In my first post about classic movie soundtracks I focused on the careers and work of two Hollywood pioneers: Max Steiner, and Franz Waxman. Of course those two chaps weren't the only ones working in Hollywood during the first decade of sound films.
To symphony-type audiences, probably the best-known of the early studio film composers is Erich Wolfgang Korngold, given that some of his concert music remains in the repertory (in particular the Violin Concerto and his opera Die Tote Stadt). In a lot of ways, Korngold exemplifies everything that's cool about Hollywood movie music.
Korngold is now remembered for his ultra-swashbuckling scores such as Captain Blood, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and The Sea Hawk. That's a tad ironic given that Korngold didn't consider Errol Flynn-style derring-do appropriate to his particular talents, at least not at first. After having initially refused "Robin Hood", he changed his mind primarily to stay in the U.S. and to be able to bring his family over from Europe — a wise move given the situation in Germany and Austria in the late 1930s. Even after that, he attempted to resign from the project. But he stayed the course and gave us an all-time Hollywood movie soundtrack classic.
Given the score's excellence, it shouldn't be surprising to hear that it has been recorded several times in its entirety, and the suites Korngold extracted from the score have been popular on records down the years as well. Complete performances are available from William Stromberg and the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, and an out-of-print recording from Varujian Kojian conducting the Utah Symphony Orchestra can be found with a bit of searching about. The suites are well-served by Charles Gerhardt and the National Philharmonic.
For great samplers of Korngold's best, you just can't beat Gerhardt's two collections "The Sea Hawk" and "The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex", both compilations extending across several decades of Korngold's many film scores. ArkivMusic has made them both available via ArkivCD reprints.
As the 1930s gave way to the 40s, younger film composers entered the fray. Many of these were American, rather than European, trained, and brought a more contemporary sensibility to their music. Less concerned with Richard Strauss-ian styles and idioms, they brought an adventuresome spirit to the art of film scoring and before long the super-lush scores of Korngold and Steiner were giving way to leaner, meaner, but no less wonderful, soundtracks.
Bernard Herrmann was certainly the most accomplished of this new wave of composers. During the 1930s he had worked extensively with Orson Welles's "Mercury Theater of the Air" company, resulting in his writing the score for Welles's "Citizen Kane", not only one of the greatest movies of all time, but boasting one of the best scores as well.
The "Kane" score introduced Herrmann's penchant for custom-fitting his musical idiom to the needs of the movie; the only faux-Strauss in "Kane" is the appropriately fake opera "Salambô" that we hear behind Susan Alexander Kane's unhappy attempts at an opera career. During the newsreel near the beginning, the music is appropriately "newsy", the "Kane march" is properly jingoistic, the Xanadu music creepy and otherworldly, and so forth.
Herrmann's practice of fitting the instrumentation to the needs at hand was to remain with him throughout his career. Consider some of his signature achievements: the use of an electronic musical instrument, the Theremin, coupled with harps and percussion for "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (destined to become a tiresome cliché of 1950s sci-fi flicks), or the wailing saxophone solos of "Taxi Driver", or (one of my favorites) the multiple pipe organs of "Journey to the Center of the Earth." And then there are those unforgettable high string glissandos that accompany Janet Leigh's demise in "Psycho."
Herrmann, like Korngold, is easy to explore on recording. For one thing, he conducted recordings of his own scores, some of which remain available. The complete score to "Journey to the Center of the Earth", complete with Pat Boone's crooning vocals, is just a click away on iTunes. Esa-Pekka Salonen recorded a set of Herrmann scores during his first years with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, still easily available. A great sampler CD from the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra offers tastes of everything from "Citizen Kane" to "Fahrenheit 451" and "Taxi Driver". Joel McNeely conducts the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in the full scores for "Psycho", "Citizen Kane", perhaps most importantly, "Vertigo" with its surging Wagnerian style so reminiscent of "Tristan und Isolde".
Coming up: ace 20th Century Fox veteran Alfred Newman, historical-epic maven par excellence Miklos Rozsa, and more...
Comments