# Rarely heard film scores



## TudorMihai

Do you like a particular film score that many people don't know about it? This could be because the film isn't that good, it is rarely aired on TV, the score was never released commercially or maybe because the film is pretty much forgotten.

I've always loved Christopher's Gordon magnificent score for the TV film "Moby Dick" (1998)






Another example is Bronislau Kaper's music for "Mutiny on the Bounty" (1962)






Lastly, I would mention James Horner's music for "Once Upon a Forest" (1993)


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## lovetheclassics

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


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## Prodromides

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!


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## Delilah

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.


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## 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.


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## sharik

*
Prokofiev* - _Ivan The Terrible_


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## sharik

*
Shostakovitch* - _King Lear_


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## sharik

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


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## sdtom

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


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## sdtom

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."


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## Prodromides

geralmar said:


> 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/board/posts.cfm?threadID=86536&forumID=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.


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## sdtom

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


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## ToneDeaf&Senile

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.)


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## circa

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.


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## Prodromides

circa said:


> In that case, I would nominate Last Year at Marienbad...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.
> 
> 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...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.


Hi, circa.

I, too, love LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD by Alain Resnais, so I'm glad to meet another enthusiast.










That French EP on the Philips label was the only item ever issued at that time on this film's music. I own a copy of that myself, but I wouldn't go so far as to call a dealer in rare soundtrack albums (which I collect) as a "joker".

Unfortunately, director Resnais has passed away at the beginning of March this year... http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-26405308


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## circa

Yes, well Prodromides, the problem was the individual emailed me to say something like "I have a lead on obtaining the score". Then a few weeks later, "I will sell you this record for 200 euros" or something like that. Maybe it was lost in translation. I don't think he was a native speaker of English and perhaps he read "score" to mean "soundtrack". Nobody in the US at least asks in a music store for the "score" of a film.
If you have the EP handy, does it list any publisher other than Mondiamusic Geneve?
Strange twist - if you search the US copyright registration of the soundtrack, you will see that some years ago a legal entity that apparently specialized in such maneuvers re-registered a copyright to it under their own name. Even though it was doubtful they had any legal claim to it or had anything to do with Resnais et al. It looks like they tried to do this to numerous old compositions as some bizarre form of speculation. A company in London used to sell a CD version of your EP...at the time the owner of that company told me in Europe it was in the public domain so he was legally able to do that. Presumably the false but legal US copyright claim would prevent them from marketing the CD in the US. At any rate, I don't the aging, monophonic version of the score...I'd really like modern a re-recording.

Yes...come to think of it I did hear of the death of Resnais in March...and promptly forgot about it! I should try to find out what became of his papers and records, which are surely considered a national treasure by the French.


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## QuietGuy

One of my new favorites is the Go-Between, score by Michel Legrand. Here's the fugue:


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## Prodromides

circa said:


> If you have the EP handy, does it list any publisher other than Mondiamusic Geneve?
> 
> It looks like they tried to do this to numerous old compositions as some bizarre form of speculation. A company in London used to sell a CD version of your EP...at the time the owner of that company told me in Europe it was in the public domain so he was legally able to do that. Presumably the false but legal US copyright claim would prevent them from marketing the CD in the US.


Unfortunately, circa, my vinyls are in storage boxes since my move last year so I don't have it handy to view.

However, this whole copyright/re-issue subject has been transpiring for a number of years in the UK with labels such as Harkit, Cherry Red, _El_, etc.
Any and all recordings greater than 50 years in age fall into this European public domain. The types of discs issued by these labels are vinyl record programs which have not yet been released legit onto CDs.

Good luck in your search for the Seyrig manuscript(s) and attempts at a new recording - afraid I can't assist you in those areas.


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## circa

Gosh, excuse the loopiness of my prior post. I was trying to multitask as I so often am.
Quiet guy, thanks for reminding me of that amazing Legrand piece. I have it on CD somewhere but had never seen the film it came from.
I absolutely love Legrand, I have a CD of his own piano improvisations of his themes. It's incredible. Couple interesting things:
people may not be aware his niece is a Baltimore alterna-pop star. The apple has not fallen far from the neighboring tree. Band is called Beach House.
Also, I need to double check this but there's a bizarre similarity of themes between a Legrand song and a track from the French prog-rock band Pulsar. Literally, like, the same melody, maybe even the same key. I notice it now and then and always forget to check the dates. In any case, no big deal, I doubt it was anything worse than accidental plagiarism. If that. It could just be an incredible coincidence but the timing is too close - mid 70s. I have wondered if any musicologist has seriously investigated the mathematical possibility of the world running out of melodies.


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## ClassicalMusicYouTube

QuietGuy said:


> One of my new favorites is the Go-Between, score by Michel Legrand. Here's the fugue:


Very nice! How old is this film?


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## Prodromides

ClassicalMusicYouTube said:


> Very nice! How old is this film?


Hi, CMYT.

THE GO-BETWEEN was released in 1971. This film was scripted by Harold Pinter and directed by Joseph Losey. It stars Julie Christie and Alan Bates. Michel Legrand's music for THE GO-BETWEEN was actually a replacement score ; Losey initially had Richard Rodney Bennett write the score but it was never used/recorded.


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## Score reader

Masaru Sato's work for Akira Kurosawa springs to mind:


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## mannaguy

*The World of Henry Orient (1964)*






Elmer Bernstein (Composer, Conductor), Kenneth Lauber (Composer). Lauber composed the above.

Found it on Amazon.


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## Dulova Harps On

A real treasure. The original score by German composer Eduard Kunneke was adapted by Frank Strobel.


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## dsosin

Judy Wyler will be happy to hear this!


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## BHKraft

*Four Days of Snow and Blood (1989)*


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## Red Terror

*The Wicker Man - OST by Paul Giovanni*


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## LezLee

Panned by the critics but I've always loved 'Deadfall' and the John Barry soundtrack. I think this guitar 'concerto' is pretty good for a non-classical piece.


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## LezLee

And this is the 'Statue Dance' also from Deadfall


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## LezLee

Debbie Wiseman is one of our best film composers both for film and TV.
This is from the Stephen Fry film, 'Wilde'


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## jazzthieve

Red Sonja by Morricone is excellent but the movie is not at all so most people don't know about it.


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## eyepatchplease

Two I can think of:

The Her soundtrack by Bill Butler and Owen Pallet. For some reason it's never been released. Shame.

The other is the Waking Life soundtrack, which I'm sure is out of print. I got it via interlibrary loan and it remains one of my favorites.


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