Classical Music PING
What!? They didn’t mention “Cape Fear” and “North by Northwest”??
Here’s some interesting information regarding Herrmann’s late work with Brian DePalma, and his influence on his “successor” Pino Donaggio:
Pino Donaggio’s association with Brian De Palma on a number of the director’s deliberately Hitchcockian thrillers has led to the composer’s being compared to Bernard Herrmann, and inevitably coming up the loser.
Herrmann provided De Palma with the intense scores for two of the director’s earliest Hitchcock pastiches, Sisters and Obsession. Carrie, Donaggio’s first score for De Palma, was to have been a Herrmann assignment too, but the composer died suddenly. Donaggio has been replacing Herrmann for De Palma ever since.
Early on, Donaggio had established a distinct and recognizable musical voice all his own, characterized by lyrical melodies—usually for woodwinds backed by guitar or piano—juxtaposed against suspense cues provided by jarring chords and sharply sustained string lines.
In general Donaggio’s scores, often conducted by Natale Massara, show an ability to adapt to a variety of classical and contemporary stylings. Donaggio likes to experiment with a broad range of musical styles, such as the Giorgio Moroder-style effects in Body Double or the pop presentation of a Rossini-style overture for the comedy Home Movies.
His stylistic signature of using the same instrumentation for both love themes and suspenseful passages evidenced itself in his first major score, for Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now. The score’s lyrical themes give way to trills in the upper registers of the woodwinds, high-pitched strings, and jarring chords on piano, guitar, and harp. Don’t Look Now shows evidence of Donaggio’s classical training as well as his background in jazz and pop, and also shows his ability to deliberately compose against the tone of the film by providing richly melodic themes identified with the characters rather than the terrifying events that are occurring.
By employing Herrmannesque orchestrations and compositional elements in his subsequent work for De Palma, Donaggio has significantly muted this early voice, becoming a sort of ersatz-Herrmann instead—and, therefore, complicit in the negative comparison that haunts him.
His recent, often very different work, in genres other than the De Palma thriller may, in time, bring an end to the invited Herrmann comparisons and lead to his being recognized for his own individual, often lyrical, style. Donaggio has been associated with Joe Dante (Piranha, The Howling) and more recently with Liliana Cavani (Behind the Door, The Berlin Affair). Donaggio has provided scores for Westerns (Amore, piombo, e furore), political thrillers (Corruzione al palazzo di giustizia), contemporary dramas (Tex), and light romantic films (Over the Brooklyn Bridge).
Despite the diversity of subject matter and use of various musical styles, these scores are more characteristic of the real—i.e., non-Herrmann—Donaggio, than his work for De Palma.
—Richard R. Ness, updated by John McCarty
http://www.filmreference.com/Writers-and-Production-Artists-De-Edo/Donaggio-Pino.html
Bernard Herrmann’s first film score was for “Citizen Kane”. His last was for “Taxi Driver”. He also did the score for “The Day The Earth Stood Still”.