I feel very humbled to read Firefox's post. Today I did not kiss a single leper, though I know some people who did... sort of.

Let me tell you what I got from George's efforts. George's efforts enabled me to listen properly to the piece he refers to above as 'The Queen's Court'. Now this is a very interesting cue. It has parallel lines of woodwind in fourths or fifths, unlike the other dances in the score where single lines entwine. It is a version of the 'Twins' Dance' melody, but with really interesting rhythm and certain very unpredictable melodic changes. Don't look for it on your CDs because it ain't there. It's in the film though.

And guess what: it is CLEARLY a development of the Assyrian Dance in 'Quo Vadis?' Now that latter dance was a period fragment.

Assyrian Dance>>>> Queen's Court>>>>Twins' Dance.

I could NEVER have gotten the progression from A to C without this new B in the middle.

Now that tells me lots. I always thought Rozsa somehow evoked Chaldean music in this film. But I've never HEARD Chaldean music (nor has anyone, if we're honest)... yet here we have Rozsa utilizing what he saw as an Assyrian idea in this film about early Canaanites. And the whole Fertile Crescent culture was influenced by Sumer and Ur, whence came old Abraham himself. So I see how Rozsa's pure liquid powers of association and intuition and hard work link up with his creative daemon. And I think to myself, 'He's DONE it'. He's bridged the gap between modern cinemagoers and the ancient patriarchs. No Biblical scholar or archaeologist or even musicologist could've doen this ... no historian. Just an artist.

And I think, whatever I do, the forces CAN be mustered to make art, because I get a glimpse of how he DID it. And I got Rozsa's trick here by being infected with George's reconstruction art. And then I start wondering about transcendance and eternity and mysticism and 'karma' if you will, channelled through an artist. Was he a devil, with those pixie ears? I feel encouraged.

All because of George. Yet he has kissed no leper today.