Thread: Rarely heard film scores

I like the soundtrack of April's Fool Day (1986) by Charles Bernstein. To me it has a great eighties feel.

There's a huge amount of rarely heard film scores.

While I agree with the reasons listed above for this unfamiliarity, I would not (speaking for myself) select titles such a Kaper's MUTINY or a Horner-scored animated movie because not only are these films major Hollywood / English-language items but they also have corresponding soundtrack albums. Even C. Gordon's MODY DICK has been on CD and there's quite a number of FSM members who love this soundtrack and talk about it.

I'd say vintage cinema from Poland, Hungary, Czech republic, etc. have rarely heard film music.
Consider Polish directors such as Wajda or Munk who had utilized composers like Tadeusz Baird for films such as SAMSON or THE PASSENGER - these are the types of film music which I think are rarely heard.

Spanish composer Luis De Pablo is extremely neglected, considering he wrote music for early Carlos Saura films like THE HUNT, PEPPERMINT FRAPPE & THE GARDEN OF DELIGHTS - and not one single album of his film music exists to my knowledge!

One of my all time film scores' composers is the Greek Eleni Karaindrou. Emotional and hauntingly beautiful are the way I would describe her music. The Weeping Willow score is stunning, as is the movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WbdSWIhNtc

The Sand Castle (1961), Alec Wilder.
Marco the Magnificent (1965), Georges Garvarentz.

I have both on LP, but have never seen a review or mention of either.

Prokofiev - Ivan The Terrible

Tikhon Khrennikov Hussar Ballad (1962 Mosfilm)
the story the plot based on - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadezhda_Durova

One of the best soundtracks to a movie that had no original soundtrack release, only a re-recording of the music, incomplete and not the best quality is the score to The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
Tom

A bit of trivia in regards to Moby Dick. The 1950's version with Gregory Peck was composed by Philip Sainton, his only film score and the main theme came from an orchestral piece he wrote called "The Island."

Originally Posted by geralmar

The Sand Castle (1961), Alec Wilder.
Marco the Magnificent (1965), Georges Garvarentz.

I have both on LP, but have never seen a review or mention of either.

Hi, geralmar.

I own both these LPs myself.

I've not mentioned Wilder's THE SAND CASTLE here, but I did create a thread on Georges Garvarentz over at the Film Score Monthly message board. Here's the link:

http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/boar...ID=1&archive=0

MARCO THE MAGNIFICENT is talked about, amongst lots of other vinyls with music by Garvarentz which have never been on digital media.

never have heard or seen Wilder's Sand Castle. I'd be curious to hear it.
Tom

Here's one I bet few if any here are familiar with. It's Gottfried Huppertz' music to Fritz Lang's 1924 silent "Sigfried", the first of his two "Nibelungen" films. It is a rarity in being the original music composed for the film. Few silent era music scores survive. What's more, it is heard performed by full orchestra, as would have happened during its initial showings at premiere cinemas in major cities. (Lesser theaters / towns would have made do with reduced instrumentation. Even lesser establishments probably didn't receive the Huppertz score but instead relied on ad hoc music that fit the mood of the film.)

With the advent of sound, dialog was added to the films, and Huppertz score replaced by bleeding chunks of Wagner. Now, I enjoy Wagner as much as most, but if I want to hear his take on the Nibelung I can watch / listening to the Ring. I don't claim Huppertz' score is a masterpiece, but it's quite listenable and worth a hearing:


(Music doesn't begin until a minute or so into the film.)

This one is a bit tricky.
Depends on the definitions of "rarely" and "heard". Does it relate to how obscure the score is in relation to the amount of renown afforded the film?
In that case, I would nominate Last Year at Marienbad. I'm a longtime fan a classical organ music. I was struck when I first saw the film around 2001-ish that it was perhaps the only film ever with a through-composed classical organ score. (I welcome additional items for that list) It adds a great deal to the film, even though according to the BFI book about LYAM, the choice to record an organ was initially a cost saving measure. It may not be the best mid-century modern organ music, but it isn't complete dreck, either. The composer, the brother of the main female lead, was supposedly a composition student of Messiaen. Thus began a decade long question to either locate the score, or find an out-of-the-box organist interested in doing an improvisatory re-recording or re-interpretation. Which would surely be a reasonable task for an academically trained and talented organist.
I attempted to contact, or contacted, at least 5 entities which were possible leads on the score, and several important (wouldn't call them "major") labels for recorded organ music. None of the labels found it interesting enough to even reply. The most promising score leads - the commercial entities which seemed to inherent whatever became of Mondiamusic, the publisher of record - didn't get back to me. The most promising was a professional french musicologist who claims to have contacted Seyrig's widow. (That of the composer, not the star. As so often seemed to be the case with french cultural figures of the mid 20th century, he died in a motor vehicle accident) He said the widow thought the score might be in the attic of her summer home, and she would check in a few months. Alas, that never went anywhere either. Some joker claimed to be willing to sell me something for some high amount of euroes, but he was really only talking about a 45rpm that had 4 short excerpts of the music. The Oratoire du Louvre, the Protestant church in Paris where the music was recorded, at least responded to say they did not believe the score was in their archives. I never tried to directly contact Alain Resnais, and I sincerely hope that perhaps he has a copy in his personal archives that will be available once his papers are donated to some academic institution after his passing.

So, that's where things are now, over a decade after I started this quest. I'm a fairly good enough classical organist now - I'm in the very rare category of people who dabble but have never been professional church musicians - that over the next 10 years I could probably adopt, by ear, some of the better vignettes and record my own mini-version of score.