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Wow, you guys weren't kidding about disc 3! That's the first one I happened to try getting out of the box and it was a challenge.
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Posted: |
Mar 29, 2012 - 1:07 PM
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By: |
Martin B.
(Member)
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Alternatively you could make a presentation of two albums, (either the Savina and the 'More Music' or the Kloss I and 'More Music') using this scheme:
Prelude
Star of Bethlehem
Adoration of the Magi
Gratus' Entry into Jerusalem
Friendship
House of Hur
Memories
Roman March
Messala's Revenge
Burning Desert
Rowing of the Galley Slaves
Victory Parade
Fertility Dance
Arrius' Party
Farewell to Rome
Return to Judaea
Love Theme of Ben-Hur
Mother's Love
Overture (to Act II)
Parade of the Charioteers
Bread and Circuses March
Death of Messala
Lepers' Search for the Christ
Sermon on the Mount
Valley of the Dead
Procession to Calvary
Golgotha
Christ Theme: 'Alleluia'
Miracle and Finale
This differs a little from the film order for the following reasons:
(a) Given there is no 'Overture' proper, and the Overture present is for Act II mostly, it's necessary to start with the Prelude... you have to have that 'Anno Domini' opening motif, the Nativity isn't dramatic enough to open with.
(b) 'Gratus' Entry' and Roman March are swapped because the Roman March is too abrupt to follow the nativity music and is too jarring. 'Gratus Entry' however starts with the same four notes as the film's title music on OST, so it sounds more fluid. Roman March works just as well in the other context, narratively.
(c) 'Memories' and 'Love Theme' are mostly (as Frank makes clear in his notes) mistitles of one another, so are reversed.
(d) The Overture, based as it is mostly on the Entr'Acte rejected, is placed at intermission.
(e) Bread and Circuses is placed after the Parade of the Charioteers since, as Rozsa makes clear in his notes, it's related in content mostly to the lap of victory scene.
(f) Since 'The Lepers' Search for the Christ' is based on four cues, and is mostly BEFORE the 'Sermon' as a cue, it fits easily here and follows on from Messala's death scene, as in the film. It segues better into the 'Sermon' with the same motif too.
(g) The 'Christ' Theme, though some think it might make a good Epilogue, belongs best before the 'Miracle', since it's clearly based on that.
Otherwise the natural sequence would be:
Overture
Star of Bethlehem
Adoration of the Magi
Prelude
Roman March
Friendship
House of Hur
Love Theme of Ben-Hur
Gratus' Entry into Jerusalem
Messala's Revenge
Burning Desert
Rowing of the Galley Slaves
Victory Parade
Fertility Dance
Arrius' Party
Farewell to Rome
Return to Judaea
Memories
Mother's Love
Bread and Circuses March
Parade of the Charioteers
Death of Messala
Sermon on the Mount
Valley of the Dead
Lepers' Search for the Christ
Procession to Calvary
Golgotha
Christ Theme: 'Alleluia'
Miracle and Finale
I can be as anal retentive as the next man.
Many, many thanks for this. Just received Ben-Hur today and have used you "album" version for the Kloss releases.
Also thanks to those who directed me towards the vinyl album covers.
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Many, many thanks for this. Just received Ben-Hur today and have used you "album" version for the Kloss releases.
Also thanks to those who directed me towards the vinyl album covers.
Glad to be of service, Eggerty, but I've made a heinous error: I seem to have omitted the 'Naval Battle'. What does that SAY?
Bung it between the 'Rowing of the Galley Slaves' and the 'Victory Parade' of course. Sorry!
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I am soooooo on the fence about this one. I actually have the money to get this, but I'm listening to the Rhino right now and it really sounds great to me. I really haven't given this one a listen in a while and I really forgot just how lovely it is. It's a beautiful score and I wouldn't mind having the additional stuff. But I have no negative feeling toward the Rhino release at all. Is the difference in sound quality that much greater on the FSM?
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Posted: |
Apr 3, 2012 - 10:05 AM
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By: |
Rozsaphile
(Member)
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Fascinating to turn to this album after a week of immersion in Quo Vadis. What an advance the later score represents! QV has plenty of beautiful, spectacular, imaginative music. But that music, heard apart from the film, does not begin to represent the dramatic arc of the story. (Of course, the plot of QV, as handled by M-G-M, was rather loose and disjointed to start with.) B-H is so different. People who lump Rozsa's "epic" film scores together need to rethink the matter. The darkness, the intensity, the interweaving of motives -- all of these things set B-H on an entirely different level.
And what a dark story it is. Leave out that damned horse race (critical for the box office but hardly the highlight of the film), and you have almost continuous immersion in suffering, tragedy, and tangled motives from the return to Jerusalem all the way through the Crucifixion. The scenes in the ruined house are the emotional heart of the picture for me. Listen to the quiet, nearly continuous scoring of the reunion with Esther, the visit of the women, and the great first act finale. The music grabs you throughout and lends the picture an emotional depth that no actors could provide on their own. And the seemingly endless Procession to Calvary. It's much longer than the concert/album version yet it's not a moment too long. It immerses you in a seemingly endless cycle of anguish and frustration -- exactly what the characters are experiencing.
It's been over half a century since my first hearing of Ben-Hur, and I've discovered a lot of great music and opera in the interim. But Rozsa's masterwork still stands near the very summit of musical drama in my book. And this album is its best disc representation to date.
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And what a dark story it is. Leave out that damned horse race (critical for the box office but hardly the highlight of the film), and you have almost continuous immersion in suffering, tragedy, and tangled motives from the return to Jerusalem all the way through the Crucifixion.
That's an interesting take on the film.
And yet the chariot race sequence plays an important role in Judah's coming to terms with Rome and with Christ. The winning of the race is Judah's way of making things right, his solution, his reaction to of all of his and his family's suffering that has accumulated by the end of Act I. Of course it's a hollow victory precisely because it involves a Roman mindset to the problem; it emulates Messala's methodology: as Esther points out, "it is as though you had become Messala." The truly effective reaction to all of the tragedy that has befallen the house of Hur, he ultimately learns, is in letting go: "and I felt his voice lift the sword from my hands..."
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Fascinating to turn to this album after a week of immersion in Quo Vadis. What an advance the later score represents! QV has plenty of beautiful, spectacular, imaginative music. But that music, heard apart from the film, does not begin to represent the dramatic arc of the story. (Of course, the plot of QV, as handled by M-G-M, was rather loose and disjointed to start with.) B-H is so different. People who lump Rozsa's "epic" film scores together need to rethink the matter. The darkness, the intensity, the interweaving of motives -- all of these things set B-H on an entirely different level.
The thing about 'Quo Vadis?' is that Rozsa's great passion as a musicologist led him to use as many authentic melodies as he could. He claimed in a 1970s interview that he'd used eleven ancient Greek tunes in that score, (we know now what six of them were, we know there are three others whose sources he didn't identify, and that still would leave two we have no clue about at all!) and he also used at least three themes from Plainsong and Ambrosian chant, plus a mediaeval Italian tune for the Fertility Hymn.
That means that he composed very few tunes of his own as leitmotifs. There's Lygia's theme, Petronius' theme, and a load of fanfares that are truly his own, plus the marches, and Vinicius' motif. He was mostly a clever and inspired arranger on that one.
'Ben-Hur' on the other hand, also benefits from his 'Julius Caesar' experience, where a rich underlay of plush, sensual soundcarpet envelopes key scenes.
There are only three 'authentic' melodies in 'Ben-Hur', namely the Yemenite Hebrew tune for Miriam, the mother, and two melodies he had used before in 'Quo Vadis?', the 'Hymn to Helios' variation for Rome in flames that he gave to Gratus' march, and the 'Lamentation on the Death of Ajax' from the 'Nero's House of Women' cue, which reappeared in the 'B' section of 'Arrius' Party'. The latter two were exemplary of Rozsa's trick of using an authentic theme as a 'departure point' as he called it, rather than total statement of the theme.
The great plethora of themes he used in B-H were largely his own. 'Bread and Circuses' of course was a lift from 'Hail Galba' in QV, and Messala was given a main theme from 'All the Brothers Were Valiant'. Had the 'Haroun al Rozsad' been used, it'd be a lift from 'The Light Touch' and 'Valley of the Kings', but all else is original.
When Rozsa re-recorded the two scores for London Decca, he did virtually nothing to the 'Ben-Hur' material, just using stuff directly lifted from his manuscript as it was. For 'Quo Vadis?' though, he reworked the material considerably, to create the illusion of a more leitmotival, full orchestral score.
I'm sure he'd have been very excited by what Tadlow are doing, but his own approach to re-packaging this score was very different. No-one presented full scores with every cue back then.
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