The album starts with his celebrated 20th Century Fox fanfare, heard at the start of all the studio's films, and goes right into one of his earliest efforts, 1931's "Street Scene. Airport, on the other hand, came right at the end, in fact, just after the end, of his life in 1970. In between are heard such Oscar-worthy works as Captain from Castile and The Robe, as well as the Oscar winner The Song of Bernadette
Album · 1986 · 10 Songs. Man of Galilee: The Essential Alfred Newman Film Music Collection. Zero ads. Try it now. Learn more.
Alfred Newman was one of the founding generation of composers who came to Hollywood in the early Thirties when the studios decided to include music in films that weren't musicals. These included Max Steiner, Franz Waxman, Dimitri Tiomkin, Miklos Rozsa and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, the best known, though there were others. Korngold and Rozsa came from the world of classical music. Captain From Castile was one of Newman's great scores with its love theme's Spanish accents and bold, heroic march, both here. The sweet tenderness of Cathy's Theme from Wuthering Heights follows. One of Newman's traits was that his music was often warm and could express great feeling and tenderness, which shows here. On this album I really like "The Hunters" from THE BRAVADOS. What a powerful piece of scoring full of energy and drive. It blew me away the first time I heard it.
Alfred Newman was director of music at 20th Century Fox and was forced to choose between two period piece projects, Captain from Castile and Forever Amber. He assigned David Raksin to Forever Amber and the rest is history. The grandeur of the whole thing inspired the use of the complete orchestral palette in the grand manner. Newman understood that the film required brilliant colors and a grand sweep, and that he would need to impart traditional Castilian auras, as well as those for the native Indian culture of the Aztecs. For the Aztecs Newman discovered that like the Chinese they used a pentatonic scale.
Alfred Newman is one of the most important figures in film music history – not just in terms of his composing, but also his many years as head of film music at Fox, conducting so many scores by other composers, giving countless great composers their big breaks, etc. He was instrumental in furthering the careers of such giants as Bernard Herrmann, Franz Waxman, Alex North and Jerry Goldsmith, to name just four. Many of them appear on this album, re-released in 2010 as part of the first of two batches of new issues of the indelible Classic Film Scores series conducted by Charles Gerhardt. The album begins – how could it possibly not? – with the most famous studio logo music, the 20th Century Fox Fanfare, which Newman wrote in (wait for i. 1933. I wonder what he would have thought then if someone had told him it would still be in use almost eighty years later.
Alfred Newman - The Captain From Castille - Pt 1 02:00. Alfred Newman - Main Title 01:33. Alfred Newman - The Captain From Castille - Pt 2 04:37. Alfred Newman - Pedro Attackted 02:48. Alfred Newman - The Captain From Castille - Pt 3 03:01. Alfred Newman - Pedro Meets Catana 02:00. Alfred Newman - The Captain From Castille - Pt 4 03:26. Alfred Newman - Juan Tells of the New World 02:01. Alfred Newman - The Captain From Castille - Pt 5 04:15. Alfred Newman - Lady Luisa – Catanas Warning 01:43. Alfred Newman - The Captain From Castille - Pt 6 05:21. Alfred Newman - Pedro Is Captured 01:46.