Blog Post

What Ever Happened to Great Movie Music

Elmer Bernstein

Originally published in High-Fidelity
: July 1970

Copyright © High-Fidelity
 1970. All rights reserved.

Photo: Frank Sinatra with Elmer Bernstein recording 'The Man with the Golden Arm'

The events of the past few years in the field of film scoring seem to indicate that any discussion on this great art may indeed have to be a historical summary at the end of its era of greatness. As a working film composer and an evolutionary product of the works of Aaron Copland, Bernard Herrmann, Max Steiner, Erich Korngold, Hugo Friedhofer, Franz Waxman, Alfred Newman, David Raksin, George Antheil, Miklos Rosza, Dimitri Tiomkin, and Bronislau Kaper, and a contemporary of Alex North, Jerry Goldsmith, Henry Mancini, Lalo Schifrin, and Andre Previn, I find it inconceivable that this sophisticated art has in such a short time degenerated into a bleakness of various electronic noises and generally futile attempts to “make the pop Top 40 charts.” Today the trend is most obviously to the non-score, the song form, and General Electric. It appears that the king is dead and the court jester has been installed in his place. Before we consider the causes of death, let us first proceed to an examination of the corpus while its remains are still with us.

Music is the art that begins where words and images leave off - which is what makes it so effective in films. Sonic vibrations set part of the body in motion and touch the listener in an almost purely visceral manner. Music can stimulate the greatest possible range of moods, shades, and fantasies. Also, it is an art that envelops the listener, who cannot escape it save by leaving the area. Unlike the written word or visual image, there is no need to intellectualize its existence. That its source is unseen and that it can enter and leave at almost imperceptible levels makes music an invaluable tool with which the skilled film composer can practice emotional seductions upon the viewer of a movie. Parenthetically, it is of interest to note that in the days of silent films David Wark Griffith used musicians to inspire his actors to passion on the set.

Some of us are old enough to remember the orchestras that accompanied the lavish first runs of silent films, or the inevitable pianists who created moods to help the neighborhood audiences hiss villains and applaud heroes. Many scores were composed and tailored to the films of their day, with written descriptions of the screen action so that the performer would know whether he was playing slow or fast enough to suit the image. The earliest piano scores for movies I know of - and which are still extant - were written for the films of Georges Méliès in the closing years of the nineteenth century. In these primitive scores, music was used to mimic the action on screen: fast music for fast action, lumbering music for lumbering action, low and menacing notes for the villain, trumpet-like themes for the hero, and so on. The music became a series of representative cliches rather than an emotional communication, and a whole set of conventions quickly grew up by which one could easily identify villain, hero, the chase, and love. Today one laughs at them, but in their heyday audiences looked forward to these conventionalized cliches.

It was quite natural, of course, that when sound came in audiences were more interested in hearing the voices of their favorite movie stars and musical performers. The earliest use of music in connection with non musical films seems to have been the filling of “dead spots” with some sort of sound. Today the results appear quite amusing - the music seems to drone on quite unrelated to the events in the picture. In this sense the lack of sophistication, integration, and skill is not unlike that of many contemporary motion pictures where the score functions merely to introduce popular material not often integrated into the film.

Max Steiner arrived in Hollywood in 1929. Very quickly his work educated the film colony to the possibilities of film music tailored to the needs of specific dramatic situations. Strange as all this may seem, it was in its time an original and thrilling concept. Steiner also pioneered musical authenticity. Nowadays we assume that a composer will research the music indigenous to the country in which a film story takes place. It is difficult then to remember how fresh and exciting was Steiner's attempt to create an Irish musical ambience for THE INFORMER.

During the following generation Hollywood scores, at least the best of them, developed into a sophisticated art form using sophisticated techniques. The techniques of course were not always apt. Take the leitmotif. The leitmotif - a specific theme continually used to identify a specific character, situation, or emotion - is a time-honored musico-dramatic device raised to great heights by the genius of Richard Wagner. Its application in film scoring is obvious, but unless used well it can become another boring and trite device. My own score for THE TEN COMMANDMENTS made extensive use of the leitmotif. This score is in many ways the least characteristic of my works as it was written while working under the close supervision of the producer, Cecil B. DeMille. DeMille believed the function of music in a motion picture to be an adjunctive story-telling device, with each character having a particular theme or motif to accompany his moments on screen. In THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, DeMille insisted upon identifying themes for Moses, Joshua, Ramses, Nefretiri, Lilia, Dathen. In addition, there were to be motifs for two opposing themes: the power of God and the force of evil. The motifs were heard whenever the characters were on screen and in cases where there was an interplay between two characters, a Wagnerian interweaving of the tunes was expected. Changes of mood created by the dramatic necessities of the story were accompanied mainly by changes of orchestral color. Thus when Moses is an infant in the bulrushes, his theme is performed by woodwind solo to a 6/8 lullaby accompaniment. Later, when he has become the prophet, his theme is announced by trumpets and horns in a martial tempo. And in this way one finds the score retelling the events on screen. This technique requires great skill in its execution to avoid extreme banality and is, I believe, one of the least attractive uses of film music since it serves merely to repeat what should be clearly evident in a good film. The leitmotif functions best in a film of epic proportions, for not many characters merit the grandeur of an accompanying musical theme. In other situations the constant repetition of a theme for a character becomes an unpardonable intrusion upon the dramatic integrity of the film. Besides, how many melodies have been created for films that one would want to hear twenty times in the course of ninety minutes?

Even more dangerous than the leitmotif device is the mono-thematic score. The single theme can designate a particular overriding emotion, as in Alfred Newman’s LOVE IS A MANY-SPLENDORED THING (85 percent of that score is based on one tune), or it can even identify a character, as in David Raksin’s eternal LAURA. A technique that can be - and nowadays usually is - a boring cliché had its classic expression in LAURA. The film portrayed a man falling in love with a ghost: The mystique was supplied by the insistence of the haunting melody. He could not escape it, it was everywhere. It was there when he was in Laura’s apartment. It was there when he turned on the record player. It was never absent from his thoughts. We may not remember what Laura was like, but we never forget that she was the music and in that music she has of course come into our lives to stay. In that instance, the music and its insistence was the most compelling feature of the film.

For me, film music functions best when it is able to deal with that which is implicit but not explicit in a scene. It can thus add to the film art rather than simply ape another element in it. Here is another example from my own work: IN MEN IN WAR one scene shows a group of soldiers walking through a Korean forest which they know to be mined. They are quite understandably terrified by the possibility of sudden death at every step. As I looked at that scene and considered what I wished to do musically, I thought of how many battles had been fought in the midst of beautiful country. As these men were making this walk their surroundings were a forest full of birds singing, leaves rustling, twigs snapping-sweet aural counterpoint that made the possibility of death even more terrible. I decided to emphasize this less obvious counter point in my music. While I called for an almost imperceptible tremolando in the basses, timpani, and bass drum, I had the cellos gently guide the wind through the leaves in delicate pianissimo glissandos and trills, the woodwinds play quick, disjointed birdlike calls, the xylophone and other percussion play staccato woodsy figures, and I gave any sustaining lines to the ominous-sounding bass flute or the bass clarinet. This approach served to deepen the terror of the scene as it added an interesting subliminal note to it.

One of the surprising attributes of the film score is its ability to speed up or slow down the action. In my early career I believed that the accompanying music must have a kinetic energy equal to that of the scene for which it is written. Cecil B. DeMille changed my mind about that. In the Exodus scene of THE TEN COMMANDMENTS there is the moment in which the Hebrews begin their march out of Egyptian bondage. DeMille used approximately 8,000 people in that scene, with the effect that the start of their march was passive and lumbering. The first music I wrote for the scene was a ponderous Hebraic march-like anthem. DeMille hated it. When I insisted that it had truly reflected the pace of the scene, he readily agreed, and stated that that was the trouble with it. If I would write music with a faster pace than that of the scene, the Hebrews would appear to move more brightly, the elation at their freedom would be more prominent. I was skeptical, but tried it. DeMille was right.


I remembered my lesson when I composed the score for THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. The unhurried pace of the film as a whole was always a potential danger in a story that demanded tension and suspense. To help this situation I wrote the music in tempos always somewhat faster than those of the film’s, and made considerable use of vigorous rhythmic patterns as well as repeated sixteenth note figures. Again, I believe it worked.


The main body of a film composer’s work is done after the editing is completed, though in some instances the composer may be called in for conferences even before shooting begins. This would be necessary for instance where musical material must be included in the shooting of a film. When the film is finally assembled, the composer and the producer or director view the film together and begin their general discussion about the character and use of music. In most cases the composer is left to decide such fine points as where the music should begin and end. The music editor then writes a description of every action and word of dialogue in the scene accurate to one-tenth of a second. The composer usually works from these descriptions, but some composers prefer to have the film and a Movieola in their homes. Since film is a medium locked in time, the composer must learn to compose music that falls naturally within the time confines.



In the recording session, the film is projected as the musicians perform. There are various visual metronomic devices such as streamers and punches on the film to aid the conductor in his job of synchronizing the playing of the music to the action of the film. The final process is one in which music, sound, and dialogue are united into one sound track.


One of the many problems besetting the film composer is the rapidity with which a device that seems fresh in one film so quickly becomes commonplace. One reason for this is the tremendous exposure afforded by motion pictures. The concert hall composer is lucky to expose his work to perhaps two thousand people at a time. But films are seen (and heard) by upwards of fifty million. It is very difficult for a fresh musical idea to stay fresh long under these conditions. The bass flute solo, which could be used to engender terror only a few years ago, is now part of the everyday language of the film composer. The once effective romantic “piano concerto” style has become banal almost to the point of the comic. To many second-rate movie composers, this phenomenon is terrifying and sends them to frantic searches for “new sounds” - which are also soon exhausted.


Two innocent events in the early and middle Fifties. it seems to me, signaled the beginning of the end of the golden age of film music. The first of these was the extraordinary commercial success of the title song by Dimitri Tiomkin for the 1951 motion picture HIGH NOON. How fresh and exciting that main title seemed then! But the free advertising resulting from the song - not to mention the enormous money that the song itself made - led to an instant demand by movie producers for similar title songs in almost every picture that followed. Lyric writers were beset with such problems as selling titles like THE REVOLT OF MAMIE STOVER to music and the situation rapidly became ludicrous. But the commercial attitude has remained: To hell with the score - let’s get that title song on the charts!


The second event was the success of my own MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM in 1955, which was compounded by Henry Mancini's TV success with PETER GUNN. With the commercial bonanza of these “pop” sounds in two perfectly legitimate situations - my score was not a jazz score, but a score in which jazz elements were incorporated toward the end of creating specific atmosphere for that particular film - producers quickly began to transform film composing from a serious art into a pop art and more recently into pop garbage.


It is no secret that many title songs have made more money than the movies they came from. Movie companies suddenly became music publishing houses and recording firms so as not to allow any of the loot to slip by them. And in the process the serious composition of thoughtful film scores was given short shrift.


We live in times in which the soul must learn to live with the senseless killing of millions through out the world; with the necessity of the double lock; with the knowledge of where not to walk after dark. We have learned to accept the philosophy that no person in public life can ever tell the whole truth, and that the future might hold annihilation either through man’s brutishness or through his ecological selfishness. In such a world, art tends to become sensation, aesthetics becomes a belief that the way to protest brutality is to reflect it in art. In motion pictures we are treated to an onslaught of violence and sensation, without form, without art, and with out humanity. In this atmosphere the quality of film scores is being strangled by the search for effect, for “new sounds” without content and form on the part of the artist, and by avarice on the part of the producer. Today the once proud art of film scoring has turned into a sound, a sensation, or hopefully a hit. How ironic that in an era in which music enjoys its greatest popularity as an art, film producers are demonstrating the greatest ignorance of the use of music in films since the beginning of that medium’s history.

 

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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