Is Movie Music the New Classical?
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Is Movie Music the New Classical? John Williams, seen below with frequent director Steven Spielberg and at right in a recording session for Star Wars, has had unusual success negotiating his double life as a composer of film and concert music. As a conductor, he has led performances of film music, including his own score to E.T. (large photo, with the New York Philharmonic). In August, Richard Kaufman conducted an Atlanta Symphony Orchestra concert of film music at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre, accompanied by clips from films like Citizen Kane, emceed by film historian Robert Osborne. Jeff Roffman Jeff David James Is Movie Music the New Classical? by Jack Sullivan ONCE REVILED BY THE CLASSICAL music establishment, film music is making a formidable comeback. The New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, and Atlanta Symphony Orchestra regularly program film music; special series such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Jeff Roffman Jeff “Friday Night at the Movies” and the Hartford Symphony Orchestra’s “A Symphonic Night at the Movies” are thriving. Philip Glass, Michael Nyman, John Corigliano, and other prominent orchestral composers are producing successful film scores; Sony, Naxos, Marco Polo, and many other labels are pouring out CDs of music by Bernard Herrmann, Nina Rota, Ennio Morricone, and John Williams, with maestros like David James Riccardo Muti and Esa-Pekka Salonen on the covers in solemn “classical” poses s as if they are conducting Beethoven. Chris Lee 31 At least some segments of the classical large numbers of young people to venues happened to like my music. Before, I was industry are grabbing onto movie music like New York’s Frederick P. Rose Hall always happy to just go to the movies in a as a way to survive in a treacherous and Carnegie Hall. With his mix of jazz, state of wonder, like a child.” This chance environment, viewing it as a form uniquely flamenco, tango, Middle Eastern chant, element goes back to the film industry’s capable of spreading symphonic culture and post-Ligeti expressionism, Golijov earliest days. European masters like Franz to a new generation at a time when many is picking up where Philip Glass left off, Waxman (1906-67) and Erich Wolfgang commentators worry about the dwindling drawing new faces into the classical- Korngold (1897-1957) were driven to number of young listeners in concert halls. music audience. The day I talked with Hollywood largely by historical accident. As John Williams, Hollywood’s premier him he was ecstatic and anxious about his “Our careers are as much what happens to composer, recently told me, film music is a next project with Francis Ford Coppola, us as what we plan to do,” says Williams. “unified art form” capable of reaching across whose film Tetro Golijov was beginning “For Korngold, if it hadn’t been for Mr. boundaries of age, ethnicity, and class, not work on that very day; the two had Hitler he never would have come over to mention the classical-pop divide. In an previously worked together on Coppola’s here and probably never would have done era of globalization where, as Williams 2007 film Youth Without Youth. Golijov film music. It’s probably the last thing in says, the multinationals seem to make rhapsodized about the appeal of movie 1928 that Korngold would have imagined “more than the treasury departments of music for symphonic composers. “Great for himself.” various countries,” film music has a special film directors come up with ideas that take Modest and soft-spoken, Williams is a prolific film composer who occasionally writes concert music “for my edification and instruction, and even a small degree of pleasure. Most of what I have accomplished in music—what little I may have done— probably will rest in the area of film music. I can’t claim to have done so much work in the concert area.” Yet his concert output, including a new Viola Concerto and Duo Concertante for violin and viola, is extensive. Williams is especially fond of concertos, where he derives “wonderful inspiration from players.” Esteemed by his symphonic colleagues in a way that most movie composers are not, he has written concertos for principal players in the Stephanie Starz Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland edge. “It’s a larger audience John Mauceri, currently chancellor of the Orchestra, and New York Philharmonic, as than symphonic music can UNC School of the Arts, has been a longtime well as symphonic suites derived from his have, just because of the way advocate of film music. Last November, he led film scores. His recent piece for cello and the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra at the Donald Dietz the material is disseminated. Vienna Konzerthaus (above) during a festival orchestra, based on themes from Memoirs For better or worse, the audience for film devoted to film composer Erich Wolfgang of a Geisha, was premiered by Yo-Yo Ma at music, even in an unconscious way, is Korngold, seen in a projected photo above the Tanglewood in 2006. multinational and enormous.” In 2006, the stage with his wife and son. No one has been more successful over League of American Orchestras recognized a longer span than Williams in bridging Williams’s achievements, giving him its you places you wouldn’t otherwise go,” Hollywood and Carnegie Hall. Golijov annual Gold Baton Award for writing he said. “With a symphonic commission, regards Williams as “a master who combines orchestral music for film, television, and you are more restricted. A movie can high inspiration with great craftsmanship”; concert hall that has become “an indelible take your imagination to a whole new he says that placing Williams next part of America’s cultural fabric, inspiring dimension.” Golijov finds the experience to his colleagues in film music is like millions of listeners worldwide.” Previous of working with a musically savvy director comparing Mozart to his now-forgotten recipients include Leonard Bernstein like Coppola—whose father played flute contemporaries. in 1959, actor Danny Kaye in 1973, and for Toscanini—to be invigorating: “You Williams’s success in negotiating his conductor Robert Shaw in 1988. learn something new even when you write double life is unusual. The Korngold- The lure of movie music goes well an uninspired cue.” With film, he says, Waxman generation had a much harder beyond pragmatic considerations. One of it’s possible to constantly take chances, time bridging the classical-Hollywood the latest symphonic film composers is experiment, and learn from failure. divide. In their era, the intelligentsia the 47-year-old Osvaldo Golijov, whose Like many in the field, Golijov never openly disdained movie music, using it large-scale Passions, operas, concertos, planned to write movie music. “It was as an automatic metaphor for anything song cycles, and chamber works draw a fluke,” he recalls. A“ few directors sentimental or simple-minded. Stravinsky 32 symphony NOVEMBER–deCEMBER 2008 Hollywood and Classical Music AMADEUS, Thomas Hulce, 1984 Remember Mr. Holland’s starring Gary Oldman); Mahler actor Gérard Depardieu as a Opus, the movie where Richard (that’s Alma Mahler, in Bride of pianist who falls in love with Dreyfuss plays a composer who the Wind, 2002); Beethoven Andie MacDowell. The piano becomes a music teacher? Or again (Copying Beethoven, is endlessly fascinating—four the ones about cellist Jacqueline 2006) and again (in Stanley more that come to mind du Pré (Hilary and Jackie), a Kubrick’s 1971 A Clockwork are The Pianist (2002), The castrato singer (Farinelli), and Orange, where the thuggish Competition (1980), The Piano Mozart (Amadeus)? Those main character’s favorite Teacher (2001), and The Piano films mostly span the 1980s composer is “lovely Ludwig (1993)—but occasionally other and 1990s, but Hollywood’s van”); and even the fairly obscure instruments have gotten some love affair with classical music Marin Marais (Tous Les Matins screen attention, as in The Red has been going on for a long, du Monde, 1991). Violin (1999), which features long time. There have been Most often, it’s not composers a score by John Corigliano. Collection Courtesy Everett Bros./ Warner rollicking comedies (the Marx but performers who have Youngsters trying to make their the piano that are impossible Brothers’ 1935 A Night at the captured Hollywood’s interest. way as performers always have based on where their hands are Opera); suspense films with a There are films aplenty that screen appeal (Fame, 1980), placed, and leading orchestras musical score as the key to an feature struggling musicians, while offbeat and sometimes but not moving the baton at the assassination plot (Hitchcock’s like Carnegie Hall (1947), hilarious portrayals of musicians right time. For trained musicians, The Man Who Knew Too Much, about a mother (Marsha Hunt) abound, from Woody Allen as it’s impossible not to laugh at 1934 and 1956); One Hundred and her pianist son (William a cellist in a marching band in mistakes that seem so obvious Men and a Girl (1937), starring Prince), in which real-life Take the Money and Run (1969) and easy to avoid, but I suspect Deanna Durbin and featuring musicians Artur Rubinstein, to Warren Beatty’s soprano that most of us are happier Leopold Stokowski as himself; Jascha Heifetz, Bruno Walter, saxophone-playing football when the actor is doing the and Humoresque (1946), about and Walter Damrosch appear. player in Heaven Can Wait actual performing, the way Hugh a tortured romance between a The 1996 film Shine tackles (1978) and Sigourney Weaver’s Laurie, star of Fox TV’s hit series classical violinist (John Garfield) the mental pressures suffered cello-playing Dana Barrett in House, does when he plays the and his lover/patron (Joan by another pianist, David Ghost Busters (1984).