An Austrian in Hollywood

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Francis Leinberger
Keyword(s):  
Film Music ◽  
Star Trek ◽  
Compositional Techniques ◽  
Film Score ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Listening Experience ◽  
John Williams ◽  
Academy Award ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Frank Sinatra

When interviewed about film music, John Williams is often quick to credit Max Steiner as the originator of the leitmotif technique in film music. Steiner brought with him to the U.S. the compositional techniques he learned as a child prodigy in Europe, including the leitmotif technique. This paper will discuss Steiner’s use of leitmotifs in his Academy Award winning score to the 1942 Warner Bros. film Now, Voyager. Film musicologists disagree on the relevance of themes being heard in different keys throughout a film score and their possible effect on the audience. I intend to demonstrate that, although the significance of these key relationships may only exist on a subconscious level, they do contribute in a meaningful way to the viewing/listening experience. To demonstrate this, I will use examples of “Charlotte’s Theme,” also known as the “Love Theme,” which appears in various keys throughout the film. The key relationships are clearly intentional and well thought out by Steiner. This theme, which is almost always in triple meter, was recorded in 1943 by Allen Miller and his Orchestra as a pop tune, in quadruple meter, with the title “It Can’t Be Wrong.” Steiner plagiarizes himself when this instrumental version is heard as source music in the 1945 Warner Bros. film Mildred Pierce. Vocal versions, including one recorded by Frank Sinatra, include lyrics by Kim Gannon. This version was also sung in the Star Trek: Voyager episode “The Killing Game, Part 1.”

From Film Score to Art Music and Back

2020 ◽  
pp. 173-192
Author(s):  
Julia Khait
Keyword(s):  
Musical Theater ◽  
Film Music ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Compositional Techniques ◽  
Sergei Prokofiev ◽  
Film Scores ◽  
Film Score ◽  
Stylistic Evolution ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ivan The Terrible

Sergei Prokofiev was one of a few composers who worked equally successfully in the fields of film music and art music. His scores for Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible are as significant for the history of film music as are his operas and ballets for musical theater. He approached film projects with the same creative rigor as his stage and symphonic works. And so we must think of his film scores not as a separate enterprise but, rather, as one of the various theatrical and dramatic genres at which he tried his hand. While the operatic features of his music for Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible have become widely recognized, Prokofiev’s other film scores can also be placed in a broader context of the composer’s output. The cross-connections between genres can be traced at different levels, from common themes and literary ideas and similar stylistic evolution, to shared compositional techniques and borrowings of musical material from one work to another.

Music by Max Steiner

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven C. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Film Music ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Award Winner ◽  
Gone With The Wind ◽  
George Gershwin ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Richard Strauss ◽  
Emotionally Troubled ◽  
John Williams ◽  
Academy Award

During a seven-decade career that spanned from 19th-century Vienna to 1920s Broadway to the golden age of Hollywood, three-time Academy Award winner Max Steiner did more than any other composer to establish and codify the language of film music. Composers today like John Williams use the same techniques perfected by the classically trained Steiner, in his scores for such motion pictures as Casablanca, King Kong, Gone with the Wind, The Searchers, Now, Voyager, the Astaire-Rogers musicals, and more than two hundred other titles. Steiner’s private life was as tumultuous as the films he scored. Born into an Austrian theatrical dynasty, he became one of Hollywood’s highest-paid composers. But he was constantly in debt, due to financial mismanagement, four marriages, and the actions of his emotionally troubled son. Steiner ended his career in triumph: at age 71, although practically blind, he wrote what Billboard called the most successful instrumental single of the era: “Theme from A Summer Place.” Throughout his chaotic life, Steiner was buoyed by a quick wit and an instinctive gift for melody, as he met and worked with a Who’s Who of artists: Johann Strauss Jr., Richard Strauss, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Oscar Hammerstein, David O. Selznick, Frank Sinatra, Frank Capra, and many more. This first full biography of Steiner brings to life the previously untold story of a musical pioneer and master dramatist who helped create a vital new art form (and multimillion-dollar industry), while writing many of the greatest scores in cinema history.

scholarly journals Indigenous Water Rights in Comparative Law

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 393-402
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Macpherson
Keyword(s):  
Human Population ◽  
Global Financial Crisis ◽  
Water Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Academy Award ◽  
Increasing Demand ◽  
Poor Management

At the end of the 2015 Academy Award-winning film The Big Short, which explores the origins of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, a caption notes that the Wall Street investor protagonist of the film who predicted the collapse of the United States (US) housing market would now be ‘focused on one commodity: water’. Water is sometimes described in popular culture as ‘the new oil’ or ‘more valuable than gold’. It is predicted to be the subject of increasing uncertainty, competition, conflict, and even war, as increasing demand from a growing human population and development meets reduced supply as a result of poor management, overuse, and climate change.

scholarly journals Hearing things in music for films: music, fiction and engagement

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 64-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Birger Langkjær
Keyword(s):  
Film Music ◽  
Music Analysis ◽  
Audience Engagement ◽  
Opening Scene ◽  
Musical Perception ◽  
Ecological Theories ◽  
Level Model ◽  
John Williams ◽  
Dramatic Space ◽  
Different Levels

Film music is often thought of as something that adds to the visuals. Yet, this truism somehow obscures the complexity of how film music works. First, music has no single and fixed meaning that can be added to the visuals in the first place. Second, experiencing audiovisual meaning can be accounted for on several levels. For that reason this article proposes eight different but complementary ways of listening to music along the lines of ecological theories of musical perception in which it is argued that we hear things, that is, referential matters in music. The validity of this is demonstrated through the discussion of a series of scholarly interpretations of John Williams’ music for the opening scene of Jaws (1975). Second, it is argued that music may add meaning on different levels and a three level model of film music analysis is suggested in which the music as an expressive device, the fiction world as a dramatic space and kinds of audience engagement are conceived as three separate, yet interacting, levels of the filmic experience.

Disability Portrayal in Film: Reflecting the Past, Directing the Future

1998 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen P. Safran
Keyword(s):  
Learning Disabilities ◽  
Motion Pictures ◽  
Descriptive Study ◽  
Persons With Disabilities ◽  
Education Professionals ◽  
The Past ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Special Education Professionals ◽  
Academy Award ◽  
Influence Perceptions

Going to the movies and viewing videos are very popular forms of entertainment. Cinematic stories and characters influence perceptions and opinions of many viewers. Studying film depictions, therefore, provides a unique perspective on society's views of individuals with disabilities. The purpose of this descriptive study was to investigate trends in Academy Award winning films that portray persons with disabilities. Over the decades, there have been an increasing number of awards involving “disability” movies; psychiatric disorders have been most frequently portrayed. Only two of the motion pictures identified presented children or youth with impairments, while none featured learning disabilities. Implications for special education professionals, with particular emphasis on using films for instructional purposes, are discussed.

Serengeti Shall Not Die

2020 ◽  
pp. 105-144
Author(s):  
Thomas M. Lekan
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
Visual Representation ◽  
Cattle Grazing ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
History Of ◽  
Academy Award ◽  
International Conventions

This chapter explores the politics of scientific knowledge and visual representation of savanna environments in Bernhard and Michael Grzimek’s bestselling book and Academy Award–winning documentary film, Serengeti Shall Not Die (1959). It shows how the Grzimeks used their iconic airplane, nicknamed the “Flying Zebra,” to conduct ecological reconnaissance and employ aerial filmography. They depicted the Serengeti as an untouched ecosystem and a global heritage of mankind, despite its history of pastoralist land use and as a battleground between contending German and British imperial forces. Following international conventions established in London in 1933, the Grzimeks insisted that the Serengeti should encompass the entire habitat of migrating wildebeest—and not, as some officials in the Tanganyika Territory insisted, be divided to accommodate the local Maasai people’s customary cattle grazing. The Grzimeks failed to stop the redrawing of the park’s boundaries, partly because the airborne camera never expunged the Serengeti’s “ghosts of land use past.”

Grupo de Renovacion Musical (1942–1948)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marysol Quevedo
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Igor Stravinsky ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Sonata Form ◽  
Compositional Techniques ◽  
American Composers ◽  
Premature Deaths ◽  
The U.S

The Grupo de Renovacion Musical was a school of Cuban composers that emerged out of the Conservatorio Municipal de La Habana during the 1940s. The young composers were pupils of Spanish-born composer José Ardévol, who served as the leader and mentor of the group. After the premature deaths of Amadeo Roldán and Alejandro García Caturla (1939 and 1940 respectively), Ardévol took over some of their duties as music professor at the Conservatorio Municipal. Ardévol and his pupils saw a need for Cuban composers to focus on compositional techniques and strongly believed that all composers should master traditional compositional methods, such as traditional counterpoint, sonata form, and fugues (most commonly used by composers of the Baroque and Classical periods) in order to fully develop their music-writing abilities. They also rejected the obvious nationalism that Roldán and Caturla had popularised and that was also found in the works of many other Latin American composers from the previous generation. Instead, they preferred the neoclassical trends of Europe—mostly of France and Spain—with composers Igor Stravinsky and Manuel de Falla serving as their models. However, they never denied the importance of the legacy established by Roldán and Caturla for future generations of Cuban composers. The group acknowledged that Roldán and Caturla were visionaries in their own time, influential through their compositions, which brought Cuban music up to date with contemporary music developments in the U.S., Latin America, and Europe, and for introducing the use of traditional Cuban music elements to contemporary art music—particularly the use of rhythm and percussive instrumentation.

Sucker

2020 ◽  
pp. 296-310
Author(s):  
Steven C. Smith
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Film Music ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
New York Philharmonic ◽  
Concert Programming ◽  
Frank Sinatra

Today, the performance of film music is a staple of symphony concert programming. In 1943, it was an anomaly. That year, Steiner was invited to conduct the New York Philharmonic for a potential audience of twenty thousand at Lewisohn Stadium. But for Max, the concert proved a humiliating disaster, due to the orchestra’s open hostility toward a “Hollywood” composer, and the addition to the program of 27-year-old Frank Sinatra. More teen idol than respected singer at the time, Sinatra inspired Beatles-like screaming from his fans throughout the concert, upstaging Steiner. A series of personal calamities followed: the death of Max’s beloved father, a health crisis of his own, and seemingly insurmountable debt. Again, music was Steiner’s salvation. The 1944 film Since You Went Away—his last collaboration with Selznick—earned Max a third Oscar. But shortly after its release, Steiner was devastated by news that Louise wanted a divorce.

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