Is Romance Dead? Erich Korngold and the Romantic German Lied

<p>Far from being the operatic aria's less glamorous sister, the Romantic German Lied offers much dramatic scope for the classical performer. It has been described as the “quintessential Romantic genre”: the balanced and harmonious union of the music and text, in which the pianist and singer are equals. As accessible at private music gatherings as in concert halls, the Lied enjoyed popularity in German-speaking countries for over a hundred years, before facing its greatest adversary: Modernism. Romanticism, as an artistic movement, fought to survive in the uncertain musical and political landscape of the twentieth century. In Erich Korngold, Romantic music found a staunch advocate, and Lieder gained one of its most gifted contributors. Following in the daunting footsteps of Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler, Korngold's unashamedly luscious, rich orchestrations and soaring melodies earned him the nickname “the Viennese Puccini.” A child prodigy, Erich Korngold's rise was swift and glorious; his fall coincided with that of the German Lied and Romanticism itself. Romance may not have “died”, but it became outdated in the twentieth-century push for modernity and innovation across all art forms. In encyclopedias little is written of Korngold and his compositional output beyond his most famous and enduring opera Die tote Stadt, and his pioneering film scoring in pre- and post-war Hollywood. In my research I will show that Korngold is deserving of a place in the music canon as not only one of the last great composers of Lieder, but one of the last great Romantics, whose life and works sit on the cusp between the old world and the new. Furthermore, I will address the question of whether Romanticism died with the arrival of Modernism and revolutionary experimentation in music, or whether it lives on today, albeit in different forms.</p>

Is Romance Dead? Erich Korngold and the Romantic German Lied

<p>Far from being the operatic aria's less glamorous sister, the Romantic German Lied offers much dramatic scope for the classical performer. It has been described as the “quintessential Romantic genre”: the balanced and harmonious union of the music and text, in which the pianist and singer are equals. As accessible at private music gatherings as in concert halls, the Lied enjoyed popularity in German-speaking countries for over a hundred years, before facing its greatest adversary: Modernism. Romanticism, as an artistic movement, fought to survive in the uncertain musical and political landscape of the twentieth century. In Erich Korngold, Romantic music found a staunch advocate, and Lieder gained one of its most gifted contributors. Following in the daunting footsteps of Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler, Korngold's unashamedly luscious, rich orchestrations and soaring melodies earned him the nickname “the Viennese Puccini.” A child prodigy, Erich Korngold's rise was swift and glorious; his fall coincided with that of the German Lied and Romanticism itself. Romance may not have “died”, but it became outdated in the twentieth-century push for modernity and innovation across all art forms. In encyclopedias little is written of Korngold and his compositional output beyond his most famous and enduring opera Die tote Stadt, and his pioneering film scoring in pre- and post-war Hollywood. In my research I will show that Korngold is deserving of a place in the music canon as not only one of the last great composers of Lieder, but one of the last great Romantics, whose life and works sit on the cusp between the old world and the new. Furthermore, I will address the question of whether Romanticism died with the arrival of Modernism and revolutionary experimentation in music, or whether it lives on today, albeit in different forms.</p>

Bernard Herrmann

Bernard Herrmann (b. 1911–d. 1975) was a prolific American composer and conductor, known primarily for his work in film. He was also active, however, as a composer for radio and television, had written music for the concert and operatic stage, and had a prodigious conducting career later in his life. The majority of the current research on his oeuvre focuses on his film scoring and his collaborations with film directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, François Truffaut, Martin Scorsese, and Brian De Palma. He started producing scores for films in 1941, with Welles for the film Citizen Kane, and died just after completing his work for Taxi Driver (dir. Scorsese, 1976). Prior to his experience in cinema, Herrmann wrote music for hundreds of radio dramas starting in the 1930s and continuing until the 1950s, which he credited for his ability to compose so readily for cinema. Herrmann’s most famous collaboration was with Hitchcock, which began with the film The Trouble with Harry (1955) and ended with Marnie (1964). The director-composer duo had a falling out in 1966 over Herrmann’s score to Torn Curtain, which Hitchcock refused to use; the director instead hired John Addison to replace Herrmann. Herrmann went on to compose scores for films by Truffaut, Scorsese, and De Palma in the 1960s and 1970s. While composing for cinema, Herrmann also wrote stock music for television, mainly for CBS, throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Herrmann also conducted concert and film music on several recordings released from 1966 through 1976, including some of his own concert works. In addition to an extraordinary output for film, radio, television, and recording, Herrmann also wrote concert music, some of which he considered most dear. He composed orchestral, ballet, and vocal music throughout his life, starting in his teens and until his death. His opera Wuthering Heights (1951) was especially important to him. In interviews, especially later in life, Herrmann emphasized that he was a composer of music—not one restricted to only film music—and even then, he regarded film music to be equal to that for the concert stage.

Adaptation, Authenticity, and Ethics in Carl Davis’s Score to the Thief of Bagdad

Contributor Geoffrey Wilson notes Davis’s self-proclaimed practice of reviving the score the films might have had in their original release but he faults the leading composer in the silent film revival movement for failing to realize his aim. Wilson cautions that a number of contemporary practices mark Davis’s scores, including his use of leitmotivs to denote characters, a willingness to allow those leitmotivs to shape the overall narrative, and his readiness to adopt a unified musical style for the film. Each practice belongs to a more contemporary period of film scoring. Wilson contends that one of the only aspects of silent scoring Davis keeps is a willingness to create musical cues that present non-Western characters and settings in essentialist if not outright racist ways. The choice makes Davis’s claim to authenticity misleading. While Davis’s scores may make a historical film more accessible to modern audiences, they do so by promoting reductive stereotypical constructs.

Sound and Vision

Chapter 4 focuses on the first decade of David Bowie’s feature screen career in order to examine the changing industrial and aesthetic relationships of narrative feature filmmaking to popular music between the 1970s and 1980s. Using six of Bowie’s starring feature film roles between 1976 and 1986, this chapter explores broadening nonmusical roles for rock stars onscreen. Such casting was made possible in a context in which rock music had become normalized on film soundtracks, absent the rock star’s onscreen performance. This chapter draws connections across the economic and aesthetic relations of popular music and cinema from the popularization of the composite score in the 1970s (that is, film scoring with popular songs rather than orchestral music) to the synergistic organization of film and music industries in the 1980s, demonstrating how composite scoring set the stage for synergy organized around MTV. In this context, rock stars’ screen performances became less tied to the previous types of roles explored in this volume: composite scoring and synergy both expanded and standardized the nondiegetic prominence of rock music within film, and such practices meant that the industrial imperatives that constitute rock stars’ relationships to film no longer necessitated those stars’ onscreen performances of music. Analyzing how his dramatic and musical film performances intersected with his rock star image, this chapter explores Bowie’s variegated screen roles in terms of how rock stars’ industrial and textual functions no longer required cogent alignment.

Sampling Suara Instrumen Musik sebagai Strategi Peningkatan Hasil Belajar Mahasiswa dalam Pembuatan Film Scoring

ABSTRAKFilm scoring merupakan pembuatan musik untuk mengiringi gambar visual dalam film. Dalam pembuatan film scoring sangat dibutuhkan pengetahuan tentang musik, hal ini dikarekan film scoring memiliki tujuan untuk menciptakan emosi penonton agar dapat memahami film yang ditonton. Instrumen musik merupakan elemen musikal yang mendukung terciptanya emosi penonton. Penelitian ini memiliki tujuan meningkatkan hasil belajar mahasiswa Program Studi D-3 Animasi, Fakultas Seni Media Rekam, Institut Seni Indonesia Yogyakarta pada pembuatan Film Scoring dengan strategi pembelajaran menggunakan sampling suara isntrumen musik. Untuk mengetahui peningkatan hasil belajar mahasiswa, maka digunakan penelitian tindak kelas dengan tiga siklus. Indikator keberhasilan hasil belajar mahasiswa didapat dari nilai dalam tugas membuat film scoring. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa terjadi peningkatan hasil belajar mahasiswa pada akhir siklus ketiga dari PTK dengan menggunakan strategi pembelajaran sampling suara instrumen musik. Hasil belajar mahasiswa ini ditunjukan dengan jumlah mahasiswa yang mendapat nilai amat baik dan baik yaitu sekitar 93,75% dari 16 mahasiswa. Berdasarkan hasil tersebut, maka dapat disimpulkan bahwa penggunaan strategi sampling suara instrumen musik meningkatkan hasil belajar mahasiswa pada pembuatan film scoring. Film scoring is music written specifically to accompany a movie. The knowledge about music plays an important role in the making of film scoring. The purpose of film scoring is evoking audience’s emotion so they will understand the film message. Musical instrument is musical element that create audience’s emotion while watching film. This research aims to enhance student learning outcomes at Animation Study Program, Faculty of Media and Recorded Arts, Indonesia Institute of the Arts Yogyakarta in making film scoring with using sampling musical instrument as learning strategy. This research is classroom action research with three cycles. The indicator of student learning outcomes gathering from number of students who got an excellent and good marking in making film scoring. The results show 93,75% students or 15 out of 16 students got an excellent and good marking in making film scoring. According to the result of this study, it was concluded that the strategy of using sampling musical instrument can improve student learning outcome in making film scoring.