Elmer Bernstein, 1922 - 2004.

This summer has not been kind to film composers. On July 21, Jerry Goldsmith died at the age of 75. (NPR has a fine appreciation laced with more its stories on film music.)

And just the other night, I was watching a doc on German television about David Raksin, who died on August 9. He'd made it all the way to 92. (The Telegraph runs one of the better obits.) The doc's very well done, particularly the section that walks you through his score for Abraham Polonsky's Force of Evil, and of course, features interviews with other composers, Henry Mancini, John Williams and so on. The more I watched, the more I started looking forward to the personable and perceptive comments from one interviewee in particular, Elmer Bernstein. On Wednesday, he died, aged 82.

The AP's Bob Thomas:

Film composer Elmer Bernstein, who created a brawny, big-sky theme for The Magnificent Seven, nerve-jangling jazz for The Man With The Golden Arm and heart-rending grace notes for To Kill a Mockingbird, has died....

"It's one thing to write music that reinforces a film, underscores it - the traditional sense of stressing, underlining - or gives it added dramatic muscle," director Martin Scorsese once said. "It's entirely another to write music that graces a film. That's what Elmer Bernstein does, and that, for me, is his greatest gift."

Soundgenerator.com:

Even during the difficult times when Bernstein suffered the fate of many of the great talents during the 1950s when his career with the film studios was almost halted by the McCarthy era. He was very sympathetic to certain left-wing causes and was tarred with same brush that was destroying many a career during the time. Bernstein found himself "gray-listed" in Hollywood and he was forced to work on several low-budget science fiction films. Bernstein turned things to his favour on the two films that have become cult favourites. The scores for Robot Monster and Cat Women of the Moon saw the composer experiment and allowed him to experiment with electronic music. In several films later in his career he introduced the Ondes Martinet, an electronic keyboard instrument with a distinct sound that can be heard on Ghostbusters and My Left Foot.

There is, of course, much more at his official site.

Posted by dwhudson at August 19, 2004 4:38 AM