Download The `Golden` Age

The 'Golden' Age
Film Music 1930-50
Film Music 'comes of age'
1930-50, 'craft' of film music matches artistry of the films via
application of the music.
Cf:
Music Theatre - Special gaps for music interludes
Opera - Action follows music (composed to 'lead' action)
Film - Music follows action.
Commercialism
Less strong before 1950s because of the Depression + WWII.
After 50s: commercialism & 'committee decision making' steps
in in American and British film making.
1st Film of the 'Golden Age' …Considered to be King Kong (1933). Used:
•  Intellectualized methods
•  A highly influential approach (on other films)
§  Edmund Meisel's score to Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin
(1925) was very self-conscious music; (NB no other sound).
§  Chaplin's City Lights (1931) was humourous in the Depression
era. Chaplin not a composer though hummed & whistled.
•  Rich, dramatic style that did not last forever. (Fashions die
out.)
King Kong (1933)
Max Steiner
Scores include:
•  The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936)
•  Gone with the Wind (1939)
•  Casablanca (1942)
•  The Big Sleep (1946)
•  The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
•  Key Largo (1948)
Last 3 all film noir with Humphrey Bogart.
Casablanca (1942)
Included the song 'As Time goes By' by Herman Hupfeld. Broadway song from 10 years earlier.
Stein integrates the melody into the whole rest of the score.
Melody becomes LEITMOTIF = "a snapshot of a time, place,
character, mood or range of emotions".
Leitmotifs are meant to be instantly recognizable.
'Epitomy' of 'Golden Age' film might be The Adventurtes of Don
Juan (1949) with Errol Flynn = swashbuckling score. (Very
popular).
Captain Blood (1935)
Score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Many 'spin offs' from this
adventure epic film.
Korngold's style:
•  Furiously fast action music
•  Lots of brass
•  'achingly' bittersweet love themes
dominated by strings.
Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Other film scores by…
•  The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
•  The Private Lives of Elizabeth
& Essex (1939)
•  The Sea Hawk (1940)
Korngold's 'legacy'…
John Williams brought the style back in Star Wars (c.f.
Korngold's King's Row (1942)
Korngold scored only 16 films.
Style very 'successful' though.
Alfred Newman
…Wrote some 250 film scores esp.
'costume' epics.
•  The Prisoner of Zenda (1937)
•  The Hurricane (1937)
•  Wuthering Heights (1939)
•  The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)
•  The Mask of Zorro (1940)
•  How Green was my Valley (1941)
•  Song of Fury (1942)
•  The Black Swan (1942)
•  The Song of Bernadette (1943)
•  Captain from Castile (1947)
•  Prince of Foxes (1949)
Headed 20th-Century Fox's
Music Department. Wrote the famous fanfare.
Alfred Newman
Though a non-practicing Jew, Newman's string writing often sounded 'Christian
Liturgical'.
He'd encourage lots of overly-expressive
string writing with lots of vibrato.
Style was first formed in
The Song of Bernadette (1943)
for a 'vision' sequence Newman
researched music for. (Got Oscar)
Became 'signature' for subsequent style.
Newman scored the mood of a whole 'scene'
Rather than mickeymousing /using leitmotif.
Victor Young
Headed Music at Paramount studios.
He'd originally scored silents.
Scores include:
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For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)
The Uninvited (1944)
Samson & Delilah (1949)
Rio Grande (1950)*
Shane (1950)*
*Westerns.
Hugo Friedhofer
Hired often by Alfred Newman.
Orchestrated for Steiner & Korngold.
His own music used:
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Harmonic invention
Stark colouration
Scores include:
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The Adventures of Marco Polo (1937)
The Lodger (1944)
Broken Arrow (1950)
Seven Cities of Gold (1955)
The Sun Also Rises (1957)
The Earth is Mine (1959)
The Best Years of our Lives (1946)
Last film here is considered his best score. Very pop., got him an Oscar. Critics who usually criticised
raved about this one.
The Studio Music Departments
Max Steiner headed RKO studios music department.
The music depts churned out music, hiring composers,
instrumentalists, orchestrators & technicians.
The first Soundtrack Albums
The Song of Bernadette (1943) got one of the first soundtrack albums.
Previously, Disney had released 'sing-along' songs from Snow White & the
Seven Dwarfs (1938).
1940: Disney did the same with Pinocchio as 'original soundtrack' - but it
wasn't!
Alfred Newman's Song of Bernadette (1943) showed that there was public
demand for film songs.
The Newman family was famous in film music. Brothers Emil & Lionel, sons
David (Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure; Galaxy Quest) & Thomas (The
Shawshank Redemption; American Beauty); nephew Randy (The Paper;
Toy Story (Pixar); The Natural).
David Raksin
Composer at Fox had scored Laura (1944).
Hitcock asked him to score Lifeboat then changed his mind …funny story.
Other Raksin scored include:
•  The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939)
•  Forever Amber (1947)
•  The Bad & the Beautiful (1952)
Music Dept Structure
Miklós Rózsa
Born in Hungary …funny story with Honegger
(see Prendergast, 1977 p68).
Scored:
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The Jungle Book (1942)
Madame Bovary (1949)
Ben Hur (1959)
King of Kings (1961)
The Thief of Baghdad (1940)
That Hamilton Woman (1941)
Double Indemnity (1944)
The Lost Weekend (1945)
The Red House (1947)
Spellbound (1945)
For Alfred Hitchcock
The film tackled Freudian psychology
Dream sequences designed by Salvador Dali
Rosza was asked to test score (to demonstrate Theremin)
Section of the film.
Theremin became 'the sound of cinematic psychosis'!
Music from film became 'Spellbound Concerto' (piano,
Orchestra & theremin).
Arthur Bliss
Master of the King's music.
Scored Things to Come (1936)
The 1st science fiction film. Based on H. G.
Wells' novel. (Listen to this score!)
Music suite written before the film. Famous
march not actually used in the film! - Now
a concerthall favourite.
We'll be looking at concerthall composers in a
separate talk. Inc. Ralph Vaughan
Williams, William Walton, Aaron Copland
& Sergei Prokofiev.