Europäische Kunstmusik in der Musikindustrie der USA am Beispiel des Gesangsschaffens von Frank Sinatra

Das Gesamtschaffen von Sinatra bildet eine außerordentlich vielgestaltige, multikulturelle Erscheinung in der Geschichte des Jazz- und Pop-Gesangs. Sinatras Repertoire, das zwischen 1939 und 1993 aufgenommen wurde, schließt neben Musical-Songs, Jazz-Standards und Popmusik in vielfältiger Stilistik auch Werke der europäischen Kunstmusik ein, die er in verschiedenen Arrangements und in der ihm eigenen individuellen Gesangsmanier interpretierte. Die Songs, in denen er Werke und Elemente der europöischen Kunstmusik aufgreift, bilden eine wenig bekannte und bis heute meist unterschätzte Facette seines Oeuvres. Sinatras Klassik-Adaptionen symbolisieren einen allgemeinen Prozess des Einbauens des abendländischen musikalischen Erbes des 17. bis 19. Jahrhunderts in die amerikanische Kultur - eine neuartige Kultur mit Ambitionen für die Assimilation der europäischen und außereuropäischen Traditionen. bms online (Cornelia Schöntube)

An Austrian in Hollywood

When interviewed about film music, John Williams is often quick to credit Max Steiner as the originator of the leitmotif technique in film music. Steiner brought with him to the U.S. the compositional techniques he learned as a child prodigy in Europe, including the leitmotif technique. This paper will discuss Steiner’s use of leitmotifs in his Academy Award winning score to the 1942 Warner Bros. film Now, Voyager. Film musicologists disagree on the relevance of themes being heard in different keys throughout a film score and their possible effect on the audience. I intend to demonstrate that, although the significance of these key relationships may only exist on a subconscious level, they do contribute in a meaningful way to the viewing/listening experience. To demonstrate this, I will use examples of “Charlotte’s Theme,” also known as the “Love Theme,” which appears in various keys throughout the film. The key relationships are clearly intentional and well thought out by Steiner. This theme, which is almost always in triple meter, was recorded in 1943 by Allen Miller and his Orchestra as a pop tune, in quadruple meter, with the title “It Can’t Be Wrong.” Steiner plagiarizes himself when this instrumental version is heard as source music in the 1945 Warner Bros. film Mildred Pierce. Vocal versions, including one recorded by Frank Sinatra, include lyrics by Kim Gannon. This version was also sung in the Star Trek: Voyager episode “The Killing Game, Part 1.”

Coda

The coda to Transgression & Redemption considers how the knowledges, methods, and values of the book might contribute to further considerations of the American novel, with immediate emphasis on several canonical masterpieces of the 1930s, including William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (1936), Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), and Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust (1939); how, alternatively, the critical repertoire of this book might contribute to Hollywood scholarship beyond poststructuralist feminist critique, with emphasis split between the erotic-spiritual edginess of individual Criterion-canonized masterpieces (the not happily-ever-after: Casablanca, All About Eve, Blue Velvet) and the luminous achievement of “sexually ever after” in serial Hollywood films, featuring Bogey and Bacall, Katherine Hepburn and one of her men, or Myrna Loy and William Powell; and how, finally, the book’s critical reorientation can reveal the mythopoetic force of American popular music, beginning for illustration’s sake with the two greatest vocalists in that history, Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra, whose vocalized radiance, entailing bent notes and captured lyric, express obsessively the twin dimensions of incarnate passion, sex and sentiment. Or, as the two of them (sort of Catholics, Marian both) liked to put it, body and soul.

Sucker

Today, the performance of film music is a staple of symphony concert programming. In 1943, it was an anomaly. That year, Steiner was invited to conduct the New York Philharmonic for a potential audience of twenty thousand at Lewisohn Stadium. But for Max, the concert proved a humiliating disaster, due to the orchestra’s open hostility toward a “Hollywood” composer, and the addition to the program of 27-year-old Frank Sinatra. More teen idol than respected singer at the time, Sinatra inspired Beatles-like screaming from his fans throughout the concert, upstaging Steiner. A series of personal calamities followed: the death of Max’s beloved father, a health crisis of his own, and seemingly insurmountable debt. Again, music was Steiner’s salvation. The 1944 film Since You Went Away—his last collaboration with Selznick—earned Max a third Oscar. But shortly after its release, Steiner was devastated by news that Louise wanted a divorce.

Pal Joey Goes to Hollywood

The 1957 screen adaptation of Pal Joey—starring Frank Sinatra as Joey, Rita Hayworth as Vera, and Kim Novak as Linda—redeems Joey. Now a singer rather than a dancer, Joey genuinely falls in love with Linda. In the end Joey gets the girl. The film promotes a set of emerging gender archetypes that defy middle-class, suburban constructions of masculinity and femininity. Joey’s stage-to-screen evolution—from heel to swinging bachelor—is mirrored by Linda’s transformation from stenographer to sex kitten. Both of these archetypes are responses to what cultural theorists have called the postwar “crisis” in masculinity. The character Vera too is altered. As played by Rita Hayworth, she is tamed by Joey. The anxiety over contested gender roles is reflected in the alteration of the original score, which is reworked, repurposed, and in some cases eviscerated in order to promote the ethos of the film.

Guerra Fría y Cine

El artículo trata sobre las relaciones entre dos temas como la Guerra Fría y el cine. Se abordan cuestiones como la historia de las relaciones entre Estados Unidos y la Unión Soviética, la “caza de brujas” en Hollywood, la evolución en la representación de los comunistas en la pantalla: desde las películas prosoviéticas de la Segunda Guerra Mundial a la percepción del peligro nuclear y militar del antiguo aliado.Destacan en este artículo los capítulos dedicados a personajes como el cineasta Oliver Stone y su obra, el escritor y guionista Graham Greene, el nuevo cine polaco y la figura de Andrzej Wajda, las ciudades (Moscú, Berlín, Praga…) y su plasmación en las películas de la época, los espías y su mundo, la URSS y la Guerra Fría. También se aborda la relación entre la España franquista y el cine de la época, con el comienzo de las grandes superproducciones y la llegada de Ava Gardner y Frank Sinatra a la Península Ibérica, la imagen de los norteamericanos en Bienvenido, Mister Marshall.