Ravinia 2019, Issue 5, Week 10

percussion that greets us when we first meet Johnny Friendly and Terry Malloy, and an alto saxophone that, in Bernstein’s words, “bleats out a tugging, almost spastic, motive of pain,” and which was to be played “with a dirty sound,” according to the written directions on the com- poser’s original score. We are introduced to Bernstein’s “fight mu- sic” during the mad scramble on the docks among the longshoremen, fighting over the tabs that will enable them to work that day. It’s a staccato brass and percussion variation on the alto sax tune heard earlier as part of the vio- lence theme. This will recur in subsequent fight scenes, such as when Johnny’s men interrupt the secret meeting in church a few hours later. Bernstein introduces his third major motif, the love theme, when Terry walks Edie home af- ter the incident in church. Bernstein called this the “glove scene,” a reference to Brando’s playing around with the glove that she’s dropped. First voiced by a flute, it eventually broadens to in- clude strings. Quiet, sweet, and touching, this theme plays a major role in the film from that point on. Other key musical moments include the dirge-like music after Father Barry’s sermon in the cargo hold, a reprise of that music during the famous “I coulda been a contender” dialogue between Terry and Charley, and the compos- er’s brilliant intertwining of the main and love themes in his finale, among the most powerful of any score of the 1950s. Life magazine referred to the film’s “somber mood, created at the outset by a chilling mu- sical score by Leonard Bernstein.” And Time magazine summed it up this way: “In his score for On the Waterfront , some critics heard a new note in Bernstein’s music, a curiously piercing purity that seemed to burst from a hot core of originality.” Bernstein’s score was nominated for an Acad- emy Award® but lost to Dimitri Tiomkin’s music for The High and the Mighty , which had gener- ated a popular song that year. Moreover, Bern- stein was not a Hollywood insider, so the West Coast composers might have been less prone to vote for an East Coast interloper. More than six decades later, however, none of the other four nominees is nearly as well-remembered as On the Waterfront . A year after the film’s premiere, the com- poser debuted a 20-minute, single-movement symphonic suite of the score at Tanglewood. Al- though it is now commonplace for film compos- ers to design concert suites to enable their music to live on in a pure-music context, it was unusu- al at the time. (Notably, Bernstein’s mentor Aar- on Copland had done it a few years earlier with his music for The Red Pony .) Bernstein would never again compose a film score. His 1954 essay for the New York Times on the experience suggests that he enjoyed the process, but he was irritated that two of his cues were dropped and others were “dialed out” during the process of mixing music, sound ef- fects, and dialogue. So he turned down all fu- ture offers to compose for the big screen. He even kept his distance from the ultimately Os- car®-winning screen adaptation of his Broadway smash West Side Story . Producer Spiegel may have hired him for the marquee value of his name. But Leonard Bern- stein’s music for On the Waterfront was integral to the film’s creative and commercial success, capturing the energy of the locale, the passion of young lovers, the danger of the moment, and the ultimate victory of one man over a corrupt system. It was more than many film scores ever accomplish, written by one of the 20th century’s most original musical voices. Jon Burlingame is a Los Angeles—based film music historian. He wrote the essay on Bernstein’s score in On the Waterfront (Cambridge University Press) and created the video essay about it in the Criterion Collection’s DVD/Blu-Ray of the film. PRODUCTION CREDITS Producer: Paul H. Epstein for The Leonard Bernstein Office, Inc. Associate Producer: Eleonor M. Sandresky for The Leonard Bernstein Office, Inc. Production Supervisor: Eleonor M. Sandresky Technical Director: Chris Szuberla Sound Engineer: Martin Bierman Music Supervision: Garth Edwin Sunderland Original orchestrations by Leonard Bernstein with Marlin Skiles, Gil Grau Film score restored and adatpted by Garth Edwin Sunderland Music Consultant: David Newman Streamers created by Kristopher Carter and Mako Sujishi With special thanks to: Tom Hooper, Ken Hahn and Sync Sound, Christopher Lane, Richard Ashton, David Jennings, Sam Baltimore and Mark Horowitz at the Library of Congress, and the Library of Congress “Academy Award®” and/or “Oscar®” is the registered trademark and service mark of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. DAVID NEWMAN, conductor The son of nine-time Oscar-winning composer Alfred Newman, David Newman began learn- ing violin and piano at an early age, earning de- grees in orchestral conducting and violin from the University of Southern California. During 1977–82 he worked extensively as a musician in film and television orchestras, playing on such soundtracks as E.T. , Twilight Zone—The Movie and the original Star Trek film. Newman went on to become an accomplished composer of film music, having scored over 110 movies, ranging from War of the Roses , Matilda , Bowfinger and Heathers , to the more recent Five Flights Up and Serenity . He is equally at home composing for dramas, such as the critically acclaimed Broke- down Palace and Hoffa ; comedies, such as the top-grossing Galaxy Quest and Throw Mama from the Train ; or animated features, includ- ing the award-winning Ice Age , The Brave Little Toaster , and Anastasia , for which he received an Academy Award nomination. His score to the short film 1001 Nights was the first work performed on the Los Angeles Philharmon- ic’s “Filmharmonic” series. Newman is also a composer of formal concert works, which have been performed by the LA Philharmonic and the Indianapolis and Long Beach Symphony Orchestras as well as heard at Spoleto Festival USA, the Grant Park Music Festival, and Ra- vinia. He recently created a suite for violin and orchestra for Sarah Chang based on songs from West Side Story . Newman has devoted consid- erable time to restoring film music classics for the concert hall, a passion which earned him the presidency of the FilmMusic Society in 2007; he recently led the world-premiere presentations of Star Wars Episodes IV–VII with the New York Philharmonic playing the scores live. He also regularly leads such top ensembles as the Roy- al Philharmonic Orchestra, Philadelphia and Cleveland Orchestras, San Diego Symphony, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra, and Bos- ton and Chicago Symphony Orchestras. David Newman made his Ravinia debut in 2014 and is making his first return to the festival. Marlon Brando as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront RAVINIA MAGAZINE | AUGUST 5 – AUGUST 11, 2019 102