Benjamin Frankel:
The making of "Music for the Movies"
E.D.Kennaway
"On-the-job-training" and "steep learning
curve" are two phrases of modern parlance that have a special resonance
for me, as I look back over the preparation of the material for CPO's
recent release "Music for the Movies", devoted to film scores of my
late stepfather Benjamin Frankel. As a student at the Royal College
of Music, many years ago, I studied piano on the Performer's Course.
Sadly, the study of orchestration and composition were not on the curriculum
and I recall, with some irony, my consternation when I learned that
the second-year theory exam included a paper on the former subject.
The problem was solved in the end, not by the introduction of tuition
in these areas, but by the discovery that there was an alternative paper
which omitted such questions. My knowledge of the orchestra, therefore,
(and still requiring much study), is based on listening, studying scores
and reading numerous textbooks on the subject.
My motive in mentioning this may seem
obscure but will become apparent during the course of this article.
Before entering into the details of
the recording, it might be worth mentioning what I regard as being the
genesis of the project. To elaborate, I must go back some sixteen years,
to the moment when I first began my efforts to see a collection of Frankel
film scores recorded.
As I recall, it was sometime early in
1985 that I first saw the film "Libel" - a courtroom suspense drama
starring Dirk Bogarde and Olivia de Haviland, directed by Anthony Asquith.
He and my stepfather had been devoted friends and collaborated on a
good many fine films (among them the above), starting with the most
famous, probably, "The Importance of Being Earnest". Other notable titles
were "Orders to Kill" and "Guns of Darkness".
While listening to the title music for
"Libel", I was struck by the instantly memorable, romantic theme and
thought immediately that it was far too good to be heard only on the
film's soundtrack. Then, not long after, I was browsing in a major London
record shop and noticed a stand of LPs (the days of vinyl) devoted to
film music, including various albums of individual composer compilations.
Suddenly, the absence of any Frankel struck me as an absurd state of
affairs, when considering his prolific and outstanding contribution
to the field. It was then that I began the long - and often frustrating
- process of trying to get an album of his film scores recorded. The
problems were manifold. My initial thought was to see if a compilation
of old recordings could be reissued under license from the various copyright
owners. The available material was limited of course: there had been
original soundtrack releases of (incomplete) scores from "Battle of
the Bulge" and "Night of the Iguana", occasional recordings of individual
themes (notably, "Carriage and Pair", "The Lily Watkins Tune" and "A
Kid for Two Farthings" theme") and some private acetates of original
session material which my stepfather had kept. This approach soon failed:
the licensing of even a limited amount of material from, say, "Battle
of the Bugle" was a prohibitive proposition; the quality of sound was
too variable across the range of recordings and I also learned that
original soundtrack material, if reissued commercially, incurred costly
re-use fees of the Musicians' Union, unless the original fee had been
negotiated to include a soundtrack release. The old private acetates
mentioned above did not satisfy the latter condition, so were of little
help. What to do next? If reissuing old recordings was not a viable
option, then it would have to be a question of making a new recording.
But only a few original Frankel manuscripts were extant (though enough
to make a few albums). Like many composers, he had not maintained his
own archives, doubtless in the belief that the material was no longer
relevant once it had been dubbed to soundtrack, and the studios were
little better at preserving scores, especially as many of them closed
or merged, often discarding unique documents in the process. Nonetheless,
the following scores survived: "Battle of the Bulge", "Night of the
Iguana", "Guns of Darkness", "Curse of the Werewolf", "Orders to Kill",
"The Prisoner", a selection from "The Importance of Being Earnest" (located
in the BBC Music Library) and some cues from "Trottie True" (not much,
out of nearly seventy feature film scores). Thus, a new recording could
be possible - but who might produce it?
At about this time, someone told me
of the sterling work that the record producer David Wishart had done
in recording some British film music on his own Cloud Nine label, including
scores by Bax, Vaughan Williams, Easdale, Schurmann and others. I made
contact and was initially delighted to learn that he was highly familiar
with the Frankel output and interested in the idea of a recording. Financial
concerns soon raised their head again, however. To make a new recording
with a major orchestra was a very costly proposition and without some
major backing, it could not be done. Not only that, but the cost of
preparing the materials (reconstruction of scores where required and
also the production of parts from the few extant scores) was also a
major issue. I then began to hunt around for financial backing in the
business sector (it was a time when the arts were receiving a good deal
of sponsorship). At one point, a private backer was interested but this
route was scuppered by a change in personal fortune. Hope of the required
backing seemed to be fading and the project had to be put "on hold".
When the opportunities were there, David Wishart, in collaboration with
the Silva Screen label, included some Frankel in compilation albums
(a suite from "Curse of the Werewolf" on a CD of scores from horror
films; the Prelude from "Battle of the Bulge" on a commemorative D-Day
album). Still, however, an entire album of Frankel's film music was
nowhere on the horizon. Then fate stepped in, with an unexpected twist,
in the shape of the German label CPO.
I had always thought that my stepfather's
film music - apart form being worthwhile in its own right - could provide
a gentle way in for those wishing to approach his more demanding concert
music. Yet, it was the latter which initially attracted the interest
of CPO, during the early 1990s and which was to be recorded by them
in an extensive and highly acclaimed series of recordings which embraced
the eight symphonies, the string quartets, the concerti, and many other
works. This, it has to be said, was what would have mattered to my stepfather,
who regarded his film music as a means to an end - a living - and who
was always dubious about the validity of film music when heard away
from the films themselves. CPO, however, were always interested in the
idea of recording some of the film music, once the major concert works
had been completed on CD. So it was that in 1998 and 1999, the complete
score of "Battle of the Bulge" was recorded ( honoured with a Cannes
Classical Award at the annual MIDEM event in January this year). It
should be said that this too might not have got off the ground had there
not been the great good fortune to trace a complete original set of
parts. To have engaged a copyist to produce a new set - bearing in mind
the score is fully symphonic and some eighty minutes in length - would
also have raised serious budgetary issues. Once the "Bulge" CD had made
its mark, CPO now decided that they wanted to follow it up with a further
film music recording.
After the drama and symphonic grandeur
of "Battle of the Bulge", I was very keen to focus on another side of
my stepfather's creative genius - his witty and tuneful film music.
Even before "Battle of the Bulge" went into the recording studio, I
had started preparing material against the day when a second recording
might be confirmed. Thanks to the revolution in computer desktop publishing
and with apologies to all those who used to earn or supplement their
livings as copyists, I was able to produce printed scores and parts
for "Night of the Iguana", "Trottie True" and "The Importance of Being
Earnest". For the most part, as many would confirm, this side of the
process is hack work, involving the slow and painstaking transfer of
the written page onto the computer. (It may cause some mild amusement
when I disclose that, so far, I was working with an old Atari STe computer,
using the Steinberg Cubase and C-Lab Notator software programs!). "Trottie
True" did involve some creative thinking, however: it seemed to me that
Ben had kept just a few cues from the full score, which he felt, perhaps,
could be put to use as a light-music suite. This is speculation but
the basis was there nonetheless. I needed to do a bit of cutting-and-pasting
and effect a few modifications to produce the eventual six-movement
suite. I also made an arrangement for muted stings of the "Lullaby"
from "The Years Between", a very attractive piece which existed only
as a published piano solo. The real challenge, however, came with the
need to reconstruct some of the music I felt was desirable for the proposed
recording.
For a while, I had been experimenting
with a number of themes from various films, among them "The Love Lottery",
"Libel", "Footsteps in the Fog", "Portrait from Life", "The Man in the
White Suit", "London Belongs to Me" and "A Kid for Two Farthings", all
of which were ideal candidates for an album of light and melodious music.
The simplest part of the procedure was the taping of the soundtrack
from video onto an audio cassette. Then came the difficult part. Often,
I would sit at the piano, listening repeatedly to a passage on the tape,
and fill in the more obvious details first: melody, harmony and rhythm.
Then came the real challenge - attempting to reproduce the composer's
original orchestration ( where I would often employ the added aid of
a synthesizer to approximate the sounds). Some aspects of this are fairly
clear - solos played by the different insturments, a theme spread out
in octaves among the upper strings and so forth. Background detail and
doublings are another matter: these can be difficult to discern even
with modern digital recordings but on scratchy old monaural soundtracks
some details can disappear almost completely, especially if, as so often,
the orchestra is heard beneath dialogue and other sounds. Many would
agree that some doublings have to be inferred - oboes do not cut through
loud orchestral tuttis really, though their presence must, in some subtle
way, modify the sound we hear. Piano or harp filling in harmony can
also be obscured quite easily, at least in terms of the individual notes
they play. Here, I must pay tribute to Ben's clarity of orchestral style
- he wrote astutely and economically for the orchestra, seldom indulging
in the "all-but-the-kitchen-sink" approach.
As it was clear that I would not be
able to reconstruct all the scores I was working on, for this one project,
I settled on three in particular: the love theme from "The Net" (another
Asquith film), "So Long at the Fair" (the expected "Carriage and Pair",
with the addition of some other cues to form a longer, integral piece)
and a personal favourite - "Footsteps in the Fog". The main theme from
the latter ("The Lily Watkins Tune") had been published as a piano solo
and recorded by some of the light orchestras during the 1950s, but none
of the original score survived. The complete score contains, I would
estimate, about thirty minutes of music, some of it dark and dramatic.
Not wanting to stray too far from my original plan (especially given
that "Night of the Iguana" is a serious score), I focussed mainly on
the romantic, melodious sections (with the odd bit of drama thrown in!).
The final result was a four-movement suite which accounted for about
half of the complete score, at about fifteen minutes. Now, I must confess
to some necessary tampering. As many will know, film music does not
- nor does it need to - follow an intrinsic musical design: it fades
in and out, sometimes lasting a mere few seconds, sometimes far longer,
according to the needs of the unfolding narrative. Mainly, "Footsteps"
provided a number of more extended and cohesive sequences (the second
movement, for example, following the original soundtrack precisely).
Elsewhere, however, it was necessary to compose some bridging passages,
so that the continuity could be preserved and a satisfactory musical
result attained. Thus, the title music is joined, via a linking modulation,
to a later incarnation of the theme, followed by a bridge which leads
to its reprise, then a short coda. The third movement provided a happy
opportunity to link two contrasted sections ("Lily's Triumph" and "Motoring
in the
Country") with the minimum of effort:
it turned out that the bar which finished the former section rested
conveniently on the suspended dominant seventh of the latter's opening.
Repeating the bar (which happened to make a balanced four-bar phrase)
and resolving the suspension led perfectly from one into the other.
The finale again required some thought. There is a point near the end
of the film where the music stops and, after some short dialogue, the
main theme is reprised for the last time. I experimented with various
linking ideas (always, I must stress, based on the composer's own thematic
elements), before coming up with one which seemed to join the two sections
naturally. The last confession concerns the inclusion of a 'grand' (though
short) Hollywod style coda, to compensate for the fact that, in the
original, the music fades into nothing (that is, apparently, as one
cannot know if this was the result of editing). Here again, though,
the ending derives entirely from Ben's own themes and is, in fact, a
kind of mirror image of the score's four-bar introduction.
Perhaps it is worth mentioning one or
two circumstances which nearly caused the recording to be delayed, at
the very least. I had sent the materials for "Night of the Iguana",
"Trottie True", "The Importance of Being Earnest", "The Years Between"
and "Curse of the Werewolf" (the "Pastoral", included for its suitably
romantic style), to the Queensland Symphony Orchestra and also to the
conductor, Werner Andreas Albert, well in advance of the recording being
scheduled. Then the original dates were postponed due to some oversight
and I could not get a clear idea of when they might be reinstated, so
relaxed my efforts on "Footsteps". Some months later, and without warning,
some other sessions were cancelled and the project was on again, leaving
only a short time to complete the work 'in hand'. The reconstructions
of "So Long at the Fair" and "The Net" were done and sent off to Brisbane
a shortish while before the sessions but.........were mislaid somewhere
at the other end and did not reappear to date. (They were only copies
of course). As the sessions drew nearer and nearer, I was now struggling
to complete "Footsteps" in time and also wondering whether to re-send
the missing scores. In the end, and following an all-night sitting at
my computer (now a PC, and using a program called Personal Composer),
I managed to finish the task about four days before recording was due
to commence. I sent off the score and parts by courier and, thank the
stars, they arrived in time. As it turned out, the recording sessions
finished with only a few minutes to spare , so the missing material
could not have been done on that occasion after all (or had it been
done first, something else would have been omitted instead). Bearing
in mind that I had been engaged on reconstructing one of my stepfather's
creative triumphs, I could only be thankful that I had only to do that
and not actually write the music myself. My respect and admiration for
him and others who work under such pressure of time and yet manage to
produce something of stature had grown emormously.
And what of the final result? I awaited
the edited mastertape in a state of high anxiety for nearly a year,
before I could decide for myself if I had succeeded in my aspirations.
I confess to some tears of relief and joy when I heard the reconstructed
music from "Footsteps": it sounded to me as if it was a faithful recreation
of the original. I would never presume to swear that every last detail
is accurate but, at worst, the result could be regarded as a mixture
of recreation and arrangement - a compromise I decided I could live
with.
All in all, a long-cherished dream has
been realized and I hope that the new recording will not only appeal
to existing Frankel admirers but will also win his music new friends,
showing, as I believe it does, how complete was his musicianship, craft
and artistic genius. Last, but by no means least, I hope that, were
he around to hear it, he would appreciate this, my personal tibute to
his memory, borne of the utmost love and gratitude.
Copyright January 2002 E.D.Kennaway