John Morgan and William
Stromberg’s Marco Polo classic film
scores series seems on this occasion
to have been transferred to the recording
company’s low-cost cousin, Naxos. Perhaps
this is a one-off; if not it is certainly
a mixed blessing. On the plus side the
series comes within the reach and interest
of a larger budget-conscious audience;
on the other hand production values
suffer. The previous sumptuous Marco
Polo booklets found space for numerous
stills from the films and complete track-by-track
analyses. These are missing from the
standard Naxos eight-page booklet; moreover
the inclusion of the text in German
cuts down the English notes to only
2 + pages.* Admittedly Bill Whittaker’s
background notes to the production of
the film are illuminating although they
omit to mention that this Steiner score
was Oscar-nominated. However since the
film is so rarely seen (if you are based
in the United Kingdom, that is) complete
track analyses are much needed to explain
tracks entitled, for instance, ‘Comet’s
Return’ (actually the appearance of
a comet marked the birth and death of
Mark Twain), ‘Darn Coat Tails’ and ‘Oxford’.
The film charts the career of one of
America’s foremost humorous writers
from a Mississippi riverboat man to
becoming an honorary fellow of Oxford
University.
Max Steiner was one
the most prolific and respected composers
of Hollywood’s Golden Age. His career
spanned almost 40 years covering an
astonishing output of over 300 scores.
He won three Academy Awards, for: The
Informer (1935), Now Voyager
(1942) and Since You Went Away
(1944), and was nominated for a further
22, including the 100-minute score for
The Adventures of Mark Twain, generally
considered to be one of his masterworks.
Often regarded as the man who invented
film music, Steiner’s career was launched
at RKO Pictures where his 1933 milestone
score for King Kong would lay
down the ground rules for original film
music that was to prove a vital ingredient
in enhancing the action and moods of
a picture. His The Lost Patrol
music (1934) was the first dramatic
music to be nominated for an Academy
Award. In 1936 Steiner left RKO for
Selznick International but soon transferred
to Warner Bros where he wrote the vast
majority of his scores. [But Steiner
was loaned back to Selznick, in 1939,
to compose probably his best loved score
– Gone With the Wind.]
[The Adventures
of Mark Twain was made in 1942 but
Warner Bros executives conscious of
World War II events overwhelming American
audiences, chose to shelve the film
before eventually releasing it in 1944.
It starred Frederick March as Mark Twain
supported by Alexis Smith and Donald
Crisp. Halliwell’s Film and Video
Guide’s two-star review states:
"Conventional biopic, quite
watchable and with unusual side turnings,
but eventually lacking the zest of the
subject."]
Bill Whitaker astutely
points out that although a Viennese
émigré like that other
celebrated Warner Bros. film music composer,
Eric Wolfgang Korngold, Max Steiner
had accumulated much experience working
in American musical idioms through years
of collaborating with composers like
George Gershwin and Jerome Kern, so
his scores, like The Adventures of
Mark Twain, sounded genuine Americana.
Bill Stromberg and
the Moscow Symphony Orchestra and Chorus
have by now got the full measure of
the grand Late Romantic film scores
from Hollywood’s Golden Age and this
new release is one of the best of the
series in respect of performance and
content (John Morgan’s score restoration
has provided 29 quality music cues spanning
nearly 71 minutes).
The album opens with
Max Steiner’s glorious Warner Bros fanfare
that filled us with so much anticipation
as the Warner Bros shield trade mark
filled the screen. (Why, oh why can’t
they still use it today?) How enjoyable
it was to hear how economically Steiner
modulated his fanfares into films’ Main
Title music. This score is no exception.
The large orchestra sweeps into the
Main Title music of natural grandeur
associated with the Mississippi River.
This is a typical highly effective,
emotional Steiner/Warner Main Title
opening peroration using pronounced
bass ostinatos and proud, heroic brass.
As the music calms, the titles music
broadens to embrace a humorous and tender
portrait of Mark Twain. The principal
theme of the picture, associated with
Twain, is derived from a riverman’s
cry. (This cry, ‘Mark Twain!’, means
‘Safe Water!’ and was adopted as the
pen name of young Samuel Clemens. This
cry was heard after Clemens’ inexperience
as a young river man had almost precipitated
a bad accident - narrowly averted by
his teacher’s skill.)
Two of the most imposing
cues are associated with Twain’s experience
as a boatman on the Mississippi: ‘The
River Pilot’ and ‘Riverboat in Fog’.
Max Steiner was extremely adept at tonal
painting action and atmosphere. The
ebbing and flowing figures on woodwinds
and strings, suggesting the churning
of the water beneath the wheels of the
paddle-steamer, and the swirling waters
as the river becomes more and more turbulent
are uncannily evoked in ‘The River Pilot’;
and the tense atmosphere as Twain struggles
to pass a treacherous mid-river island
in dense fog is also skilfully built
up. The Moscow Orchestra are both brilliantly
exciting and nicely subtle in these
evocations.
Humour is essentially
associated with Mark Twain and Steiner’s
portraits of braying donkeys, scampering
squirrels and jumping frogs rival any
by his contemporary Americana portrayer,
and friend, Ferde Grofé. Typical
Steiner sugar-coated tenderness abounds
in cues associated with Twain’s wife
Livy (sweetness not to be sniffed at
because (a) it is most sympathetic and
attractive in its own right here and
because (b) we should remember that
film composers have to write over large
music for the larger-than-life characters
on the screen). Steiner uses familiar
source music to underline and reinforce
the reality of historical events – for
example, ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’
in connection with the Civil War and
the General Ulysses S. Grant episode.
So many tracks are
little gems. ‘Theatre scene’ for instance,
that suggests the showcasing of feminine
charms (Livy?) entrancingly blending
neo-classical styles with dainty, fluttering,
flirtatious figures, ‘Gold Rush’ (reminiscent
of Steiner’s The Treasure of
the Sierra Madre score) mixes material
that suggests a heroic frenetic rush
and glittering allure, and ‘Toy Shop’
contains all the wonder of childhood
with bells, xylophone and celesta tracing
magical patterns before a mournful note
of tragedy is struck.
Imposing music returns
music for the closing scenes as Mark
Twain walks over the hill into the ‘sunrise
of immortality; the Twain theme momentarily
turned into a carefree whistle and the
music assuming a mystic shimmer of string
tremolandos and tubular bells with the
choir swelling the closing peroration.
A first-class performance
of one of Steiner’s outstanding, heart-warming
Americana, Oscar-nominated scores.
Ian Lace
* Max Steiner’s score for The
Adventures of Mark Twain is discussed
on pages 40-42 in Christopher Palmer’s
celebrated book, The
Composer in Hollywood (Marion
Boyars Publishers Ltd, London ISBN 07145-2885-4;
1990)
Moscow Symphony Orchestra and Chorus/William Stromberg
