharacter dying of AIDS). It ishere that Barry’s music is used,and as Barry’s music always

does—from Midnight Cowboy toDances with Wolves to everythingelse—it shifts the tempo into alow gear but elevates the feelingsto a high one. The strong sense ofmacro structure, the simplicity ofthe melodies, and the size but rel-ative stasis of Barry’s orchestramake his scenes all about poten-tial, rather than actions.

Unfortunately, the film issomewhat clunky in transitioningin and out of Barry’s cues (someare all but inaudible), but thereprobably was not much choice ashis music would not have beenappropriate for the more light-hearted and contemporary sce-narios. For example, as much as Ilove King Kong, it was probably

best to score the scenes takingplace at a youth-oriented clubwith actual dance music.

All in all, Barry’s music doesnot gel completely with Playingby Heart’s unusual structure, butit adds considerable weight to itsthemes of love and time. Thetotality of Barry’s contributionwill soon be released by Decca inEngland. —L.K.

Rushmore ★★★ 1/2MARK MOTHERSBAUGH & VARIOUSLondon 314-556-074-2IN0220 tracks - 49:19

Wes Anderson, the directorof Rushmore, admits in

the liner notes of this album thathe had intended to score hisentire film with British Invasionrock and roll hits. He felt that theloud, angry songs from bands likethe Kinks that wore blazers andties were the perfect musicalanalogy to the main character ofthe film—a loud, angry teenagerwho wears a blazer and tie.

What Mark Mothersbaughbrought to this quirky prepschool comedy was a deserved air

of sophisti-cation. Hisnine scoretracks totala precious9:45 of theCD’s run-ning time.There isbut one dis-tinct theme,a catchyphrase for

the main character, Max, heardon “Sharp Little Guy” and “TheLad with the Silver Button.” Therest of the score feels like a sam-pler box of chocolates from differ-ent scenes in the film. The cohe-sive element (the chocolate) is thealmost classical sound thatMothersbaugh brings out of anensemble that includes flute, gui-tar, mandolin, harpsichord andglockenspiel.

Beneath this umbrella ofsound, Mothersbaugh samplesfrom a variety of styles. “FriendsLike You Who Need Friends” isan organ-powered war chant,“Hardest Geometry Problem inthe World” moves from aGreensleeves-esque guitar

melody to a “Flight of theBumblebee”-type tempo on flute,and “Piranhas Are a Very TrickySpecies” sounds like an improvfrom Louis Prima’s drummer.Every cue has an upbeat tempoand the score meshes well withthe source tracks. One cue,“Snowflake Music,” is not origi-nal to Rushmore, but is fromMothersbaugh’s score to BottleRocket, a film directed byRushmore’s producer, OwenWilson.

Although short, the score isenjoyable. The quirky, ensemblearrangement is reminiscent of the‘60s and ‘70s jazz scores frommasters like Barry and Mancini.In today’s big-budget, big-soundmadness, kudos to Disney andTouchstone for financing a filmthat didn’t need to break box-office records (or sound systems)to be a great film, and kudos toMothersbaugh for putting agreat-sounding score behind it.

—Tim Kurkoski

Something to Believe In ★★★LALO SCHIFRINAleph Records 0089 tracks - 67:29

Although the cover for thisCD boasts of Placido

Domingo’s rendition of the titlesong, and although the disc con-tains two separate versions ofsaid tune, the true feature of thealbum is Lalo Schifrin’s secondpiano concerto. Under the capa-ble fingers of soloist JeffreyBiegel, the Piano Concerto #2(“The Americas”) is a startlinglydiverse work that often soundslike a close relative of Schifrin’sJazz Meets the Symphony series,though the concerto doesn’t quiteobtain the same sense of focus.Few composers today are as aptas Schifrin in obscuring theseams between the opposingstyles they’ve welded together. Inthe three movements of this con-certo (“Blues,” “Tango,” and“Carnival”) the composer travelsthrough a wide trench of popular,modernistic, and Neo-Classicalphrases while allowing each tobecome informed of the others’peculiarities. Schifrin’s orchestra-tions are as colorful as always—though some of the ideas manageto pass by more quickly than onewould hope. The piano writing is

showy but not excessively virtu-osic, which works well with theessential lyrically quality of theconcerto.

Lyrical or not, the 42-plusminute piano concerto (all threemovements frustratingly relegat-ed to a single track) is probablythe harshest music to be found onthis otherwise soft-spoken disc.As Schifrin himself notes in thebrief liner notes, this is the mostunderstated he’s been since hisscore to The Fox (1968). Besidesthe two moody, old-school“Something to Believe In” cuts,there are two Silvestri-style-magic cues and another song,“No-One [sic] Home.” Balakirev’s“Islamey” and Simply Red’s“We’re in This Together” roundout what ends up a mixed bag.

—Doug Adams

Tango ★★★★LALO SCHIFRIN & VARIOUSDeutsche Grammophon 459 145-2 GH22 tracks - 63:03

Interesting factoid about LaloSchifrin number 38: he played

piano for Astor Piazzolla.Piazzolla, of course, was one theworld’s predominate composers ofartful tangos. (He’s best knownto film music fans as the guy whocomposed the thematic tune from12 Monkeys.) This pegsArgentinean Schifrin as the obvi-ous choice for Tango—a film thatuses Hispanic dancing as itsmajor story-telling vehicle. Hewas also the right choice. For thefilm, Schifrin assembled a hand-ful of tango compositions, sevenof which now reside on this disc.Each is more or less written forthe standard tango band of ahandful of strings, piano, andbandoneon (a close relative of theaccordion)—the major exceptionsbeing the symphonically dramatic“La represion,” which utilizes fullorchestra and chorus, and “Tangopara percussion,” which is com-posed solely for percussion.

What’s interesting aboutSchifrin’s use of the tango form isthat the song-construction hasseemingly lent his style a newfocus. His usual sprawling senseof color is given a tight frame inwhich to shine, but the result isall the more accessible. The tangoforms also give Schifrin a chance



S C O R E

m u s i c. . . e x c l u s i v e t o F S M !

Patton/The Flight of the PhoenixClassic Jerry Goldsmithwar soundtrack plus rareFrank DeVol adventurescore on one CD! JerryGoldsmith’s Patton (1970) is abrilliant definition of GeneralPatton, from the jaunty Pattonmarch to the echoplexed trum-pet triplets that conjure up theghosts of an ancient, martialpast. Previous albums havebeen re-recordings; this is theoriginal film soundtrack.TheFlight of the Phoenix (1965) isa superb adventure film abouta cargo plane that crashes in

the Sahara desert. FrankDeVol’s rousing, kinetic scoremelodically delineates the film’ssharply drawn conflicts and thecharacters’ struggle against theencroaching threat of thedesert.$19.95100 RiflesOriginal soundtrack byJerry GoldsmithNever before released!100 Rifles (1969) is JerryGoldsmith’s most outrageouswestern score, featuring belli-cose brass, wild percussion andmelodic Mexican nuggets. TheCD features the score twice: innewly remixed stereo and in the

mono mix originally made for thefilm. It’s an audacious, rip-roar-ing hunk of Mexican adventure,never before available. You’regonna love it! $19.95

The Return of DraculaGerald Fried 2CD set alsoincluding I Bury the Living, TheCabinet of Caligari andMark of the Vampire. Fromthe composer of Star Trek’s“Amok Time” and “Catspaw”comes this historic 2CD set offour of his early horror scores:The Return of Dracula (1958) isbased on the Dies Irae, I Bury

the Living (1958) featurescreepy harpsichord, The Cabinetof Caligari (1962) has a beauti-ful, romantic theme, and Markof the Vampire (1957) recallsFried’s score for StanleyKubrick’s The Killing. 24 pg.booklet. $29.95(Shipping charges are same as a

single CD)Fantastic VoyageThe Complete UnreleasedScore by Leonard

Rosenman! Fantastic Voyageis the classic 1966 science fic-tion movie which follows a minia-turized surgical team inside thehuman body. The score byLeonard Rosenman (composerof Lord of the Rings, East ofEden and Star Trek IV) is one ofhis most famous and has neverbeen available in any form. It is a

powerful, modern orchestralwork with breathtaking musicalcolors, presented here in com-plete form, in stereo.$19.95The PoseidonAdventure/The Paper ChaseOriginal unreleasedsoundtracks by JohnWilliams! The PoseidonAdventure is the classic 1972Irwin Allen disaster movie, withWilliams’s stunning title themeand suspenseful interiorpassages. The Paper Chase isthe acclaimed 1973 comedydrama about Harvard lawstudents, with music rangingfrom a light pop love theme toBaroque adaptations to thehaunting “Passing of Wisdom.”Also includes Americana 6-min.main title to Conrack (1974).$19.95

Stagecoach/The Loner Original soundtracks byJerry Goldsmith!Stagecoach is the 1966 remakeof the John Ford western. TheMainstream CD is a re-recording;this CD is the first release of theoriginal soundtrack, asconducted by the composer.The Loner is Goldsmith’scomplete contribution to the1965 western TV series by Rod

Serling (sounds like RioConchos): main and end titlesand two episode scores.$19.95The Wild Bunchrestored edition. Limitedavailability courtesyWarner Home Video! Theclassic Jerry Fielding score, inbrilliant stereo, to the 1969Sam Peckinpah western. The 76-minute CD was meticulouslyrestored and remixed by NickRedman for inclusion only withthe 1997 laserdisc of the film;

f e a t u r e s e l e c t i o nPrince ValiantThe Classic Adventure Score by FranzWaxman! Prince Valiant (1954) is a stirringknights-and-adventure work in the classic tradi-tion of The Adventures of Robin Hood and StarWars. It features a dynamic set of themes andvariations for the hero, princess, villain, mentor(sound familiar?) in a stirring symphonic setting.The CD includes the complete score as it survives

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Want to step to the front of the line?Simply send us your name, address and credit cardinformation (VISA, MasterCard or American Express),and we will send you automatically each CD as it isreleased. You can return any disc for a full refund orcredit within 30 days. Each CD will cost $19.95 plusshipping ($3 U.S./Canada, or $5 rest of world); chargeswill be processed at the time of shipping. Pre-order A Send me Everything!Pre-order B Send me each subsequentSilver Age Classic CD for $19.95.Pre-order C Send me each Golden Age

More cool stuff on the next page!

b o o k s. . . f o r m u s i c l o v e r s

The Music ofStar Trek:Profiles in Styleby Jeff BondThis is the first-ever historyof Star Trek soundtracks,from the original series tothe movies to the new incar-nations, by FSM’s own JeffBond, with a foreword byStar Trek II and VI directorNicholas Meyer. Featured areinterviews with composersJerry Goldsmith, AlexanderCourage, Fred Steiner, GeraldFried, Leonard Rosenman,Cliff Eidelman, DennisMcCarthy, Ron Jones, JayChattaway, David Bell, PaulBaillargeon; producer RobertJustman; and music editorGerry Sackman.

The book also contains anup-to-date, complete list ofevery score written for allfour TV series; a guide tounderstanding how certain

shows were tracked andcredited; Classic Trek manu-script excerpts from FredSteiner, Gerald Fried, SolKaplan and George Duning(in their own hand); andcomplete cue sheets fromselected episodes and films.Published by Lone EaglePress. 224 pages, softcover,illustrated. $17.95A Heart at Fire’sCenter: The Life andMusic of BernardHerrmannby Steven C. Smith

Bernard Herrmann (1911-1975) stands as a toweringfigure in film music: not onlywas he the most influentialfilm composer of all time,who scored such classicfilms as Citizen Kane,Vertigo, Psycho and TaxiDriver, but he was an irasci-ble, passionate personality

famous for his temper andoutbursts. This 1991 book isthe definitive biography ofthe legendary composer,covering his film, television,radio and concert work aswell as his personal life: fromhis beginnings in New YorkCity through his three mar-riages and many professionalassociations.

This book is actually stillin-print, but it can be hardto find. It is a brilliant illumi-nation of the musician andthe man and probably thebest film composer biogra-phy ever written.Published by University ofCalifornia Press. 416 pp.,hardcover. $39.95U.S. Exclusive—Onlyfrom FSMJohn Barry: ALife in Musicby Geoff Leonard,Pete Walker andGareth BramleyThis 8.5” by 10.75” tome isa definitive history of JohnBarry’s music and career,from his earliest days as aBritish rock and roller to hismost recent films andLondon concert. It is not apersonal biography butrather a comprehensivechronicle of every singlething John Barry has everdone: from records to filmsto television to concerts,with plenty of primarysource material from Barryand his many collaborators.

James Bond fans will bethrilled by the many behind-the-scenes photographs(from scoring sessions forYou Only Live Twice,Diamonds Are Forever andThe Living Daylights) andinformation relating to 007.In fact, Barryphiles overall

will be astounded at what isprobably the biggest collec-tion of Barry photographs inthe world, from all stages ofhis career—at work, athome, and at events. Alsoincluded is a completefilm/discography and albumand film artwork, some in fullcolor.Published by Samsom & Co.,U.K. 244 pp., hardcover,illustrated.$44.95

Overtones andUndertones:Reading FilmMusicby Royal S. BrownRoyal Brown is best-knownas the longtime film musiccolumnist for Fanfare maga-zine, whose illuminatingreviews have placed filmmusic in a serious academiccontext as well as enter-

tained with their sharpobservations. Overtones andUndertones is his 1994book, the first-ever serioustheoretical study of music infilm. It explores the relation-ships between film, musicand narrative and chroniclesthe aesthetics of the artform through several eras.Key works analyzed are TheSea Hawk (Korngold),Double Indemnity (Rózsa),Laura (Raksin), Prokofiev’smusic for Eisenstein,Herrmann’s music forHitchcock, and severalscores for the films of Jean-Luc Godard. A supplemental

section fea-tures Brown’s probing inter-

views with Rózsa, Raksin,Herrmann, Mancini, Jarre,Schifrin, Barry and Shore.

If you are a film studentinterested in writing aboutfilm music, you have to readthis book.Published by University ofCalifornia Press. 396 pp.,softcover. $24.95

Dimitri Tiomkin: APortraitby Christopher PalmerThis 1984 book (T.E. Books,out of print!) by the lateChristopher Palmer is theauthoritative study of leg-endary composer DimitriTiomkin (1894-1979). Longout of print, a few copieshave surfaced from the U.K.publisher and are now forsale—when they’re gone,they’re gone! The book ishardback, 144 pp., anddivided into three sections: abiography, overview ofTiomkin in an historical per-spective, and specific cover-age of his major landmarks(Lost Horizon, High Noon,the Hitchcock films, Giant,55 Days at Peking and manymore). Also includes a com-plete filmography, 41 b&wphotos, and 9 color plates.Rare!$24.95VideoHound’sSoundtracks:Music from the

Movies, Broadwayand TelevisionEdited by Didier C.Deutsch, Foreword by LukasKendallThis massive 1024-pagebook contains reviews of

over 2,000 soundtrack CDs,rated from one to five“bones,” with complete cred-its and track lists for eachdisc. Many of the reviews areby FSM’s hardy veteran writ-ers: Jeff Bond, Andy Dursin,Lukas Kendall and PaulMacLean. The ultimate guidefor those indecisive momentswhile looking at catalogs ordiscs in a used bin. Includescross-indexes by composer,title, rating, orchestrator,conductor, performer andsong title, as well as a com-pilation CD of tracks fromHollywood Records.$24.95

Film ComposersGuide 1997-1998 FourthEdition Compiled and Editedby Vincent J. Francillon This is the ultimate resourcefor finding out what com-posers have scored whatfilms—over 2,600 com-posers cross-referenced with25,000 films! Never be puz-zled again. Also containsagency contacts, AcademyAward winners and nomi-nees, record companyaddresses and more. 8.5” by11”, 416 pp. Lone EaglePublishing. Retail price $55;Special to FSM readers:$39.95

Out-of-Print—Cheap!McNally’s PriceGuide for CollectibleSoundtrack Records(1950-1990)by Keith and DorieMcNallyThis 1994 LP price guidewas an attempt by mail-order dealer West PointRecords to compete withthe existing soundtrackguide by Jerry Osborne. 240pages in all, it features 780black and white photos ofrare album covers along withexhaustive listings (over2300 in all) for 12”, 10” and7” LPs, plus sections ontelevision soundtracks, origi-nal casts and foreign edi-tions. It also has a lengthyintroductory section withessays on soundtrack LP col-lecting, including informationon foreign markets.

McNally’s Price Guide orig-inally sold for $29.95. Nowout-of-print (West PointRecords itself having gottenout of the business), remain-ing copies are available fromFSM for a mere:$9.95

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b o o k s. . . f o r c o m p o s e r sThe Click Book Comprehensive TimingTables for SynchronizingMusic to Film Created by USC student andcomposer Cameron Rose.Click-tempo tables for 6-0through 32-0 frame click-tempos (6-0, 6-1, 6-2,etc.)... Each timing tablecovers beat 1 to beat 999at the given click-tempo...Large, bold, easy-to-readclick-tempo values andequivalent metronomic val-ues at the top of eachpage... Timing, frame andfootage breakdowns forrhythmic subdivisions withineach click-tempo—includingcompound meters... Listingand tutorial of standard tim-ing-conversion formulas for24 fps film speed... Tutorialin SMPTE-to-Absolute timeconversion... Frames-to-Seconds conversion tablesfor U.S. and European filmand video speeds. 430 pp.Price is the industry standardfor click books; this onegives more value for money!$149.95

New Edition!1999 Film/TVMusic Guide From the Music BusinessRegistry Is your career worth invest-ing $95? Contains exhaustivedirectories of record labels,music publishers, film/TVmusic depts., music supervi-sors, music editors, compos-er representatives, com-posers, clearance companies,recording studios, performingrights societies, and musiclibraries—names, addresses,contact numbers.

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Volume One, 1993-96Issues are 24 pp. unlessnoted. Most 1993 editions arexeroxes only* #30/31, February/March’93 64 pp. Maurice Jarre,Basil Poledouris, JayChattaway, John Scott, ChrisYoung, Mike Lang; the sec-ondary market, EnnioMorricone albums, ElmerBernstein Film MusicCollection LPs; 1992 inreview.#32, April ’93 16 pp.Matinee temp-track, SPFM

’93 Conference Report, StarTrek music editorial.* #33, May ’93 12 pp. Bookreviews, classical/film con-nection.* #34, June ’93 16 pp.

Goldsmith SPFM award din-ner; orchestrators & whatthey do, Lost in Space, recy-cled Herrmann; spotlights onChris Young, Pinocchio, BruceLee film scores. * #35, July ’93 16 pp.Tribute to David Kraft; JohnBeal Pt. 1; scores vs. songs,Herrmann Christmas operas;Film Composers Dictionary. #36/37, August/September’93 40 pp. Bernstein, BobTownson (Varèse), RichardKraft & Nick Redman Pt. 1,John Beal Pt. 2; reviews ofCAM CDs; collector interestarticles, classic corner, fanta-sy film scores of ElmerBernstein. * #38, October ’93 16 pp.John Debney (seaQuestDSV), Kraft & Redman Pt. 2. * #39, Nov. ’93 16 pp. Kraft& Redman Pt. 3, Fox CDs,Nightmare Before Christmasand Bride of Frankensteinreviews. * #40, Dec. ’93 16 pp. Kraft& Redman Pt. 4; Re-recordingThe Magnificent Seven.* #41/42/43,January/Feb./March ’94 48pp. Elliot Goldenthal, JamesNewton Howard, Kitaro &Randy Miller (Heaven &Earth), Rachel Portman, KenDarby; Star Wars trivia/cue

sheets; sexy album covers;music for westerns; ’93 inreview. * #44, April ’94 JoelMcNeely, Poledouris (OnDeadly Ground); SPFMMorricone tribute & photos;lots of reviews. * #45, May ’94 RandyNewman (Maverick), GraemeRevell (The Crow); Goldsmithin concert; in-depth reviews:The Magnificent Seven andSchindler’s List; Instant LinerNotes, book reviews.* #46/47, June/July ’94Patrick Doyle, NewtonHoward (Wyatt Earp), JohnMorgan (restoring HansSalter scores); Tribute toHenry Mancini; MichaelNyman music for films, col-lectible CDs.* #48, August ’94 MarkMancina (Speed); ChuckCirino & Peter Rotter; RichardKraft: advice for aspiringcomposers; classical music infilms; new CAM CDs;Cinerama LPs; bestsellingCDs.#49, September ’94 HansZimmer (The Lion King),Shirley Walker; LaurenceRosenthal on the Vineyard;Salter in memoriam; classicalmusic in films; John Williamsin concert; Recordman at theflea market.#50, October ’94 AlanSilvestri (Forrest Gump),Mark Isham; sex & sound-track sales; Lalo Schifrin inconcert; Morricone Beat CDs;that wacky Internet;

Recordman on liner notes.#51, November ’94 HowardShore (Ed Wood), ThomasNewman (ShawshankRedemption), J. PeterRobinson (Craven’s NewNightmare), Lukas’s mominterviewed; music of Heimat,Star Trek; promos.* #52, December ’94 EricSerra, Marc Shaiman Pt. 1,Sandy De Crescent (musiccontractor), Valencia FilmMusic Conference, SPFMConference Pt. 1, StarGateliner notes, ShostakoholicsAnonymous.#53/54, January/February’95 Shaiman Pt. 2, DennisMcCarthy (Star Trek); SergioBassetti, Jean-Claude Petit &Armando Trovajoli inValencia; Music & theAcademy Awards Pt. 1;rumored LPs, quadraphonicLPs.#55/56, March/April ’95Poledouris (The JungleBook), Silvestri (The Quickand the Dead), Joe Lo Duca(Evil Dead), Oscar & Music

Pt. 2, Recordman’s Diary,SPFM Conference Report Pt.2.#57, May ’95 Goldsmith inconcert, Bruce Broughton onYoung Sherlock Holmes, MilesGoodman interviewed, ’94Readers Poll, Star Trekoverview.#58, June ’95 Michael Kamen(Die Hard), Royal S. Brown(film music critic),Recordman Loves Annette,History of SoundtrackCollecting Pt. 1.*#59/60, July/Aug. ’95 48pp. Sex Sells Too (sexy LPcovers, lots of photos),Maurice Jarre interviewed,Miklós Rózsa Remembered,History of SoundtrackCollecting Pt. 2, film music inconcert pro and con. #61, September ’95Goldenthal (Batman Forever),Kamen Pt. 2, Chris Lennertz(new composer), Star Trek:The Motion Picture (analysis),classical music for sound-track fans.#62, October ’95 Danny

Elfman Pt. 1, John Ottman(The Usual Suspects), RobertTownson (VarèseSarabande), Ten MostInfluential Scores, Goldsmithdocumentary reviewed.* #63, November ’95 JamesBond Special Issue! JohnBarry & James Bond (histo-ry/overview), Eric Serra onGoldenEye, essay, favorites,more. Also: History ofSoundtrack Collecting Pt. 3,Davy Crockett LPs.* #64, December ’95 DannyElfman Pt. 2 (big!), SteveBartek (orchestrator),Recordman Meets Shaft: TheBlaxploitation Soundtracks,Kamen Pt. 3, re-recordingHouse of Frankenstein.* #65/66/67January/February/March ’96,48 pp. T. Newman, ToruTakemitsu, Robotech, StarTrek, TenInfluential com-posers; Philip Glass, HeitorVilla-Lobos, songs in film,best of ‘95, film music docu-mentary reviews (Herrmann,Delerue, Takemitsu, “TheHollywood Sound”).#68, April ’96 David Shire’sThe Taking of Pelham OneTwo Three; Carter Burwell(Fargo), gag obituaries,Apollo 13 promo/bootlegtips.#69, May ’96 Music in Plan 9from Outer Space; JohnWalsh’s funny movie musicglossary; Herrmann & Rózsaradio programs; Irwin Allenbox set review; Bender’s“Into the Dark Pool” column. #70, June ’96 Mancina(Twister), final desert islandmovie lists, Jeff Bond’s sum-mer movie column, TV’sBiggest Hits book review.#71, July ’96 David Arnold(Independence Day), MichelColombier, Recordman Goesto Congress, Bond’s summermovie column.#72, August ’96 Ten BestScores of ‘90s, T. Newman’sThe Player, Escape from L.A.,conductor John Mauceri, ref-erence books, Akira IfukubeCDs.#73, September ’96Recordman on War FilmSoundtracks Pt. 1; Interview:David Schecter: MonstrousMovie Music; Ifukube CDs Pt.2, Miles Goodman obituary.#74, October ’96 ActionScores in the ‘90s (intelligentanalysis); Cinemusic ‘96report (Barry, Zhou Jiping);Vic Mizzy interviewed.* #75, November ’96 Barry:Cinemusic Interview (verybig); Recordman on War FilmSoundtracks Pt. 2, Bond’sreview column.* #76, December ’96

v i d e oBasilPoledouris: His Life andMusic An intimate visitwith thecomposer ofConan theBarbarian, BigWednesday, Free Willy,Starship Troopers andLonesome Dove. Take atour of his work and

lifestyle—in his ownwords—from hismethods ofcomposing to hislove of sailing andthe sea. The videoruns 50 minutesand includesfootage of Basilconducting and atwork on synthesizermock-ups of

Starship Troopers, as wellas dozens of behind-the-scenes and family photos,and special appearances by

FSMma

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ceShipping info:CDs/video: $3 firstitem, $1.50 eachadditionalU.S./Canada. $5 first item, $3each add’l rest ofworld. Books: $5each U.S/Canada,$10 rest of world.

(continued from page 38)to dole out some more of hisimmediately catchy bass lines—here in a slippery chromaticstyle. (Does any film composerwrite better bass lines thanSchifrin?) The “Tango delatardecer” is especially qualifiedin this regard. “Tango barbaro”is a stand-out work as well withits wildly rhythmic and disso-nant finale.

Tango fans should also find alot to enjoy in the included ver-sions of Piazzolla’s “Calambre”and the classic “La cumparsita,”but some of the other works area bit lightweight. The rating isfor Schifrin’s work, which ishighly recommended. —D.A.

They Died With Their Boots On★★★★MAX STEINERMarco Polo 8.22507925 tracks - 70:05

Fans of Max Steiner shouldgo week-kneed at the

prospect of listening to a newrecording of what I assume ismost, if not all, of his score tothe classic Raoul Walsh histori-cal epic They Died With TheirBoots On, with Errol Flynn por-traying Custer from his entryinto West Point to his death atLittle Big Horn. Marco Polo vet-erans Bill Stromberg, JohnMorgan and the MoscowSymphony tackle the score withgusto, creating one of their bet-ter albums. There’s a nice, mel-low love theme (given a particu-

larly Steineresque, glassy andtrembling treatment in “MysticTeapot—Owl”) and a lovelybouncing melody introduced intrack 2 (“Custer Arrives”) whichspeaks to Custer’s indomitablecharacter. Steiner’s penchant forquoting traditional themes aseasy emotional markers for theaudience gets taken to extremeshere: Steiner references “TheBattle Hymn of the Republic” aswell as “Dixie” throughout thescore’s early battle sequences,reinforcing for any audiencemembers whose attention haswandered that they are indeedwatching events from the CivilWar: also given the treatmentare “When Johnny ComesMarching Home,” “The BattleCry of Freedom,” “Tramp,

Tramp, Tramp” and “The Girl ILeft Behind Me,” as well asMendelssohn’s wedding march,various trumpet revellies, “RuleBrittania” and “America.”

Steiner’s own material is justas catchy in its own way and hasthe advantage of not throwingthe viewer out of the film everytime he or she has to stop andreflect “Hey—that’s ‘Dixie’!”The most effective (and subtle)quotations are from the excitingfife-and-drum march “GarryOwen,” an anthem for Custerand the 7th Cavalry thatreceived a more straightforwardyet infinitely more ironic treat-ment in Arthur Penn’s skewer-ing of the Custer legend, LittleBig Man. It contrasts beautifullywith Steiner’s love theme in thecue “March Out—Sioux.”Steiner’s musical treatment ofCrazy Horse and his Sioux war-riors seems to take its cue fromthe word “Crazy,” but it’s actu-ally less clichéd and more sym-pathetic than the thrummingwar drums he used to character-ize the Native American foes inhis later The Searchers.

Steiner was a master at creat-ing Mickey Mousing effects (likethe chugging, snare-drum-driventrain music in “Grazioso—Train”) that added immeasur-ably to the swaggering, heroiccharacter of many of the filmshe scored. The hammering,relentless “Little Big Horn” cueis certainly a highlight of hiscareer. The CD includes around30 pages of exhaustive linernotes (I always love readingabout the reactions of Russianmusicians, people who are froman almost completely alien cul-ture, upon playing Americanfilm music), and there’s appar-ently a videotape recording ofthis performance at the BYUFilm Music archives.—J.B. FSM


S C O R E

Little Evil Things Volume One★★★Framac Music ISBN 1-891007-01-75 tracks - 55:29Little Evil Things Volume Two★★★Framac Music ISBN 1-891007-03-34 tracks - 71:20FRANK MACCHIA & TRACY LONDON

Little Evil Things is an attempt

to cross-breed the sensibili-

ties of old-time suspense radio

broadcasts, The Twilight Zone,

and Stephen King (which are all

somewhat related anyway).

Writer/composers Frank

Macchia and Tracy London have

concocted a series of short horror

stories for which Macchia has

composed background scores

using synths, samples and some

small acoustic groupings.The

music is brash, sometimes car-

toony horror material, particular-

ly in the high-tension vignette

“Transformation.”“Little Evil

Thing” features an almost blasé,

tongue-in-cheek, Thomas

Newman-type opening, and

somewhat tongue-in-cheek narra-

tion by London. It’s unusually

descriptive music that would

never be allowed in a contempo-

rary movie.“The Quiet Child” is

a variation on the old “It’s a Good

Life” segment of The Twilight

Zone, with a moody opening of

string and woodwinds,

and scratchy “Danse

Macabre” violin solos

throughout.“It’s After

Me” is narrated by

Macchia himself.

“Parasites,” with a man’s body

being invaded by maggots, is a

more graphic version of Ray

Bradbury’s short story “Fever

Dream.”While you might think

that this would be an appealing

listen for older children, there’s

definitely an adult sensibility at

work in many of the stories (“You

look like shit,” someone observes

in one of them).

Volume Two features longer,

more elaborate stories, and some

of the material is pretty wild.

“Sisters” tells the story of two

women literally joined at the hip

who just don’t get along. Siamese

Twin catfight—yeah, baby! The

second album has a more con-

temporary feeling, kind of like

thirtysomething goes mad.

Macchia’s music for “It’s in the

Water,” the story of a man with

hydrophobia, has a lot of shifting,

submerged, undulating textures;

my only real disappointment was

with the L.A. satire “Blubb,” the

tale of a gigantic mound of left-

over liposuction fat that threatens

Beverly Hills.This was the perfect

opportunity to lampoon the musi-

cal conventions of giant monster

movies, but Macchia’s score

maintains a small-scale, droll

and ironic tone instead.

The composer plays quite well

against the narration throughout

both albums and this really does

capture that creepy, black feel-

ing of some of the older Twilight

Zone scores. Of course, like a

comedy album, Little Evil Things

1 and 2 may not hold up under

repeated listenings once the

punch-line finales of the stories

are known. But it certainly

scores as a novelty. —J.B.

Order Little Evil Things directlyfrom the company at 877-LIL-EVILor see www.littleevilthings.com.

Things That Go Bump

Writer/composersMacchia & London

FILM PRODUCERS, DIRECTORS, COM-

POSERS, MUSIC SUPERVISORS, AND

STUDIO AND RECORD LABEL EXECU-

TIVES GATHERED IN NEW YORK CITY ON

NOVEMBER 10, 1998, FOR A DAY-LONG

CONFERENCE ON “THE PHENOMENON OF

THE SOUNDTRACK.” THE EVENT WAS PART

OF A FOUR-CITY FILM MUSIC FESTIVAL PRO-

DUCED BY KNITMEDIA AND SPONSORED BY

DIVX, the much-maligned “pay-per-view”

DVD format. The festival included film

music concerts in Chicago, Los Angeles, San

Francisco, and New York, by such artists as

Randy Newman, Carter Burwell, RyuichiSakamoto and Mark Isham.

The first discussion panel of the day fea-tured producer Anthony Bregman (The IceStorm), writer/director Stacy Cochran (Boys)and director Morgan J. Freeman (HurricaneStreets). The general consensus was thatHollywood is hot on “music-driven films”(read: song compilations sell). The panel alsoagreed that licensing songs takes up toomuch time, energy, and money, and thatwhile soundtrack deals can help financefilms, the result is that commercial consider-ations often take precedence over purelymusical concerns. No surprises there.

The next panel featured composers CarterBurwell (Fargo), John Ottman (Apt Pupil)and Stephen Endelman (Flirting withDisaster) sounding off on the difficultiesposed by temp tracks, short composingschedules, and competition from songs andsound effects. The composers suggested anumber of ways to handle these frustrations.Burwell follows a simple rule of thumb anddeals with only one person during the scor-ing process—the director. “I don’t let pro-ducers’ comments influence my music. Ifthey don’t like it, they can fire me or funneltheir comments through the director.”Burwell stressed the importance of a goodrelationship with the film editor. “I often sayto myself, I wish I could have a few morebeats. I’ll go to the editor and ask for a littlemore or less, usually at the end of a scene.”

Being present during the sound mixingsessions, although tedious, is also a good

idea. As Ottman explained, “Sound effectspeople get so involved in their work that theylose sight of the overall film.” He added thatthe score is often seen as a threat to thesongs for the soundtrack album. If the com-poser is present, he can defend the score andencourage the mixers to let the songs andsound effects take a back seat.

Ottman, a self-described “film scorefreak,” was blunt in his assessment of con-temporary film scores. “Film music sucksnow,” he said, criticizing most of today’sscores for working on a superficial level,serving the moment with no sense of devel-opment. He cited examples like Armageddonwhere the music is created “by committee.”The result: “all climax, no foreplay.”Burwell, although unconvinced that badscoring is a new thing, agreed that good filmmusic “should not be telling you the samething you’re seeing on-screen,”and should instead create “a par-allel universe to the film, telling astory of its own.”

Concert KillersThe most surprising statementcame from Stephen Endelman,who criticized the trend of filmmusic “being elevated to the sta-tus of contemporary classicalmusic.” He argued that a lot offilm music doesn’t stand up tomusic written for the concert hall.His concern is that the program-ming of film music in serious con-cert venues “could kill composers

who really write concert pieces and stunt thegrowth of composing.” In preparing for hisown concerts in the DIVX soundtrack festi-val, Endelman said he “reconceived” his filmmusic, making each piece an entity on itsown.

Following the composers panel, MichaelKamen took the floor as the day’s keynotespeaker, winning everyone over with his can-dor, humor, and obvious passion for music.Long before he began working in film,Kamen played oboe at the Juilliard School,where most of the music being written andperformed was “of an intellectual basis.” Theappeal of becoming a film composer was theopportunity to write melodically in a tonalidiom. “I love film music so much because it’sall storytelling and emotion,” he said.

Unfortunately, timing music to picturerequires a certain amount of mathematical

calculation; something Kamendoes not enjoy. He learned early onnot to focus too much energy onthe mathematical aspects of scor-ing. On his first film assignment,he tortured himself working outprecise timings for every cue.When he arrived at the scoringsessions, he discovered that thevideo reels to which he had com-posed had been transferred at thewrong speed: all his calculationswere wrong. Thereafter, heresolved never again to worry toomuch about timing and relies onhis music editor to take care of



Sounding Off on SoundtracksBy James Miller

C O N F E R E N C E R E P O R T

The prosgathered infour cities to perform,reminisce,

compare notesand do a littlebitchin’ andmoanin’.

Festival attendees included (clockwise from top left) Shudder to Think,

Michael Kamen and Carter Burwell

I’m sure you’ve seen or heard of the WoodyAllen movie, What’s Up, Tiger Lily? Thatflick is actually an Allen-dubbed version of a1965 Japanese spy film called InternationalSecret Police: Key of Keys.

Compared to other countries, theGermans and Italians seem to have gottenthe greatest number of their Bond rip-offsdubbed into English and exported. Fromsome of the titles, such as Lightningbolt;Kiss Me, Monster; New York Calling SecretAgent Super Dragon; Spy Today, DieTomorrow; and Two Female Spies inFlowered Panties, one can get a sense of thehigh-camp entertainment value that thesefilms possess. Although never blessed withthe open-ended budgets of the Broccoli-Saltzman productions, the foreign counter-parts did often have grade-A composers pro-viding their scores. Even Ennio Morriconetook his shots at the genre with his writingfor Matchless and Operation Kid Brother,the latter starring Neil Connery, Sean’syounger brother. The Italian filmmakerswere determined enough with this lookalikeproduction to bother surrounding Neil withmany of his sibling’s costars from the UnitedArtists series: Daniela Bianchi (TatianaRomanova), Adolfo Celi (Largo), BernardLee (M) and Lois Maxwell (Moneypenny).Other Italian composers who were to grace

the crazy Euro-world of “Kiss Kiss BangBang!” with the harvest of their skills: PieroPiccioni, Carlo Savina, Nico Fidenco,Armando Trovaioli, and more, many of themheavy-hitters. The films they worked onhave become obscure, but for we soundtracklovers the manna continues to fall, thanks,this time, to Mr. Wolfgang Maier.

Germany’s answer to England’s LionelWoodman, Wolfgang has been a dedicatedcollector, and is now an independent produc-er of classic Italian and German film scorereissues. Being a Euro-collector for manyyears has positioned Wolfgang, likeWoodman, so that he is now able to re-release the most prized scores (both theseguys are cognizant of the best titles, and hey,in this business that’s half the battle!).Wolfgang’s new anthology of Italian secretagent themes, Our Man from R.O.M.E.(Ceraton/Lifestyles CT/LS 0301, 20 tracks,54:07) is burdened with nothing but thegood stuff.

The disc kicks off with Wolfgang’s auda-cious coup, his successful resurrection ofBruno Nicolai’s exceptional main title vocalfor Upperseven: L’Uomo da Uccidere (1966).SLC, the late, great Japanese film musiclabel, re-released Upperseven in 1997, a typ-ically pristine Japanese production, andcomplete but for the wonderful vocal by

Betty Curtis. It was a mystery to collectorsas to why SLC would leave off the vocal,especially since Upperseven is a prime exam-ple of a whole score which revolves around astrong main theme song. It didn’t take longfor the answer to make its way through themighty “collectors grapevine”: theUpperseven master tapes had been found ingood condition, but the main title vocal hadvanished from the GDM archives in Rome.

Early in 1998 Wolfgang was in the thick ofproduction on his Our Man from R.O.M.E.anthology when he suddenly had the self-realization that he just might be insaneenough to attempt a full-scale re-recordingof the Upperseven vocal. Of course, the mostimportant aspect of such an agenda wouldbe the performer, and this would have to bea woman. As is so often the case, fate took ahand in the affair. Wolfgang had, a few yearsearlier, conducted a radio interview withHubert von Goisern und die OriginalAlpinkatzen (Hubert von Goisern and theOriginal Alpine-Cats). At the time Hubieand his “cats” were a successful band inAustria and Germany. What had set themapart was an unexpected contemporaryinvention on the Scandinavian tradition ofyodeling. No small portion of their fame wasattributable to their lead singer, a beautifulyoung lady with a highly trained voicenamed Sabina Montes. Sabina, along withgiving voice to the hybrid yodeling, had alsobeen experimenting with “throat singing,” ashamanistic technique taught to her by anactual Mongolian practitioner.

Belying her porcelain sex-kitten appear-ance (she’s turned down film roles built onthis stereotype) Sabina, at 24, was alreadyan accomplished artist, and obviously onenot afraid of a challenge, when Wolfgangcontacted her to discuss his “Upperseven”scheme. I had the pleasure of interviewingSabina on just this topic, and we spoke abouther first professional excursion into the fan-tastic world of Italian film music (pleasebear in mind that English is a second lan-guage for Miss Montes):

JB: How did Wolfgang approach you forthis project?

SM: What does approach mean?JB: I’m sorry, how did Wolfgang go about

asking you to do this song?SM: Well, last year in the spring he called

me. He said there is a film music which hecan’t put on a record because the versionwhere a woman sang on it, this is lost. Hehas a clean copy of the vocal version withoutsinging [the original backing track, or “TV”mix], and he asked me if I want to do this. Itold him that I love jazz very much. So hesent it to me, and oh, I love this song! Ithought, “Wow, yeah, this is it!” I love thiskind of music, and I think with the modernmusic that we have now there are no more

AS THE SAYING GOES, IMITATION IS THE SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY. IN WHICH

CASE, HER MAJESTY’S AGENT 007 HAS BEEN FLATTERED UP THE KAZOO. DURING

THE DECADE WHEN LOVE WAS FREE AND BATMAN WAS ADAM WEST, SEVERAL

EUROPEAN NATIONS WERE USING THEIR CINEMA TO REFLECT BACK AT US BRITS AND

YANKS THEIR OWN IDEAS OF AN INFALLIBLE SPY. EVEN THE JAPANESE GOT IN ON THE ACT.

From Rome, with Loveby John Bender

S C O R E I N T E R N A T I O N A L E


such composers. And so I learned“Upperseven,” and in about two weeks Icome to Regensburg and we make this song.

JB: You only had two weeks to rehearse?SM: Wolfgang had sent me the good ver-

sion without singing, and the film’s originalvocal [taped from a video], but this old vocalwas so eeeoooaaarrrr [Sabina makes a soundlike a Walkman playing down on dying bat-teries], it was terrible! I had the text [lyrics]which Wolfgang wrote for me, and so Ilearned it. I listened to the old version maybefive times, but it was really absolutely bad! Isang a hundred times the lyrics with thegood instrumental version.

JB: Did Wolfgang explain anything to youabout Italian cinema, and its music fromthat period?

SM: Yes, he did. He showed me much CDand records, and so I was getting into it. Butyou know, I love that time, for example I loveMarilyn Monroe very much.

JB: I can’t believe you just said that. In allhonesty, when I first listened to your record-ing I was reminded of Marilyn Monroe! Yoursinging is much better of course, but you cer-tainly possess something in your style whichinvokes Marilyn’s sultry spirit. Your voice isvery feminine, very sexy. It is so appropriatethat you connected with this project. BrunoNicolai’s Upperseven, with all of its JamesBond ‘60s sound, really allowed for you to getinto the mode of that marvelous period.

SM: When Wolfgang first heard me sing“Upperseven” he said, “Wow, it’s great!” Butfor me it was just how I felt about this song.It’s not me, it’s the music is so wonderful.

One of the prime movers of the pinnacleepoch in Italian film music, AlessandroAlessandroni, was a participant in Nicolai’soriginal recording over 30 years ago.Wolfgang and Sabina respectfully visited theMaestro at his home and played their freshtake on Nicolai’s classic theme. Alessandroniwas so enthused by the potency of Sabina’sinterpretation that he responded, “Oh, I’mnow an old man, how can I join you? I wish Iwas young again and could work with you!”

As for my initial response to Sabina’s“Upperseven,” I was surprised. On the tech-nical side I was amazed by the authenticityof the aural texture recreated—pure 1960s.I’ve since learned this is due to Wolfgang’sdoggedness at finding a recording studio thatstill had in their possession a functional1960s microphone. Aesthetically, I knewWolfgang would select a woman who couldsing with full competence. What I didn’texpect was such a distinctive and personal-ized response, especially from so young anartist as Sabina. Besides a hefty dose ofbreathy sensuality, at several juncturesthroughout the piece she employs someunusual vocal maneuvers—and they work.

It’s now hard to imagine the song performedany other way.

If Our Man from R.O.M.E. had SabinaMontes’s “Upperseven” followed by nothingelse but 19 tracks of toilets flushing it wouldstill be a must-have item. In fact,“Upperseven” is joined on this disc by a finegathering of carefully selected tracks, somenever before available. Included is the vocaland instrumental of Berto Pisano’s andJacques Chaumont’s main title for Kill! (theEnglish-dubbed print of the 1972 film wascalled Kill! Kill! Kill!). I first heard thisamazing orchestral eruption of violence andenergy on Peter Blumenstock’s promotionalrelease of last year, Crippled Champions:The Soundtrack Generation. He ran thevocal by Doris Troy. Logic dictated that,sooner or later, I would come across the mostdaring, brazen, title track power-balladever—I’ve been immersed in film music forover 20 years and I’m not afraid to pro-nounce that Kill! is probably the ultimate,the last word in testosterone-injected filmtheme fury. You don’t play this piece, you

detonate it! Here is a quick sampling of thesulfurous lyrics:

They bought the law—yeah, Bought it!Bought it! Bought it!

Sweep free on bail—Laughin’! Laughin’!Laughin’!

Kill the bastards—Bastards! Bastards!Bastards!

Kill them, kill them, kill them!Troy was born to sing this incredible

theme. Her striking, androgynous voice hasjust enough strength to cut through Pisano’sblasting horns, unrelenting percussion andcrashing string clusters. The skill and preci-sion with which this difficult compositionhas been arranged and conducted has re-inflamed my awe of the Italian film musiccommunity. Every time I play Kill! it’s likediscovering film music again for the firsttime. If you have yet to hear it, I envy you—you cannot be prepared!

Other tracks include more Nicolai, infec-

tious themes from Agente Special LK andKiss Kiss Bang Bang, a cool suite from CarloSavina’s A Gentar si Muore Facile, andUmiliani’s swinging theme to Due MafiosiContro Goldginger, which is beautifullyenhanced with a cameo by Edda Dell’Orso.

Simultaneously with Our Man fromR.O.M.E. Wolfgang has also released a relat-ed two-score CD by Piero Piccioni, Agente077 Dall’oriente con Furore and MissioneMorte Molo 83 (Tsunami TOS 0306, 23tracks, 58:59). Both scores are for ‘60sItalian spy films. Besides being an obviouscollector’s item (buy this now or say good-bye to these two scores forever) this disc alsoturns out to be a pleasurable listen whenexperienced in its entirety, the direct resultof Wolfgang spending countless hours work-ing diligently at editing and arranging thecues until they flowed like honey, one intothe other. MMM 83 has a main theme thatreeks of some probable spaghetti westernaffiliation. Personally, I’m convinced Piccionirecycled a rejected western composition forthis espionage caper.

Calabria Cops + Dusseldorf Desperadoes= Good Music for You and Me!

The last, but not least, in Wolfgang’s cur-rent batch of three is Die Schwarzen Adlervon Sante Fe (Dolce Vita SK 1174, 34 tracks,62:37). The Black Eagles of Sante Fe was a1965 German, French and Italian co-produc-tion. Made in the heat of the European cine-ma’s western fever, the film starred LexBarker, Forrest Tucker, and a young RitaMoreno. The same year The Black Eagles hittheatres, the German label Internationalreleased an EP (IN-EP 408). This record hasbecome the rarest of all German film score45’s, with only a handful still known to be inexistence. The score was composed by GertWilden, a name that could ring a bell withreaders in possession of more extensive, cos-mopolitan collections. Early last year PeteBlumenstock’s Crippled Dick label releasedtwo Wilden CDs, Schoolgirl Report and I

Prepare tomeet theDouble-O

Doppelgangers,and femme

fatale SabinaMontes—whogives voice to“Upperseven”


Told You Not to Cry (FSM Vol. 3, No. 4, pp.43, 48). The Black Eagles is most definitelyby the same hand. The sound is bold andenergetic—no lazy cues here! As with hiswork on the erotic films and the krimis, thisscore has been designed so as to be muchmore conspicuous, and comparatively incon-gruous, than that composed for Americanproductions. Wilden is adept with melody,and there are a number of juicy themes here,my favorite being “Cliff and Blade” (track14). This is one of those wonderfulBernstein-style prairie tunes; emphaticallypaced at an easy canter, it’s also graced witha big, breezy string section and the requisiteharmonica solo.

The crystal-shell insert, beneath a cleartray, bears a photo of Gert Wilden, on whichhe has autographed each using a silver metal-lic marker. This release has been limited toonly 300, and apparently Japanese collectorshave already made a rabid dash at gobblingup a sizable portion of that number.(Someday I must share with you my tragictale of crossing paths with a gang of Japanesecollectors!) If our regular dealers aren’tpresently listing this, I suggest you contactSoundtrack Deletions at Hillside House, 1Woodstock Road, Strood Rochester, KentME2 2DL, England; ph: 011-44-1634-711-053. They might have copies on hand.

Three years ago Peter Blumenstock, on hisprivate Lucertola label, released a CD featur-ing four scores from Italian poliziotteschi.Like the spaghetti western, the poliziotteschi

(violent police thriller) was agenre born of an Americaninfluence; in this instance,the single seed from whichthe format sprung was DonSiegel’s 1971 masterpieceDirty Harry. But, as withthe spaghetti western, thispolice genre was not just amimic of whatever was com-ing out of Hollywood. Italianfilmmakers, under economic constraints,needed to be opportunistic with theirattempts at initiating substantial formulaictrends within their own industry. They mere-ly used the international success of Siegel’sfilm to fuel a decade’s worth of significantlyItalian cop thrillers, exploitation films thatwere socially relevant within that society.

By comparing the music for the dozens ofpoliziotteschi with the Dirty Harry filmsscored by Lalo Schifrin, a clear picture can behad of the contextual differences between thetwo groups of pictures. Because theEastwood series reflected our American fron-tier/capitalistic/puritan sensibility of equat-ing crime with an extremely individualized“land/money/morality” threat, the films hadto paint their villains as wholly evil. Schifrinhad little choice but to focus on this “badboys” agenda and came up with a grandlyinnovative urban gothic, almost a kind ofspooky horror-jazz (consider that hisMagnum Force main title would work nicelyin the new vampire-hunter flick, Blade). The

Italians, however, donot see crime as a desta-bilizing element attrib-utable to some form ofungodly “other” whomust be expunged, butrather as a manifesta-tion of problems involv-ing every Italian. Themusic on Blumenstock’sbrand new CD ofpoliziotteschi themes,Beretta 70 (Crippled Dick

Hot Wax CD HW 053, 14 tracks, 52:25)defines the Italian perspective of “crime isus.”

The exciting, hard-driving cues on thisbeautifully packaged disc representaction/thriller music for the commonman—a rock opera that’s played at streetlevel, where real people live and die. Like alot of Italian film music this stuff is hot andwet, almost too dramatic. The instrumen-tation frequently involves a tight cluster ofsynth, electric guitar and bass, sometimesbrass, and all riding a racing, molten waveof percussion towards an arrest or a carcrash. Only Armando Trovaioli’s BlazingMagnum theme gets dressed-up enough toinclude woodwinds and a layering of vio-lins. It’s a great collection of tracks from 12films and 13 different composers, includingtop talent such as Franco Micalizzi (his“Folk and Violence” is the quintessentialpoliziotteschi anthem), Stelvio Cipriani,Goblin and Luis Bacalov. An essential discfor any major collection. FSM

S C O R E I N T E R N A T I O N A L E

1 ,000,000 SOUNDTRACKS,ORIGINAL CASTS,TELEVISION, NOSTALGIA LPs!Rare originals, limited editions,imports, reissues, most mint condi-tion! Catalog—$1.00.Soundtrack/Television Valueguide—$10. 1,000,000 VIDEO MOVIES!Science fiction, horror, silents, for-eign, cult, exploitation, all genres!Rare titles found here! Catalog—$1.00. Big descriptive catalog—$10.RTS/FS, Box 93897, Las Vegas NV89193.

WantedChristopher Allen (PO Box540352, Dallas TX 75354;[email protected]) seeks TheLighthorsemen on CD.Jim Bianco (ph: 609-751-2011,fax: 609-751-3414) wants anythingStewart Copeland (post-Police only)score related—promo CDs, inter-views, unreleased, etc. Paul Ettinger (RR#3Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, BON2HO, Canada; ph: 902-758-1377;[email protected]) wants on CDTrinity and Beyond (Stromberg andMorgan); on LP StarCrash (Barry);

and on any format The LastPlace on Earth (Jones).Chuck Mymit (98-40 64th Ave,Forest Hills NY 11374) is looking fora VHS copy of the PBS film Moviolaabout composer John Barry. Alsolooking for a piano lead sheet forthe title music of Body Heat(Barry).Joey T. Stiklius (90 Edson Ave,Waterbury CT 06705; ph: 203-757-4686) is looking for a CD of TheFourth Protocol (Lalo Schifrin).

For Sale or TradeMichel Coulombe (3440 Mont-Royal Est, Montréal, Québec H1X3K3, Canada; ph: 514-529-0133,[email protected]) has the follow-ing CDs for sale: Flesh + Blood($235), The ‘Burbs ($175),SpaceCamp ($175), Raggedy Man($200), Bernard Herrmann ConcertSuites ($350). Postage fees areincluded.Jack Hirschorn ([email protected]) has for sale 1929 RCA AR-1264 Theremin, ex. condition withmany vacuum tubes; 4 legs; sound-ing board; 2 original antennae; elec-tro-dynamic loudspeaker; theremin

electrical converter made byGenette. Please email for price anddetails.Scott Hutchins (1504 East 83rdStreet, Indianapolis IN 46240-2372;[email protected]) has the followingitems for sale or trade: Midnight Run(Elfman, sealed), Defending Your Life(Gore, sealed), Tie Me Up! Tie MeDown! (Morricone, sealed), JasonGoes to Hell: The Final Friday (mint,not sealed). Make an offer.Gordon Lipton (2808 East 11 St,Brooklyn NY 11235; ph: 718-743-2072) has the following CDs for saleor trade: Man Who Would Be King(Jarre, $25), Cousteau: CapeForm/Channel Island (Scott, $25),Lionheart Vol. 2 (Goldsmith, $25),Merlin of Crystal Cave (Shaw, $20),Dressed to Kill (Donaggio, $20). Yourlist gets mine.David Parsons (139 Village Way,Pinner, Middlesex HA5 5AA, England;ph/fax: 0181-866-3529; [email protected]) has LP recordsof soundtracks, original casts, radio,TV, comedy for sale. Lists availableby email or snail mail. Send IRC’s orcash to the value of £3/$5 for hardcopy snail mail printouts. Want lists

invited. First ad placed in this genre.For sale: Porgy & Bess U.K. Philips R07522 L (1959) LP soundtrack(ex+/ex); special white sample label.Unique advance jacket made inHolland with “Advance copy for theInternational press” printed on frontand back. Greg Shoemaker, 2839 RathbunDrive, Toledo OH 43606) has sound-tracks on vinyl, movie items.Nothing’s mint, so no mint prices.Two 33¢ stamps nets you a list.Wijk Walter (Draaiboomstraat 49,2160 Wommelgem, Belgium; ph/fax:0032-3-233-31-86) has CDs for saleincluding rare items like The Relic($100), I Know What You Did LastSummer ($100), Apollo 13 authenticpromo ($75), Tokyo Blackout($200), Jane Eyre ($200) and manymore titles. Write or fax for list.

Both Wanted & For Sale/TradeMichael Mueller (5700 Grelot Rd#1033, Mobile AL 36609; ph: 334-414-1417; [email protected])has the following CDs for sale ortrade: The Boys from Brazil (MastersFilm Music, $70), Under Fire (Warner,Japan, $200), Wild Rovers/The Great

F S M R E A D E R A D S


THE LASERPHILE(continued from page 19)($34.98) was bumped to March 23. Althoughthe DVD was to have included most of thesupplements from MCA’s Deluxe letterboxedlaser box-set (which sold for $124.98), JohnWilliams’s isolated stereo soundtrack was notannounced to be one of them.

Anchor Bay GoodiesAnchor Bay continues to aggressively licensetitles from a variety of sources on DVD. Ahandful of movies appeared from the vaults ofABC’s library in January (including a great-looking transfer of Sam Peckinpah’s StrawDogs, along with Duel in the Sun and thelong-forgotten Sean Connery westernShalako), while Anchor Bay released a hand-ful of Italian horror meister Dario Argento’sbest films in February, including Tenebre,Phenomena and Demons. (Check the “Andy’sAisle Seat” section of our FSM website forreviews of these individual titles.)

For 1999, Anchor Bay has licensed a pack-age of Disney titles for DVD release, includingThe Black Hole, which will make itswidescreen debut on March 30, complete witha remastered Dolby Digital soundtrack. Forlater in the year, the company has tentativeplans for remastered DVD editions of NeverCry Wolf, Condorman and Something WickedThis Way Comes—and wouldn’t it be nice ifthe original, Georges Delerue-scored versioncould somehow be found in the Disney vaultsand screened for the first time? (Anyoneinterested in this film should also seek outImage’s letterboxed laserdisc release, since itcontains an insightful audio commentaryfrom Ray Bradbury and the effects supervi-sors, touching upon the changes and re-shoots the troubled production went throughbefore completion.)

Speaking of alternate versions, Anchor Bayhas a “Director’s Cut” of Army of Darknesslined up for next Halloween, while theEuropean cut of Supergirl is currently “inthe works” for a letterboxed DVD bow,though no date has been set as of yet. AsJerry Goldsmith (and Helen Slater) fans arewell aware, the longer Supergirl includesalternate music cues and generally runssmoother than the abbreviated versionTriStar released in the U.S. Chances are thatAnchor Bay is taking their time and possiblylooking for more pristine elements to utilizefor the DVD since the pan-and-scan printused on their VHS release last year was dark,grainy, and in mono, despite its originatingfrom the longer European edition.

Next Time More lasers and DVDs! Send all com-ments and queries to [email protected], and don’tforget to check www.filmscoremonthly.com/aisleseatfor more reviews.

This A U C T I O N is ameans of reachingcollectors who do not exclude VINYLLPs from their soundtrack and relat-ed collections. I deal almost exclu-sively in vinyl not (yet) available onCD. Issue 3 lists a year. To receive acopy, write or fax me. This auction isan abbreviation of my regular lists,excluding CDs. All LPs listed here areAM (Almost Mint) or S (Sealed). PHmeans there is a punch hole (dele-tion). Minimum bid as shown U.S. $only. Postage is extra. Auction endsJune 4. Stereo indicated by *.L P sBullitt Schifrin, Warner 1777*(AM) $30.00The BorgiasDelerue, BBC Ent -428* (AM) 20.00Batman (TV)Hefti/Riddle, 20th Fox -4180* (AM) 60.00The Chairman Goldsmith, Tetra5007* (S) 15.00Triple Feature (3 scores byTrovaioli/Dankworth) Epic 24195(AM) 20.00

A Certain SmileA. Newman, Columbia 1194 (AM) 20.00C h e c k m a t eJ. Williams, Columbia 1591 (AM) 30.00East Side, West Side (TV)K. Hopkins, Columbia 2123 (S)15.00An Elephant Called SlowlyBlake, Bell 1202* (PH) (S) 12.00Freud Goldsmith, Citadel 6019*(AM) 25.00Flesh & BloodPoledouris, Varèse 81256* (AM) 20.00Les Galets d’EtretatGarvarentz, Barclay 80133* (S) (PH)

40.00Go, Go, Go World!Oliviero-Nicolai, Musicor 3059* (S)(PH) 25.00Great ExpectationsM. Jarre, Pye 18452* (AM) 25.00The Golden SealBarry-Kaproff, Compleat 6001* (S) 20.00Heidi (TV) J. Williams, Capitol2995* (S) 25.00

The HorsemenDelerue, Sunflower 5007* (AM) 15.00In Harm’s Way Goldsmith, RCA1101* (AM) 40.00Lilies of the FieldGoldsmith, Epic 26094* (AM) 25.00MonsignorWilliams, Casablanca 7277* (AM) 40.00My Geisha Waxman, RCA 1070*(AM) 40.00McLintock!De Vol, UA (Japan Imp.) 946* (AM) 20.00Our Mother’s HouseDelerue, MGM 4495* (S) 35.00The Southern StarGarvarentz, Colgems 5009* (S) 20.00A Summer Place/Helen ofTroySteiner, FMC #1* (AM) 25.00The Silver Chalice Waxman,FMC #3* (AM) 25.00Touch of Evil Mancini, Challenge602 (AM) 40.0013 Jours en France


CONFERENCE REPORT(continued from page 43)any problems that arise. Kamen also takes a“free-wheeling” approach to conducting, pre-ferring streamers to click tracks. He beganconducting at the age of three—to records. “Igave some fantastic performances in my liv-ing room,” he said.

Because composing is a solitary occupa-tion, Kamen explained that he rarely gets tomeet other film composers. One of the excep-tions occurred when he participated in a filmmusic panel with Danny Elfman and AlanSilvestri at Sundance. It was a rare opportu-nity to compare notes. They all agreed thatone of their greatest frustrations is comingup with a tune they know is right for a filmand being told by the director that he doesn’tlike it. Kamen went on to share some specif-ic examples of his experiences with directors.

Fun with DirectorsAfter seeing Die Hard for the first time,Kamen said, “I thought it was a rampantpiece of shit. When they asked me to useBeethoven’s Ninth, I said, ‘If you want me tobastardize German music, I’ll fuck withWagner!’” The director, John McTiernan,argued that he was doing an homage toStanley Kubrick, who had used Beethoven’sNinth in A Clockwork Orange. Kamenagreed to use the Beethoven, but only ifMcTiernan also agreed to use “Singin’ in theRain,” another tune featured prominently inA Clockwork Orange. “I decided to have funwith it,” Kamen said. “What else can youdo?” Later, when working on Robin Hood,the film’s director told Kamen he envisionedthe film as a 12th century drama and want-ed the music to reflect that vision. Taking thedirector at his word, Kamen put together atemp score made up entirely of medievalmusic. The experiment did not go over well.

“It was so bad I nearly lost the gig.” After listening to Michael Kamen, the last

two panels, which focused mostly on thebusiness aspects of songs, were anticlimactic.The first was devoted to music supervisors,including Alex Steyermark (many Spike Leefilms), Randall Poster (Rounders), SusanJacobs (54), Bonnie Greenberg (Ed TV), andJeffrey Kimball (Good Will Hunting).Because their duties include choosing songsand making temp scores, music supervisorsare often seen as the enemy of film com-posers. Sometimes, however, music supervi-sors help facilitate an effective balancebetween score and songs. Jeffrey Kimball, forexample, talked about arranging for DannyElfman and Elliot Smith, who contributedscore and songs to Good Will Hunting,respectively, to meet and exchange samplesof their music during the making of the film.

Who Are the Decision Makers?The final panel included music departmentexecutives, Randy Spendlove (Miramax) andMark Kauffman (New Line), and record labelexecs, Sharlotte Blake (London) and ScottGreer (Epic). The good news is that bothMiramax and New Line expressed their com-mitment to continue issuing separate scoreand song albums whenever possible. The badnews is that movie studios and record labelsstill care more about song albums because, ofcourse, they make a lot more money thanscore albums. Film music fans can at leasttake heart in this: according to the panelists,score albums are becoming even more suc-cessful than song compilations outside theUnited States, especially in Asia. It seemsthat song compilation albums have beenaround a lot longer overseas than in the U.S.,and consumers outside our shores are get-ting tired of song-based soundtracks. If andwhen this trend will ever come to America isanybody’s guess. FSM


R E T R O G R A D E

Charles Gerhardt, 1927-1999THE PASSING OF A LEGENDARY CONDUCTOR MARKS THE END OF AN IMPORTANT ERA IN SOUNDTRACK APPRECIATION

by Robert E. Benson

Charles Allan Gerhardt, conductor, recordproducer and music arranger, died February22, 1999 in Redding, California, from com-plications following an operation for brain

cancer. He was 72.Born February 6, 1927 in Detroit, Michigan,

Gerhardt showed extraordinary musical instincts at anearly age, playing piano when five and composing andorchestrating when nine. His early years were spent inLittle Rock, Arkansas. He and his family moved toIllinois after the 10th grade where he finished his pub-lic schooling. He served in the U.S. Navy in World WarII as a chaplain’s assistant in the Aleutian Islands and

was a life member of the Veteransof Foreign Wars. After the war hecontinued his education at theUniversity of Illinois, the Collegeof William and Mary, and theUniversity of Southern California.His studies were always dual:music and science. For a time heattended the Juilliard School ofMusic in New York.

His first recording sessions as anengineer were for Westminster/Sonora, and in 1950 he began along association with RCA Victor,first working in New York andlater in London. His first job wasprocessing early 78rpm recordingsby Artur Schnabel and EnricoCaruso for issue on the then-newLP record. Gerhardt’s musicalgifts and understanding of the

technicalities of recording were quickly recognized.During the next decade he recorded many of RCA’s lead-ing artists including Vladimir Horowitz, WandaLandowska, Kirsten Flagstad and William Kapeli. Hemade one of the first RCA experimental stereophonicrecordings, music of Menotti and Prokofiev, with LeopoldStokowski conducting. Beginning in the early ‘50s heworked closely with Arturo Toscanini during the lastseven years of the Maestro’s life. Toscanini took a per-sonal interest in Gerhardt and encouraged him tobecome a conductor.

Early in 1960 RCA and the Reader’s Digest askedGerhardt to produce a 12-LP album of light classicalmusic to be sold only by mail. With a budget of $250,000,Gerhardt had total control of the project: repertory,orchestras, conductors and technical production. Hehired orchestras in London, Vienna and Paris, and con-ductors such as Sir Adrian Boult, Massimo Freccia, SirAlexander Gibson and Rene Leibowitz. A Festival of

Light Classical Music was an incredible success, sellingin massive quantities. The success of this album prompt-ed dozens of others, mostly lighter fare—pop tunes and“mood” music, all done in high style and recorded withstate-of-the-art sonic quality.

Major classical projects included a 1961 set ofBeethoven symphonies with Rene Leibowitz and theRoyal Philharmonic; a 1965 set of Rachmaninoff’sworks for piano and orchestra with Earl Wild, JaschaHorenstein and the Royal Philharmonic; and a 12-LPset, Treasury of Great Music, with the RoyalPhilharmonic led by some of the greatest conductors ofthe era: Fritz Reiner, Charles Munch, Rudolf Kempe,Sir John Barbirolli, Sir Malcolm Sargent, Antal Dorati,and Jascha Horenstein with whom Gerhardt had a par-ticular rapport.

Early in his career Gerhardt met famed recording engi-neer Kenneth Wilkinson. The two worked together when-ever possible, producing countless recordings that per-fectly matched quality of performance, interpretiveinsight, and sonic splendor. In 1964 Gerhardt formed anorchestra consisting of some of the finest players inLondon, incorporated in 1970 as the “NationalPhilharmonic Orchestra,” an ensemble used in almost allof his recordings.

Gerhardt’s career as a conductor began when he tookover the baton when a scheduled conductor didn’t showup. After that he conducted often for recordings and occa-sionally in the concert hall, in a wide range of repertory.His classical recordings include works of Richard Strauss,Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Ravel, Debussy, Walton andHoward Hanson.

Gerhardt’s keen interest in music for films resulted inan LP titled The Sea Hawk: The Classic Film Music ofErich Wolfgang Korngold, produced by George Korngold,son of the famous Viennese composer, who often workedwith Gerhardt. This recording, released in 1972, instant-ly became a best-seller and was followed by 12 more LPsfeaturing music of other famous film composers includ-ing Max Steiner, Miklós Rózsa, Franz Waxman, AlfredNewman, Dimitri Tiomkin, Bernard Herrmann andJohn Williams. Gerhardt’s interest in the importance ofmusic in films, and his abilities as an arranger, resultedin Gerhardt himself being asked to compose music forseveral European films.

Gerhardt spent most of his time in London makingrecordings but always maintained a residence in theUnited States. After retiring from RCA in 1986, he free-lanced for Reader’s Digest, producing and recording until1997. He moved to Redding, California, in 1991.

He is survived by three cousins: Lenore L. Engel andElizabeth Anne Schuetze, both of San Antonio, Texas,and Steven W. Gerhardt of St. Pete Beach, Florida. FSM

Charles Gerhardt,conducting his

Classic Film Scoresfor Bette Davisalbum in 1973.

Film Score Monthly Presents Golden Age Classics • Limited Edition Original Soundtrack CDs • Now available: FSMCD Vol.2, No.3

Prince Valiant by Franz Waxman

I am so pleased that the

Prince Valiantsoundtrack is finally

available for everyone to enjoy.

John W. Waxman

1. Main Title 2:072. King Aguar’s Escape 2:463. Sir Gawain 2:474. King Arthur Speaks 0:565. Sir Brack 4:506. Val Escapes 2:397. Val and Aleta 3:248. Procession 0:539. Valiant’s Report 1:29

10. Aleta and Ilene/The Wrong Girl/Aleta 4:20

11. The Banquet 1:4212. The Ring 4:41

13. Val’s Capture 2:2714. Trapped 2:0615. Escape 5:5316. Dash to the Tower 4:3517. Sligone’s Death 1:0818. The Singing Sword/

Sir Brack’s Death 2:43BONUS MATERIAL

19. Alternate Fanfare 0:1320. The Pledge/Val Leaves the Island/The Fens/The First Chase (damaged) 8:25

Album Produced byNick Redman & Lukas Kendall

C O M P L E T E T R A C K L I S T I N G

Next month: A never before available John Barry score!

Upcoming releases will feature:

Jerry Goldsmith, Alfred Newman, Elmer Bernstein.

THE COMPLETE SURVIVING SCORE

ONE-TIME PRESSING OF 3,000 COPIES

Prince Valiant is one of Franz Waxman’sgreatest scores: a stirring knights-and-adventurework in the classic symphonic tradition of TheAdventures of Robin Hood and Star Wars. It features adynamic set of themes and variations: a brash, heroicmelody for Prince Valiant (Robert Wagner), swellinglove music for Princess Aleta (Janet Leigh), a nobletheme for Sir Gawain (Sterling Hayden), malevolentmaterial for Sir Brack (James Mason), and many othermotives and melodies for the settings and ideas.

Charles Gerhardt (to whom this album isdedicated) recorded a suite from Prince Valiant toopen his Classic Film Scores of Franz Waxman volumein the early 1970s. This CD presents the premiererelease of the original soundtrack as conducted byWaxman for the film. It has been remixed in stereofrom the original 35mm magnetic film elements andcarries forth the crisp, energetic playing of the 20thCentury Fox studio orchestra.

Fortunately, almost all of the score has survived in excellent condition, particularly the excit-ing and action-filled material for the movie’s thirdact, when Valiant is captured and must escape tofight his enemies. Sadly, certain incidental fanfareshave been lost, and an eight-minute swath of musicwas afflicted with noticeable mag wow—this has beenincluded at the end of the disc as a bonus track.

Prince Valiant has been one of the most requested scores from the Fox archives—and here itis! The 16-page booklet features stills from the Foxarchives, rare photographs of the composer, and linernotes by Doug Adams. $19.95 plus shipping

Film Score Monthly Presents Golden Age Classics • Limited Edition Original Soundtrack CDs • Now available: FSMCD Vol.2, No.3

Prince Valiant

v4n4 Cov Revise - FILM SCORE MONTHLY

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