Movie/TV/Game Scores Through The Ages - Alan's Personal Favourites

The Sea Hawk is one of my Top 10 scores of all time!

-Erik-

Also, thanks Erik for stepping in on D. I fear if I had other members would just say its Tom and his conservative views. Heh, that is for other threads if some of you think this is funny. This thread is like I'm revisiting my defunct golden scores. Love it.
Thomas

Thanks for your understanding D. Especially in the US Snow White is a symbol of good and purity.
Thomas

If going by music/image marriage, I would pick FANTASIA for 1940. In terms of original scores, I would give it to THIEF OF BAGHDAD as well, slightly ahead of REBECCA with SEA HAWK at third.

That's why I won't pick up the FSM release and just savour my Varese/Bernstein suite-style recording of BAGDAD.

Incidentally, I have seen neither THIEF nor SEA HAWK, so I'm just going by album experiences here.

I 100% agree with you on FANTASIA, that has a lot to answer for concerning my love of classical. ( all possitive I might add )

But...but...that is the FSM release: the 1973 Bernstein FMC rerecording (at LP length...40 minutes or so?)
The Varese tracks are recorded by Rozsa himself (& the Graunke Symfoniker, if memory serves, around the same time).

Anyway, The Sea Hawk is a very good score (I personally prefer the Varujan Kojian rerecording over the Morgan/Stromberg one: the latter is just too long for me), but I'd never choose it over The Thief Of Bagdad. (incidentally: the Sea Hawk has about as much singing as The Thief Of Bagdad has! ). Korngold is clearly at the top of his game here, but for me there is no magic in the score. It's swashbuckling, exciting and adventurous, but it's not epic, larger than life.

This is what I dearly love in The Thief Of Bagdad.
It's the finest oriental fantasy score ever composed, to a truly magical film.
Every single cue is another adventure and another theme to whistle or hum, and imbued with such enthusiasm as to border on exuberance! Of course it helps that I do know the film. Very well in fact (and I'd warmly and strongly recommend it to anyone! It's a beautiful Korda production, of such scope that it dwarfs all its meager carbon copies ten-twenty years hence). So it's easy for me to pick out the Evil Grand Vizier, the thief (who was a son of a thief, who was a son of a thief), the malevolent but awe-inspiring Djinn...but even without that benefit, Rozsa's score is of such colour and eloquence that it tells the story so easily and beautifully through the music: the sweating laborers in the Basrah harbour, the evil Vizier's arrival, the beautiful princess, her toy-obsessed father, the thief, the noble king...all have an immediately noticeable and recognizable musical presence.

To me it's one of the finest scores ever, and it consistently features somewhere in the top of my personal perennial favourites.

Oh? I don't own the FSM, so I couldn't say. Given Alan's response above, I assumed they had released an expanded version of the score.

I was going to correct you as there has been a (digital download?) release of both Our Town and Of Mice and Men complete scores:

http://www.filmscoreclicktrack.com/2010 … -our-town/

I picked this up a few months ago on the Naxos label (Naxos 9.70124) but I can't seem to find any reference to this at all: all the places I have looked has cited it as "unavailable" - it seems to have been withdrawn?

So, the complete score (43 minutes) for Our Town was available.

Tom, here's some details on what was on Naxos' Our Town release:

http://www.racksandtags.com/falkirkbair … d-Our-Town

I find Korngold's songs much more listenable than those found on The Thief of Bagdad. Personal preference I suppose.

Martijn, I think you might have spelt "friend" incorrectly?

BTW, thanks for your input above.

I enjoy reading the points of view of others.

I think that part of it is that there's been a lot of new music becoming available since last time - particularly with all the recent re-recording releases.

And I think that there's going to be a few changes even into the 70s/80s with the releases from people like FSM & Intrada.

It's funny because it was available for a time - I bought it at www.classicsonline.com - but now it seems to have been withdrawn.

It's similar to Christopher Drake's score for Wonder Woman: I bought this from Amazon a few weeks ago but now I can't seem to find it again (I wanted to check the tracks from the download release with La-La Land Record's new CD release).

Maybe some download titles are only available for a limited period of time before a CD release?

Swashbuckle, excitement and adventure IS magic for me!

Incidentally I've never heard The Thief Of Bagdad in full. Just 'The Love of The Princess' on the Gerhardt album which is quite pleasant in an old fashioned kind of way.

It's a great score, genius even - but I've never had the patience to listen to the complete score. Too many bloody short cues! I just can't enjoy that, no matter how good the themes are, and no matter how clever the score is. And it has brilliant themes and is of course very clever.