{"id":11273,"date":"2024-05-02T16:26:31","date_gmt":"2024-05-02T16:26:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=11273"},"modified":"2024-05-13T18:51:16","modified_gmt":"2024-05-13T18:51:16","slug":"there-are-film-composers-and-then-theres-elliot-goldenthal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=11273","title":{"rendered":"There are film composers and then there\u2019s Elliot \u2026 Goldenthal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>By Ray Bennett<\/p>\n

Oscar-winning American composer Elliot Goldenthal, who turns 70 today, said that the first time he saw the sheet music for Krzysztof Penderecki\u2019s \u2018Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima for 52 Strings\u2019 when he was 17, he turned pale and started to tremble. \u2018It was a deep moment. I realised that I had seen my first real film score.\u2019\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking at the 2018 Krakow Film Music Festival, with the venerable late Polish composer sitting next to him on a speaker\u2019s panel, he described spending an afternoon at Penderecki\u2019s home with its bucolic surroundings. \u2018We didn\u2019t exchange many words but the silences \u2013 in music we call them rests \u2013 the rests were more poignant,\u2019 Goldenthal said. \u2018He has the ability to inspire. His music goes out, he doesn\u2019t know where the wind will take it. For me, it took it to Brooklyn when I was growing up.\u2019<\/p>\n

Goldenthal occupies a special place among my favourite providers of film music. I have spent time with him and his life partner, director Julie Taymor (pictured below with Elliot and me), at Abbey Road during recording sessions for her movie \u2018Titus\u2019; talked to him at length about his scores for other films of hers such as \u2018Frida\u2019, \u2018The Tempest\u2019, \u2018Across the Universe\u2019 and \u2018The Glorias\u2019 and joked and laughed into the night over drinks at the World Soundtrack Awards in Gent, Belgium, and the FMF in Krakow, Poland.<\/p>\n

Elliot won the Academy Award for \u2018Frida\u2019 and he was nominated for best score for Francis Ford Coppola\u2019s \u2018Interview with a Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles\u2019 and Neil Jordan\u2019s \u2018Michael Collins\u2019. He scored Jordan\u2019s \u2018The Butcher Boy\u2019 and \u2018The Good Thief\u2019 amid a range of films that include \u2018Alien3\u2019, \u2018Batman Forever\u2019, \u2018Batman & Robin\u2019 and \u2018Heat\u2019. Busy in the concert hall, Goldenthal composes chamber music and writes symphonies, ballets and operas. As well as the Oscar, he has won two Golden Globes, three Grammy Awards and two Tony Awards.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nRobin Williams once told me that there were movie stars \u2018and then there\u2019s Jack\u2019, as in Nicholson. At the 2014 FMF in 2014, a special concert showed that there are film composers and then there\u2019s Elliot, as in Goldenthal.<\/p>\n

He created for the festival a stupendous 20-minute piece titled \u2018Grand Gothic Suite\u2019 with cues from \u2018Batman Forever\u2019 and \u2018Batman and Robin\u2019 performed during the ASCAP 100th Anniversary closing gala in the vast central hall of an enormous building once called the Vladimir Lenin Steelworks.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It remains a functioning factory known as the Tinning Plant of Arcelor Mittal Poland. For the festival, it was converted to a concert hall with four thousand seats, a stage big enough for full orchestra and chorus and a giant movie screen. What the venue lost in acoustics, it more than made up for in atmosphere.<\/p>\n

Played with evident joy by the Beethoven Academy Orchestra and Polish Radio Choir conducted by Diego Navarro, the suite soared and danced and rampaged and\u00a0almost blew the roof off the Tinning Plant venue not because it was loud but because it was so enthralling. It stopped the show.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Audience and orchestra leapt to their feet and demanded that Goldenthal (in the centre of the photo above) go to the stage for a prolonged standing ovation.<\/p>\n

As Julie Taymor, told me afterwards, the suite showed that dumb action movies can have scores that are created with classical orchestral foundations. Goldenthal has an extraordinarily rich musical vocabulary and he employed it fully in the \u2018Grand Gothic Suite\u2019. It was so vividly descriptive and evocative that you didn\u2019t actually need to see the movies.<\/p>\n

Two-time Oscar-winner Hans Zimmer had to follow that with a suite from Christopher Nolan\u2019s hit movie \u2018Inception\u2019 suite and later he recalled \u2018the great and redoubtable Elliot Goldenthal completely and utterly wiping the floor with us with his extraordinary, brilliant \u201cBatman\u201d suite! I just love that man\u2019s music… and he triumphed that night!\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ray Bennett Oscar-winning American composer Elliot Goldenthal, who turns 70 today, said that the first time he saw the sheet music for Krzysztof Penderecki\u2019s \u2018Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima for 52 Strings\u2019 when he was 17, he turned … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,1694,1263,8,9,2257],"tags":[1481,1275,2174,4171,4115,1248],"class_list":["post-11273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-interviews","category-krakow-film-music-festival","category-memory-lane","category-music","category-news","category-recalling","tag-elliot-goldenthal","tag-hans-zimmer","tag-julie-taymor","tag-krakow-film-music-festival","tag-krzysztof-penderecki","tag-world-soundtrack-awards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11273"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11301,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11273\/revisions\/11301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}