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Homage to Elmer Bernstein

Mr. Francois Cuadrat | FRANCE | 01/20/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Film music is today a genre just as important as other previous types of music such as baroque, classical, romantic, jazz... and Elmer Bernstein is a truly great composer. His works are both rich and complete and while intricately detailed they are also, paradoxically, beautifully simple. Nowadays, however, it appears difficult for the younger generation to appreciate the full extent of his talent. Melodies are no longer fashionable and young people no longer have the same listening potential. Today's modern music is somewhat limited to rather ordinary orchestral harmonisation (if any), thudding electronic sounds and a general lack of musical culture. This is, no doubt, resulting directly from the monotonous banging sounds played on radio and TV as a result of purely economic interests involved in the production of easy, basic music which is so popular today. Just listen to some of today's contemporary music and you become aware of the exaggerated loud bass, the absence of any memorable melodies (if by chance there are any lyrics, they are elementary and often badly performed) and an almost total absence of harmonisation, all of this swamped by a deafening percussion beating at an extremely boring regular tempo ! Nowadays anyone can do anything in the name of music. What happens when such music is transposed onto the screen ? It by no means enriches the images we see, it simply overshadows them. This is, in fact, just the opposite of what film music is intended for. Moreover, most of the sounds in such music are electronic or electric, often resulting in deformed sounds which young people hear eventually making them unable to appreciating the true quality of simple acoustic sounds or of a four note chord, and let's not talk about digital recordings making such interpretations sound so empty. What is better than listening to the natural sound of an analogical recording : it takes us closer to rhythm, movement, nature and people ! This is, no doubt, why Elmer Bernstein's music is so different - it is but the opposite of most of today's dull and boring music. It is so much alive, created thanks to his gift in music, his love of music and his search for perfection. He composed it not only so that it merged with the film it was written for but mostly to add to the emotions it evokes. Better still, Elmer Bernstein's compositions become even richer when heard with the actual film. It shows the lively interaction that exist between both of them : the music is essential to the film which in turn is essential to the music. The composer brings together technical and complex elements to create orchestrations with ultimate grace and lightness which are characteristics of both his professionalism and his originality. He is a Master of the art of musical composition. For a lot of different reasons his works are true models for the future generations of listeners, composers and instrumentalists to follow. In my own opinion, the essential characteristics of his work are in the wonderful harmony of the strings, the wind instruments and the percussion and the exchanges between the melodies, counterpoints and rhythm sections, all done so naturally, so smoothly and so harmoniously. Elmer Bernstein has definitely established his own « school » of music, creating an example which was followed by many film music composers all around the world : the perfect and seventh chords, the atypical rhythm, the violin E-string played in unison, the rapid and staccato in the brass section, the superb richness of the sound (made by using the timbre and other characteristics of the instruments which merge perfectly together), the changes in key as unexpected as spontaneous, the rhythm breaks, the incredible accentuations, the rare instruments and inspired interpretations. When hearing the performance the listener is immediately transported into the « Bernstein sound », the « Bernstein style », the « Bernstein music ». The original sound of Elmer Bernstein will last forever and should be taught in schools and universities specialising in the music from the 20th and 21st centuries. To show our appreciation of his inventive genius, his works and his talent, which are as impressive and as vast as those of other great erudite music composers, Elmer Bernstein's name should appear on the list of the great Masters. If Mozart was alive today, I'm sure he would write film music. No doubt he too would love this great art to which Elmer Bernstein gave so many compositions and so much nobility. Should Mozart have been reincarnated perhaps his name would have been "Bernstein". I personally have been teaching music theory for fifteen years to students of all ages at a music school in France. The theory I teach and which I thought would lead to the ability to reading written music and to the understanding of what music really is, both technically and emotionally, was based mainly on Elmer Bernstein's compositions. These compositions provided me with true examples of melodic structures which are rich both in harmony and rhythm. Music should not be labelled nor appreciated according to the school in which it is categorised - classical, jazz, old or new... The concept of different musics doesn't exist, it's just Music, something merging vibrations together. Music should be felt by the instrumentalist and the listener; it should convey strong emotions. That is why I encouraged instrumentalists to play the works of Elmer Bernstein. In 1986, at the UNESCO Centre in Paris, this resulted in an orchestra consisting of young musicians, which I conducted, giving an excellent performance during the finale of a National Orchestral Competition for young French musicians. I'm sure that the music of Big Jake, True Grit, Katie Elder or many others are still alive in the memories of the young people who are now grown-ups. Elmer Bernstein's compositions, so lively and affirmative and bursting with energy and emotion, give us a true "joie de vivre" and take us sometimes into deep thoughts and meditation, and other times into sadness and nostalgia, but they always convey, and always will, an immense feeling of happiness to the listeners. American cinema, so popular world-wide for a large numbre of very sound reasons, owes much of its success to its excellent film-music composers (Bill Conti, Lalo Schifrin, Henry Mancini, John Barry, Georges Delerue, to name but a few). Elmer Bernstein has contributed to the fame and appreciation of some of the best things in American culture: talent, work, intelligence, imagination, creation, devotion, self-sacrifice, hope, sharing, generosity... love! Elmer Bernstein's music is not simply added to the film, it makes the film, it is the film! By successfully merging together so many musical influences and thanks to his immense and varied musical abilities, Elmer Bernstein's compositions reflect his true qualities and should be used as an example for everyone, whether musicians or not. By this I mean the qualities which lead to the making of great men, great musicians, and which bring out the best in us.

Many, many thanks Mr Elmer Bernstein, you will always be remembered as a true, unique example to follow.



P.S. I've never had the chance nor the opportunity to meet Mr Bernstein, but through his compositions, I feel like I have always known him.

"

Strange Bedfellows, But They Made For Great Collaborations

Erik North | San Gabriel, CA USA | 11/07/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"John Wayne and Elmer Bernstein. Two men, Hollywood legends, who made for somewhat strange bedfellows. In terms of political ideology, you could hardly find two men more apart in Hollywood: Bernstein a political liberal who found himself "graylisted" during the McCarthy era; Wayne the ultimate arch-conservative and virulent anti-Communist.



But there's no denying that when it came to film, the two of them were always on the same page. And the proof is on this recording that Bernstein made during the 1980s with the Utah Symphony Orchestra of the scores he had composed to five of the Duke's latter-day westerns: 1961's THE COMANCHEROS; 1969's TRUE GRIT (the one that won Wayne his Oscar); 1976's THE SHOOTIST (Wayne's valedictory film); 1973's CAHILL: UNITED STATES MARSHAL; and 1971's BIG JAKE. Wayne clearly had heard Bernstein's ability to create the wide open spaces kind of Western film music required for his films via the score for THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, and thus secured Bernstein's services. And as can be gauged from this recording (even if they are not the actual originals themselves), Bernstein delivered the goods without fail. The scores here are classic Americana, rendered excellently by the Utah Symphony, that don't slop over with the kind of overbearing sentimentality that so many critics accused a lot of Wayne's latter films of having.



Though these are not as familiar to audiences as Bernstein's MAGNIFICENT SEVEN score, they are nevertheless highly representative of the approach he took to the Western genre as a composer, and certainly the way Wayne approached things in his later years even if his ideas about values were becoming increasingly outdated by then. Highly recommended for Western film score aficionados."