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570188bk Frankenstein:570183bk Son of Kong 15/7/07 8:23 PM Page 8 John Morgan Widely regarded in film-music circles as a master colourist with a keen insight into orchestration and the power of music, Los Angeles-based composer John Morgan began his career working alongside such composers as Alex North and Fred Steiner before embarking on his own. Among other projects, he co-composed the richly dramatic score for the cult-documentary film Trinity and Beyond, and has won acclaim for efforts to rescue, restore and re-record lost film scores from the past. William Stromberg A veteran film composer, conductor and film archivist, William Stromberg, working with famed film music reconstructionist and composer John Morgan, has conducted numerous albums of film music for RCA, Naxos, Marco Polo and, most recently, Tribute Film Classics. Upcoming albums include the complete scores to Bernard Herrmann’s Mysterious Island, Max Steiner’s She and Herrmann’s The Kentuckian. Moscow Symphony Orchestra Founded in 1989 as the first independent orchestra in modern Russia, the Moscow Symphony Orchestra maintains a busy schedule both in the concert hall and recording studio. For more than a decade, it has become noted for its pivotal role in a long-running series of recordings devoted to classic film scores conducted by Hollywood composer William Stromberg. Their most recent collaboration was the complete film score for Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s The Sea Hawk (Naxos 8.570110-11). House of Frankenstein guests John Morgan, William Stromberg and Bill Whitaker Photo: Rick Baker 8.570188 8 570188bk Frankenstein:570183bk Son of Kong 15/7/07 8:23 PM Page 2 Hans J. Salter (1896–1994) and lycanthrope Lawrence Talbot and Maleva the gypsy any pretense of upholding the grand tradition of travel to Vasaria); and, finally, the brooding passage Universal’s finest horror films had vanished. Only the Paul Dessau (1894–1979) underlining Dr Niemann’s return to his old, vine- music and photography helped prop the film up. Complete score for the film shrouded laboratory (adapted from The Ghost of Soon after World War II, Dessau settled in East Berlin Frankenstein score). For this recording, the more where his compositions, at last free of the confining 1944 extensive arrangement of ice cavern music from influences of the American cinema, eagerly celebrated House of Frankenstein Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man has been substituted communism through operas such as Puntila (1959), a Reconstructed by John Morgan for that in House of Frankenstein. In the case of the comic allegory on the ruling class and the common traveling music, both the high-spirited cue from people based on friend Bertolt Brecht’s play; Einstein 1 Universal Signature * The Ruins (Salter) 1:38 Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man as well as the more (1970), offering a Marxist perspective on the century’s (Jimmy McHugh) 0:17 ( The Monstrosities (Salter) 2:02 ambiguous one from House of Frankenstein have been most famous scientist; and orchestral suites such as Sea 2 Main Title* 2:17 ) Wolf Man Revived recorded. Finally, the brief bit of music for the early of Tempests, which commemorates a Russian moon 3 Lightning Strikes (Salter, Skinner & Charles Previn) 2:13 sequence when the storm destroys Neustadt Prison – probe landing. Till his death in 1979 at age 84, he also (Salter & Frank Skinner) 1:48 ¡ penned by Frank Skinner for Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller continued to display his mastery at reworking other Show Me the Records Saboteur (1942) and barely audible in that picture composers’ materials, such as his stately Bach Variations 4 Gruesome Twosome Escape* 1:50 (Salter, Skinner & Previn) 2:22 amidst the lightning bolts – practically represents a (1963) and playful symphonic adaptation of Mozart’s 5 Strangulation (Salter) 0:30 ™ Travels (Salter)*0:35première here since the music is also effectively String Quintet, K614 (1965). Whatever his thoughts on 6 Off to Vasaria (Salter)*1:18£ Hunchback’s Jealousy 1:51 drowned out in House of Frankenstein, thanks to Hollywood, it is interesting to note that, besides 7 Chamber of Horrors 0:40 ¢ Niemann’s Laboratory (Salter) 1:31 crashing thunder and collapsing walls. bogeyman-filled House of Frankenstein, Dessau could 8 Dracula Restored (Salter)*1:30∞ Liquefying Brains (Salter) 1:12 If an analysis of the House of Frankenstein score also claim to have scored cartoon films for Walt Disney sometimes suggests a crazy quilting of music from such as Alice’s Monkey Business (though it is unlikely he 9 Dracula’s Ring* 1:29 § Niemann’s Revenge* 1:07 different hands and even different films, it only reveals ever rushed to make such claims). 0 The Burgomaster Murdered 2:06 ¶ The Pentagram 1:37 standard practice at Universal at the time. Staff Salter remained in Hollywood, unwittingly comm- ! Rendezvous with Dracula 2:35 • Full Moon 1:16 composers (ranging from Skinner and Salter to, in the emorating the atomic age and the Cold War by co- @ The World Beyond* 1:29 ª Silver Bullet 3:33 1950s, Henry Mancini) routinely collaborated on films, scoring Universal sci-fi films such as This Island Earth # º Dr Niemann Successful 1:24 cultivating a style similar enough to allow what some (1955) and The Mole People (1956). Incidentally, the Dracula Pursued* 1:44 called “Salterizing” – the seamless patching together of strange irony of Hans Salter came full circle eighteen $ Dracula Destroyed* 1:08 ⁄ The Moon is Full 1:18 such cues into a score. Whatever the case, Randall D. years after House of Frankenstein when, near the end of % Gypsy Tantrums ¤ Larry at Peace 1:37 Larson, in his exhaustive survey Musique Fantastique his career as a film composer, he found himself scoring (Max Rapp & Milton Rosen)*1:47‹ Dr Niemann Attacked 1:37 (Scarecrow Press, 1985), suggests the only score of the Hitler (1962). However, the film was anything but ^ Ilonka Whipped 1:08 › Death of the Unholy Two 1:14 Frankenstein sequels entirely by Salter is that for The distinguished, and Salter’s score, for all its merits, never & fi Ghost of Frankenstein. And in House of Dracula approached the rousing power, creepy atmosphere and Dan’s Love 3:23 End Cast 0:29 (1945), the utterly wretched sequel to follow House of raw inventiveness found in the composer’s undying All music composed by Hans J. Salter and Paul Dessau except where shown in brackets. Frankenstein, the music of no less than eight composers, horror scores for Universal. All music orchestrated by John Morgan except tracks indicated by an asterisk*, which were orchestrated by including Salter, Skinner and Dessau, was hastily William Stromberg. patched together by music director Edgar Fairchild. Bill Whitaker 1995, rev. 2007 However, by the time House of Dracula was produced, 8.570188 2 7 8.570188 570188bk Frankenstein:570183bk Son of Kong 15/7/07 8:23 PM Page 6 Niemann (in Dr Niemann Attacked), the revived fact, Morgan later introduced Stromberg, a family friend If there’s one reigning irony about composer Hans J. imbued with an air of total abandon, it allowed Frankenstein Monster decides to break free, make short eighteen years his junior, to this old cinema music, Salter, it is that, after fleeing the nightmarish world of centuries-old menacing mummies to walk the globe, work of Daniel and then rescue the mad doctor. In the ultimately resulting in the latter’s decision also to pursue the Third Reich in 1937, he wound up in America heart-craving ghouls to raid local cemeteries and world- score, this is captured through a last, desperate variation a career in film music. scoring Universal’s classic Frankenstein films, all weary werewolves to erupt in fury whenever a full moon of Daniel’s motif and a grandly energized, thoroughly Once a decision had been made by Marco Polo to centered on mad scientists with names like Niemann rose. Over half a century later, Universal’s horror films unstoppable one for the Frankenstein Monster. House record the complete House of Frankenstein score (and and Frankenstein and Edelmann, and all revolving and their peerless scores retain much of their dark mood, of Frankenstein concludes with an unforgettable musical with Salter’s full blessing, just weeks before his death), around a superhuman brute whose demise lasted only till yet also evoke an air of seemingly simpler times – much climax in Death of the Unholy Two: The timpani’s the young composers’ passion reached the point that the next sequel. But if Salter ever truly pondered this the way gleeful, vintage cartoon scores and smooth, relentless pounding signifying doom, the woodwinds they even reassembled the delightful, forty-second irony, he seldom mentioned it. When, shortly before his upbeat Big Band renditions seem to do. (For the record, shrieking in full panic and the strings and brass capturing chamber of horrors prelude heard shortly before death in 1994, he was at last asked about it, he only Salter considered his horror scores distinctly American.) the utter chaos of the film’s bizarre, one-of-a-kind Dracula’s revival in the film. Other sections proved chuckled, thought a moment, then replied: “It must’ve Evidence of this nostalgic simplicity – however resolution in which, very oddly for a Hollywood more challenging, including the aforementioned climax. been written in the stars.” illusionary – was offered up in the 1993 film Mad Dog programmer of the early 1940s, everybody dies. After “My hand was about to fall off by the time I got finished, A mild-mannered Viennese gentleman whose exist- and Glory, in which the fifty-year-old soundtrack to the this, all that remains is the end cast music, a brief and there was so much going on,” Morgan said of ence in the Old World was spent conducting operettas Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man climax briefly served blunt tribute to the gypsy Ilonka, her sacrifice and the reassembling the final, bring-down-the-house section.