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Stephan and Ron... that's a really good question. To my ears, the piece at the end has some characteristics of Malcolm Arnold's style, although I don't think anything he did around that time that fits the bill; I also can't think of any MGM pictures he did, so I'm probably wrong. At any rate, I'll be very interested to see if anyone DOES know what these pieces of music are. I like 'em.
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Joe said:"I haven't looked at those trailers in a long time. As I recall, they used Previns music from Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse." Joe, here's part of what Ron said in another thread (mentioned by him above): "On the special 2-disc DVD of "Doctor Zhivago," there are two (count 'em, two) "Zhivago" trailers. One is not labelled as such, but it's a stunningly produced preview of the film with music from the score plus Previn's "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" (beautifully used, too). In the second, labelled as the theatrical trailer, there is music by Jarre, but there is jarringly different music that is obviously from some MGM score or other and it's quite sweet, too! I do not recognize it, however." So, we are talking about TWO DIFFERENT trailers, one which uses FOUR HORSEMEN, and one that uses something no one has yet been able to identify. Take a peek at THIS trailer, this is the one with the unidentified music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvIL_A0UsJk The music pieces that need to be identified appear at 1:12 and 2:20 to the end.
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Posted: |
Feb 5, 2014 - 4:11 PM
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By: |
manderley
(Member)
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There is no reason to believe that these two pieces, though they are likely from the MGM library, are necessarily of the time period of the 1965 Zhivago release. The first short piece under Geraldine Chaplin's name sounds much in the style of Herbert Stothart. Since the trailers were almost never in stereo in this period, there was no need to find stock music which was in stereo, so there are more possibilities likely. For the final piece, I wonder if someone, thinking along the lines of Russian or European themes and going way back, pulled material from stock which would relate to these kinds of films---SONG OF RUSSIA, perhaps, or ESCAPE, or THE MORTAL STORM, or THREE COMRADES---or even as off the wall as music from THE BEGINNING OR THE END by Amfitheatrof; this could be music by Stothart, Waxman, Kaper, Amfitheatrof, Ward, etc. There is a martial, militaristic feeling to this end piece. For many years, composer Rudolph Kopp was in charge of the stock music library at the studio and often put together stock music for B-films, trailers, promo films---at least in the '40s-'50s. When MGM was producing its MGM PARADE tv series in 1955-56, I remember one 2-part episode was devoted to the career of Greta Garbo. The clips from the silent films had to be covered with music, and at least one of the pieces used, in 1956, was the romantic finale music by Stothart from RANDOM HARVEST (1942). So they were not afraid of going back quite a distance in time to pull something which fit. I think that is where the likely possibilies lie. (And, with reference to Ron Pulliam's comment above, he seems to be referring to another trailer entirely with regard to Andre Previn. I can't hear any Previn in this trailer at all.)
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Can anybody identify the music that plays through the trailer, and some documentaries, of "Dr. Zhivago"? Some of it is Maurice Jarre's score but most of it is this unidentified music. The cue first appears briefly around 1:14 when Geraldine Chaplin's name appears and then when Rita Tushingham's name appears, and continues to the end. I read somewhere that the composer was Andre Previn, but from which score and is it available? I'm changing my plea here, I originally thought I heard elements of Constant Lambert's 'Anna Karenina' but I'm not sure. The bit that's near the end is very like Malcolm Arnold, and I'd say 'Inn of the Sixth Happiness', the London Prelude, but Arnold recycled his stuff so often that I can't be sure it's not from somewhere else. He was of course Lean's original in-house composer. But I also hear Michel Legrand in his 'epic' mode somewhere in the mix there, and things are edited back and forth between the Arnold and the Legrand subtly. I think these are largely European composers being used.
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By the way, I don;t think that the clip at 1:14 has anything to do with the Legrand/Arnold sounding material at the end. I've decided I dunno who any of them are, despite the resemblances to Legrand and Arnold, but the feel of the last bit is '60s/early '70s in essence, and sounds British. Since this was done in 1965, it's probably a reasonably contemporary piece.
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I'm pretty sure it's British too, and of the 1960s. This might be a long shot, but I wonder if a quick look at the list of 'nearly' composers of 'Lawrence of Arabia' would give a clue? Could we be talking Gerard Schurman? I don't think so, but you get the idea. Maybe it's just the playback, but it sounds like late '60s/early '70s in acoustic style. I get the same sort of strange feeling I get when I hear Dudley Moore's original 'Bedazzled' opener, the short orchestral bit with strings before the main theme. It just sounds like that era. So I'd bet it was contemporary to the Lean film. It also sounds very apt for Russia, but that could be by association. One other possibility. Could it have been actually specially composed FOR the trailer, then partly replaced by the other stock music? This was not the norm, but neither was it particularly unusual. Over in Hollywood it happened all the time. I still think it has Legrand's feel, especially in the high string rushes. It has the flavour of 'Dirty Business Amongst the Dirty Laundry' from '3 Musketeers' for example.
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Posted: |
Feb 8, 2014 - 12:27 PM
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By: |
manderley
(Member)
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Could it be lifted from mgm Brothers Karamozov? An interesting possibility, Joe. Why does nearly everyone else on this thread seem to think this trailer is an English product with additional stock music by English or other foreign composers, or from other studios' music tracks? There was no cross-pollination of music from other studios' films in those days. The score for ZHIVAGO was recorded in Culver City---Lou Raderman was the concert-master, after all. MGM had a finely-honed trailer department, with skilled film and stock music editors. Titles, opticals, narration overdubs and mixing were done at the studio here. Although Warners wrote and recorded scores for their trailers, MGM almost never did, utilizing either original session music tracks from the score (if they were already recorded and available) or slugging in stock cues and pieces from old music masters in the vault. All of this was often a process coming through the shorts department and supervised by the sales department in New York. The filmmakers on the film, itself, rarely had any input, and often never saw the trailer unless they saw it in a theatre. I doubt if David Lean got to approve or work on this at all. It's important to remember that the trailer was made TO SELL THE FILM, good or bad, and not to create a trailer that would win awards on Madison Avenue or fulfill the feature-film's creative team's artistic ambitions. I think you all need to look at music which was available on printable stock in Culver City, rather than Borehamwood.
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But the bit at the end really does sound like English film music. This trailer, which mentions the Academy Awards, is obviously not a pre-release version. They could have used Jarre's tracks if they wanted to. I wonder whether there was a pre-release trailer? I don't think roadshow attractions which of course initially opened at only a few theatres always had them until the film went wide. ZHIVAGO opened at the end of December 1965 in America but not until April 1966 in the UK, by which time it would have received those Academy Awards. None of the DVD/Blu-ray discs seem to have included an earlier trailer.
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But the bit at the end really does sound like English film music. This trailer, which mentions the Academy Awards, is obviously not a pre-release version. They could have used Jarre's tracks if they wanted to. That's a good point. 'Should've spotted that! That increases the possibility that it has that 'late '60s/early '70s' feel for a reason. If it were 'Brothers Karamazov' surely someone would know that score: the film's not that obscure. The thing has a Russian feel all right. There's a sort of clashing ostinato (sounds very Arnold) that suggests Moscow's bells at the start of the segment, which Lambert also used as an idea in 'Karenina'. But it's big epic music, so how many big Russian epics can there be from that period?
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