Screen Grab: Master & Commander

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master-and-commander

Master and Commander-The Far Side of the World poster by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia

One of the secrets behind the success of the 2003 Oscar-winning film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, apart from the outstanding ensemble acting, was the music – and especially the classical music used.

That’s not to discredit the original score, which is a combination of original music written by Christopher Gordon, Iva Davies and Richard Tognetti, and traditional folk dances. The original score is on a massive scale, carrying a powerful blast of sea spray in its opening number, The Far Side of the World, and it captures the grandeur of the ship as well as the menace of approaching battle.

The use of classical music lifts the film still further, none more so than the use of Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis. This becomes the stirring motto of the film, with a newly-motivated crew and their strong feelings of brotherhood:

With the film set in 1805, director Peter Weir skilfully incorporates music written in the preceding century. At the other end of the scale from the big-boned soundtrack music is the Prelude for solo cello by J.S. Bach, taken from the Cello Suite no.1 and played by Yo-Yo Ma:

Also used are pieces by Mozart (a brief excerpt from the last movement of his Violin Concerto no.3, leading from a slow introduction to busy strings) and Corelli, whose Adagio from his Christmas Concerto is solemn but rather beautiful.

Finally, for the closing credits, we have a String Quintet by the Baroque composer Luigi Boccherini, for string quintet (two violins, viola and two cellos), which is genial in terms of the communal music making the crew get involved in below decks, but alternates between slow, profound thoughts and vigorous bursts of energy.

The Master & Commander soundtrack can be heard on Spotify here:

Published post no.2 – Sunday 1 February 2015

The Borrowers – Manfred Mann’s Earth Band: Joybringer

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What tune does it use?

Jupiter from Gustav Holst’s orchestral suite The Planets, written between 1914 and 1916.

Jupiter must be one of the most plundered bits of Holst’s set of planets for orchestra. Its stirring central theme became the melody of the song World In Union, used by Kiri te Kanawa for the 1991 Rugby Union World Cup in the UK, as well as in countless other vocal arrangements (Kathryn Jenkins et al). Here though, a much more original bit of ‘sampling’ gives rise to a fantastically uplifting pop song, completed by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band in 1973.

How does it work?

Mann takes the tune from 0’57” in the Planets, clip below:

Then he moves it down in pitch by half an octave to make the whole tune.

Then, after the second chorus (at 1’32”) Mann uses another tune from Jupiter:

Here is the original:

The band subject it to a synthesizer improvisation before it goes into the growly Hammond Organ at the bottom. Then, before we know it, we’re back to the tune, and joy is unconfined!

What else is new?

Joybringer comes from the album Solar Fire – in which Mann continues to use the whole of The Planets for inspiration in the song titles. Listen to it via Spotify below: