Intrada Soundtrack Forum

Happy July 4 to you American friends !


Christmas, Easter, Halloween are easy: there are plenty of seasonal scores.
For Thanksgiving, the only one I know is the Plymouth Adventure, though you might include Pocahontas and The New World.

How about July 4?
I'm not directly concerned, naturally, but it's a good opportunity to listen to some scores again, and send you a friendly thought.

I started the day with Poltergeist, just because it opens with "The Star-Spangled Banner".
I have just started Independence Day (I hadn't thought of it before! ).
Not a score, but there's John Debney's album, The Lights of Liberty-- but I don't have it.
John Williams' The Patriot and Trevor Jones / Randy Edelman's The Last of the Mohicans.

I've seen a movie called 1776 mentionned on FSM's board: how good is it?

Of course in America the tradition is the 1812 Overture and likely we could call it a soundtrack as it appeared in "Down With Love." The question remains in my mind why are we playing a Russian composed work that is about Napolean? To me it never made sense.

Another work of interest is Ives and his Holiday Symphony which includes Washington's Birthday, Decoration Day, Fourth of July, and Thanksgiving. I am not an expert on this work so the recording I have (#39556) Columbia with Bernstein and the NY Philharmonic may or may not be a good interpretation of the work.

If anyone truly knows the real story of how we started playing the 1812 Overture in this country I would be interested.
Tom

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"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which can not fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance...that principle is contempt prior to investigation.
Herbert Spencer

Happy Fourth of July to my American friends, neighbours, and relatives!

Frank Skinner's Americana score for SHENANDOAH epitomizes, musically, (the folk song of the title, the Battle Hymn of the Republic, beautiful, delicate scoring by Skinner, period-appropriate instrumentation (harpsichord) in the orchestration) many of the values (James Stewart's recitations, from the soundtrack, are visionary and still have currency) and themes I consider the essence of America's goodness and greatness and is an appropriate idealized epitome for the Fourth of July.

NP: SHENANDOAH (Frank Skinner)

b.

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DavidinBerkeley

"Ask [the director] where the camera comes from and I'll tell him where the music comes from" (David Raksin)