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Posted: |
Dec 22, 2018 - 5:12 AM
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By: |
Nono
(Member)
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While I am impatiently awaiting for my copy to arrive, I was wondering if someone could tell us if the liner notes explain how Coppola came to hire Kilar and was the music recorded in L.A.?
Many Thanks,
Jay
Hi Jay,
A friend of mine interviewed Kilar in 1993. Coppola didn't want a Hollywoodian composer and was told that Kilar had some experience in film music, and since he liked the sound of his classical works he called him.
They first met on October 12th 1991 in Beverly Hills (shooting began on 14th), and Kilar asked for 7 to 8 weeks to compose the score. The composer unfortunately fell ill right after their meeting. Then they spent few days together in May 1992 in Paris where Coppola showed him the script. He gave Kilar some suggestions but let him totally free for the score. They actually talked about music in general, and Ravel in particular.
Kilar received the film in June in Poland then began working on the score. From the discussions he had with Coppola about the film, he was inspired by the themes of God and love. The score was recorded in Hollywood in September 1992.
It's a great score indeed, with a very interesting an intelligent reference to Szymanowski's opera King Roger : Mina's theme sounds like Roxana's aria, and Dracula could be the Shepherd, and Harker the King Roger.
There are many differences of course, but also very similar symbols.
The musical link with Szymanowski's opera gives a greater depth to the score (and the film), the same way Coppola did with Cocteau for the visuals.
Through the Cocteau and Szymanowski references we can understand why Coppola and Kilar talked about Ravel when they met in Paris, since both Auric's score for La Belle et la bête and Szymanowski's music have been influenced by Ravel.
The L.A. recording for Dracula is superb, but I would have prefered the sound of a Polish orchestra. Unfortunately, Wit's recording of the suite with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra (on Marco Polo) is nice, but not great.
Email me when you can, Jay (see my profile for the address).
Best regards,
Bruno
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They still have crappy mail service in Italy?!
Mama mia!
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Posted: |
Dec 25, 2018 - 9:37 AM
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By: |
Nono
(Member)
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While I am impatiently awaiting for my copy to arrive, I was wondering if someone could tell us if the liner notes explain how Coppola came to hire Kilar and was the music recorded in L.A.?
Below what Coppola told in the 2007 DVD/Blu-ray audio commentary. Lutoslawski died in 1994, and Ligeti was Romanian, not Polish :
Choosing a composer for a movie is always a very important thing in any project. But for me in particular; being the son of a composer, being raised in a musical household, I very much wanted a classical score.
And my knowledge told me that some of the greatest classical composers were in the East European world, particularly in Poland, partly to do with the state sponsorship of classical music.
And for a long a time the composer I really wanted to do it was a great Polish composer named Lutoslawski. I eventually tracked him down at a concert where he was conducting his own work.
And when I proposed that he might consider doing a score for me, his reaction was sort of, like, at the level of -- I mean: “Young man, do you know how many hours it takes me to write one minute of music?” And that -- the implication being that, at that level of classical music -- and it’s not only the composition, it’s the orchestration -- it is a very arduous, time-consuming job to compose so many minutes of music.
It’s not as we think of it, where you get a motif and possibly bring in an orchestrator. And you play the theme over and over again. So at that level of hand-made music it’s incredibly time-consuming.
And basically, what he was saying is, you know, that he wouldn’t be able to devote the time to write whatever it is, thirty minutes, forty minutes of new music. And actually, in truth, he died not that long after that brief meeting.
But I continued researching Polish composers. And I was very interested in Ligeti, Górecki, many wonderful composers, some of which I heard in Stanley Kubrick’s last film, although it was not an original composition. I believe he used existing work of those composers.
But ultimately I was led to consider the notion of Kilar, another Polish composer, to write this score. And I approached him, and he was willing.
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Fantastic release indeed. I have been doing a lot of comparing with the film, and interestingly the original soundtrack already included some (clever) film edits. To get a playlist resembling the music as heard in the film (without doing any editing) I would recommend this track order:
1. Dracula - The Beginning (CD 3)
2. Dracula Toolbox: Tears to Diamonds (music box) (CD 2)
3. The Journey (alternate) (CD 2)
4. The Castle (CD 1) (only partly used)
5. The Legacy (CD 1)
6. Mina's Photo (CD 3)
7. Lucy's Party (original version) (CD 1)
8. The Book (original version) (CD 1) (only partly used)
9. To the Brides (alternate) (CD 2)
10. The Brides (original version) (CD 1)
11. The Storm (CD 3)
12. The Letter I (CD 1)
13. Love Remembered (CD 1)
14. Love Remembered (alternate) (CD 2)
15. Mina / Dracula (CD 3)
16. Lucy Squirms (CD 1)
17. The Letter II (CD 1) (only first half used)
18. The Hunt Builds (CD 3)
19. Lucy's Lullaby (vocal) (CD 1) (electronically manipulated in the film)
20. The Stake (CD 1)
21. Vampire Hunters (original version) (CD 1)
22. The Green Mist (CD 1)
23. The Fire (alternate introduction) (CD 2) (the opening of the film version alternates between this and "The Fire")
24. Mina Possessed (CD 2)
25. Ring of Fire (original version) (CD 2)
26. Race Against the Sunset (CD 2)
27. Love Eternal (CD 3)
28. Ascension (CD 3)
29. End Credits (CD 3)
30. Love Song for a Vampire (CD 3)
Some tracks are used more than once in the film, but I decided against including them twice.
Funny enough, with all this wealth of material to choose from, there's still some music missing:
- a recurring stinger motif (with a bit of col legno strings)
- the film version of "The Hunters Prelude" (a nice moody cello/bass variation with pronounced percussion for when the hunters discover the boxes of earth at Carfax Abbey)
I wonder if those just couldn't be found or were decided against.
The film also uses a short vocal excerpt from Diamanda Galás' "Exeloume" towards the end, but that has no connection to Kilar's music of course.
Anyway, great release. I just wish there would have been more information of the individual tracks (plus the missing cues), but apparently the lack of documentation made this impossible. Definitely made me re-discover both film and score.
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Ligeti is HUNGARIAN 
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Fantastic release indeed. I have been doing a lot of comparing with the film, and interestingly the original soundtrack already included some (clever) film edits. To get a playlist resembling the music as heard in the film (without doing any editing) I would recommend this track order:
1. Dracula - The Beginning (CD 3)
2. The Letter II (alternate) (CD 2)
3. The Journey (alternate) (CD 2)
4. The Castle (CD 1) (only partly used)
5. The Legacy (CD 1)
6. Mina's Photo (CD 3)
7. Lucy's Party (CD 3)
8. The Book (original version) (CD 1) (only partly used)
9. To the Brides (alternate) (CD 2)
10. The Brides (original version) (CD 1)
11. The Storm (CD 3)
12. The Letter I (CD 1)
13. Love Remembered (CD 1)
14. Love Remembered (alternate) (CD 2)
15. Mina / Dracula (CD 3)
16. Lucy Squirms (CD 1)
17. The Letter II (CD 1) (only first half used)
18. The Hunt Builds (CD 3)
19. Lucy's Lullaby (vocal) (CD 1) (electronically manipulated in the film)
20. The Stake (CD 1)
21. Vampire Hunters (original version) (CD 1)
22. The Green Mist (CD 3)
23. The Fire (alternate introduction) (CD 2) (the opening of the film version alternates between this and "The Fire")
24. Mina Possessed (CD 2)
25. Ring of Fire (original version) (CD 2)
26. Race Against the Sunset (CD 2)
27. Love Eternal (CD 3)
28. Ascension (CD 3)
29. End Credits (CD 3)
30. Love Song for a Vampire (CD 3)
Some tracks are used more than once in the film, but I decided against including them twice.
Funny enough, with all this wealth of material to choose from, there's still some music missing:
- a recurring stinger motif (with a bit of col legno strings)
- the film version of "The Hunters Prelude" (a nice moody cello/bass variation with pronounced percussion for when the hunters discover the boxes of earth at Carfax Abbey)
I wonder if those just couldn't be found or were decided against.
The film also uses a short vocal excerpt from Diamanda Galás' "Exeloume" towards the end, but that has no connection to Kilar's music of course.
Anyway, great release. I just wish there would have been more information of the individual tracks (plus the missing cues), but apparently the lack of documentation made this impossible. Definitely made me re-discover both film and score.
Another piece missing is the film intro to Lucy's Party which is different than the soundtrack version. I would use Tears To Diamonds (music box) which is what was used in the film instead of Letter II (alternate). Those stingers can be easily be ripped from the French Audio track on the blu-ray or DVD without SFX. I would like to know what music was used playing on the phonograph that's not listed in the end credits.
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Another piece missing is the film intro to Lucy's Party which is different than the soundtrack version. I would use Tears To Diamonds (music box) which is what was used in the film instead of Letter II (alternate). Those stingers can be easily be ripped from the French Audio track on the blu-ray or DVD without SFX. I would like to know what music was used playing on the phonograph that's not listed in the end credits.
I think the alternate film intro of "Lucy's Party" is just the onscreen harp mixed with the score harp. But you made me realize that the film actually uses the faster "Lucy's Party (original version)" from CD 1 instead of the album version. Will need to amend that.
And you're right, it's actually "Tears to Diamonds (music box)" in the first scene between Mina and Jonathan. Didn't pay enough attention to the subtle differences between the two recordings. Fixed the playlist accordingly.
No idea about the phonograph music unfortunately.
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Another piece missing is the film intro to Lucy's Party which is different than the soundtrack version. I would use Tears To Diamonds (music box) which is what was used in the film instead of Letter II (alternate). Those stingers can be easily be ripped from the French Audio track on the blu-ray or DVD without SFX. I would like to know what music was used playing on the phonograph that's not listed in the end credits.
I think the alternate film intro of "Lucy's Party" is just the onscreen harp mixed with the score harp. But you made me realize that the film actually uses the faster "Lucy's Party (original version)" from CD 1 instead of the album version. Will need to amend that.
And you're right, it's actually "Tears to Diamonds (music box)" in the first scene between Mina and Jonathan. Didn't pay enough attention to the subtle differences between the two recordings. Fixed the playlist accordingly.
No idea about the phonograph music unfortunately.
Lucy's Party on CD 3 is the version that would have been in the film had they used the extended scene.
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Lucy's Party on CD 3 is the version that would have been in the film had they used the extended scene.
Right. Fascinating. It's also interesting to hear some of the other unused music in the deleted scenes. Like "Rules Café" in the alternate farewell scene between Mina and Jonathan or the weirdly titled "Dracula Toolbox D21" in Dracula's extended death scene. They certainly had quite a lot of music to toy with during editing.
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Wow, this is such a gorgeous set! The tracklist from SilentWitness (Thanks!) is a great starting point to make different play lists. I have made two more - one expanded album and one expanded list containing most of the composed score but featuring the alternate takes on the tracks that are in already in SilentWitness' list.
This set is constantly on play since it has crossed oceans of time to find me...
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I finally got mine yesterday and played the "composed score" presentation (so disc one and part of disc two) and I have to agree with the many positive voices here: the set is magnificent. I always loved the score and the movie, but felt the soundtrack album could have been better, both as far as content and as far as sound quality goes. LaLaLand has delivered on both counts.
I am amazed at the detail and nuances this new mix reveals, compared to the somewhat muffled sound of the original OST release. Not that the OST release sounded particularly "bad", but now when I compare them directly it sounds as if the OST master must have been several generations removed from the recording master, this new LaLaLand release sounds splendid in comparison.
And contentwise, it is a paradise... the "composed score" presentation as is is already more interesting than the OST presentation, most notably, it contains the exciting "Race Against the Sunset" and a few alternates. It's an interesting experience to listen to very familiar pieces (like "Dracula - The Beginning") with different lines and in extended versions. Good to know the OST edit of the piece (which is great) is also included.
Kudos to all involved, off hand I'd say this may well be my favorite soundtrack release of 2018.
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I finally got mine yesterday and played the "composed score" presentation (so disc one and part of disc two) and I have to agree with the many positive voices here: the set is magnificent. I always loved the score and the movie, but felt the soundtrack album could have been better, both as far as content and as far as sound quality goes. LaLaLand has delivered on both counts.
I am amazed at the detail and nuances this new mix reveals, compared to the somewhat muffled sound of the original OST release. Not that the OST release sounded particularly "bad", but now when I compare them directly it sounds as if the OST master must have been several generations removed from the recording master, this new LaLaLand release sounds splendid in comparison.
And contentwise, it is a paradise... the "composed score" presentation as is is already more interesting than the OST presentation, most notably, it contains the exciting "Race Against the Sunset" and a few alternates. It's an interesting experience to listen to very familiar pieces (like "Dracula - The Beginning") with different lines and in extended versions. Good to know the OST edit of the piece (which is great) is also included.
Kudos to all involved, off hand I'd say this may well be my favorite soundtrack release of 2018.
Yeah, I think I wrote that it sounded like a layer of gauze was over at least some of the album cues. Tremendous achievement.
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