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Second Thoughts On Hollywood

Aaron Copland

Modern Music Vol. 17, no 3 March 1940

Copyright © Modern Music 1940. All rights reserved.

Everyone is so prepared to hear the worst about Hollywood that it is a pleasure to be able to start these observations on a cheerful note. The best one can say about Hollywood is that it is a place where composers are actually needed. The accent is entirely on the living composer. Day after day and year after year there are copyists, instrumentalists, and conductors who do nothing but copy, perform, and conduct the music of contemporary composers. Theoretically, at any rate, the town is a composer’s Eldorado.

For the movies do need music, and need it badly. By itself the screen is a pretty cold proposition. In Hollywood I looked at long stretches of film before the music had been added, and I got the impression that music is like a small flame put under the screen to help warm it. It is this very function, however, which so often gives the composer a minor role. There is no sense in denying the subordinate position the composer fills. After all, film music makes sense only if it helps the film; no matter how good, distinguished, or successful, the music must be secondary in importance to the story being told on the screen. Essentially there is nothing about the movie medium to rule out any composer with a dramatic imagination. But the man who insists on complete self-expression had better stay home and write symphonies. He will never be happy in Hollywood.

Whether you are happy or not largely depends on two factors: the producer you work for, and the amount of time allotted for completing the score. (I am assuming that the film itself is an intelligent one.) The producer is a kind of dictator, responsible only to the studio executives for every phase of the picture’s production. This naturally includes the musical score. The trouble is not so much that these producers consider themselves musical connoisseurs, but that they claim to be accurate barometers of public taste. “If I can’t understand it, the public won’t.” As a result of this the typical Hollywood composer is concerned not with the reaction of the public, as you might think, but with that of the producer. It isn’t surprising therefore, that all film music originating in Hollywood tends to be very much the same. The score of one picture adds up to about the score of any other. You seldom hear anything fresh or distinctive partly because everyone is so intent on playing safe. A pleased producer means more jobs. That alone is sufficient to explain the Hollywood stereotype of music.

The demand for speed from the composer is familiar to anyone who has ever worked “in pictures.” The composer may sit around no end of time, waiting for the picture to be done; as soon as it’s finished the director, the producer, the script writer — everybody is in a frightful hurry; valuable time is passing and the studio has visions of the money it is losing each day that the film is not in a theatre. It is difficult to make studio executives realize that no one has yet discovered how to write notes any faster than it was done circa 400 A. D. The average movie score is approximately forty minutes long. The usual time allotted for composing it is about two weeks. For OF MICE AND MEN I had about six weeks, and I believe that other composers insist on that much time for writing an elaborate score.

The purpose of the film score is to make the film more effective, that’s clear enough. But I don’t think anyone has as yet formulated the perfect solution for this problem. In fact I came away with a sense of the mysterious nature of all film music. In retrospect, I can see three important ways in which music helps a picture. The first is by intensifying the emotional impact of any given scene, the second by creating an illusion of continuity, and the third by providing a kind of neutral background music. Of these three, the last presents the most mysterious problem - how to supply the right sort of music behind dialogue.

Intensification of emotion at crucial moments is, of course, an old tradition of theatre music. True, it is no more than the Hearts and Flowers tradition, but still, perfectly legitimate. The one difficulty here is to get the music started without suddenly making the audience aware of its entrance. To use a favorite Hollywood term, you must “steal the music in.”

Obvious too is the continuity function of music. Pictures, jumping from episode to episode, from exterior to interior, have a tendency to fall apart. Music, an art which exists in time, can subtly hold disparate scenes together. In exciting montage sequences where the film moves violently from shot to shot, music by developing one particular theme, or one type of rhythmical material, or some other unifying musical element, supplies the necessary continuous understructure.

But “background” music is something very special. It is also the most ungrateful kind of music for a composer to write. Since it’s music behind, or underneath the word, the audience is really not going to hear it, possibly won’t even be aware of its existence; yet it undoubtedly works on the subconscious mind. The need here is for a kind of music which will give off a “neutral” color or atmosphere. (This is what creates the indefinable warmth that the screen itself lacks.) To write music which must be inexpressive is not easy for composers who normally tend to be as expressive as possible. To add to the difficulty, there’s the impossibility of knowing in advance just what will work in any given scene. If one could only test the music by adding it to the scene before it is shot, or have the music performed while the actors speak their lines! But this is utopian. Once the scene is done and the music is added, the result is fairly problematical. Even dubbing it down almost below the listening level will not always prove satisfactory.

If Hollywood has its problems it has also its well-known solutions. Most scores, as everybody knows, are written in the late nineteenth century symphonic style, a style now so generally accepted as to be considered inevitable. But why need movie music be symphonic? And why, oh why, the nineteenth century? Should the rich harmonies of Tchaikovsky, Franck and Strauss be spread over every type of story, regardless of time, place or treatment? For WUTHERING HEIGHTS, perhaps yes. But why for GOLDEN BOY, a hard-boiled, modern piece? What screen music badly needs is more differentiation, more feeling for the exact quality of each picture. That does not necessarily mean a more literal musical description of time and place. Certainly very few Hollywood films give a realistic impression of period. Still, it should be possible, without learned displays of historical research and without the hack conventions of symphonic music, for a composer to reflect the emotion and reality of the individual picture he is scoring.

Another pet Hollywood formula, this one borrowed from nineteenth century opera, is the use of the leitmotif. I haven’t made up my mind whether the public is conscious of this device or completely oblivious to it, but I can’t see how it is appropriate to the movies. Sitting in the last row of the opera house, it may help the spectator to identify the singer who appears from the wings, if the orchestra announces her motif. But that’s hardly necessary on the screen. No doubt the leitmotif system is a help to the composer in a hurry, perhaps doing two or three scores simultaneously. It is always an easy solution to mechanically pin a motif on every character. In DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK this method was reduced to its final absurdity. One theme announced the Indians, another the hero. In the inevitable chase, every time the scene switched from Indians to hero the themes did too, sometimes so fast that the music seemed to hop back and forth before any part of it had time to breathe. If there must be thematic description I think it would serve better if it were connected with the underlying ideas of a picture. If, for example, a film has to do with loneliness, a theme might be developed to induce sympathy with the idea of being lonely, something broader in feeling than the mere tagging of characters.

A third device, and one very peculiar to Hollywood, is known as “Mickey-Mousing” a film. In this system the music, wherever possible, is made to mimic everything that happens on the screen. An actor can’t lift an eyebrow without the music helping him do it. What is amusing when applied to a Disney fantasy becomes disastrous in its effect upon a straight or serious drama. Max Steiner has a special weakness for this device. In OF HUMAN BONDAGE he had the unfortunate idea of making his music limp whenever the club-footed hero walked across the scene, with a very obvious and it seemed to me vulgarizing effect. Recently Mr. Steiner has shown a fondness for a new device. This is the mixing of realistic music with background music. Joe may be walking around the room quietly humming a tune to himself (realistic use of music). Watch for the moment when Joe steps out into the storm, for it is then that Mr. Steiner pounces upon Joe’s little tune and gives us the works with an orchestra of seventy. The trouble with this procedure is that it stresses not so much the dramatic moment as the ingenuity of the composer. All narrative illusion is lost the instant we are conscious of the music as such.

It may not be without interest to retrace some of the steps by which music is added to a film. After the picture is completed it is shown in the studio projection room before the producer, the director, the studio’s musical director (if any), the composer and his various henchmen, the conductor, the orchestrator, the cue-sheet assistants, the copyists - anybody in fact who has anything to do with the preparation of the score. At this showing the decision is reached as to where to add music, where it should start in each separate sequence and where it should end. The film is then turned over to a cue-sheet assistant whose job it is to prepare a listing of every separate moment in each musical sequence. These listings, with the accompanying timing in film footage and in seconds, is all that the composer needs for complete security in synchronising his music with the film. The practised Hollywood composer is said never to look at a picture more than once. With a good memory, a stop-watch, and a cue-sheet he is ready to go to work. Others prefer to work in the music projection room where there is a piano, a screen, and an operator who can turn the film on and off. I myself used a movieola, which permits every composer to be his own operator. This is a small machine which shows the film negative through a magnifying glass. Using the movieola I could see the picture whenever and as often as I pleased.

While the music is being written the film itself is prepared for recording. Each important musical cue must be marked on the film by some prearranged signal system that varies in every studio. These “signals” show the conductor where he is. If he wants to hit a certain musical cue which, according to the cue-sheet, occurs at the forty-ninth second, the negative must be marked in such a way as to indicate that spot (always with sufficient warning signals) and if the conductor is competent he can nearly always “hit it on the nose.” In Hollywood this knack for hitting cues properly is considered even more important in a conductor than his ability to read an orchestral score. Another method, much more mechanical, but used a good deal for Westerns and quickies is to synchronize by means of a so-called click-track. In this case, the film is measured off not according to seconds, but according to regular musical beats. There is no surer method for hitting cues “on the nose”. But only the experienced composer can ignore the regularity of the beat and write his music freely within and around it.

For the composer the day of recording is perhaps the high point. He has worked hard and long and is anxious to test his work. He hears his music sounded for the first time while the film is being shown. Everything comes off just as it would in a concert hall. But if he wishes to remain happy he had better stay away from the sound-recording booth. For here all the music is being recorded at about the same medium dynamic level so that later on the loudness and softness may be regulated when the moment comes for re-recording.

Re-recording takes place in the dubbing room. This is a kind of composer’s purgatory. It is here that the music track is mixed with other sound tracks — the dialogue, the “effects” track, etc. It is at this point that the composer sees his music begin to disappear. A passage once so clear and satisfying seems now to move farther and farther off. The instant a character opens his mouth, the music must recede to the near vanishing point. This is the place that calls out all a composer’s self-control; it's a moment for philosophy.

From the composer’s standpoint, the important person in the dubbing room is the man who sits at the controls. It is he who decides how loud or soft the music will be at any given moment, and therefore it is he who can make or ruin everything, by the merest touch of the dials. But surprisingly, in every studio these controls are in the hands of a sound engineer. What I don’t understand is why a musician has not been called in for this purpose. It would never occur to me to call in an engineer to tune my piano. Surely only a musician can be sensitive to the subtle effects of musical sound, particularly when mixed with other sounds. A Toscanini would be none too good for such a job - certainly a sound expert is not qualified.

While on the subject of sound levels I might as well mention the unsatisfactory way in which sound is controlled in the picture theatre. The tonal volume of a picture is not set for all time; no mechanical contraption permanently fixes the loudness or softness of the music. The person who decides on the sound levels is not even the film-operator but the individual theatre manager who is of course susceptible to advice from Tom, Dick, and Harry sitting anywhere in the house. People who love music tend to prefer it played loudly. Those who don’t care for it especially want to hear it only at a low level. So no matter how much care is taken in the dubbing room to fix proper tonal levels, the situation will remain unsatisfactory until a method is found to control the casual and arbitrary way in which dials are set in the theatre operator’s booth.

Hollywood, like Vienna, can boast its own star roster of composers. Alfred Newman, Max Steiner, Victor Young, Anthony Collins are composers created by the film industry. While it is easy enough to poke fun at the movie music they turn out as so much yardage, it would at the same time be foolish not to profit by their great experience in writing for the films. Newman, for example, has discovered the value of the string orchestra as a background for emotional scenes. Better than the full orchestra, the strings can be de-personalized. This is important in a medium where the sound of a single instrument may sometimes be disturbing.

Another secret of movie music which Steiner has exploited, is the writing of atmosphere music almost without melodic content of any kind. A melody is by its nature distracting since it calls attention to itself. For certain types of neutral music, a kind of melody-less music is needed. Steiner does not supply mere chords, but superimposes a certain amount of melodic motion, just enough to make the music sound normal, and yet not enough to compel attention.

Composers who come to Hollywood from the big world outside generally take some time to become expert in using the idiom. Erich Korngold still tends to get over-complex in the development of a musical idea. This is not always true, however. When successful, he gives a sense of firm technic, a continuity not only of feeling but structure. Werner Jansen, whose score for THE GENERAL DIED AT DAWN made movie history, is still looked upon as something of an outsider. He shows his pre-Hollywood training in the sophistication of his musical idiom, and in his tendency to be over-fussy in the treatment of even the simplest sequence. Ernst Toch, who belongs in the category with Korngold and Janssen, wrote an important score for PETER IBBETSON several years ago. On the strength of this job, Toch should be today one of the best-known film composers. But unfortunately there aren’t enough people in Hollywood who can tell a good score when they hear one. Today Toch is generally assigned to do “screwy music.” (In Hollywood music is either “screwy” or “down to earth" - and most of it is down to earth.) Toch deserves better.

The men who write Hollywood’s music seem strangely oblivious of their reputations outside the West Coast. I have often wondered, for instance, why no concerted effort has ever been made to draw the attention of music critics to their more ambitious scores. Why shouldn’t the music critic cover important film premieres? True, the audience that goes to the films doesn’t think about the music, and possibly shouldn’t think about the music. Nevertheless, a large part of music heard by the American public is heard in the film theatre. Unconsciously, the cultural level of music is certain to be raised if better music is written for films. This will come about more quickly, I think, if producers and directors know that scores are being heard and criticized. One of the ways they will find out what’s good and what’s bad is to read it in the papers. Let the press now take this important business in hand.

 

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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