As you celebrate and reflect on this President's Day, we wish you peace. One of our favorite ways to celebrate is with Copland's Lincoln Portrait. The video above includes Leonard Bernstein conductng and Aaron Copland narrating with the National Symphony. Although this is awesome, our favorite recording is with Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony joined by James Earl Jones to narrate.
We wish you a happy President's Day.
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This week on Film Score Friday, we listen to the score from On the Waterfront. The 1954 score was Leonard Bernstein's only film score, not counting musicals.
This score did a number of things that moviegoers had never heard as movie accompaniment before. The film starts with a theme representing the protagonist (Marlon Brando) with a lone horn. This theme with the solo horn is heard throughout the film. There's lots muted brass throughout the score as well. The confounding thing is how little the music is used in the film.
Elia Kazan directed the film and is the the culprit for how little of the great score we hear. Only about a third of the film has music. Begrudgingly, we have to admit it works. When the music does return after the breaks throughout the film, it makes it all the more impactful.