Given the paucity of imagination displayed towards film music by Proms planners and concert promoters which works would forum members recommend they include? Perhaps we can encourage them to include something other than the boringly predictable compilations of film themes they usually do. (Perhaps we can also get them to stop 'ghettoising' the music in the form of "Film Music Concerts"!)
As this is the R3 forum I would suggest that these need to be generally referable to the rest of R3's output and they need to be able to stand on their own away from the film (And, for this purpose, I would suggest excluding works which are re-workings of the original score and are essentially separate concert works, e.g. Alexander Nevsky or Sinfonia Antartica).
I'll start with a couple of suggestions of my own.
A common criticism of music from films is that it doesn't follow classical forms and, therefore, is unable to stand on its own away from the film. While this is quite often the case there are exceptions.
Thinking of an entire score I would mention Erich Korngold's music to Kings Row (available on CD on the Varese Sarabande label). As Edward Greenfield's review of the original LP put it: “Korngold's reworking of his melodic fragments throughout is highly imaginative and sufficiently interesting to give the score a life of its own away from the visual images.”
I'd also mention a couple of shorter examples. For the scene in "Sorry, Wrong Number" (to be found on Volume One of Varese Sarabande's 'Franz Waxman: Legends of Hollywood') where the bed-ridden character (played by Barbara Stanwyck) hears the footsteps of her eventual murderer ascending the stairs the composer writes a cue which is a classic passacaglia. Why a passacaglia? Because it allows the music to suggest the heroine’s mounting terror in a way no other form could. The cue not only perfectly ‘complements’ the scene but the music makes perfect sense away from the film.
Thinking of Waxman I'd recommend listening to "The Creation of the Female Monster" (on the relevant CD in The Classic Film Scores series on BMG) from “The Bride of Frankenstein”. This again perfectly complements the scene but effectively stands up on its own.
The Pax Romana scene in Dmitri Tiomkin’s score for “The Fall of the Roman Empire” (on Cloud Nine records) is in form the type of processional piece you can hear in many a Russian opera (Play this to someone who didn’t know the music’s origins and they would never know the difference). Later in the score the Forum scene is basically a sonata rondo (with two main themes and a development section). However, here the limitations film composer's often have to work under make themselves felt in that he has to cut this short to accommodate the next scene/cue.
On the other hand, many of Bernard Herrmann's scores are more difficult to listen to away from the film. (Acting and film-making styles had changed since the so-called 'Golden Age' and the music had to be much more integrated with the images on screen.) Even then you have cues which fulfil their function within the film but stand up very well by themselves. I'm thinking of the scene of Susan Kane's operatic début in Citizen Kane and the pastiche aria Herrmann wrote for it, Salammbo's aria. I remember playing this to some opera-loving friends who had never seen the film and a couple of them instantly asked "Which opera is this from?" (It can be found on Chandos and BMG in the same series mentioned above.)
As this is the R3 forum I would suggest that these need to be generally referable to the rest of R3's output and they need to be able to stand on their own away from the film (And, for this purpose, I would suggest excluding works which are re-workings of the original score and are essentially separate concert works, e.g. Alexander Nevsky or Sinfonia Antartica).
I'll start with a couple of suggestions of my own.
A common criticism of music from films is that it doesn't follow classical forms and, therefore, is unable to stand on its own away from the film. While this is quite often the case there are exceptions.
Thinking of an entire score I would mention Erich Korngold's music to Kings Row (available on CD on the Varese Sarabande label). As Edward Greenfield's review of the original LP put it: “Korngold's reworking of his melodic fragments throughout is highly imaginative and sufficiently interesting to give the score a life of its own away from the visual images.”
I'd also mention a couple of shorter examples. For the scene in "Sorry, Wrong Number" (to be found on Volume One of Varese Sarabande's 'Franz Waxman: Legends of Hollywood') where the bed-ridden character (played by Barbara Stanwyck) hears the footsteps of her eventual murderer ascending the stairs the composer writes a cue which is a classic passacaglia. Why a passacaglia? Because it allows the music to suggest the heroine’s mounting terror in a way no other form could. The cue not only perfectly ‘complements’ the scene but the music makes perfect sense away from the film.
Thinking of Waxman I'd recommend listening to "The Creation of the Female Monster" (on the relevant CD in The Classic Film Scores series on BMG) from “The Bride of Frankenstein”. This again perfectly complements the scene but effectively stands up on its own.
The Pax Romana scene in Dmitri Tiomkin’s score for “The Fall of the Roman Empire” (on Cloud Nine records) is in form the type of processional piece you can hear in many a Russian opera (Play this to someone who didn’t know the music’s origins and they would never know the difference). Later in the score the Forum scene is basically a sonata rondo (with two main themes and a development section). However, here the limitations film composer's often have to work under make themselves felt in that he has to cut this short to accommodate the next scene/cue.
On the other hand, many of Bernard Herrmann's scores are more difficult to listen to away from the film. (Acting and film-making styles had changed since the so-called 'Golden Age' and the music had to be much more integrated with the images on screen.) Even then you have cues which fulfil their function within the film but stand up very well by themselves. I'm thinking of the scene of Susan Kane's operatic début in Citizen Kane and the pastiche aria Herrmann wrote for it, Salammbo's aria. I remember playing this to some opera-loving friends who had never seen the film and a couple of them instantly asked "Which opera is this from?" (It can be found on Chandos and BMG in the same series mentioned above.)
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