Adventures in Orchestrating Film Music

Music Tracks Newsletter, Volume 1, Issue 4 & 5, Summer 1980/1981


Copyright © 1980/1981, by Richard R. McCurdy. All rights reserved.

Biographical profile by N. William Snedden

Albert Richard “Al” Sendrey (1911-2003) was educated at Herne Bay College, England and Trinity College of Music, London, studying composition with William Lovelock, orchestration with Henry Geehl and conducting with Albert Coates and Sir John Barbirolli. He also attended the École Normale de Musique de Paris and the Leipzig Conservatory studying cello with Alexei Kinkulkin (a former pupil of the famous German cellist Julius Klengel), and piano with Robert Teichmuller. He was later a protégé of Arnold Schoenberg who helped to get his works performed at the Hollywood Bowl. Sendrey worked with film companies in Paris (1935-37) and London (1937-44) before joining MGM in 1944. Altogether he contributed to some 170 movies starting with the 1935 French language film REMOUS aka WHIRLPOOL OF DESIRE for which he was music director (together with A. De Sviroky) and composer (as Pierre Sandrey [sic]). For an overview of Sendrey’s career in TV and as a piano accompanist working in Las Vegas from about 1953 onwards see Los Angeles Times obituary “Albert Sendrey, 91; Film, TV Composer” by staff writer Dennis McLellan, dated June 1, 2003, which can be found at http://articles.latimes.com.

Sendrey’s concert works include two string quartets, a viola sonata, a woodwind quintet, four lyric songs, three symphonies (1st symphony 1940 winning Chicago Symphony award; 2nd Inter-American Symphony 1947 winning Henry H. Reichhold prize), Johnny Appleseed Overture (1953), L A Boheme (jazz version of Puccini’s La Boheme), Spanish Suite, Cello Divertimento, and Grand Chaconne for Piano. His father Dr. Alfred Sendrey née Aladár Szendrei studied at the Conservatory in Budapest and later The Royal Academy of Budapest together with fellow classmates Zoltan Kodaly and Béla Bartók. Alfred was an opera conductor, musicologist, composer and, from 1961-67, a teacher at the University of Judaism in L.A. where his students included Henry Mancini, Johnny Green, Nelson Riddle, Lyn Murray, Leo Shuken, Bob Bruner and others. Al Sendrey’s mother Eugenie Sendrey née Weiss was a soprano and graduate of the Vienna Conservatory and his grandmother the famous operatic contralto Ernestine Schumann-Heink (1861-1936) who performed with Gustav Mahler and became well known for her performances of the works of Richard Wagner at Bayreuth.

An Interview with Albert Sendrey by Richard R. McCurdy

I got to know Al one afternoon at the Burbank Studios at a scoring session for one of his recent TV projects. From the first moment we met, he entertained me with a fascinating array of stories and techniques about arranging. Probably the most nostalgically romantic observation he made was that the very studio in use today, and since remodelled, was used in 1938 for the recording of THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD, composed and conducted by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Now that's nostalgia for you!

Albert Sendrey has been orchestrating film scores for the Hollywood greats for more years than he'd care to mention. His first work was done with Miklós Rózsa and producer Alexander Korda in London and Hollywood. This led to steady work in America with the major composers at MGM. His fine talent has enriched the scores of Miklós Rózsa, John Green, Dimitri Tiomkin, Herbert Stothart, Elmer Bernstein, Quincy Jones and Harry Sukman - to name only a few. His work includes: BRIGADOON, AN AMERICAN IN PARIS, THE GREAT CARUSO, ROYAL WEDDING, EASTER PARADE, SUMMER STOCK, THE YEARLING, SEA OF GRASS, MRS, MINIVER, THIRTY SECONDS OVER TOKYO - all of this among some 170 pictures at MGM. He continually makes his mark on many current movies for television, as well as devoting time, as he always has, to composing his own works. The memorabilia in his hilltop home in Hollywood would fascinate any film music buff and is replete with images of Korngold and many other greats, given to his father, Dr. Alfred Sendrey. I am an avid collector of film scores and was anxious to listen to anything Albert would tell me about his craft and the people for whom he has orchestrated.

Al just why does a film composer need on orchestrator?


Quite simply, it's the time element. Schedules in this business are too demanding, and there's just no time. Even Korngold, with his superior techniques and knowledge of the orchestra needed an orchestrator, Hugo Friedhofer, to help him meet the schedule at Warner's. An orchestrator fulfills other needs as well. Arranging is really a matter of teaming the composer with another person's musical creativity so that his ideas, suggestions and different motives can be utilized to enhance the composer's intentions, But this creative process is a very delicate one. You can never intrude on the composer's intentions, but you can delight and surprise him as I think many of us have done, especially the master, Leo Shuken, who has delighted Victor Young and many other composers with things of which they'd never dreamed. You have to be a loyal advisor to your composer and say, "In my opinion, this is what the scene would require. The other line you just played is too much ‘on the nose’."

Victor Young wrote a nice piano sketch, and Leo Shuken made it flower and blossom, because he had the boldness to invent counter-points that the composer had not thought of. So what makes a modern score blossom out like a flower? It isn't a C major chord. It's the lines - the boldness of the lines in the chord. There's a kinetic energy driving every inner voice. The writing of inner voices is such a great art. Miklós Rózsa has a wonderful way of repeating a theme in the lower voice in the next bar. Spellbound is, for instance, a fine example of Rózsa's very, very great trademark. He writes a theme, and it immediately appears in another voice. His style lends itself perfectly to this kind of treatment and gives him a definable idiom of his own.

Tell me about your work with Miklós Rózsa.

Well, that goes back to when I started in this business. I was a young guy studying at Trinity College of Music in London. Muir Mathieson, the young music director at London Films, Alexander Korda's company, and I became acquainted. We were practically teenagers, and he said, "Why don't you come out to Denham and maybe do some work with us?". This was when Miklós Rózsa was just getting started, and he had done his first picture with Muir conducting it. So I hung around Denham for awhile and started working there, and my first credits evolved in British film.

The first time I met Rózsa was in my father's music room in Paris, and in Leipzig when Rózsa brought a score of his variations for my father to perform. My admiration and fondness for this man have gone undiminished. I've always felt that Rózsa's great techniques were something to emulate - something to strive for. When we were roommates and friends in London, I was the student and he was the master.

When the war broke out, Korda moved his whole studio to Hollywood; and Micky Rózsa and I started working at Korda, here on Las Palmas, at General Service. Rózsa is a brilliant musician; and, next to Bernard Hermann, I feel he is the most erudite of all the film composers. He is the only one with a style that can be recognized from a one or two bar phrase, as I pointed out earlier. Micky needed an orchestrator like he needed two heads, and I think this brings me to the point I really want to make. An orchestrator in Hollywood must be, above all, a loyal friend to his employer - the composer. More than musically, he must, be discreetly suggestive of everything and must be equivalently talented. Now, at the time and I'm going back 40 years, I was by no means an equivalent talent to Rózsa. I was not a Hugo Friedhofer nor a David Raksin. But he took me under his wing anyway - on pictures like THIEF OF BAGDAD, JUNGLE BOOK, LADY HAMILTON, SUNDOWN, LYDIA, etc.

A short time later, after serving a stint in the U.S. Army Ordinance, I was hired by Herb Stothart whose amanuensis I became. I worked on THE YEARLING, SEA OF GRASS, MRS. MINIVER, THREE MUSKETEERS (the Gene Kelly - Lana Turner version); and soon I was working for everyone at Metro - Johnny Green, George Bassman, Georgie Stoll, Roger Edens, Lennie Hayton and Adolph Deutsch. I did so many Esther Williams' pictures with water effects that I had bubbles coming out of my ears. When she swam under, over and around on the large screen in the recording stage, the musicians felt they got splashed with their Strads and Lorees and Selmers. That is how realistic the trills, glisses, tremolos, bell tree and cymbal splashes were - actually nothing more than show-off and bravado on my part. I kept trying to outdo myself with effects; and I am sure the composers saw through my little game, but liked what I wrote. The only time I struck out was when I put a bird whistle into a love sequence for Nat Finston, and a Piatti crash into a kissing climax for John Green. Both gave me the evil eye and taceted the offending percussion.

Johnny and I became inseparable when he became music head of MGM. There is barely a note that came out of his pencil that Connie Salinger or I did not orchestrate after sitting in his houses on Club drive, and later on Bedford, often 'til four in the morning. Many soufflés and lobster bisques and burgers were cooked by him in those late hours at the end of a hard night's work. So I was mainly a utility man in those days and did a lot of pictures - BRIGADOON, AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (reorchestrating Gershwin), THE YEARLING (reorchestrating Delius) THE THREE MUSKETEERS (reorchestrating Tchaikovsky). All of which raises another point - why in the heck do the Masters have to be reorchestrated? It's simply that the way a lot of original compositions are colored may not be suitable to the way it's going to be used in another situation, so it makes sense to thin it down or have a clarinet or some other instrument take the melodic line, because it's more effective for what's going on visually. As an example, there were problems in some of Gershwin's orchestrations of AN AMERICAN IN PARIS. John Green, who is certainly an expert said, "Albert, we can do it better." As you know, Gershwin orchestrated AN AMERICAN IN PARIS himself. Ferde Grofe, who had done his Concerto and the Rhapsody, thought it was gorgeous; but John said, "Let's take the massive brass out of here and do something more with the woodwinds. Where he writes for one clarinet, let's do it for all the woodwinds. Where he hasn't got the string line, let's put strings in here." It was done to help Gene Kelly's dancing, not out of musical megalomania. The same applied to Delius and Tchaikovsky mentioned earlier. Any reorchestration was done for the picture, its scenic requirements, its dramatic motivations.

So you would not say you improved on Gershwin?

Not at all. Furtwangler "Improved" on Beethoven, reorchestrating most of his symphonies. He put more horns in them, and added different sonorities. He strengthened things. Why did Ravel orchestrate Pictures at an Exhibition? Was Mussorgsky a rotten orchestrator? No. Mussorgsky's Russian style of orchestration was droll and heavy - Typically Russian - whereas Ravel's was more colorful and brilliant. But the point is - we "improved" on Gershwin only to adapt it more effectively to the film, not because we thought we could go one better than the original. I remember a problem we had in mixing styles when we did THE YEARLING, and somebody had the unbrilliant idea to use the Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Nights Dream scherzo when the little boy's asleep and dreams of deer jumping around through the forest. Now after nine reels of a Delius sound, all of a sudden in reel ten we are shocked into Midsummer Nights Dream, It's wrong, and everybody says, "What the heck is it doing there?". It was not MY choice, nor that of the music director, Herb Stothart. The director, Clarence Brown, may have said, "Why don't we put in the Mendelssohn?". And maybe the producer, Sidney Franklin, knew something of music, loved Delius, and said, "I want Delius. For whatever reason, we wound up with this bloody awful mixture, and that's how these things will happen. Composers usually have no real say about that sort of thing when it originates at that level.

What about the actual process of arranging a score; where does it all begin?

At the first screening and at any additional runnings, if necessary. After discussions with the producer and composer, he'll go off and write; and then we'll get together again. Maybe the composer might play me two themes, since it can be difficult for one man to pick which is the better theme, so I’ll sit down with him, and he’ll say, I’ll play you what I think is the right theme for this Scandinavian girl." He'll play me a melody slightly reminiscent of Grieg. Now he'll play another melody that has turgid romanticism in it, but completely alien, and I'll say "in my humble opinion, you might choose the first." It's very difficult advice to give, because if you give the wrong advice, you're not just hurting your friend, you're hurting yourself, for later he'll come to you and say, "That's the last time I’ll listen to you!". Rudolph Friml used to play me things by the hour, and ask my opinion on their worth, but when I'd tell him, "This is bad," he'd scream at me, "Who are you to tell me it's bad?" But nevertheless, he'd discard it. You see these are the things - the composer must trust a man who is his friend, who's loyal to him, and who has no hidden thoughts in the back of his mind. It's a matter of friendship, understanding and trust. But more than that even, he must be convinced the arranger/orchestrator knows what he is doing.

Supposing you were hired to orchestrate for a fellow named Richard Wagner, who had a thing called Die Meistersinger, and you said to him, "Hey, Richard, do you know these two themes can be played together?" And he says, "You don't say!" Then you say, "As a matter of fact, you could invent a third theme and use it in the overture for triple counter-point." And he'd say, "Gadzooks! What a great idea! When you orchestrate this, will you do that?" And you do it. Wagner of course, didn't need an orchestrator; and the triple counterpoint was his own. But today, we do this. We often look at two themes a fellow has - the bad man's theme - the good man's theme - the little boy and the dog theme - or the girl theme. "Did you know these themes are compatible because of their harmonic structures?" He says, "By God, they are! Maybe in this spot... maybe we could do two of them together. Try it!" And you do it. Now that's not orchestration, that's not arranging - that's composition, But you never superimpose your own personality. You just superimpose the techniques, the g-r-a-n-d technique of writing. So it's like golf - we must all be par breakers in this business. My dear, late, lamented friend, Gus Levine, was such a par breaker. Eddie Powell and Leo Shuken were the greatest par breakers in the film industry. Eddie Powell was brilliant with Alfred Newman, although Newman always knew what he wanted. I personally have worked for Newman and worked on several pictures like CAMELOT and NEVADA SMITH with him, and I was absolutely staggered by his four or five line sketches. He'd say, "I want the woodwinds to do this; I want the brass to be here. Don't double the horns and the trombones. Don't... " In other words, Newman was a very clever man and knew the bad effects of overlapping voicings. And, then again, I will sometimes get a sketch with a NO-LINE outline. We call those composers the "whistlers", and they shall remain nameless here.

A busy composer will get an assignment and the cue sheets, and might tell you, "These are the themes. Here is the A theme, the B theme, and the C theme. This is the D theme." Now you know: (1) These are the people in the action, so (2) You screen the picture, (3) You take the themes home, and (4) You write. You're not actually composing; yet, if you weren't a composer, you couldn't write nine bars. You're not employed merely because you know the range of the instruments or because you make the nicest water, bird or wind effects. As an example, let's say you are at the piano playing a composition you have just written. While you're playing it, I'm putting it down, Then you say, "Let's take paper and pencil and see if you've got my chords and harmonies and so forth." And I say, "I've already got it down."

As a case in point, I orchestrated PETER PAN in San Francisco, with Mary Martin, and was working for Trude Rittman, who was doing some background ballet arrangements. We had adjoining suites at the Clift Hotel in San Francisco, and I was waiting for her to finish a long ballet - the animal opening of Act II. We had a piano in each suite, and she was in hers writing background music for the ballet - the giraffe, the big bird, stuff like that. I was just too impatient to wait all day for Trude's work, so one day - and this is the absolute truth, for Trude will bear me out I sat next door (there was a thin door separating us) and wrote down what I heard her composing. It was easy as pie, and I wrote it down in a two-line sketch - the way a lot of composers do - and I started to orchestrate it into a full score. Just before dinner, Trude called me and said, "Albert, could you come over, please, and look at my sketch?". Of course I said yes and, taking my score with me, she noticed it and said, "What are you carrying under your arm?" I said, "Just a minute. Play me your sketch," and she played me what she had. With a smug face that only I can have because I'm that kind of a guy, I laid the score pages in front of her and said, "Here, Trude, it's all orchestrated. "She just said, "I don't believe it!" I said, "Check it over, there may be a bar too many, because you may have made a cut." I laid down the equivalent of 15 full score pages in front of Trude Rittman. Well, this story has gone around, believe me. She's told Frederick Lowe, who is a dear friend of hers; and she's told Dick Rodgers, as well, because when they met me later they both said, "You're the guy who orchestrates before you get a sketch!" We handed the score into Louis Adrian, the music director, just the way I had done it. Trude has told the story in the last 23 years to many people who, later when I met them, have said, "Aren't you the fellow who...?"

You mentioned you knew Erich Wolfgang Korngold well.

Yes, very well. I met him when I was a child, and he visited our house in Leipzig, Germany, where Dad was an opera conductor. When Dad premiered Korngold's opera Die tote Stadt (The Dead City) at the Leipzig Opera - I should mention that my father was a great conductor of symphony and opera - he was the Wagnerian conductor at the Chicago Opera, where I was born during the performance of Parsifal on Christmas night. Korngold always thought of me as Alfred's "little boy" and invited me to his house in Toluca Lake for Viennese goulash many times. He was a fabulous musician, a wonder child who gave recitals in Vienna at the age of nine, sitting on fat books to reach the keyboard. But to my chagrin, he never used me. He had the "dean" of orchestrators, Hugo Friedhofer - also Milan Roder and Bernard Kaun. I wasn't in a class with those heavy weights.

Those fellows had no problem translating Korngold's sketches into great music in ROBIN HOOD, THE SEA HAWK, and THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER. He must have made a great sketch.


I have seen his sketches, and they are brilliant. Just like Max Steiner's... Four lines. Winds at the top... then bass... even percussion and strings... treble and bass clef. Hell, today many libraries copy them and call them concert scores. As Shuken once said, "We are a dying breed. When copyists know how to do that, who needs us?"

You worked for Franz Waxman, also?


Only when Leonid Raab was at the race track or playing cards. I did LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON, but primarily arranged a tune Billy Wilder had brought back from Europe - "FASCINATION." Waxman, like many composers hated incorporating other people's song hits into his scores so he handed the whole caboodle over to us arrangers. Ditto with "SAYONARA" when Irving Berlin wrote the title song. Franz was very temperamental. On LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON, a gypsy band played - slow for Gary Cooper's seduction scenes - prestissimo for the fait accompli in the sack, which somehow the gypsies knew, behind closed doors. I made a bloody fortune on those fast czardas arrangements. It was the seductions that cost me, because we are paid by the page. "FASCINATION", in slow time! Franz had the mastery of writing slow things and would conduct them in an adagio molto, possibly the slowest tempo there is. That was Franz. He has written me some lovely little commendations on albums of his. One reads. "To my dear colleague, Albert Sendrey, who could even orchestrate a "FURTZ." (German slang for flatulation).

I often work for my dear friend, Gerald Fried. Gerald, who won an Emmy for ROOTS, is brilliant; but he gets in a time bind where he sometimes does two pictures at once. When he gives me something and gets it to the recording stage, I want him to be delighted with it. I don't want him to think, "That's pretty good." I want him to turn to me in the booth and say over the speaker, "Sendrey, it's great!" And then I want him to say later privately, "Damn it, those scenes you put in … those new lines... they were what I would have put in, had I had the time." This is what I call orchestrating with love, harmony and respect for a composer, with due respect for his ability and for his fine inspiration, by showing him a way where his music can be made to sound even better.

Well, when a client hires me today - and I've got many Oscar and Emmy winning clients - he will get better, not as good, but better than he wants. You learn how to be a par breaker. I will invent colors that they didn't think of. I will put in counterpoints from earlier themes of theirs that will fit against this theme, and they will say, "Oh, Al, I never thought of this." Now this isn't trying to be cocky or smart, Richard. It is merely showing that when a fellow has good equipment at his disposal after years of practice, he USES it.

Oh, hell, I am not infallible. Far from it. I have learned this through many mistakes of mine - many costly mistakes on pictures at MGM which cost $10 million (the pictures, not the goofs) in the old days. I have made errors of judgment for Herbert Stothart, who protected me; for Georgie Stoll, who protected me; and for Johnny Green, who was kind enough to protect me when he was musical director; not only musically but against personal executive attacks on me because of my extravagance in my disregard for budgets. Why not use the largest orchestra available on contract and a chorus of 80? On score paper, it looks no bigger than a more modest combination, but upstairs, in the executives' offices, only the bottom line counts. I did not know that or, rather, did not want to be bothered with it. Toscanini had a hundred men, so we'll have a hundred - especially when they want Delius and Tchaikovsky.

Did you make many mistakes and errors in judgment?

I had my share. Once, for Rosza, I wrote a low A on a bassoon part. He red-pencilled my score and wrote on it in huge letters, "Oh, Albert!!" Adolph Weiss, the bassoonist, had once told me how to get that low A, and I was prepared. I brought the inside of a roll of toilet paper to the session, stuck the tubular cardboard into Adolph's bell, and out came a low A. Cockily, I told Rosza, "Here's your low A." That, of course, is chutzpah - not musicianship.

Will many composers give you a free hand in composition?

To some extent. I recall two Elmer Bernstein scores - one a John Wayne epic, THE COMANCHEROS, and the other a Julie Andrews comedy, THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE. On both of these Elmer gave Leo, Jack Hayes and me about four reels each. We three blended our work in, so it sounded like one man's style and more important, it sounded like Bernstein. On MILLIE, that's a miracle, as Elmer was in New York at the time writing a Broadway musical, and phoned in his sketches, so to speak.

Can you recall any other adventures with some of the "big names"?

Dimitri Tiomkin! He once berated me quite severely because of a misunderstanding. I was lunching in the MGM Commissary with some colleagues and was remarking about having seen DUEL IN THE SUN last evening and sitting in the very first row. "I can't hear you fellows, I'm deaf!" They wanted to know why and I told them the shrill sound was too much for me from first row where I was obliged to sit. A beautiful score, but a lousy seat! Well, this got back to Mr. Tiomkin, as I found out the next day. I had been assigned the job of adapting the Debussy score for Portrait of Jennie. But when I saw Mr. Tiomkin the next day, he told me, in his inimitable accent, ''You say bad tings about Selznick picture. Better you not verk for Mr. Selznick. Tank you. Good bye." And that was the end of my association with PORTRAIT OF JENNIE and Dimi!

I remember when I was called in by Charles Chaplin around 1954 to work on LIMELIGHT. I went to his house on Summit Road. It was a beautiful home with a gorgeous old tennis court on which I played with him a few times, and with Gerald Fried since then. He read me the script, danced the ballet girl role, and played the whole thing for me, and then played the projected score on his violin. It was a fabulous, creative relationship. We worked on it for several weeks, and I wrote a lot of music down that he had written. However, I got a call from one of the heads of MGM that I should not continue this relationship, because the head of the studio didn't like the idea that an employee of MGM was working with Charles Chaplin. He was a "Communist", and I was made to stop. Twenty-two years later, this film was finally being shown publicly in America and Chaplin was up for an Academy Award, so the music head of the Academy called Chaplin in Switzerland and asked him for the name of the arranger of LIMELIGHT. Since Mr. Chaplin doesn't write, he gave the name of two gentlemen, since deceased, who wrote the music for and with him. The Oscar went to Chaplin and those two gentlemen for LIMELIGHT. I dare say I would have had this award as sure as the sun is shining. It was a political thing that cost me my one and only Academy Award.

Has there ever been an instance of men that absolutely will not entrust orchestrating to somebody else?

Bernard Hermann did all his own orchestrating, but such a thing is a rarity today. He did his own ... at all times... because he always asked of a producer, "I need three months for this score" or "I need two months." I don't believe he ever had an orchestrator. Bernie took the time contractually, but we don't get it, even our biggest boys - even our great, great guys - don't get it.

Did you ever meet Bernard Hermann?

Only for luncheon or at the gym, and he was a marvelous raconteur. He was extremely funny, in more ways than one. He scratched his head, picked his nose, and picked his ears; but that was Bernard Hermann. I was his greatest admirer, next to my friend Lyn Murray, who worked with him in New York at CBS.

Is the Bernard Hermann sound easy to come by?

No. First of all, it means that you have to be utterly conversant with every phase of classical writing and structure. You must know your orchestra. Bernie was able to build drama and leave air by not stuffing it full. He had a sparsity in his orchestral structure. Remember PSYCHO was scored for strings alone. Period.

Bernie Hermann was a wonderfully difficult man. He once ordered Darryl Zanuck off the stage. "Get out of here", he said, "Who the hell do you think you are?" Zanuck was only the head of the studio, so that endeared Bernie to many of us; but that trait also made him very difficult. He could do all the things that none of us dare to do today. Now there's a Bernard Hermann cult, as you know, and there is scarcely a dramatic thriller being done today where the producer does not want the "Bernard Hermann sound." When I did SOMEONE'S WATCHING with Lauren Hutton for Harry Sukman, that sound was very much in evidence. It was what too late to say, "So get Bernie Hermann!"

And John Morris did a nice Bernard Hermann takeoff in the score for HIGH ANXIETY.

That was a beautiful job. Johnny Williams just outdid all of us though with a 90-piece orchestra on DRACULA, and produced an absolutely brilliant sound. He may have been somewhat inspired by Bernie, but it was still a pure John Williams sound. Johnny distilled SUPERMAN and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS and all those things, and made a vampire picture that has them all beat. It's brilliantly orchestrated (Herbie Spencer) and magnificently recorded. Not just two basses the way we do, but a lot of basses - two or three tubas, four or five trombones, the low horns - and it sits there like a huge, black spider on the screen. Now on top, where we use the 12 violins we're given by our budget people, he used the entire London Symphony. Then when the piccolos go with all those strings and the moog creeps in, you're absolutely shivering in your seat.

What about the use of synthesizers today?

Synthesizers, used properly, are really a marvellous contribution to the music of today. With all the electric instruments at our disposal, moogs, etc., I believe that even a gardener might become a good orchestrator. All he has to do when a fellow hands him a sketch is say, "Wouldn't this be good for an Arp, and wouldn't this be good for a CS-80, and wouldn't this be good for..." and so on. But I'll tell you that there are moog players and there are moog players. It still takes somebody who's got imagination and knows how to tune and get the maximum color out of the machine. We don't know how to tune it, so we're at the mercy of the fellow playing on the stage. I've been on many stages where the poor fellow didn't know how to tune his instrument.

Properly played, there are some sounds on the moog that are so exiting your hair will stand on end; yet there are other sounds that are terribly dull. When the man on the stage doesn't know how to produce it, you'll stand by him with a big 40 piece orchestra just sitting while you explain to him that you want a bit more reverberation... you want the sawtooth... you want the oscillator. And he says, "Which one?" He gives you the wrong one, so you're spending eight expensive minutes with him patching his switchboard.

All of which brings me to one code of mine. The orchestrator must be as good as the man employing him. The faculty of making something from a sketch belongs to the man who has an element of culture and innate taste. Orchestration is taste. It's the sum of all cultures from Berlioz through Prokofiev, Mozart to Stockhausen. Study them all... Then become an orchestrator. Not before. I studied with Toch once and quit when he said that Mozart was all there was in music. Well, I have been very busy all these years. I've never gone into another business like real estate, never had to teach tennis for a living. I've always been working... every year... which means that we orchestrators aren't extinct, "like dinosaurs", as Leo Shuken used to say.

Extinct? Hardly! Just after we finished our chat, Al informed me that he would be off to London for a performance of his Third Symphony with the London Youth Symphony Orchestra.