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I have long admired the music of composer David Amram, but have always had a special place in my heart for his sadly brief tenure scoring music for the movies. The jazz based, classically trained composer wrote the musical scores for several of the most important motion pictures of the nineteen sixties ("The Manchurian Candidate," "Splendor In The Grass") and then, as dramatically as he had emerged upon the Hollywood scene, quietly disappeared, turning his back on the film community, while returning to the freedom of composing according to the unrestricted dictates of his heart. With graphics contributed by Roger Hall at "Film Music Review," here is my brief look at the profoundly significant, cinematic musical legacy of David Amram.
http://www.americanmusicpreservation.com/DavidAmramTribute.htm
Steve Vertlieb February, 2017
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Thank you, Graham. David Amram wrote some of the most uniquely original and important motion picture music of the sixties. I had always wondered why he hadn't continued in Hollywood, and I asked him that very question on several different occasions. Like Leonard Bernstein before him with his own remarkable score for Kazan's "On The Waterfront," Amram disliked being instructed by studio politicians and hacks on how to conform to their uniformly restricted musical concepts and standards. Consequently, he left Hollywood to write music not limited by pre-conceived notions, boundaries, and principles. He still values his time in the motion picture community and maintains many friendships there but, ultimately, was happier to develop musically by his own merits and artistic values.
Steve
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I recently bought a set of Amram's film score music tracks, chiefly because I wanted the tracks to SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS. All it includes is the main title, nothing more. The other scores are pretty good, but that was the one I wanted.
Curiously, there's a better rendition of the principal theme, recorded by Percy Faith, which was eventually released on CD, which I found and still play occasionally.
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