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Juan Quintero Muñoz

Julio Arce

Juan Quintero: The History of Sound in Spanish Cinema by Julio Arce

Originally published in Clásicos del Cine Español, vol. 1. Juan Quintero, Madrid, Iberoautor, 2000

Transcribed
 text reproduced by kind permission of Julio Arce UCM

In one of the latest publications on Spanish cinema - written by Román Gubern, José Enrique Monterde, Julio Pérez Perucha, Esteve Riambau and Casimiro Torreiro, and entitled Historia del cine español, Madrid, Cátedra, 1995-, which aims to offer an organic and comprehensive historical vision to cover the gaps and historiographical deficiencies of our cinema, we find the absence of any reference, however small, to Spanish film composers. This oversight is not justified by the poor quality of Spanish film music, or by the carelessness of its directors; both in past eras and in recent years, we find examples of filmmakers who have shown great interest in film scoring. Without the presence of composers such as Juan Quintero, Manuel Parada, Jesús García-Leoz, Isidro B. Maiztegui, Carmelo Alonso Bernaola or José Nieto, to name but a few, any historical approach, however well done, becomes a 'dull and incomplete history of Spanish cinema'.

The contribution of Spanish film composers has not been fairly valued, neither in the world of filmmaking nor in the field of musical research; the lack of interest shown in musicians and their soundtracks is reflected in the scarcity of recordings, monographs and specific studies on their works and artistic paths. Moreover, most of the published works lack the necessary scientific rigour, so that the analysis and evaluation of the soundtrack in Spain from the perspective of musical techniques and their relationship with the image is still, one hundred years after the invention of cinema, a pending task for Spanish film and music historiography.

Film music of the 1940s


It is not too doubtful to say that the best thing about Spanish cinema in the 1940s is its music. Post-war cinema was influenced by the political situation resulting from the civil war; the possibilities for creating quality cinema were diminished by the weakness of the industry, the censorship restrictions on the exhibition of foreign films and the choice of themes and scripts, which reflected the principles and doctrinal interests of the Franco regime. However, Spanish film music of those years, immersed in cardboard historical dramas or 'white telephone' comedies that had little to do with Spanish social reality, reveals the mastery of our composers and shows a level comparable to that of France, Italy or the United States.

The inescapable separation, organization or categorization into genres, styles, trends, etc., imposed by our culture, has taken the soundtracks of the forties as paradigms of cinematographic musical creation. Musicians such as Max Steiner, Alfred Newman or Erich Wolfgang Korngold laid the foundations for the aesthetic definition of a new genre. However, it should not be forgotten that music is introduced into cinema to perform expressive and structural functions, submitting itself to the rest of the audiovisual discourse. Cinema is also an industry, so artistic creation, whether visual, literary or musical, must be analysed from new perspectives and not from the postulates of traditional art history.

When composers in the American industry were faced with the task of creating music for the screen, they consciously chose a language that was conservative and directly related to the music of the last half of the nineteenth century. Roy M. Prendergast argues that the relationships between music and image in film are similar to those which Wagner, Verdi or Puccini had to resolve in their melodramas. These musicians did not make use of the latest expressive trends but opted for solutions that had been proposed many years before by opera and the symphonic poem. Cinema, despite being a new form of artistic communication, was also an industry and music was part of the final part of film production; those musical codes that could be understood from the symphonic and operatic tradition were sought in order for the soundtrack to be effective, above and beyond its artistic quality in the context of contemporary musical creation.

Cinema in Spain sought from its beginnings a link with the national lyric tradition, fundamentally through ‘zarzuela’, but not with the intention of creating a specific film music based on the techniques and style of dramatic music. Film music was limited to the direct adaptation of lyric theatre works for the screen. Our cinematic history is replete with adaptations of zarzuelas in which the music is simply transferred from the pit to the soundtrack.

In Spain, Juan Quintero, Manuel Parada and Jesús García-Leoz were the most characteristic musicians of post-war cinema. Between the three of them, they produced most of the soundtracks, some of which are surprising for their quality and spectacular nature. The structure of national production during these years sought to emulate the achievements of the American industry and to contribute to the control and propaganda of a regime with a nationalist and reactionary ideology. But if, in terms of content, the cinema was characterised by the choice of themes filtered through the ideological sieve of Francoism -such as historical dramas-, the music adopted the international language initiated by the composers of the American industry. Spanish post-war musicians did not contribute novel or surprising solutions, nor did they create a specific language for Spanish cinema. They followed the guidelines initiated by the Hollywood masters with great skill and achieved an effective music that enriches the images and brings new meanings.

Juan Quintero: Biographical notes

Juan Quintero Muñoz was born in the Spanish territory of Ceuta on 29 June 1903. His parents were Francisco Quintero, a civil servant in the Post and Telegraph Corps, and Francisca Muñoz, both born in the Cadiz town of San Roque. His birth in the African city was a circumstantial event, as the family was in Ceuta for work reasons. Three months later, they returned to San Roque, where he spent his childhood years and showed an early inclination towards music. At the age of six, by his father's decision, he began to take music theory and piano lessons with a private teacher. Again for work reasons he moved with his family to Madrid when only nine years old. In this city he continued his musical training and later developed his artistic and professional activity.


Juan Quintero demonstrated his musical vocation and qualities from an early age. There were no members of the family who were professionally dedicated to music; however, his father was an amateur guitarist who knew how to redirect the child's playful interest in music towards study, despite the fact that he wanted his son to become a civil servant. His older brother, Manuel, gave him a magnificent piano, which he paid for in installments with great sacrifice. When he was only nine years old, he was already playing small classical pieces. Around this time he joined the Gregorian Chapel in Madrid as a choirboy, directed by maestro Pardo. At the age of eleven he composed a ‘cuplé’ entitled El monoplano, with lyrics by a friend of his brother's, which was published and premiered at the cabaret Ideal-Rosales; three months after its premiere the little musician received his first royalty payment of ten pesetas and eighty-three cents.

In 1915 he entered the Royal Conservatory of Music in Madrid. He was taught solfège by Dolores Salvador, piano by Sofía Salgado and, when he moved on to the higher grade, by Joaquín Larregla. He studied harmony with Abelardo Bretón and composition with Amadeo Vives. He also studied violin with Julio Francés. He finished his degree in 1925 and was awarded an extraordinary prize for piano. His Scherzo, consisting of two etchings on themes from Richard Wagner's Ring Tetralogy, was also awarded first prize in a composition competition at the conservatory in Madrid donated by the Círculo de Bellas Artes.


Initially, between the end of his studies at the conservatory and the end of the Civil War, Juan Quintero devoted himself mainly to performance; as was usual at that time, there was no strict limit on repertoire among performers, so that a pianist could give recitals of classical works and other occasions light music. He began to fill in as a violinist in the orchestras of several Madrid theatres. As a concert pianist he gave recitals in Madrid and on tours around Spain. He also accompanied the Russian violinist Miltems and the Hungarian cellist Faldhesy and was a member of the chamber group Doble Quinteto Español. The tango fever of the 1920s made Argentine tenors like Spaventa, whom Juan Quintero used to accompany in his recitals in Spain, very popular. He also accompanied Celia Gámez on one of her first visits to Spain.

In the early 1930s he composed, together with the violinist and composer Jesús Fernández Lorenzo, one of his best-known works, the pasodoble torero En er mundo, which was created for a black saxophonist called Aquilino who was then a hit in Madrid. In 1932 he composed Morucha, another of his most popular songs. The lyrics were composed by the Aragonese tenor Juan García, whom Maestro Quintero used to accompany in his recitals. It was premiered on Sábado de Gloria in 1933 at the Rialto cinema in Madrid as the fin de fiesta after the premiere of the film EL DANUBIO AZUL. During this period he composed other songs, tangos and pasodobles such as Desencanto, Ojitos de luto, A mi madre, Talento, Frenazo, Abisinia, etc.

When the war broke out, he had to combine his work as a piano accompanist and violinist in the orchestra of the Capitol cinema and the Alcalá theatre with his military duties. Although he was not sent to the front, he was mobilised and carried out administrative work for the Republican army in a barracks in Madrid. There he met Colonel Cárdenas, a great music lover, who helped him through difficult times and encouraged him to continue composing. In 1938 he married Paquita Martos. When the war ended, he began what we could call his mature phase, characterised firstly by his successful incursions into musical comedy and then by his involvement in the field of film music.

On 14 March 1941 the 'zarzuela cómica moderna en dos actos' entitled Yola, which was composed for Celia Gámez, premiered at the Teatro Eslava. It was her librettists, José Luis Sáenz de Heredia and Federico Vázquez Ochando, who offered the young maestro the composition of the musical numbers. Following its success - more than three thousand performances were given in Spain alone - he composed the music for another of Celia Gámez's musical comedies, Si Fausto fuera Faustina. Years later she premiered in Valencia the musical comedy Ayer estrené vergüenza, and a few days later - on 22 May 1946 - she premiered at the Teatro de la Zarzuela Matrimonio a plazos, a musical comedy written by Leandro Navarro and Jesús María Arozamena. All these works had common characteristics; As the critic of the Valencia newspaper Las Provincias recounted on the occasion of the premiere of Ayer estrené vergüenza, they were shows presented with "ornate effects, striking scenery, succinct costumes, pleasantly undressed actresses, a great variety of scenes, brevity (and this is essential for the audience to be without fatigue and with their attention always awake), romanzas with heartfelt sentimentality, and a great deal of humour, dances with bandoneon, or whatever they call it, and with syncopated rhythms, according to the American recipe, and a constant coming and going of characters, of very varied costumes, of parades of nice and very pretty girls, with tiples-vedettes, and tiples cantoras; because there are vedettes, even in the orchestra we see it, not the violin concertino, nor the cello, but the 'jazz' on a separate stage to play its instruments in competition with the other noble instruments”. (A tiple is a plucked-string chordophone of the guitar family.)

Despite the success obtained with these works, Juan Quintero left behind composing for the lyric theatre and opted for the cinema, as he considered that the cinema offered new possibilities while musical comedy was a genre in decline. His beginnings in the cinema were fortuitous; Juan Quintero lived in Lope de Rueda Street in the same building as the actress Guadalupe Muñoz Sampedro, who was part of the Beatriz theatre company. It was at this lady's house that he met the actor Juan de Orduña. There, the man who would later become one of the most representative directors of post-war Spanish cinema, listened to the maestro Quintero perform on the piano a piece composed during the war years and entitled Suite Granadina. Juan de Orduña was so impressed that he proposed to the musician to make a documentary about Granada based on his music. The work was orchestrated and the documentary, which was titled the same as the musical work, was structured on the basis of the score; the final bulería was accompanied by a dance performed by Mari Paz. From this moment on, her dedication to film music was constant.

The first score he composed expressly for the cinema was the one that accompanied the short film by Carlos Arévalo entitled YA VIENE EL CORTEJO  (1939), based on the poem by Rubén Darío. It was Juan de Orduña, who recited the poem and who provided him with the work. Already in his first involvement as a film composer, he demonstrated his talent for visual description, which Méndez-Leite described as “a marvellous score that underlined the heroic symbolism of the images”. In 1940 he participated, together with the maestro Ruiz de Azagra, in the music for the film LA GITANILLA, directed by Fernando Delgado. Months later he composed alone the music for LA FLORISTA DE LA REINA, a film directed by Eusebio Fernández Ardavín and released on 9 January 1941. In the biographical sketch that Mariano Sanz de Pedre made in 1955, he mentions LA FLORISTA DE LA REINA as the first fiction film in his catalogue. It is possible that it was written before LA GITANILLA, or that the author himself did not consider his collaboration with Ruiz de Azagra to be relevant.

The film career of Quintero is linked to the director Juan de Orduña. We have already mentioned that the former Spanish silent film star used his music as the basis for the documentary SUITE GRANADINA. In his first feature film - PORQUE TE VI LLORAR (1941) - he turned to his friend for the musical episodes. Orduña's triumphs as a director went hand in hand with Quintero's recognition as a film composer. In 1946 he received the award for best composer from the Círculo de Escritores Cinematográficos for the films LA PRÓDIGA, by Rafael Gil and UN DRAMA NUEVO, by Juan de Orduña. Two years later he received an award for the music of LOCURA DE AMOR, at the Huelva Hispano-American Film Competition.

Juan Quintero made more than a hundred films from 1940 until he abandoned film composition in the mid-1960s. He worked with the most representative directors of the time, Eusebio Fernández Ardavín, Juan de Orduña, Rafael Gil, Ladislao Vajda, Luis Lucia, José Luis Sáenz de Heredia, Ramón Torrado, etc. He worked on films of different genres that required a specific musical treatment: historical narratives such as LOCURA DE AMOR, AGUSTINA DE ARAGÓN, ALBA DE AMÉRICA or PEQUEÑECES, comedies such as ELLA, ÉL Y SUS MILLONES or ELOÍSA ESTÁ DEBAJO DE UN ALMENDRO and also films with a folk setting such as CURRITO DE LA CRUZ or LA HERMANA SAN Sulpicio.

If the film music made in Spain was modelled on American composition, the organisational functioning differed considerably, as in our country there were no musical departments or a group of musicians who divided up the different functions necessary for the production of the soundtrack (composition, orchestration, direction and recording). Juan Quintero was in charge of practically the entire process, working under conditions that today, in view of the latest technical advances, could be described as artisan. He himself was in charge of the composition and orchestration, the hiring of the musicians and the direction. Unlike the American studios, where musicians were generally employed exclusively by the studios, Spanish composers worked independently for different film companies.

In spite of the limitations of the Spanish film industry, the results were surprising and the confirmation of this fact is perfectly reflected in the works on the disc Clásicos del Cine Español, vol. 1. Juan Quintero (Madrid, Iberoautor, 2000) in which we can hear, in very superior technical conditions, the mastery and genius of Juan Quintero's music.

In 1952, after several years as an advisor to the Sociedad General de Autores, he was appointed Head of the Film Section after the death of José Forns. At the end of the 1950s he reduced his involvement in cinema and devoted himself to administrative work. He definitively abandoned film composition at the end of the 1960s; Cinema had moved on and the aesthetics of the post-war blockbusters were abandoned; symphonic music virtually disappeared from the screen and was replaced by the modern rhythms of pop and jazz. His health had deteriorated and deafness hindered his compositional work. Juan Quintero died in Madrid on 26 January 1980, leaving behind him more than a hundred films and the memory of a man who channelled his creativity into the difficult field of composing for the image without worrying that his audience did not know the name of the composer who had moved them.


The film music of Juan Quintero

The soundtracks on which this recording has been made constitute a selection and a sample of his most relevant works. Through them we will try to identify the most outstanding qualities of a musician practically unknown or ignored until now by the musicological discipline and by the reflection on the cinematographic fact. This album therefore has a vindicating character. We could question whether it makes sense to present music far removed from the image for which it was conceived, but in this case the music has value in itself. Many of the films in which Juan Quintero took part have been later reviled by the critics, considering that they belonged to a reactionary cinema with propaganda purposes for the Franco regime; however, we have already pointed out that the music is probably the best of the Spanish cinema of the forties. It is important, therefore, to make known the forgotten stars of the post-war musical creation; it is vital to rescue the work of this composer and others like Manuel Parada or Jesús García-Leoz because they reached, in adverse situations, the mastery in the field of music for the cinema. Without images his music has a memorative value; perhaps it helps us to reread the cinematographic text to discover the subtle and masterly links that were drawn between the screen and speakers in the room. Juan Quintero composed freely despite the limitations of industry and technique. And it is possible that if the political and economic conditions had given rise to another cinema, the value of his music would still be the same. 


We will distinguish two levels for an analytical approach to the music of maestro Quintero. Both have to do with their purpose in the dramatic development. In the first place, a structural level that is related to the discursive continuity, time factor and the fact of montage as an element of cinematographic construction. At this level, music has been articulated in different ways, supporting, altering or reinforcing the narrative discourse. Juan Quintero uses what we can call a classical scheme for organising the musical material. All his films open with a musical segment to accompany the credits, with a purpose very similar to that of overtures in lyric theatre or symphonies at the beginning of theatrical performances. But although it appears at the beginning of the film, it was the last segment to be composed, as it was made from the most important fragments chracterstic of the segments inserted in the dramatic development. The 'overture' of the film, which announces and predisposes to the understanding of the film, is not written in the score but is assembled at the time of the recording from segments or fragments destined to specific scenes. 

A fact that we must take into account in Juan Quintero's work is the large percentage of music contained in the films. This issue is also the director's responsibility, as well as the selection of the sequences to be highlighted. The music is present in complete sequences and, in many cases, these are linked together and juxtaposed with musical segments that are diverse in their character and significance. In this linking process abrupt cuts occur, if required by dramatic development, or links through the union by means of a musical element. One of the transitional resources most used by Juan Quintero is the harp glissando.


Within each sequence, the music is usually articulated by means of a well-defined melody in its contours, participating in a conservative tonal language. The melodies have, mostly, a considerable extension and are structured in a traditional way in parts, giving place to repetitions and refusing motivational play. The texture is, most of the time, diaphanous, limiting contrapuntal interplay and based on the presence of a main melody underlined by chords. Let us remember that Juan Quintero was a pianist and his works were conceived on this instrument and then orchestrated, so the texture derives from the extension to the orchestra from a pianistic conception.

Each musical segment is generally identified by a sequence and is articulated through a melody that tries to capture the expressive content of the image. In the moments required by the dramatic narration, typical synchronization effects occur between the image and music that constitutes one of the defining characteristics of film music.

On a second level, we will analyse the expressive functions that music brings to the images. First, we must reflect on the use of the orchestra as a musical 'instrument' or, rather, as the expressive vehicle on which all of Juan Quintero's music - and that of most European and North American film composers during the forties and fifties - is based. In a certain sense, the symphony orchestra went directly from the theatre to the cinema in the same way that the cinema was gradually introduced into theatres. The orchestra served as a link between the tradition of the theatrical show and the new film genre. The expressive resources of the lyric theatre were used by film composers to facilitate the understanding of the new audiovisual language. But there are other reasons that we can define as symbolic: the composition for symphonic orchestra gives cinema a quality that relates it to art more than entertainment shows.

The added value that music brings to the image can be realized in different ways. One example is the identification between a character, an idea or any other dramatic-visual element and a musical sequence through a process of symbolization. We are talking about the hackneyed 'leitmotiv', so often used to define the essence of cinematographic music and reviled by those who believe that it has no sense outside the dimensions of Wagnerian drama. However, it is a fact that both Juan Quintero and most of the composers of the forties used 'themes', or, 'leitmotifs' for structural and expressive purposes. If we look at the central theme of LOCURA DE AMOR, narratively linked to the character of Queen Juana, we can see that a synaesthetic relationship is established between the musical component and the character characterization. The melody, in G minor, begins with a ninth chord; the melodic and expressive peak coincides with the dissonant note and the motive is resolved with a melodic descent with chromaticisms; to this must be added that the melody is placed in an extreme register. This melodic theme on its own does not define or bring any meaning, because it must be placed in a communicative context and it has to hold on to codes created over the years. In this way, the melody, together with the character embodied by Aurora Bautista, perfectly expresses the estrangement from reality, the boundary between sanity and madness, and the weakness and insecurity that is perfectly defined by the chromaticism.

On other occasions, the theme assigned to a character provides added value due to its identification with a historical period or culture. This is the case of the musical sequence that accompanies the death scene of Isabel la Católica in LOCURA DE AMOR, as it presents characteristic features of classical polyphony; in the same film, the Moorish princess is accompanied by a naïve melody that we immediately recognize as Arabic. The instruments also help in the identification of dramatic elements: military scenes are accompanied by trumpets and other wind instruments; a hunt will be inescapably underscored by the sound of horns.

Dramatic intensification is also achieved through synchronicity effects between music and image. Unexpected notes in fortissimo in the brass serve to focus attention on a specific dramatic episode. Juan Quintero uses the catalogue of effects that the most relevant composers have been elaborating since the beginning of sound cinema. The assignment of the music to the images is done, in short, following a comprehensible code of signs that seeks the quick identification of the viewer, in a popular cinema that wants to indoctrinate the masses more than to stir their consciences.

A good film composer is one who knows and masters the symbolic relationships between music and image. His music does not necessarily have to be innovative but effective. Juan Quintero is one of our most important film musicians, not only for the volume of his production, but also for the quality and effectiveness of his music.

Charles Gerhardt & Classic Film Scores

by Pascal Dupont • 10 May, 2024
Charles Allan Gerhardt English version adapted by Doug Raynes - FRENCH VERSION AND COLLECTION had a reputation as a great conductor, record producer and musical arranger. His major work at RCA on the Classic Film Scores series earned him recognition from film music devotees of Hollywood’s Golden Age, as well as other renowned conductors of his day. Born on February 6, 1927 in Detroit, Michigan, Charles Gerhardt developed a passion for music and percussion instruments from an early age. At the age of five, he took piano lessons, and by the age of nine, had established a solid reputation as an orchestrator and composer. He spent his early school years in Little Rock, Arkansas, then after 10 years, having completed his schooling, moved with his family to Illinois for his military duties, he served in the U.S. Navy during World War II as a chaplain's aide in the Aleutian Islands, then became an active member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. He went on to study at the University of Illinois, at the College of William and Mary, and later at the University of Southern California. Throughout his time at school Gerhardt was attracted not only to music, but also to the sciences. Passionate about the art of recording, he joined Westminster Records for five years, until the company ceased operations, and then joined Bell Sound. One day, he received a phone call from George Marek to meet with the heads of Reader's Digest, to discuss producing recordings for their mail-order record business; a contact that was to secure his musical future and a rich career spanning more than 30 years. Gerhardt's first job for Reader's Digest was to produce a record; “A Festival of Light Classical Music”; a 12 LP box set that he produced in full. One of Gerhardt's finest projects was the production of another 12 LP box set, “Les Trésores de la Grande Musique (Treasury of Great Music)”, featuring the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by some of the leading figures of the day: Charles Munch to Bizet and Tchaikovsky, Rudolf Kempe to Strauss and Respighi, Josef Krips to Mozart and Haydn, Antal Dorati to Strauss and Berlioz, Brahms 4th Symphony by Fritz Reiner and Sibelius’ 2nd Symphony by Sir John Barbirolli. In the 1950s he conducted works by Vladimir Horowitz, Wanda Landowska, Kirsten Flagstad and William Kapeli. In the early 1960s, Gerhardt lived in England, where he made most of his recordings, but kept a foothold in the United States, mainly in New York. Often, when he went to the United States after a period of recording sessions, he would stop off in Baltimore and spend some time listening to cassettes of his new recordings. Gerhardt loved percussion instruments, especially tam-tams. One of his favorite recordings was the Columbia mono disc of Scriabin's Poem of Ecstasy, with Dimitri Mitropoulos and the New York Philharmonic. He had great admiration and respect for the many conductors he worked with, starting with Arturo Toscanini, with whom he worked for several years before the Maestro's death. It was Toscanini who suggested that Gerhardt become a conductor, which he did! His career as an orchestra director began when he had to replace a conductor who failed to show up for rehearsals. It was a position he would later occupy for various recording sessions and occasional concerts. His classical recordings include works by Richard Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Ravel, Debussy, Walton and Howard Hanson. Hired by RCA Records, he transferred 78 rpm recordings of Enrico Caruso and other artists to 33 rpm. He took part in recordings by soprano singer Kirsten Flagstad and pianist Vladimir Horowitz. He worked with renowned conductors such as Fritz Reiner, Leopold Stokowski and Charles Munch, from whom he learned the tricks of the trade. Still at RCA, he assisted Arturo Toscanini, with whom he perfected his conducting skills. Then, in 1960, he produced recordings for RCA and Reader’s Digest in London, and joined forces with sound engineer Kenneth Wilkinson of Decca Records (RCA's European subsidiary), The two men got on very well and shared a passion for recording and sound quality, making an incredible number of recordings over a 30-year period. Also in 1960, RCA and Reader's Digest entrusted him with the production of a 12-disc LP box set entitled “ Lumière du Classique (A Festival of Light Classical Music) ”, sold exclusively by mail order. With a budget of $250,000, Gerhardt assumed total control of the project: repertoire, choice of orchestras and production. He recorded in London, Vienna and Paris, and hired such top names as Sir Adrian Boult, Massimo Freccia, Sir Alexander Gibson and René Leibowitz. The success of this project, in terms of both musical quality and sound, earned him recognition from his employers. Other projects of similar scope followed… A boxed set of Beethoven's symphonic works with René Leibowitz and The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. A boxed set of Rachmaninoff's works for piano and orchestra with Earl Wild, Jascha Horenstein and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the above mentioned 12 LP disc set “Trésor de la Grande Musique (Treasury of Great Music)” with the Royal Philharmonic conducted by some of the greatest directors of the time: Fritz Reiner, Charles Munch, Rudolf Kempe, Sir John Barbirolli, Sir Malcolm Sargent, Antal Dorati and Jascha Horenstein, with whom Gerhardt had sympathized. In January 1964 in London, Gerhardt joined forces with Sidney Sax, instrumentalist and conductor, to form a freelance orchestra. This successful group went on to join the National Philharmonic Orchestra of London, an impressive line-up that would later become Jerry Goldsmith's orchestra of choice. With Peter Munves, head of RCA's classical division, he conceived the idea of recording an album devoted exclusively to the film music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, one of his favorite composers. Enthusiastic about the project, Munves gave Gerhardt carte blanche, and was offered a helping hand by George Korngold, producer and son of the famous Viennese composer, who owned all the copies of his father's scores. The Adventure Began : The Sea Hawk: Classic Film Scores of Erich Wolfgang Korngold. For this first disc, Gerhardt selected 10 scores by Korngold, which he recorded in the Kingsway Hall Studio in London, renowned for its excellent acoustics. The disc thus benefits from optimal recording conditions, favoring at the same time the performances of the National Philharmonic (and its leader, Sidney Sax), a formidable orchestra made up of London's finest musicians and freelance soloists. Each album was recorded in the same studio, with Kenneth Wilkinson as sound engineer and George Korngold as consultant/producer. As soon as it was released, the album's success received strong acclaim in classical music circles and received a feature in Billboard No. 37, a first in this category in December 1972. It took no less than a year to sell the first 10,000 copies in all the specialist record suppliers and the album went on to sell over 38,000 copies, making it the fifth best-selling album in the “classical” category in 1973. On the strength of this success, Peter Munves and RCA entrusted Charles Gerhardt with the production of further discs devoted to other world-renowned composers of Hollywood music. The program includes several albums dedicated to Max Steiner and Erich Wolfgang Korngold plus one each to Miklos Rozsa, Franz Waxman, Dimitri Tiomkin and Bernard Herrmann, followed by 3 volumes associated with specific film stars such as Bette Davis, Errol Flynn and Humphrey Bogart. Then, a disc devoted to Alfred Newman, a composer who was a pillar of the famous Hollywood sound, who Gerhardt admired and had met: “Newman was a charming man, full of good humor. He was friendly, fun and always had a joke. With his eternal black cigar in hand, he was a composer by trade, down-to-earth, discussed little about himself but was a first-rate advisor in my life. “ Gerhardt would consult certain composers in advance about how to recreate suites from their works, or when this wasn't possible, he would rearrange the suites himself and submit them to the composers for approval. "Some critics complained that my suites were too short, but my aim in the case of each album was to present a well-split 'portrait' of the composer, highlighting his many creative facets". Although Korngold, Newman and Steiner were no longer around to lend their support, Gerhardt was lucky enough to still work with Herrmann, Rózsa and Tiomkin as consultants who turned up at the recording studio to lend a hand. Gerhardt also had the idea of creating albums focusing on a single film star. Three specific volumes were devoted to music from the films of Humphrey Bogart, Errol Flynn and Bette Davis. Although these albums suffer from too great a diversity of genres, they still offer the chance to hear and discover rare and previously unpublished compositions. The best conceived album was arguably the one devoted to Bette Davis. Conscious of the important role played by music in her films, the legendary actress took part in the conception of the album, knowing that it favored scores by Max Steiner designed for Warner Bros. The Collection Begins ! Gerhardt's passion for certain composers knows no bounds, but he soon envisages a disc devoted to Miklos Rozsa, including suites for “Spellbound” and “The Red House”, one of his favorite scores, which he will exhume to create one of the longest suites in the series. At the same time, he received various fan wish lists and films to watch, such as “The Four Feathers”, which he had never seen and which gave him the opportunity to discover a splendid score by Miklos Rozsa that he had never heard before. He was disappointed, however, not to be able to conceive a longer “Spellbound” sequel for rights reasons. Despite RCA's full approval, Gerhardt realized that it was not easy to record film music in its original form, as few were ever edited, played and made available for rental. For The Sea Hawks album, things were simpler, as Georges Korngold had copies of his father's scores, and Warner Bros had also archived material in good condition. From the outset, Gerhardt encountered other major problems in the search for and discovery of scores hidden away in other studios, often with the unpleasant surprise of discovering missing or incomplete conductors, or others heavily modified by orchestrators during recording sessions, or the surprise of discovering, in certain cases, instrumentation information noted in shorthand on the edges of the conductor score. For the disc dedicated to Max Steiner, for example, the conductor score for “King Kong” had disappeared from the RKO archives, having been shipped in 1950 to poorly maintained warehouses in Los Angeles where it had become totally degraded and illegible. With the help of Georges Korngold, Gerhardt was able to reconstruct a substantial suite from the piano models left by Steiner at the time. This experience was repeated when the conductor score for Dimitri Tiomkin's “The Thing” was discovered in the same warehouse, in an advanced state of disintegration. Fortunately for Gerhardt, Tiomkin, who was still alive, had been able to provide precise piano maquettes with orchestration information in shorthand, revealing a complex and highly innovative style of writing. Tiomkin always composed at the piano, inscribing very specific information and signs on the edges of the scores in pencil, an ingenious system of his own invention that was difficult to decipher. “Revisiting the score of ‘The Thing from Another World’ was a complex task, involving experimental passages and an unorthodox orchestra. You can understand that I had a huge job on my hands. When I approached the recording sessions, it was not without some trepidation. However, the composer present made no criticism or comment on my work, and was delighted. He was delighted.” For “Gone With The Wind”, Steiner was against the idea of remaking a complete soundtrack, as he felt that too many passages were repeated. It was an opportunity for him to revisit his own score, integrating his favorite melodies. This synthesis gave him the opportunity to revitalize his music by eliminating the least interesting parts of the score. Conceived as long suites or isolated themes, the discs reflect the essence of the composers' work. The “Classic Film Scores” series by Franz Waxman, Bernard Herrmann and Miklos Rozsa etc will become a big hit with collectors. For Gerhardt, this will be an opportunity to unearth forgotten or rare scores such as Herrmann's “The White Witch” and “On a Dangerous Ground”, Hugo Friedhofer's “The Sun Also Rises” and early recordings for Waxman's “Prince Valliant” and Rozsa's “The Red House”, all with new, impeccable acoustics. For “Elisabeth and Essex”, Erich Korngold had already prepared a suite in the form of an Overture, which was given its world premiere in a theater. The suite for “The Adventures of Robin Hood” also pre-existed. Franz Waxman created his own suite for “A Place in the Sun”, which was also performed in concert. Dimitri Tiomkin, Miklos Rozsa and Bernard Herrmann acted as consultants and contributed arrangements to their scores. For the continuation of “White Witch Doctor”, Bernard Herrman added percussion to link the different musical tableaux. He did the same for the different parts of “Citizen Kane”. Miklos Rozsa saw an opportunity to add a male choir to the suite from “The Jungle Book”, based on an idea by Charles Gerhardt. For the record dedicated to Errol Flynn, Gerhardt re-orchestrated the theme “The Lights of Paris” from Hugo Friedhofer's “The Sun also Rises”, as the original was no longer available. “I wanted to go back to that time and systematically explore the very substance of the great film scores of the late 30s and 40s, sending them back directly to their images as dramatic entities. The desire to rediscover tunes we know and to take into account the contexts in which they were originally used. I decided to recreate these scores with their original orchestrations, and this could only be done by returning to the ultimate sources, as the composers had originally conceived them.” Keen to open up the collection to other genres, such as science fiction, Gerhardt dedicated two further albums to the series in 1992. The first featured contemporary sequels to “Star Wars” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, promoting the work of John Williams, a leading composer of new film music. Then another called “The Spectacular World of Classic Film Scores”, presenting a disappointing compilation of scores that had already been recorded, except for the creation of a sequel to Dimitri Tiomkin's “The Thing From Another World” and Daniele Amfitheatrof's rarely heard theme “Dance of the Seven Voiles” from Salome. In 1978, the collection was published in Spain by RCA Cinema Treasures. In the USA and Europe, the Classic Film Scores LP series was reissued in the early 80s with a black art deco cover and colored star index. All Volumes in the First Series Were Reissued : By the end of the '80s, the series was running out of steam, and Charles Gerhardt planned to relaunch his collection with albums dedicated to famous American actresses, a new volume for Max Steiner and the Western, a volume reconstructing the score of Waxman's “The Bride of Frankenstein”, followed by volumes devoted to Alex North, Hugo Friedhofer, Victor Young and Elmer Bernstein... But RCA would not support Gerhardt in these projects, preferring to release the collection on CD for the first time. In early 1990, RCA asked Gerhardt to supervise and co-produce the collection, which he saw as an opportunity to revisit some of the volumes, inserting tracks that had not appeared on the LPs or extending certain suites. The volume devoted to Franz Waxman, “Sunset Boulevard”, was the first to be released. The CD did not benefit from any particular promotion, but sold very well, as did the other CDs that followed... A collection marked by a new design in silver pantone. The CDs series was reissued in 2010, still under the RCA Red Seal label, but distributed by Sony Music Entertainment. RCA Victor's Classic Films Scores series represents a unique collection in the history of film music recordings. 14 recordings of rare quality, produced by Georges Korngold and Charles Gerhardt to become one of the revelations of the reissue phenomenon. Other Concepts... Later, Gerhardt spent most of his time in London, continuing to make recordings. After retiring from RCA in 1986, he returned to independent work for Readers Digest and other record labels, a position he held in production and musical supervision until 1997. Since 1991 he had lived in Redding, California. In later years, he did not appear professionally, refusing all public invitations because of his desire to remain discreet. In his entourage he was close to three cousins, Lenore L Engel and Elizabeth Anne Schuetze, both living in San Antonio, and cousin Steven W Gerhardt of St. Pete Beach, Florida. In late November 1998 Charles Gerhardt was diagnosed with brain cancer and died of complications following surgery on February 22, 1999. He was 72 years old. Thus ends this tribute to Charles Gerhardt and the most famous collection of film music records: The Classic Film Scores series.

Exodus

by Doug Raynes • 24 Jan, 2024
Following on from Tadlow’s epic recording of El Cid, the same team – Nic Raine conducting and James Fitzpatrick producing – have turned their attention to a completely different type of epic film for the definitive recording of Ernest Gold’s Academy Award winning score for Otto Preminger’s Exodus (1960). The score is something of a revelation because aside from the main theme, the music has received little attention through recordings. Additionally the sound quality of the original soundtrack LP was disappointing and much music was deleted or cut from the film.
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