Rundown of events at Vienna's film music symposium. Pauk Haslinger and Leonard Rosenman feature. Funny comment on the demographic of the average soundtrack collector.
Film + Musik
Article by Edwin Wendler published September 1995 in Soundtrack! # 55
Vienna, Austria: a city of music tradition. Some of the world’s most famous composers – Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Schonberg (to mention but a few) have lived and worked there. So did Steiner, Salter, and Korngold. But of course, there is more to that city than old clichés...
This year’s film music symposium “Film + Musik” took place at Vienna's Theater museum and was organized by Synema, V’iennale and filmhaus. The three day event (April 28-30) began with a lecture by Prof. Claudia Gorbman from the University of Washington, Tacoma. How does music function as a storytelling element? Should music accompany the images (Max Steiner’s mickey-mousing “King Kong” is a good example) or should it stand on its own in counterpoint? As for the psychoanalytic approach, there is a certain ‘depth’ of music which touches the audience’s subconscious more effectively when it is played in the background rather than in the foreground. Towards the end of her lecture, Prof. Gorbman talked about soundtrack albums and film music collectors. Here’s her description of the average collector: male, white, well-educated, fetishist attitude, interested in orchestral music only, collecting usually starts at age 16. There are only about 3,000 of them worldwide, and the Internet helps them to communicate with each other.
Composer Paul Haslinger, former member of Tangerine Dream, gave an insight on working in Hollywood. In his opinion there are two groups of composers: people pleasers (Brad Fiedel, Hans Zimmer, John Debney...) and individuals (Danny Elfman, Mark Isham, Elliot Goldenthal...). Mr. Haslinger talked about how some of his fellow composers got their careers started (Tim Burton was at an Oingo Boingo concert which led to Danny Elfman scoring “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure”; Mark Isham was promoting his first solo album when he got his first scoring assignment for “Never Cry Wolf”). Mark Mancina’s start with Jan de Bont's directorial debut, “Speed”, inevitably led to the crucial issue of ghostwriting (since Mark Mancina used to compose for Hans Zimmer). Mr. Haslinger remarked that ghostwriting was probably the worst thing one could ever do as a composer in Hollywood. Many people do it, of course, for financial reasons. Concluding his report, Mr. Haslinger stated that – thinking about agencies, attorneys, and studio executives in general – naiveté must be a condition to work in Hollywood.
German composer Rainer Fabich gave an analysis on Edmund Meisel’s major symphonic score for S.M. Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin” (1925). Integrating sound effects was an important element of the music, which indicates early signs of musique concréte. Mr. Fabich also said that Meisel had been under extreme pressure, composing the entire music in only twelve days and nights. For the film’s finale, which features numerous shots of the ship’s engines, the composer created complex rhythmic patterns for an expanded percussion ensemble, often referred to as ‘machine music’. Because of this (at the time) unconventional approach, Meisel’s original score was sometimes replaced when the film was shown in other European countries.
In another lecture on music for silent films, conductor Berndt Heller revealed some stunning information on various problems of reconstructing old films and their music scores. There's an interesting story behind Gottfried Huppertz’s score for Fritz Lang's “Metropolis”, which Mr. Heller had conducted the night before at Vienna’s Konzerthaus. For several years the music was regarded as totally lost. In 1960, however, Huppertz’s piano score was discovered in the summer house of the composer’s widow, along with a huge amount of material for small orchestra. But Mr. Heller realized that the pages had been mixed up. Furthermore, it wasn’t “Metropolis” at all, but Huppertz' s score for “Die Nibellungen”, which had somehow been mixed up among the music sheets. With the help of the piano scores and certain characteristics in the harp notation, Mr. Heller was able to get things right. But that’s not the end of the story. Huppertz had also orchestrated his music for a large orchestra. The first 60 pages of that score were missing because the composer’s publisher had taken them in order to have them rewritten as a suite. Mr. Heller located that suite as well and reconstructed the missing pages. When the film itself was reconstructed, Huppertz’s score proved to be very useful because it contains information regarding the storyline. Today, four different versions of “Metropolis” are in existence, the differences being alternate shots and longer/shorter scenes. Composer Giorgio Moroder’s version is the shortest of them all (with subtitles instead of inserted captions and over 200 shots missing!).
Mr. Heller also talked about his reconstruction of Richard Strauss’ score for “Der rosenkavalier” (1926) and the ongoing search for the film’s last two reels which are missing from all known copies. There is, however, a trailer that contains some shots originating from the vanished material. Therefore, Mr. Heller is sending copies of those shots to archives all over the world, hoping that somewhere some shots of the last two “Rosenkavalier” reels might be identified as such.
In her lecture, Kathryn Kalinak, director of the Film Studies Program at Rhode Island College, Providence, focused on the classical Hollywood film score. Here are some key words: realism (the problem of music coming “from nowhere”), narrative glue (music often works as a link between scenes, starting before a scene starts and ending after a scene ends), illustration (explicit inaction sequences, implicit when expressing emotion), priority of dialogue, etc.
Composer Peer Raben talked about his work for renowned director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, pointing out that their collaboration had always been very friendly and cooperative. One of their films had been “Lili Marleen” (1981), for which Mr. Raben had used the famous song of the same title by composer Norbert Schultze. Because of the rather militaristic arrangements in the score, Schultze had approached Raben, exclaiming, “You put a steel helmet on my beautiful song!” Raben’s reply: “That’s exactly what I wanted.”
Schultze: “Excellent!”
Wolfgang Thiel gave a lecture on the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, analysing the use of original scores and source music in his movies. For soundtrack enthusiasts who are not familiar with Russian cinema, composer Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov (born 1939) will be a pleasant surprise. Not only does he write remarkable film music, he also composes excellent music for the concert hall. His First Symphony (composed at age 19) sounds just like a Hollywood film score. Another collaborator of the late Tarkovsky’s is Eduard Artemyev, known for his music for “Solaris”. The only reason why Russian film composers are virtually unknown outside of their country is because of the language problem.
Film critic Royal S. Brown evaluated Bernard Herrmann’s film scores. Several musical motifs from “The Trouble with Harry”, “Vertigo”, and “Psycho” are all based on a combination of two major thirds, which Mr. Brown calls the ‘Hitchcock chord’. Herrmann’s Sinfonietta for Strings was mentioned as being quoted in “Psycho”. And in the lecturer’s opinion, Herrmann’s music did not have much influence on other composers but rather on other directors who wanted to have a ‘Herrmann sound’ in their films.
Composer Leonard Rosenman was interviewed by Paul Haslinger. After talking about Mr. Rosenman’s musical background, which includes studying with Arnold Schonberg, Mr. Rosenman stated that he enjoyed both writing for the concert hall and for motion pictures, although once he was known as the composer of “East of Eden”, concert halls had no interest in performing his music any more, thinking that he was “only a film composer”.
Mr. Rosenman presented three cues from his soundtracks: ‘The Probe’ from “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home”; a piece of choral/orchestral music from an unreleased score (which reminded me of the ethereal music for sopranos in “Robocop 2”), and ‘Helm's Deep’ from “The Lord of the Rings”, which he seemed particularly proud of. The composer mentioned that he had invented the language for the men’s chorus, and he got some laughs when he explained that the mysterious words “namnesor dranoel” were simply his name spelled backwards!
On the subject of “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home”, Mr. Rosenman said that after having seen the ‘Chekov's Run’ sequence he had told director Leonard Nimoy that he wanted the music in that scene to sound like comedy music. Mr. Nimoy was not happy with that idea. Therefore, Mr. Rosenman composed two different cues, a dramatic piece and a funny piece. Of course, after having heard the difference, Mr. Nimoy favored the comedy approach.
Being asked about the younger generation of Hollywood composers, Mr. Rosenman made it perfectly clear that he has no respect for composers who do not have a classical musical education, and that there were only a few composers he respected. He mentioned John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, and the late Alex North.
Other lecturers were Herbert Gehr with a history of video clips, Thomas Mießgang with a critical look at films about rock ’n’ roll, Isabella Reicher and Tanja Widmann with a history of musical films, and Michael Palm with an analysis of source music in Stanley Kubrick's films. Prof. Gorbman held another lecture concerning the collaboration of director Jean Vigo and composer Maurice Jaubert (sparse use of music, early use of electronic instruments and unusual recording techniques, for example recording backwards).