#ClassicsaDay #ClassicalFilmScore Week 3

For February 2020, the #ClassicsaDay team chose film music as its theme. What exactly is the intersection of classical and film music? Share your answers with a post on Twitter or Facebook, with a link to musical examples.

Some film composers began in the classical world. And some film composers have transitioned to classical music. For my selections this month, I focused on composers in the classical world who also wrote for film, and the musical selections exclusively from their movie work.

Here were my selections for week three of #ClassicaDay #ClassicalFilmScore. 

02/17/20 Philip Glass: The Hours

This 2002 film's all-star cast included Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman as Virginia Wolf. It was based on Michael Cunningham's 1998 Pulizter Prize-winning novel.

02/18/20 Sergei Prokofiev: Ivan the Terrible

Sergei Eisenstein's 1944 film commissioned by Joseph Stalin. The three-part epic had a troubled history. Stalin banned the release of Part II until 1958, and production of Part III was halted and the footage destroyed.

02/19/20 Arthur Bliss: Things to Come

H.G. Wells wrote the script for this 1936 film based on his own 1933 novel. The characters serve as archetypes, with the real story being about civilization's evolution from 1940 to 2054.

02/20/20 Eric Coates: The Dam Busters

This 1955 film is a dramatisation of Operation Chastise, a 1943 RAF mission to destroy German dams. Coates' march, written for the film, has become a staple of military band literature.

02/21/20 Morton Gould: Windjammer

The film documents the voyage of the Christian Radich from Oslo to New York, then back to Norway. It was the only film to be shot in Cinemiracle, a widescreen format that featured a seven-track stereophonic soundtrack.