Korngold's scores still echo in today's films

Charlotte.com ^ | 11/30/ 2007 | Lawrence Toppman

[Borges]

The man who invented modern film music died 50 years ago this week -- Thursday, to be as precise as he was.

People wrote film soundtracks before Erich Wolfgang Korngold, but his were the first scores memorable enough to stand alone in concerts or recordings. The Moravian-born Jew was a classically trained prodigy in Vienna, where Mahler declared him a genius: His opera "Die Tote Stadt" ("The Dead City") wowed critics, and he was considered one of the world's best-liked living composers, until Hitler took power in 1933. Then his music was banned in Germany and Austria.

He moved to Hollywood and brought his classical construction to such sweeping dramas as "The Adventures of Robin Hood," "The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex" and "The Sea Hawk." (All were Oscar-nominated; "Hood" won.)

Korngold had a unique knowledge of the relationship between sound and image and a remarkable ability to tailor his musical themes to exactly the timings needed by a director. But he was especially adept at scoring spectacles; as the demand for those dipped, he found himself less at home in the recording studio.

His last assignment, the mediocre "Escape Me Never," came 10 years before he died. He had a heart attack after that and went back to Vienna in 1949, but people had stopped taking him seriously as a classical musician. ("More corn than gold" was a famously cruel assessment.)

He left us five lushly romantic operas, a fine violin concerto (premiered by Jascha Heifetz) and a meltingly lovely symphony in F sharp. (The latter two include elements from his movie scores.) And he kicked off a Hollywood tradition without which the Oscar-winning music of John Williams, James Horner and Howard Shore would scarcely be imaginable.

[Borges]

[Borges]

Classical Music Ping

[RayChuang88]

However, what improved Korngold's reputation was John Williams' landmark score for Star Wars, which almost single-handedly revived the tradition of large orchestral scores for movies.

[Borges]

I do think the influence of the SW music was a bit exxagerated. Maybe it was the loudest orchestral score in a while but people like Jerry Goldsmith had been writing orchestral music before SW. Patton was several years earlier. Maybe it was the Korngoldian idiom of full out Romanticism that Williams revived.

[MrEdd]

Speaking of film composers, what is Patrick Doyle (Henry V, Exit to Eden) working on these days? anyone know?

[restornu]

Down load full arrangements
http://www.rhapsody.com/erichwolfgangkorngold2

Mini clips 25 sec
http://www.emusic.com/album/Erich-Wolfgang-Korngold-KORNGOLD-Devotion-MP3-Download/10872709.html

sampler
http://samples.emusic.com/s/wE2bqW2KgKNB0Vj6G13yM94QwCAZ3iosuBn0ONE2rn0_kK61mUPLIzRznZHJ1Z65Apd8Kmc2REMAokL7bpJvhrc_ZnyPyUPY_lxCvO3XnH40/11096785/15888786/The_Sea_Hawk__filmscore_by_Erich_Wolfgang_Korngold.mp3

[Borges]

http://imdb.com/name/nm0236462/

[sitetest]

Dear Borges,

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[MinuteGal]

I absolutely love his symphony. I hear and see it performed every once in a while on an all-classical music station that my cable TV company carries.

I'm really so blessed that I can view and listen to this station many hours a week. The programs have multiplied my musical knowledge a hundred-fold.....maybe even a hundred-and-one-fold.

Leni

[HoosierHawk]

Thank you for the links.

[Socratic]

Thanks for the ping.

[Darkwolf377]

Well put. Williams brought back the LOUD, in-your-face Korngold-like score back into vogue. I hate to say it, since I am a collector of film music since the late 70's, but Williams, through no fault of his own, has influenced a lot of bad overblown scores which have hurt more than helped the movies.

Goldsmith is in a class by himself.

[Borges]

I’ve always thought Goldsmith was a bit of a hack and that Williams was in a class by himself. He’s also written some fine Concert music as well.

[Darkwolf377]

I wouldn't call Goldsmith a hack by any means. Williams has a more approachable style, very lush and audience-friendly, but he's been churning out much the same stuff for thirty years. Since around the early eighties Williams has been overly influenced by Spielberg, with his weeping, overly-emphatic scores blaring at the audience, telling them HOW to feel, far too manipulative and kinda silly. His concert music is pretty trite--his blowup with the Boston Pops was because some of the players were laughing at one of his silly "Americana" compositions.

Goldsmith, on the other hand, worked on lousy movies but brought amazing vitality and new ideas to movies--his scores for Planet of the Apes, Chinatown, Basic Instinct, Alien, and many more are really startling in how out there he's willing to get. Williams just went back to the same-old same-old. He's a bore.

[Borges]

These days he is. But his bassoon concerto is a nice piece. The Chicago Symphony just played it. His best scores will be around for a long time.

[windcliff]

ping

[onedoug]

‘Love “Robin Hood” and the allusions that it was said to cast against the Third Reich.