Intrada Soundtrack Forum

I'm really for "The Haunting". Everything about the film is great including Humphrey Searle's score. He was one of the first film composers to write an atonal score (at least in part). Other composer like Jerry Goldsmith also wrote atonal music but this was Searle's main area of study.

It's an important score and both the film and score have a cult following. This may be its last and only chance to be recorded in full.

So many wonderful re-recordings of long-neglected film scores have been undertaken in the past 40 years that I'm reluctant to complain that my personal favorites are missing in the Intrada poll. No less than Jeff Bond quite accurately noted, upon Intrada's release of the original tracks for "When Worlds Collide" and "War of the Worlds," how American composer Leith Stevens' two remarkable scores absolutely deserve re-recording to capture the full genius and scope of this classic sci-fi film music. I agree and would donate several thousand to make that a reality (though don't tarry long -- other projects beckon). Walter Schumann's alternately beautiful and nightmarish score for the cult classic "Night of the Hunter" is way overdue for attention. How this missed consideration in the Intrada poll, I cannot imagine. And any self-respecting conductor surveying American music in the recording studio should obviously tackle a better re-recording of Hugo Friedhofer's complete "The Best Years of Our Lives," though his "Vera Cruz" also beckons. Given the amazing variety of Jerry Goldsmith's scores for westerns -- each never quite treading ground broken by the composer previously -- a recording of "Black Patch" and "Face of a Fugitive" strikes me as a critically and fundamentally important re-recording project. And, as Bill Stromberg well knows, American composer Frank Skinner's rollicking "Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein" would be a worthy and relevant project, perhaps coupled with Skinner's earlier score for Alfred Hitchcock, "Saboteur." Another pivotal American score rating attention: George Antheil's "The Pride and the Passion." However, my dollars will go to important "classical music" projects if they happen to appear first, including discs devoted American composers Henry F. Gilbert and Anthony Philip Heinrich. Enough from my corner. Interesting comments by all!

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David, wonder no longer...I have several Leith Stevens scores which I all like very much, so there is no doubt in my mind that I'd prefer his Shadow of a Doubt to Tiomkin's. Now to be fair, I haven't heard the latter on its own so I might possibly like it okay as pure music divorced from the film context, but to me in the film it actively detracts and distracts in the worst possible way. Literally my single least favorite score for a Hitchcock film (which itself I think is hugely overrated, even apart from disliking the score).

Yavar

Different strokes for different folks I guess! And like I said, maybe as standalone music it's better. I just remember it absolutely ruining the movie for me, and IMO being a perfect example of the heavy-handedness which unfortunately turns so many people off to Golden Age film music in general (because they think it's all like that).

So if this was the preferred score of Bill's, how come it's not the Tiomkin/Hitchcock in this poll instead of Strangers on a Train?

Yavar

I must confess I have never seen I Confess...one of the rare Hitchcock sound films I haven't in fact, even though I do own it. Actually it's the only one that I own but haven't seen, so maybe I've been holding out so that I still have a "new" one I can see sometime. But who knows? Maybe it would be the rare Tiomkin score that I love.

Yavar

I CONFESS is also my favorite among Tiomkin´s four Hitchcock scores and it is a great pity that almost nothing has been available from this score till now. But the film itself is not that well-known anymore nowadays. This is is the most lyrical and romantic of those four scores. And the use of the distant and magical solo soprano is very unusual. The main theme sung by the solo soprano is a bit reminiscent of the one from Tiomkin´s THE BIG SKY (also one of my favorite Tiomkin scores) which had been composed just one year before and which also begins in a similar soft and quiet way.
Yavar should at least listen to this very poetic Main Title music which is not at all the bombastic Tiomkin stuff he usually dislikes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGCyVrTM_AQ

A Double Life and, if Tadlow doesn't do it, The Night of the Hunter

If those two were in the poll I would probably have to retract my votes for The Haunting and Joan of Arc and have those join the Goldsmith twofer as my picks.

Re: I Confess -- that main title is nice. What is the rest of the score like? (Does it actually know when to restrain itself?) I will say that as pure music, I have been known to occasionally really enjoy some Tiomkin bombast -- the Tadlow recordings of The Alamo and The Fall of the Roman Empire I find very enjoyable (if frankly not Rozsa/Herrmann/Korngold/Newman/Waxman/Friedhofer level...compared to those masters and others I still find his orchestrations clumsy and overcluttered).

Yavar

Slightly off topic but ...

>>"The Waltons" scores by Jerry Goldsmith with a new recording of Jerry Goldsmith's "The Homecoming: A Christmas Story">>

I see this come up fairly often in threads - no offense to the original poster, but I wonder how many people asking for Goldsmith's Waltons stuff are actually familiar with what he wrote for the series (as opposed to The Homecoming telemovie). He scored only a comparatively few episodes, all of them in the first season, and they re-use a lot of the same motifs, so there is not actually that much stuff. Also, it's pretty spare instrumentation wise, and extremely similar to a lot of his 'Americana' stuff that is already available. Probably the first episode ('The Foundling') has the most underscore, but a fair bit of that is the main title theme in variations of instrumentation and tempo.

I'm a huge fan of Jerry but I would argue that - memorable main title aside - his stuff for the Waltons is decidely 'Goldsmith lite'.

In contrast, Alexander Courage - who went on to score the vast bulk of the episodes, writing scores for every episode from seasons 3 to 8 and a bit of season 2 and 9 as well, plus four of the six telemovies made after the series finished - created a very memorable and distinctive musical palette for the series, weaving together traditional folk tunes and variations thereof with his own voice thrown in there as well.

I would think a good representation of Courage's work for the show would be a much more rewarding listening experience overall.