What Film Music are you listening to?

[clpetersen]

Just visited this thread. Here is one of our favorite soundtracks. Add Pulp Fiction, The Big Chill to this list.

[clpetersen]

and another:

[joel_hifi]

Ennio Morricone - Cinema Paradiso

Wonderful movie, beautiful soundtrack

[joel_hifi]

So I have added 100+ movie soundtracks to my must listen bucket list, many of them inspired by this very good thread and by Jim/Still-One in the What are you listening to tonight thread (thank you!). I will play them in a chronological order and will share impressions as I go down the list.

I started with two wonderful scores composed by Max Steiner, considered the father of film music. They regretfully do sound like pre-war recordings but the historical interest prevails! Via Qobuz


Max Steiner - The Wizard Of Oz (1939)




Max Steiner - Gone With The Wind (1939)

[joel_hifi]

Bernard Herrmann - Citizen Kane (1941)
Joel McNeely / Royal Scottish National Orchestra

After a little search I decided to settle on the Varèse Sarabande re-recording, superb score and rendition, via Qobuz

Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine / AllMusic
Varese's 1999 Citizen Kane presents a re-recording of Bernard Herrman's entire original score for Orson Welles' modernist masterpiece, as performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under the direction of Joel McNeely. This recording does not reinterpret the score, it simply offers an excellent straight-ahead rendition of one of the greatest musical works in film history.

[joel_hifi]

Max Steiner - Casablanca (1942)

No Varèse Sarabande version of this one, so I've been listening to the original soundtrack (skipping some of the dialogues), via Qobuz

Herman Hupfeld's tune As Time Goes By is wonderful... "Play it Sam" (Dooley Wilson)

[jimtranr]

Originally Posted by joel_hifi

Max Steiner - Casablanca (1942)

...

Herman Hupfeld's tune As Time Goes By is wonderful... "Play it Sam" (Dooley Wilson)

Max Steiner hated it...and did a remarkable job of incorporating it into his score.

[joel_hifi]

Originally Posted by jimtranr

Max Steiner hated it...and did a remarkable job of incorporating it into his score.

Jim, thanks for sharing this, I love learning new things

For other curious minds I'm pasting some additional notes

Mark Richards / Film Music Notes

When Max Steiner was asked to write the score for Casablanca, he was told to use the popular song “As Time Goes By” as a love theme for the two main characters, Rick and Ilsa. But as Mervyn Cooke tells us in his book, A History of Film Music,

Steiner apparently disliked the song and wished to replace it at a rather late stage with one of his own: since this would have involved reshooting several of Ilsa’s scenes, the displeased studio executives prevented his doing so on the pretext that Ingrid Bergman had already changed her hair style for her next film.

If Steiner felt stuck with the song, he certainly didn’t show it. In the film, after Sam plays the song for Ilsa, it becomes an integral part of Steiner’s orchestral score. More than that, Steiner skilfully transforms the song to depict Rick and Ilsa’s changing emotions at various stages in their relationship.

[joel_hifi]

Thinking of ordering this book... any other good literature on the subject?

[jimtranr]

Rip of Intrada's two-CD set of Bruce Broughton's expanded score and alternate cues for the 1993 film, produced using the original master tapes.

Broughton explains in the program notes that the film was temp-tracked using his score for 1985's Silverado, and the latter's relatively upbeat (I stress "relatively") scoring made Tombstone sound "silly." As he puts it, Tombstone was the "badder boy," so he infused it with a much darker musical ambience.

For my tastes, it's a helluva good ride executed in exemplary three-dimensional sonics. No sardine-can studio sound here.