Quote:
We tend to think of reworkings as in the hack Mantovani/ Rose vein for musack albums, but what if composers/ orchestrators with lots of real clout and talent, like Zador were to rework Rozsa's ideas? Would this dilute the work, or give it new life? Bruno Nicolai re-did a whole album of Jarre's 'Dr. Zhivago' for example. I'm not speaking here of LeRoy Holmes-ish lightenings but re-interpretations by people who know. Herrmann reworked 'Julius Caesar' of course, and there were the reduced 'Ben-Hur' albums by 'Norman Maine' and 'Jean Baitzouroff'. Palmer of course made marginal changes with Rozsa's consent to many pieces.


Ah, William! So many stimulating/questionable ideas and claims in a single paragraph. How is anybody to keep up with you?

1. Rozsa would not have approved the characterization of his friend Mantovani as a "hack." He was a very competent musician who just happened to work in a different (but perfectly respectable) vein of "light classical" music. It's Muzak, by the way -- a trademark.

2. Zador reworking Rozsa's ideas. There's a thought. Because Zador worked on these scores for a living, under supervision, it's intriguing to imagine him redoing things on his own. We would have had Rozsa "Zadorized." I'll take mine straight. Very little of Zador's large oeuvre is on records, and the music I've heard (admittedly in mostly poor performances) has not impressed me greatly. Undoubtedly there's more out there waiting to be discovered.

3. A whole Zhivago remake? What was it like?

4. Herrmann reworked JC? Why do you say that? Rozsa offered him either the suite or the overture. Herrmann chose the former. I always understood that the suite had been prepared in advance.

5. Palmer made marginal changes. Yes, and more than marginal, such as injecting the lepers' music into the B-H overture. But it was all on Rozsa's instructions or with his explicit or tacit consent. Tomorrow's editors will be flying blind.