Those Magnificent Men and Their Flying Melodies

Let’s examine some pre-Star Wars film composers who made its score possible, many of whom are represented on the Chandos label.

We sometimes take modern film music for granted. Over the history of film, the incidental music that tells us what to feel has changed often, and dramatically, from mere windup organs to symphony orchestras, to popular genres and modern electronica. It could all seem quite random, if one didn’t factor into the equation some key directors and composers with a vision to continue traditions going all the way back to Beethoven. But something interesting happened in the post-World War 2 years: a bridge over the river of sounds that led to one of the richest periods of film music, now largely forgotten.

When I was a boy, back in the distant pre-history of the 1970s, a weekend movie on television was usually a World War 2 movie, or another replay of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. There were (thankfully) Gerry Anderson’s fabulous series: Thunderbirds, Stingray, UFO, a bit of trippy Space 1999 in the morning shows, for the kiddos, driven along by the exceptional and irreplaceable music of Barry Gray.

But, the screen music of the seventies wasn’t a big deal, in the way it is now. Not until it really took off thanks to Star Wars. Oh, there was a bit of West Side Story and some great Hollywood Westerns, but most film music made in the post war years had to contend either with ageing wartime loudspeakers in a cinema salon, or valve-driven pocket sized loudspeakers on a television set. Not too memorable. Consequently, some of the greatest music was never even noticed by our generation, despite it being there in abundant quality and quantity.

It goes without saying that John Williams’ score, for the original Star Wars release in 1977, was the defining event for modern film music. It inspired an entire generation, and changed the game for movies going forward, not least because of George Lucas’ clever marketing campaign. It went on to change theatres too, with the THX sound system standards, kickstarting a new market in film scores, which more or less persists today. Certainly, film scores were rarely heard in such detail before Star Wars. Recordings of sufficient quality didn’t exist much before the 1970s, so everything we have of earlier movies is based on rerecordings or rerenderings.

It has been said that Williams didn’t intend to break new ground with the Star Wars score. He was copying the forms of older movies to set a familiar reference. But little has been said about what his influences were, apart from some oblique references to Prokofiev and to holding Korngold in high regard. Korngold’s The Sea Hawk certainly pops up in Williams’ score for Hook, though I confess to having little love for Korngold’s music – technically brilliant, but like a soulless reading of a very long list written on a cardboard sandwich. We can only speculate about Williams’ motivations.

So that’s what I’m going to do.

Charting changing movie musical styles over time is for us enthusiasts, and one such change from those wartime films to more modern movies was driven by the gradual improvement of audio recording. Actors no longer had to shout to be heard, and the music could be blended more tastefully into the mix. So film music also softened – and in that transition time, there are so many superb scores that are completely overlooked today. It was a different musical language before the 1970s, filled with romance and sentimentalism and it morphed slowly following the development of modern British “classical” music.

So what happened to those scores that were never released and were barely audible? Thankfully, they were preserved in archives and are occasionally played by film music champions, such as the Prague orchestra. Today, largely due to the efforts of Chandos label, and a few enthusiastic conductors, like Richard Hickox and Rumon Gamba, many old film scores have been resurrected, and now exist once again in luxurious 96/24 releases.

Williams vs Williams

The early film score composers were also composers of modern “classical” music, moonlighting for fun and profit. Few classical composers of the 20th century did not write film music in some form or another. It was a proving ground for some of their greatest ideas. There is no proper palace to begin, so I’ll start with what, to me, is a defining moment in scoring – with another Williams!

Following the war, Ralph Vaughan Williams, surely one of Britain’s most well known composers, was commissioned to score the film Scott of the Antarctic (1948). This score is remarkable for its innovation of sounds and ideas, bleak and eerie spaces with majestic scenery. It is one of the few scores still represented by an original recording (in superb condition) by the composer himself. It was then later reproduced by the BBC Symphony Orchestra by Rumon Gamba in Scott of the Antarctic Suite. The music written for this movie also eventually became Vaughan Williams’ Seventh Symphony – one of my absolute favourites, evoking a bleak winter landscape, and charting Scott’s hopeless mission: “I do not regret this journey; we took risks, we knew we took them, things have come out against us, therefore we have no cause for complaint.”

Vaughan Williams wrote a lot of music, in many genres. To join the pantheon of war films, there is the 49th Parallel and Coastal Command, both soundtracks available on the Gamba recording The Film Music of Ralph Vaughan Williams. The very beautiful soaring theme of the 49th Parallel is still quite well known. Williams uses several folk themes and nationalistic references that were also embedded into his nine symphonies.

In the wake of World War 2, many movies were made memorializing specific heroic acts. The Heroes of Telemark (a badly preserved original recording) is familiar to this audience but alas is not a remaster.  Of course, The Dambusters and the story of the bouncing bomb is another classic. The theme from the Bridge over the River Kwai, scored by Sir Malcom Arnold is another enduring classic, rerecorded by Richard Hickox conducting the London Symphony Orchestra to replace the scratchy original recording. Arnold was a peculiarly uneven composer, prone to manic depression, who seemed to come alive for film work. Apart from a truly brilliant, original guitar concerto, his film music seems to far outshine his “serious” symphonic work. The Film Music of Sir Malcom Arnold is a nice introduction.

For sweeping themes and big orchestrations, two composers fit naturally together in style.  Australian composer Arthur Benjamin scored The Conquest of Everest (1953), with an almost John Williams flair to its opening, and British composer Leighton Lucas of The Dam Busters, make excellent companions in a collection of scores  The Film Music of Arthur Benjamin and Leighton Lucas, once again by Rumon Gamba and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. This is a really enjoyable and noteworthy release, and it brings me back to Star Wars again, because if you listen to the opening of Lucas’ suite from Ice Cold in Alex, you will be in for quite a surprise.

And then there’s Ron Goodwin‘s very famous Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. Chandos’ Ron Goodwin release is a favourite of mine. The composer was well known for the Battle of Britain. However, although it was not a true war story, a more compelling favourite is 633 Squadron. This movie theme became very popular, and was even covered by rock drummer Cozy Powell in the 1970s.

In all of these, there is the sense that, if you had to listen to one more triumphant march your brain’s propaganda centre might pop messily. So let’s finish in a different vein with the excellent William Alwyn, perhaps best known for the theme to A Night To Remember (about the sinking of the Titanic) and the 1942 biopic They Flew Alone about British aviator Amy Johnson who flew solo from Britain to Australia.  Alwyn’s works for film are collected in a series of releases volumes 1–4.

There is a lot of music for you to explore in these volumes. As a child of the 1970s, when reruns of these movies were commonplace, it gives a certain nostalgia to hear them again. Musically, they were every bit as good as modern film music – in some ways superior in terms of their orchestrations. As you listen, you might hear little ideas and phrases that remind you of Star Wars and its progressively modernized language. As a musician and composer myself, I have to hold a particular torch for our own contemporary John Williams. Much as he deprecated himself alongside Korngold, the skill and detail of his arrangements is still unsurpassed in modern times.

As we coast down the tail end of 20th century excellence, let us not forget those Magnificent Composers who paved the way for that marvellous Golden Age!