:: NPR did an interview yesterday with film composer Howard Shore, available here. The major part of the interview centers on Shore's most recent work, the score to David Cronenberg's film A History of Violence; in that portion of the interview, Shore describes how his collaborations with Cronenberg (this is the eleventh film they've done together) works, and how Shore establishes a melody for a certain character and then permutes that melody throughout the film as the character develops. He also describes the role of film music in establishing setting, saying that part of the composer's job is to take the filmgoer to the site of the story.
The second portion has Shore reflecting a bit on the phenomenon that was The Lord of the Rings. Shore believes that LOTR was the sum total of everything he knew about music up to that point in his career, and he speaks of the score (he clearly considers his LOTR work to constitute a single, giant score) with the tone that a proud father uses when referring to his son.
:: John links this story about a homeless man with a musical gift:
For months, Nathaniel Anthony Ayers had been excited about an invitation to see the Los Angeles Philharmonic in action at Disney Hall. "The anticipation is horrible," he told me a week before the designated day. He'd started showering daily at a shelter, he said, to gussy himself up as much as possible.
Nathaniel was a music student more than 30 years ago at the prestigious Juilliard School when he suffered a breakdown. Today, as he continues to battle the schizophrenia that landed him on skid row, music is one of the few things that inspires and consoles him.
He plays violin and cello for hours each day in downtown Los Angeles, lifting his instruments out of an orange shopping cart on which he has written:
"Little Walt Disney Concert Hall — Beethoven."
What a story.
:: I can't remember where I saw this linked, so if I'm not crediting someone, I apologize, but here is a long but fascinating article about conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler, one of the great conductors of the early 20th century -- and a controversial figure whose ties to the German Nazi regime were complex, and often taken for support.
Berlin. October 7, 1944. A typical day toward the end of the Third Reich. Soldiers die. Civilians suffer. Jews are murdered. Nothing special.
In the Beethovensaal a concert is about to begin,Wilhelm Furtwangler conducting but the theater is empty, relieved of its usual audience studded with Nazi elite seeking a brief cultured respite from the stresses of war. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is on stage, awaiting its cue. Conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler stands awkwardly on the podium. The vague meandering of his baton summons the first shadowy note of Bruckner's Ninth Symphony. A Radio Berlin engineer starts his Magnetophon. The most extraordinary orchestral recording of the century has just begun.
Back in my days of collecting music on LPs and cassettes, I owned a number of Furtwangler's recordings. Trouble was, I didn't really have the ear at the time to discern their quality (especially because they were all in mono). I should track down some of Furtwangler's work again one of these days. I recall reading in a book called The Great Conductors that Furtwangler's beat was extremely unorthodox, to the point that many orchestras had enormous difficulty in following him. He apparently crafted his beat to match musical phrases rather than the metrical demands of the time signature and the bar line.
Anyway, check these links out.
No comments:
Post a Comment