I'm Jonathan, Laurence's son. Over at his house I saw the very nice card you all had sent, and I noticed the mention of this message board, so I came here and saw this thread. He wanted to write a thank-you note, and I offered to post it here for him. And a special thank you to DavidInBerkeley for your effort! Without further ado...
"To all my friends and (I am flattered to add) admirers of my work,
I can’t tell you how touched I was to receive this best-ever birthday card from all of you. The trouble and effort required to produce it, and the warmth of feeling behind it, did in no way go unnoticed by its delighted recipient.
In his profession, a film composer has a rather strange relationship with the rest of the world. One is hired, most of the time, only when the film is completed or almost so. Therefore one arrives on the job, as it were, after everybody has already gone home. The actors usually remain complete strangers. All that are left on the scene are the editor(s), the director, and the producer. And in television, the director has often gone on to his next project, and only the producer remains, and this person, as often as not, understands little or nothing about music or the craft and art of film-scoring. With the editors, film or music – they are true professionals, but their job is mostly to tell you the exact spot on the film where each music cue begins and where it ends, and its timing. Sometimes the director, if he’s still there, may have ideas about music “spotting,” as it’s called, the producer less likely so (with very notable exceptions like George Lucas, with whom it was always a great pleasure to sit in front of the film and ponder.)
So, in the next weeks, it is often a very solitary job. You are in a long, lonely, and sometimes nervous-making tunnel, especially when you really wonder if what you’re scribbling is any good at all. But you slog on, no choice! Finally the big wheels show up at the recording sessions, making comments that may be helpful or completely stupid. But it’s done and the picture is released, sent out into the great world.
Now we enter the complete unknown. All kinds of people in all kinds of places all over the world, people whom you will never know, hear your music, or, at least have it delivered into their ears. Whether they are even aware of it is another question. You certainly hardly ever know whether they registered even one note of your hard-earned music, and if they did, whether they liked it, hated it, or were completely indifferent to it. You certainly almost never hear from them, one way or the other. And except at the popularity contests like the ones known as the Oscars or the Emmys, where a handful of scores are given perfunctory recognition, deeply in the shadow of the star-lit luminaries who appear in front of the camera, and in whom everyone is really interested, most film scores, some of them of a much higher quality even than the films they accompany (although that is becoming a very rare phenomenon) go down the sinkhole of oblivion. One has to Google a film, old or even recent, to remember who was responsible for the score.
SO!!! That’s the life a small group of us has chosen, because we love the medium of film and feel that a great score not only enhances an already good film, but is often responsible for the major part of the viewer’s emotional response to it. And thus when one suddenly realizes that all that love and effort and sweat and those all-night sessions at the drawing-board have been recognized, acknowledged, and appreciated by a small group of musically sensitive people, whether musicians or not, well, to say that it is heartwarming is a major understatement. So, thank you all for your kind remembrance of me and my work. How good can a birthday present get?
Well done DiB. And what a wonderful, beautifully-written reply you got via his son last year.
Man, that Rosenthal bloke - not only does he write beautiful music, he also writes beautiful prose better than any of us! He should post on here every week.
Happy Laurence Rosenthal's (90th) Birthday to everyone.
Thanks, DavidinB, for updating your thread with LR's 90th. [this means I don't need to create a separate thread as I had done with others' 90th birthdays]
Because of his prolific work on television films and miniseries (along with his main title for "Fantasy Island") should Rosenthal be in the Television Academy Hall Of Fame?
