Post by erik on Mar 27, 2021 17:15:42 GMT -5
Many a Hollywood film score has entered the classical repertoire in our lifetimes. One such example is in this week's Classical Works Spotlight, a score to one of the greatest Westerns of the 1950's.
Jerome Moross: THE BIG COUNTRY
The influence of Aaron Copland on 20th century American music wasn’t limited to only the major classical concert venues by any stretch of the imagination. Indeed, his influence spread all the way to Hollywood, where, in the years following the end of World War II, his brand of Americana began influencing many a composer of film music; it also helped that Copland himself won the 1948 Oscar for his score for the film adaptation of John Steinbeck’s The Red Pony. One composer who directly studied under the man known as the “dean of American composers” was Jerome Moross. Like Copland, Moross was a native of Brooklyn; and he not only studied under Copland’s tutelage, he also helped Copland orchestrate the music for the 1940 film version of the Thornton Wilder play Our Town. This kind of influence got Moross into composing scores based on folk idioms that nevertheless were also simpatico to the Hollywood way of thinking. But of all of his film scores, his most famous one is the one he composed for the 1958 William Wyler-directed Western epic The Big Country. This film concerns itself with a Navy sailor (Gregory Peck) who, returning to Texas at the turn of the 20th century to marry the girl (Carroll Baker) he left behind, then finds himself involved in a vicious range war between Baker’s father (Charles Bickford), a high-class, “tony” type, and a far less refined family of rougher types, led by Burl Ives. The dispute is over a stretch of river known as The Big Muddy, whose water is vital to both families’ cattle and horses. Wyler put together a cast that included Jean Simmons, Charlton Heston, Chuck Connors, and Alfonso Bedoya; and Ives would snag a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as Bickford’s uncouth range rival. But besides all this, Moross’ score, which includes one of Hollywood’s most memorable main title themes, over a series of shots of Peck’s buckboard wagon traversing the Texas plains, remains legendary well into the 21st century; and it too might have snagged an Oscar had Dmitri Tiomkin not won for The Old Man And The Sea that same year (1958). Moross died of a stroke on July 25, 1983, only one week before what would have been his 70th birthday.
MGM Studio Orchestra/JEROME MOROSS (MGM)
Jerome Moross: THE BIG COUNTRY
The influence of Aaron Copland on 20th century American music wasn’t limited to only the major classical concert venues by any stretch of the imagination. Indeed, his influence spread all the way to Hollywood, where, in the years following the end of World War II, his brand of Americana began influencing many a composer of film music; it also helped that Copland himself won the 1948 Oscar for his score for the film adaptation of John Steinbeck’s The Red Pony. One composer who directly studied under the man known as the “dean of American composers” was Jerome Moross. Like Copland, Moross was a native of Brooklyn; and he not only studied under Copland’s tutelage, he also helped Copland orchestrate the music for the 1940 film version of the Thornton Wilder play Our Town. This kind of influence got Moross into composing scores based on folk idioms that nevertheless were also simpatico to the Hollywood way of thinking. But of all of his film scores, his most famous one is the one he composed for the 1958 William Wyler-directed Western epic The Big Country. This film concerns itself with a Navy sailor (Gregory Peck) who, returning to Texas at the turn of the 20th century to marry the girl (Carroll Baker) he left behind, then finds himself involved in a vicious range war between Baker’s father (Charles Bickford), a high-class, “tony” type, and a far less refined family of rougher types, led by Burl Ives. The dispute is over a stretch of river known as The Big Muddy, whose water is vital to both families’ cattle and horses. Wyler put together a cast that included Jean Simmons, Charlton Heston, Chuck Connors, and Alfonso Bedoya; and Ives would snag a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as Bickford’s uncouth range rival. But besides all this, Moross’ score, which includes one of Hollywood’s most memorable main title themes, over a series of shots of Peck’s buckboard wagon traversing the Texas plains, remains legendary well into the 21st century; and it too might have snagged an Oscar had Dmitri Tiomkin not won for The Old Man And The Sea that same year (1958). Moross died of a stroke on July 25, 1983, only one week before what would have been his 70th birthday.
MGM Studio Orchestra/JEROME MOROSS (MGM)