CLASSICAL MUSIC and the Movies

[Richard Tarleton]

Barry Lyndon is a masterpiece of imagery and music; Mozart, Handel, Schubert and that old fave Trad ...

What a marvellous film - watched it again on a wet afternoon only the other day. The full list from Wiki:-

The film's period setting allowed Kubrick to indulge his penchant for classical music, and the film score uses pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach (an arrangement of the Concerto for violin and oboe in C minor), Antonio Vivaldi (Cello Concerto in E-Minor, a transcription of the Cello Sonata in E Minor RV 40), Giovanni Paisiello, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Franz Schubert (German Dance No. 1 in C major, Piano Trio in E-Flat, Opus 100 and Impromptu No. 1 in C minor), as well as the Hohenfriedberger March.[note 1] The piece most associated with the film, however, is the main title music: George Frideric Handel's stately Sarabande from the Suite in D minor HWV 437. Originally for solo harpsichord, the versions for the main and end titles are performed very romantically with orchestral strings, harpsichord, and timpani. It is used at various points in the film, in various arrangements, to indicate the implacable working of impersonal fate.

And a bit of the Chieftains. One or two musical anachronisms there - but never mind.

[Stanley Stewart]

Just played the Galop: la bal from Bizet's Jeux d'Enfants and can't for the life of me recall what programme had this as theme music. What was it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9r4fncPefdk

Merely a hunch, Pet. Listening to the jaunty Galop, I began to see a group; Joseph Cooper, Richard Baker, Joyce Grenfell, Ian Wallace, Robin Ray and was reminded of "Face the Music", early 70s. Does this click with you? It certainly gave me happy memories and Ian Wallace rounded off the proceedings with a ballad. I particularly remember an exquisite performance of Kern's, Look for a silver lining:

"...A heart full of joy and gladness
will always banish the rain.
So always look for a silver lining
and try to find the sunny side of life." (approx )

[mercia]

the theme tune to 'Face the Music' (if that's what we mean) was the Popular Song from Walton's Facade

can't help with Galop

[Radio64]

2014 Oscar-winner La Grande Bellezza actually features John Tavener's The Lamb ..

..my heart nearly stopped when it came up in the film!

[Stanley Stewart]

Indeed, mercia, Wm Walton! Now, of course, I can't get the wretched tune out of my mind!

[Ferretfancy]

the theme tune to 'Face the Music' (if that's what we mean) was the Popular Song from Walton's Facade

can't help with Galop

I'm sorry to say this, but the only highlight for me in Face the Music was when a young Imogen Cooper said to Joseph Cooper " Why do you play the piano so badly? "

I found it a horrible, sickly self congratulatory programme in which contestants who knew music well pretended that they didn't, while scratching their heads in puzzlement at the questions. This was made even creepier by the obvious fact that they had been told the answers beforehand.

The whole middle class cosiness was loathsome.