Mr. McLean strode onstage first, humbled or charmed or one of the states one can’t discern from a distance. The wings of his shirt collar ruffled like those of a roused rooster, his hands wringing the microphone like it were the neck of the same. He had been waiting his whole life, he told us, to announce Mr Morricone to the stage, which seems presumptuous and unambitious. I had been waiting only since the purchase of the ticket to hear him announced, but that is more time than I would allow a Mr. Williams or a Mr. Goldsmith. I have heard the Philharmonic Play those pops’ Pops before.
Mr. Morricone is thought of differently to other composers in his field, although why is not wholly clear. Unlike the Messrs Zimmer and Shore, Mr. Morricone composes directly to manuscript, without plying tunes from the piano first, and all his work is orchestrated by his own hand. But, while this is a rarity in modern Hollywood, one would have been guaranteed the same from Mr. Herrmann, at least, and neither the first wave of refugees-turned-film composers, like Mr. Korngold , nor the would-bes, like Messrs Stravinsky and Schoenberg, would have envisaged working any other way.
But nor would it ever seem that Mr. Morricone thinks himself a composer above mere movie jobs, as the guesswork surrounding the total number of scores written (is it four hundred or more like four hundred and fifty?) illustrates a work ethic that far outweighs any preciousness. And, yet, he appears to recall, in interview, so little about the films on which he has worked, while seldom forgetting to mention his own ‘absolute music,’ that music that comes solely from him and is intended only for the concert hall.; although, none of the latter sounds through the Waterfront Hall this evening. However, iconography is not kept by statistics and, had only one of those four hundred scores or fewer symphonies yielded up a melody to the communal culture, his contribution to the world would be greater than my housemate‘s and mine combined.
Mr. Morricone’s exulted position is determined by the pull of these and many other thoughts: that he was raised in a culture with a different relationship to orchestral music than that held by Hollywood’s America; that he worked initially in a movie industry with different, and possibly lower, measurements of success than those of Hollywood and at a time when cinema had finally become accepted as an artistic and experimental medium. The ubiquity of some of his themes and his association with the silver of celluloid make him almost as glamorous as a rock star, while his commitment to music and composorial means, as well as, it must be admitted, his age, give him the air of an elder statesman from the time when classical music was the music of the people, the era of Mr. Puccini, the last hummable Italian. It is the quality of the themes, however, that inspires, this evening, the number of standing ovations that a musician can usually expect only in a dive with no chairs. The audience is so quiet with reverence that one could hear an old man cough and frequently do.
Sir Christopher Frayling dismisses various avenues of discussion before his lecture the following morning, as no body finding its self in the QFT would wish to discuss music so early. Rather, the talk focuses on the Italian Westerns on which Mr. Morricone collaborated with Mr. Leone. This, it would seem, is Sir Christopher’s speciality. And, so the public consensus would suggest, Mr. Morricone’s too. Yet, throughout the informative and amusing address, the composer is approached as one would a man defended by a bodyguard, the bulk of the great director’s body of work hiding the uncooperative composer behind. Set design and casting choices are examined and explained with greater attention than the selection of notes or instruments. However, when the snippets from The Good, The Bad & The Ugly and Once Upon A Time In America are played, it would be hard to argue that the wrong choice of pitch or timbre had been made.
The music, it is implied, must be discussed in relation to the films, as Mr.Morricone’s approach to filmic composition is one of near-organic enmeshment, where the score cannot merely be tacked on, but must play its own role within the piece. It is odd, then, that he refers to his concert hall pieces as ‘absolute music,’ as his cinematic methodology is almost Wagnerian in its commitment to Gesamtkunstwerk, that is ‘absolute art.’ If the music he composes for his own ends is absolute as music, is the movie music incomplete without the accompanying image or somehow compromised by the association?
Certainly, during that afternoon’s airing of The Good, The Bad & The Ugly, the score gives a fine supporting performance. The main theme resurfaces, like a Wagnerian leitmotif, throughout the film, indicating each of the titular characters. However, it is a leitmotif shared alike by the trio, varying only in instrumentation with each actor, to convey, as the whole film does more subtly, that we are each , in part, ugly, bad and good. Not that this would be apparent (and how could it be) without the freeze-framed curlicues that identify Messrs Eastwood, Van Cleef and Wallach with each of the named qualities - or, perhaps, they have been mixed up cleverly. Taken from its context, as must happen to all iconic works, the tune is now used to set Wild Western ambiances and imply shoot-out situes, when the theme became famous, originally, as a departure from the cowboy conventions of Mr. Tiomkin and Co.
During the concert’s simultaneous broadcast on Radio Ulster, Mr. McLean opined that it was difficult not to hear that theme without seeing, from the corner of one’s mind’s eye, Mr. Eastwood, as The Man With No Name. Knowledge of the movie prompts one to see this more easily than Mr. Berlioz‘s own notes conjure a hanging man during the Symphony Fantastique, but, from my seat, I could only just make out the trombonists that nudged one another and newsreader, Mr. Thompson, redden in his role as first male of the Belfast Philharmonic Choir. Hearing that two-note melody on doubled-clarinet, rather than arghilofono or torturous yelp, negates the close associations of timbre with mood so carefully built up in the film. And, when the response to that call comes from masterfully blended strings, instead of a raggedy Sicilian folk group, something is confused - one does not feel the weathered desperation of the Wild West (if music can ever be thought to make one to feel anything against one‘s will), but inspires, instead, a recognition that comes close to certainty and a triumphal admiration of something done well. A one-hundred piece orchestra is not equipped for subtlety.
There is a fundamental way in which classical music differs from pop music. The former floats freely in the imagination of the author, until enambered in the permanence of script. The ideal rendition of the piece, as heard only in the composer’s head, is imprinted, silently, on the page, where it waits for interpretation. While no orchestra, I’m sure, could capture the exact enunciations or elocutions of the writer’s perfect performance, or the subjective ideal of whomsoever reads the script, each recital is right in its own way - no matter how badly played - as an act of inferring the artistic ambiguities left unspoken. Though one can be compared to another, no one of them can be given authorial authority.
Pop music, on a different hand, is written to be recorded and is transmitted from composer to audience by means of performance. The work of the imagination is caught in vinyl instead of manuscript, so that each timbre, each stress, each climax is winnowed to a specific from the possible. Though others may reinterpret the work as they will, all alternate renderings exist in comparison to the original, which, simply by being released, is considered how the composer thought the song should sound.
In this sense, film music is more like pop. For, although, it may be scored and orchestrated by a single composer, as in Mr. Morricone’s case, a documented, definitive version is recorded to accompany the film. In fact, the interplay between music and image could more forcibly fix the recording as being the right one.
Mr. Morricone is, thus, more ecstatically received than any living concert hall composer would be. Not just because his music is largely better, which it may well be, and better known, which it most certainly is, but because it is with his recordings that we are most familiar- he conducted them, he orchestrated them and he pressed the red button. His live appearance grants the event more gravitas than a mere evening of movie greats gamely sawed at by a Philharmonic. That it is him along with his own orchestra gives it almost the pretence of being a rock band; the sense of authorial authority carries through, even if, once begun, Mr. Morricone is revealed to be a static, unmoved conductor, whose clumsy, old man’s hands search for a soloist to take a bow, but direct an uncertain second viola-player to stand up. However, like a seasoned touring band, the orchestra have played through the numbers so many times as not to need a conductor.
Mr. Morricone loves those lovely women. They comprise such a large portion of his orchestra: their stylish white hair draping onto the piano keys; their pursed lips titillating reed and mouthpiece; bowing braids of horse hairs across several rows of strings. To whom else would he grant a silly red rose, but the graceful, obsidian-haired first violinist? Ms. Rigacci, his faithful soprano, whose haunting voice is so completely at one with the Roma Sinfonietta that, at times, one can hardly hear it. One lady, unmiked, could never outsing a one-hundred piece orchestra, nor should she try.
Our own lovely women were there as well, making up two thirds of the Belfast Philharmonic Choir. But where were the great ladies of Radio Ulster? On the broadcast, no Ms. Lenaghan. Or, more worryingly, Ms. Louise-Muir of Sounds Classical, who has compeered so many of the recent opening night concerts. Instead, the show was annotated by Mr. McLean and the avuncular Mr. Cato; between them two film reviewers and a pop fan. The festival’s other large-scale classical event is also a movie score to be played in its entirety.
Films often star lovely women. I have spotted a connexion.
The film score is lucky as a form of instrumental music, in that it is almost guaranteed to be listened to in full and in context; when first heard, it will not be edited down to only the finest moments. Soundtracks comprised of pre-composed pieces offer the complete opposite though and, as such, many people now will be familiar with older orchestral themes and movements, excised from their settings, because they have been dubbed over something on the cinema or television screen. The concert hall and screening room make different demands and, for a piece of music to move from one to the other, it must be groomed adequately. A film score, even ones as well-integrated as those of Mr. Morricone, plays up to the dialogue: filling in its gaps, emphasising its emotions or implicating its ironies. And thus, its pacing is all wrong for the concert hall; the constituent parts are too short and sharp, the whole too long and meandering.
As a result, tonight’s selection hears choices from the full gamut of Mr. Morricone’s career, but each altered, redressed and rearranged to fit into the concert setting. However, to accommodate the conventions of concert music - length, pace, etc. - that seem to have been forged long ago in direct relation to the human leg’s capacity to cramp, they aren’t played as they appear in the films nor played, each tune separately, as an independent piece, but are, instead, reshuffled thematically into an approximation of a symphony.
The Life & Legend Suite, for example, comprises the theme from The Untouchables, Once Upon A Time In America, The Legend Of 1900 and Casualties Of War; an overview of American history that hopes to make mythic the country’s desperation and determination. However, with no thematic connexion (musically), each movement dies, suddenly, upon a muted, upturned chord, and transforms, unexpectedly, into the next. The emotional strengths of each segment, which are apparent when played alongside film footage, seem to build to the same tenor moment and then, with the scattergun narrative of pieces forced together, to go nowhere.
It is only the final suite that sounds like a complete piece of music . And, as it is an abridged soundtrack to The Mission, this requires no further reasoning. But, for completeness’ sake, let us say that it was due to recurring themes, consistent orchestration and a musical arc that, while unable to relate the story of the film, hints towards it subtly. Also, as the score was originally written for and recorded by a full orchestra, it feels appropriate and unadulterated - no odd ends forced together, no distinctive instruments replaced by sterile strings.
An earlier attempt at the Spaghetti Scores puts together Once Upon A Time In The West, The Good, The Bad & The Ugly, Fistful Of Dollars and Ecstasy Of Gold, which sit together well conceptually. However, the notable inconsistency between the rich orchestration of Once Upon A Time… and the simple, folk arrangement of The Good…, the heavy percussion of Fistful… and modal swirl of Ecstasy… requires that each be rearranged all in a line. The result is an Ugly theme that more resembles Rawhide, the very trite scoring from which Mr. Morricone hoped to escape, and a Fistful Of Dollars subdued by the lack of drums and a distant guitar. It would be untrue to think that these alterations diminished writing of this strength, but the significance of each is delicately changed.
It is Mr. Morricone’s skill at arranging, as Sir. Christopher points out, that has resulted in his acclaim and success. The tune of Ecstasy Of Gold is, its self, incredibly simple, but is stretched out to almost four minutes by an intricate interweaving of instruments and ideas. Even when those instruments are substituted to suit the sinfonietta, the ideas remain. When the strength of the piece lies in the interconnectedness of the melodies, rather than a single strong theme and its relation to specific timbres (as in The Good, The Bad & The Ugly), then it can be reimagined in many different ways and can be played, not only once as an integral movement, but twice as an independent encore.
Notable exclusions:
Pazuzu’s Theme from The Exorcist II: The Heretic - Mr. Morricone’s seventh highest grossing film.
The Man With The Harmonica from Once Upon A Time In The West
Piume Di Cristallo from L’uccello Dalle Piume Di Cristallo - With its haunting similarities to Mr. Komeda’s score for Rosemary’s Baby - the two being written less than a year apart.
Mr. Morricone and Sir. Christopher Frayling are in disagreement. Sir. Christopher has brought up, more than once, as has more than one interviewer (how many times was it mentioned in all?), the influence of Mr. Cage on Mr. Morricone’s film work, most significantly the integration of everyday sounds with music, be they ticking watches, parped harmonicas or Bach fugues.
As Mr. Morricone rightly points out this is a nonsense. His scores are so strained over that they could not be left over to chance as so much of Mr. Cage’s music was. The substitution of real-life for music that is central to the latter’s 4’33 is far-removed from the integration of the two that gives, admittedly, a small portion of Mr. Morricone’s its power. In both cases, the presence or absence of music, intensifies the action or, indeed, the lack of action - one draws attention to a musician, in the background, who lacks an audience; the other, an audience, in the background, lacking a musician. Rather, as Mr. Morricone has said, it was the musique concrète works of Messrs Schaeffer, Stockhausen and that sort that has made his work so populist.
That is not suggest that there is an absence of ticking watches at the concert. They keep their time just as well as the old men expel their phlegm. But it is the musicians that make the most noise, though not solely those sounds intended. The rock musicians, who, during beat-long rests, slouch at the back of the stage like the bad kids at school, click and clack throughout: the extraneous drum-kit and its snare bleed at every pop of the electric bass; the guitarist inserts his jack noisily over a solo piano interlude, but is barely audible when The Good, The Bad & The Ugly needs him the most - never has a guitarist pulled so many faces to make so little sound.
“It is the definition of a wall of sound,” Mr. Farrow, the festival organiser said on the previous night’s Arts Extra. But, it seems, the wall of sound is only just blocking out a teenage rock group rehearsing in the next room. There is an odd separation between the unity of the acoustic instruments, which were designed to blend together, and the amplified electric guitars and synths and the heavily miked drums, which sound distant or layered sloppily on top. Unlike the film scores, these disparate parts do not integrate seamlessly. They are not balanced, as they would be in the perfect recording - whether that be film or record - but it is that disparity and failure to get it just right (and the old men coughing) that reminds us that this is a real event happening in real-time. And you can hear none of it on the radio broadcast.