Blog Post

Tip to Moviegoers: Take Off Those Ear-Muffs

Aaron Copland

New York Times: November 6, 1949, Section SM, Page 28

Copyright © New York Times 1949. All rights reserved.


The next time you settle yourself comfortably into a seat at the neighborhood picture house don’t forget to take off your ear-muffs. Most people don’t realize they are wearing any — at any rate, that is the impression of composers who write for the movies. Millions of moviegoers take the musical accompaniment to a dramatic film so much for granted that five minutes after the termination of a picture they couldn’t tell you whether they had heard music or not.


To ask whether they thought the score exciting or merely adequate or downright awful would be to give them a musical inferiority complex. But, on second thought, and possibly in self-protection, comes the query: “Isn’t it true that one isn’t supposed to be listening to the music? Isn’t it supposed to work on you unconsciously without being listened to directly as you would listen at a concert?”

No discussion of movie music ever gets very far without having to face this problem: Should one hear a movie score? If you are a musician there is no problem because the chances are you can’t help but listen. More than once I’ve had a good picture ruined for me by an inferior score. Have you had the same experience? Yes? Then you may congratulate yourself: you’re definitely musical.

But it’s the spectator, so absorbed in the dramatic action that he fails to take in the background music, who wants to know whether he is missing anything. The answer is bound up with the degree of your general musical perception. It is the degree to which you are aurally minded that will determine how much pleasure you may derive by absorbing the background musical accompaniment as an integral part of the combined impression made by the film.

One’s appreciation of a work of art is partly determined by the amount of preparation one brings to it. The head of the family will probably be less sensitive to the beauty and appropriateness of the gowns worn by the feminine star than his wife will be. It’s hopeless to expect the tone-deaf to listen to a musical score. But since the great majority of movie patrons are undoubtedly musical to some degree, they should be encouraged not to ignore the music; on the contrary, I would hope to convince them that by taking it in they will be enriching both their musical and their cinema experience.

Recently I was asked rather timorously whether I liked to write movie music - the implication being that it was possibly degrading for a composer of symphonies to trifle with a commercial product. “Would you do it anyhow, even if it were less well paid?” I think I would, and, moreover, I think most composers would, principally because film music constitutes a new musical medium that exerts a fascination of its own. Actually, it is a new form of dramatic music — related to opera, ballet, incidental theatre music — in contradistinction to concert music of the symphonic or chamber music kind. As a new form it opens up unexplored possibilities, or should.

The main complaint about film music as written today in Hollywood is that so much of it is cut and dried, rigidly governed by conventions that have grown up with surprising rapidity in the short period of twenty-odd years since the talkies began. But, leaving the hack composer aside, there is no reason why a serious composer, cooperating with an intelligent producer on a picture of serious artistic pretensions, should not be able to have his movie scores judged by the same standards applied to his concert music. That is certainly the way William Walton in HENRY V, Serge Prokofieff in ALEXANDER NEVSKY, or Virgil Thomson in LOUISIANA STORY would want to be judged. They did not have to lower their standards because they were writing for a mass audience. Some day the term “movie music” will clearly define a specific musical genre and will not have, as it does have nowadays, a pejorative meaning.

Most people are curious as to just how one goes about putting music to a film. Fortunately, the process is not so complex that it cannot be outlined here. The first thing one must do, of course, is to see the picture. Almost all musical scores are composed after the film itself is completed. The only exception to this is when the script calls for realistic music — that is, music which is visually sung or played or danced to on the screen. In that case the music must be composed before the scene is photographed. It will then be recorded and the scene in question shot to a playback of the recording. Thus, when you see an actor singing or playing or dancing, he is only making believe as far as the sound goes, for the music had previously been put down on film.

The first run-through of the film for the composer is usually a solemn moment. After all, he must live with it for several weeks. The solemnity of the occasion is emphasized by the exclusive audience that views it with him: the producer, the director, the musical head of the studio, the picture editor, the music cutter, the conductor, the orchestrator — in fact, anyone involved in scoring the picture. At that showing it is difficult for the composer to view the photoplay coldly. There is an understandable compulsion to like everything, for he is looking at what must necessarily constitute the source of his future inspiration.

The purpose of the run-through is to decide how much music is needed and where it should be. (In technical jargon this is called “to spot” the picture.) Since no background score is continuous throughout the full length of a film (that would constitute a motion picture opera, an unexploited cinema form), the score will normally consist of separate sequences, each lasting from a few seconds to several minutes in duration. A sequence as long as seven minutes would be exceptional. The entire score, made up of perhaps thirty or more such sequences, may add up to from forty to ninety minutes of music.

Much discussion, much give and take, may be necessary before final decisions are reached regarding the “spotting” of the picture. In general my impression has been that composers are better able to gauge the over-all effect of a musical accompaniment than the average non-musician. Personally I like to make use of music’s power sparingly, saving it for absolutely essential points. A composer knows how to play with silences; knows that to take music out can at times be more effective than any use of it might be.

The producer-director, on the other hand, is more prone to think of music in terms of its immediate functional usage. Sometimes he has ulterior motives: anything wrong with a scene — a poor bit of acting, a badly read line, an embarrassing pause — he secretly hopes will be covered up by a clever composer. Producers have been known to hope that an entire picture would be saved by a good score. But the composer is not a magician; he can hardly be expected to do more than to make potent through music the film’s dramatic and emotional values.

When well contrived there is no question but that a musical score can be of enormous help to a picture. One can prove that point, laboratory fashion, by showing an audience a climactic scene with the sound turned off and then once again with the sound track turned on. Here briefly is listed a number of ways in which music serves the screen: Creating a more convincing atmosphere of time and place. Not all Hollywood composers bother about this nicety. Too often, their scores are interchangeable; a thirteenth century Gothic drama and a hard-boiled modern battle of the sexes get similar treatment. The lush symphonic texture of late nineteenth century music remains the dominating influence. But there are exceptions. Recently, the higher grade horse-opera has begun to have its own musical flavor, mostly a folksong derivative.


Underlining psychological refinements — the unspoken thoughts of a character or the unseen implications of a situation. Music can play upon the emotions of the spectator, sometimes counterpointing the thing seen with an aural image that implies the contrary of the thing seen. This is not as subtle as it sounds. A well-placed dissonant chord can stop an audience cold in the middle of a sentimental scene, or a calculated woodwind passage can turn what appears to be a solemn moment into a belly-laugh.


Serving as a kind of neutral background filler. This is really the music one isn’t supposed to hear, the sort that helps to fill the empty spots between pauses in a conversation. It’s the movie composer’s most ungrateful task. But at times, though no one else may notice, he will get private satisfaction from the thought that music of little intrinsic value, through professional manipulation, has enlivened and made more human the deathly pallor of a screen shadow. This is hardest to do, as any film composer will attest, when the neutral filler type of music must weave its way underneath dialogue.


Building a sense of continuity. The picture editor knows better than anyone how serviceable music can be in tieing together a visual medium which is, by its very nature, continually in danger of falling apart. One sees this most obviously in montage scenes where the use of a unifying musical idea may save the quick flashes of disconnected scenes from seeming merely chaotic.


Underpinning the theatrical build-up of a scene, and rounding it off with a sense of finality. The first instance that comes to mind is the music that blares out at the end of a film. Certain producers have boasted their picture’s lack of a musical score, but I never saw or heard of a picture that ended in silence.

We have merely skimmed the surface, without mentioning the innumerable examples of utilitarian music - offstage street bands, the barn dance, merry-go-rounds, circus music, cafe music, the neighbor’s girl practicing her piano, etc. All these, and many others, introduced with apparent naturalistic intent, serve to vary subtly the aural interest of the sound track.

Perhaps it is only fair to mention that several of these uses come to the screen by way of the long tradition of incidental music in the legitimate theatre. Most workers in the theatre, and especially our playwrights, would agree that music enhances the glamour and atmosphere of a stage production, any stage production. Formerly it was considered indispensable. But nowadays only musical comedy can afford a considerable-sized orchestra in the pit.

With mounting costs of production it looks as if the serious drama would have to get along with a union minimum of four musicians for some time to come. If there is to be any combining of music and the spoken drama in any but the barest terms, it will have to happen in Hollywood, for the Broadway theatre is practically out of the running.

But now perhaps we had better return to our hypothetical composer. Having determined where the separate musical sequences will begin and end he turns the film over to the music cutter who prepares a so-called cue sheet. The cue sheet provides the composer with a detailed description of the physical action in each sequence, plus the exact timings in thirds of seconds of that action, thereby making it possible for a practiced composer to write an entire score without ever again referring to the picture. Personally I prefer to remain in daily contact with the picture itself, viewing again and again the sequence I happen to be working on.

The layman usually imagines that the most difficult part of the job in composing for the films has to do with the precise “fitting” of the music to the action. Doesn’t that kind of timing straitjacket the composer? The answer is, No, for two reasons: first, having to compose music to accompany specific action is a help rather than a hindrance, since the action itself induces music in a composer of theatrical imagination, whereas he has no such visual stimulus in writing absolute music. Secondly, the timing is mostly a matter of minor adjustments, since the over-all musical fabric is there.

For the composer of concert music, changing to the medium of celluloid does bring certain special pitfalls. For example, melodic invention, highly prized in the concert hall, may at times be distracting in certain film situations. Even phrasing in the concert manner, which would normally emphasize the independence of separate contrapuntal lines, may be distracting when applied to screen accompaniments. In orchestration there are many subtleties of timbre - distinctions meant to be listened to for their own expressive quality in an auditorium - which are completely wasted on sound track.

As compensation for these losses, the composer has other possibilities, some of them tricks, which are unobtainable in Carnegie Hall. In scoring one section of THE HEIRESS, for example, I was able to superimpose two orchestras, one upon another. Both recorded the same music at different times, one orchestra consisting of strings alone, the other constituted normally. Later these were combined by simultaneously re-recording the original tracks, thereby producing a highly expressive orchestral texture. Bernard Herrmann, one of the most ingenious of screen composers, called for (and got) eight celestas - an unheard-of combination on Fifty-seventh Street - to suggest a winter’s sleigh ride. Miklos Rozsa’s use of the “echo chamber” - a device to give normal tone a ghost-like aura - was widely remarked, and subsequently done to death.

Unusual effects are obtainable through overlapping incoming and outgoing music tracks. Like two trains passing one another, it is possible to bring in and take out at the same time two different musics. THE RED PONY gave me an opportunity to use this cinema specialty. When the daydreaming imagination of a little boy turns white chickens into white circus horses the visual image is mirrored in an aural image by having the chicken music transform itself into circus music, a device only obtainable by means of the overlap.

Let us now assume that the musical score has been completed and is ready for recording. The scoring stage is a happy-making place for the composer. Hollywood has gathered to itself some of America’s finest performers; the music will be beautifully played and recorded with a technical perfection not to be matched anywhere else.

Most composers like to invite their friends to be present at the recording session of important sequences. The reason is that neither the composer nor his friends are ever again likely to hear the music sound out in concert style. For when it is combined with the picture most of the dynamic levels will be changed. Otherwise the finished product might sound like a concert with pictures. In lowering dynamic levels niceties of shading, some inner voices and bass parts may be lost. Erich Korngold, one of Hollywood’s top men, put it well when he said: “A movie composer’s immortality lasts from the recording stage to the dubbing room.”

The dubbing room is where all the tracks involving sound of any kind, including dialogue, are put through the machines to obtain one master sound track. This is a delicate process as far as the music is concerned, for it is only a hair’s breadth that separates the “too loud” from the “too soft.” Sound engineers, working the dials that control volume, are not always as musically sensitive as composers would like them to be. What is called for is a new species, a sound mixer who is half musician and half engineer; and even then, the mixing of dialogue, music and realistic sounds of all kinds must always remain problematical.

In view of these drawbacks to the full sounding out of his music, it is only natural that the composer often hopes to be able to extract a viable concert suite from his film score. There is a current tendency to believe that movie scores are not proper material for concert music. The argument is that separated from its visual justification the music falls flat.

Personally, I doubt very much that any hard and fast rule can be made that will cover all cases. Each score will have to be judged on its merits and, no doubt, stories that require a more continuous type of musical development in a unified atmosphere will lend themselves better than others to reworking for concert purposes. Rarely is it conceivable that the music of a film might be extracted without much re-working. But I fail to see why, if successful suites like Grieg’s PEER GYNT can be made from nineteenth century incidental stage music, a twentieth century composer can’t be expected to do as well with a film score.

As for the picture score, it is only in the motion picture theatre that the composer for the first time gets the full impact of what he has accomplished, tests the dramatic punch of his favorite musical spot, appreciates the curious importance and unimportance of detail, wishes that he had done certain things differently and is surprised that others came off better than he had hoped. For when all is said and done the art of combining moving pictures with musical tones is still a mysterious art. Not the least mysterious element is the theatregoers’ reaction: Millions will be listening but one never knows how many will be really hearing, so the next time you go to the movies remember to be on the composer’s side. Remove those ear-muffs.

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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