Hey Paul have you heard (and seen) "The Power" with Rosza's score? That is one of his best and a very weird one. Nothing like his epics. Though of course he was famous for (to some degree) rewriting one score to fit each new movie assignment. He only really did this on films he was not inspired by. He had great taste in cinema, because his most inspired music is always from the truly best films he scored, not merely the most popular. For example again, "The Power." A totally forgotten film, not even on video now, even though it was brilliantly directed by Byron Haskin who directed the original "War of the Worlds."
On the epic side of Rozsa though, people always talk about Ben Hur it is true. But he wrote his best march ever for Quo Vadis. That is an awe-inspiring 6 minutes of music.
That's good that JWL mentions Leonard Rosenman. He is one of the most interesting and little known film composers. In the midst of the flowery romanticism or Mancini-copycat stuff being done by everyone else, he was writing pure, powerful atonalism. One extremely bizarre example is "Beneath the Planet of the Apes." Yes, I know that is a fairly tacky movie, but it had some great surreal scenes in it (which is why I like it better than the more intelligent original film), and a fantastic score. Another clinic on how to do a movie score first of all, but beyond that, some weirdly beautiful sounds created for the more insane scenes of the film, including a devotional hymn for chorus and organ to the glory of the hydrogen bomb.
On the epic side of Rozsa though, people always talk about Ben Hur it is true. But he wrote his best march ever for Quo Vadis. That is an awe-inspiring 6 minutes of music.
That's good that JWL mentions Leonard Rosenman. He is one of the most interesting and little known film composers. In the midst of the flowery romanticism or Mancini-copycat stuff being done by everyone else, he was writing pure, powerful atonalism. One extremely bizarre example is "Beneath the Planet of the Apes." Yes, I know that is a fairly tacky movie, but it had some great surreal scenes in it (which is why I like it better than the more intelligent original film), and a fantastic score. Another clinic on how to do a movie score first of all, but beyond that, some weirdly beautiful sounds created for the more insane scenes of the film, including a devotional hymn for chorus and organ to the glory of the hydrogen bomb.
