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Overture Concert: Theatrical Blockbusters
Vernon Cook Theater -- September 20, 2008 - 8:00 pm

Dances with Wolves Suite                                                         Barry
Jurassic Park                                                                     Williams
Adagio for Strings                                                                 Barber
Hollywood Blockbusters                                                        Horner
Schindler's List                                                                   Williams
Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana                                 Mascagni
James Bond, Themes from 007                                  arranger, Custer

PROGRAM NOTES

When he received an Academy Award for his musical score for the 1954 film The High and the Mighty, composer Dimitri Tiomkin paid homage to those who had inspired his writing: "I would like to thank Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, Strauss, Rimsky-Korsakov." Tiomkin was serious, for he was of the European classically-trained school of composers who found their way to Hollywood during the 1930's and '40's, either to escape Nazi persecution or to take advantage of the opportunities offered in the movie capital of the world. Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Franz Waxman, Max Steiner, Kurt Weill and other notable film composers from that era could have expressed similar sentiments to Tiomkin's without fear of contradiction.

To Tiomkin's list of Romantic inspirations, today's film composers could add the names of more modern classical composers such as Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Aaron Copland, all of whom wrote significant works for motion pictures in their own right. Prokofiev's scores for the Russian classic films Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible, Shostakovich's scores for Russian versions of Shakespearean masterpieces such as King Lear and Macbeth, and Copland's The Red Pony and Our Town scores have entered the classical music repertoire as standard works.

The composers on tonight's program carry on that rich tradition of expansive, expressive music designed to underscore the significant sentiments of a given film. Their music has also been found to withstand the rigors of critical examination and able to stand on their own merits apart from the films they represent. The music tonight offers some of the finest examples from some of the most proficient composers of film music from the recent past.

John Barry

John Barry (Prendergast), born 1933 in York, England, came to film music, one might say, naturally. His mother was a musician, a classical pianist, and his father owned and operated several theaters and movie houses in the Lancastershire and Yorkshire areas. It was here in the environment of the theater that he developed a love for and an ambition to compose film music. While doing his National Service, he played the trumpet and learned to arrange jazz, which served as the basic music idiom for the band he formed on leaving the service, "The John Barry Seven." The band proved a success on BBC television and issued a number of best-selling recordings, including "Black Stockings."

Barry took on an up-and-coming singer Adam Faith to solo with his band, and when Faith's career took a popular turn with the public, Barry went along as song writer and arranger. When Faith then starred in a series of lightweight films, Barry wrote and arranged scores for the productions. In this manner, Barry came to the attention of the producers of the film Dr. No, based on characters created by Ian Fleming; he was asked to arrange Monty Norman's theme for the movie, and thus he established, along with his band, the unique brassy sound of the James Bond franchise.

Barry's success as the Bond composer launched him into the broader ranges of film music composition, and over the decades he has garnered several Academy Awards for his outstanding scores. Born Free (1966), The Lion in Winter (1968), Out of Africa (1985), and Dances with Wolves (1990) have each been awarded top place for original music scores by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

The suite from Dances with Wolves includes the following numbers from the complete score: The Buffalo Hunt, Farewell and End Title, The John Dunbar Theme, Journey to Fort Sedgewick, The Love Theme, and Pawnee Attack.

John Williams

When John Williams arrived on the film scene in 1958 with his score to the low budget, unremembered Daddy-O, Dmitri Tiomkin and Franz Waxman were still composing for films in the grand tradition. By 1969 when Williams received his first Academy Award nomination for The Reivers, the old masters were gone, replaced by a new breed including Williams, John Barry, Alex North, Jerry Goldsmith, and others.

Williams started out composing for television, providing themes and incidental music for Irwin Allen productions Lost in Space, Time Tunnel, and Land of the Giants. Incidentally, he provided a theme for the cult TV classic Gilligan's Island. When Allen ventured into big screen productions, Williams followed along with scores for two "disaster" movies, The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. But it was from his associations with directors Stephen Spielberg and George Lukas that Williams came to compose his greatest successes - Jaws, E. T.: - The Extra-Terrestrial, Schindler's List, the Indiana Jones trilogy, and the Star Wars series. To date, Williams has composed for or served as music director for more than eighty films. For his efforts, he has received forty-five Academy Award nominations and reaped the award five times: Fiddler on the Roof (1971 - for adaptation), Jaws (1975), Star Wars (1977), E. T. (1982), and Schindler's List (1993).

In addition to his film work, Williams maintains an active concert presence, having composed a symphony, a sinfonietta, and concertos for various instruments, including the horn, the violin, the viola, the trumpet, the bassoon, the flute, and for combinations of instruments. He stepped down in 1993 after thirteen years as chief conductor of the Boston Pops, yet he still conducts at various festivals and venues around the world, usually showcasing his own compositions.

Williams is represented with two works on this Autumn Concert - Jurassic Park and Schindler's List. The Jurassic Park highlights include End Credits, Journey to the Island, Theme, and Opening Titles. From Schindler's List the orchestra offers three selections: Theme, Jewish Town, and Remembrances.

"While I’m writing for words, then I immerse myself in those words, and I let the music flow out of them. When I write an abstract piano sonata or a concerto, I write what I feel. I’m not a self-conscious composer. It is said I have no style at all, but that doesn’t matter. I just go on doing, as they say, my thing. I believe this takes a certain courage." Thus, Samuel Barber (1910 - 1981) described the style and substance of his composing method.

Samuel Barber - 1944

Barber composed in all genres of classical music - stage, orchestral, chamber, piano, choral and art song. His style was intensely personal, but he was central to the continuing popularly of the American neo-Romantic school of composition in mid-twentieth century music circles as it was challenged by the short-lived avant-garde serial movement. He once described himself as a "living dead" composer. Among classical aficionados, his symphonies, violin and cello concertos as well as other of his output are highly valued, but it is his Adagio for Strings that has kept his name prominent in the general population.

The Adagio for Strings was first born as the second Molto adagio movement of a two movement string quartet, a work Barber composed in 1936 while studying in Europe. At the instigation of conductor Arturo Toscanini, he reworked the second movement and the Adagio for Strings was premiered by Toscanini with the NBC Symphony Orchestra in 1938.

The Adagio is so well known and universally recognized that it would be presumptuous to attempt to describe it in words. Used in many public situations, suffice it to say, it has been utilized with notable effect in several movies, among which are The Elephant Man, S1m0ne, Lorenzo's Oil, El Norte, The Scarlet Letter, and Amélie. But its most elaborate and emotive use is in Oliver Stone's Platoon (1985).

James Horner

James Horner is the youngest of the active composers on tonight's program. A native of Los Angeles, Horner studied composition at London's Royal Academy of Music and the University of Southern California. After earning his doctorate at the University of California at Los Angeles, Horner scored his first film in 1980 for the American Film Institute, a short film The Drought. While working for low-budget film producer Roger Corman at New World Pictures, Horner forged close relationships with then-emerging directors Ron Howard and James Cameron.

The classically trained Horner had this to say about his technique for scoring films: "Films speak to me right away. The atmosphere, the overall mood dictates what kind of orchestra I will use. Watching a film the first few times, I make a charcoal sketch; later I put the colors in."

Horner arrived on the scene just as the large-scale symphonic soundscapes returned to films following the smash successes of John Williams' Star Wars scores. His first Academy Award nomination came in 1986 for his scoring of the sci-fi thriller Aliens. Other notable films Horner supplied soundtracks for include Field of Dreams (1989), Apollo 13 and Braveheart (1995), A Beautiful Mind (2001) and House of Sand and Fog (2003). His one Academy Award came for his stirring music for Titanic (1997).

Hollywood Blockbusters showcases music from four of Horner's most successful ventures - "Main Title" (Apollo 13), "Bannockburn" (Braveheart), "Somewhere Out There" (An American Tail), and "My Heart Will Go On" and "Southampton" (Titanic).

Pietro Mascagni

With the premiere of his opera Cavalleria Rusticana (Rustic Chivalry) in 1890, Pietro Mascagni (1863 - 1945) launched the verismo (realism) movement in Italian opera.

Verismo is associated with highly melodramatic operas that deal with the unpleasant realities of life, introducing characters from the lower social strata, poverty, passion and brutality. So profound was his influence that it prompted similar attempts from other Italian composers, producing Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci (The Clown) and Puccini's La bohème (The Bohemians). Today, Mascagni's Cav is often coupled with Leoncavallo's Pag in major opera houses and on recordings.

Mascagni wrote fourteen other operas, an operetta, and much choral and instrumental music, and enjoyed fame during his lifetime as a conductor as well as a composer. His other operas, however, are of uneven quality in either text or music and have not fared well outside the occasional revival by an adventurous opera company. His international reputation rests almost solely on Cavalleria Rusticana.

The libretto for Cav derives from a short story by the acclaimed Sicilian writer Giovanni Verga. A young man Turiddu is unfaithful to his fiancée Santuzza. He is still in love with his former girlfriend Lola; however, Lola is now married to Alfio. When Santuzza learns of Turiddu's infidelity, she reveals the secret to Alfio, who then challenges Turiddu to a duel and kills him.

The beautiful Intermezzo from Cav is often recorded and performed independent of the opera itself. It has been used with notable success in Godfather III and as the opening and closing music for Martin Scorsese's masterful film Raging Bull. In fact, Scorsese uses music from two other Mascagni operas in addition to Cav - a Barcarolle from Silvano (1895) and the Intermezzo from Guglielmo Ratcliff (1895).

Calvin Custer, arranger

Although a composer of original material, Calvin Custer (d. 1998) is best known for his rousing arrangements of other composers' works. A graduate of Carnegie-Mellon and Syracuse Universities, Custer served as an all--purpose performer with the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra (SSO) for twenty-four years.

Four years after joining the SSO as a keyboardist and horn and brass performer, in 1966 Custer was appointed Associate Conductor and Resident Conductor for the group. He was instrumental in the orchestra's community outreach program and performed regularly with the SSO Percussion Ensemble and the Syracuse Symphony Rock Ensemble.

Custer's arrangements have been performed by many major orchestras and recorded by the Boston Pops under Arthur Fiedler. His original compositions include Concert Piece for Horn and Orchestra (1978), Music for Brass and Percussion (1982), and Fanfare (1985).

The Clinton Symphony Orchestra played two of Custer's arrangements of theatrical music during its concert in Riverview Park in June of this year.

Custer's arrangement James Bond, Themes from 007 is made up of four well-known motifs from the James Bond movie franchise. The suite includes James Bond Theme by Monty Norman, Live and Let Die by Paul and Linda McCartney, For Your Eyes Only by Michael Leeson and Bill Conti, and Goldfinger by John Barry.

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