Interview with John W. Morgan, William Stromberg & Anna Bonn

John Morgan, Anna Bonn & William StrombergKeeping Up The Classic Film Score
A Conversation with John W. Morgan, William Stromberg & Anna Bonn


If there's something akin to the role of the archaeologist in film music academia, the chair of professor emeritus should be assigned without question to John W. Morgan, William Stromberg and Anna Bonn. This trio of San Fernardo Valley musicians is working since the early 90s in the field of reconstruction and rerecording of the great symphonic film scores composed during Hollywood's Golden Age, namely the period of time that goes from the mid 30s to the late 50s. It's known how hard was to find film music recordings in those years. The soundtrack records business was still long from being a common reality, and for the fans of the music of composers like Max Steiner, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Alfred Newman, Franz Waxman, Miklos Rozsa, Dimitri Tiomkin and Bernard Herrmann, the only way to re-experience the film music magic was going to the movie theater and rewatch the film again and again or, in the era of the first television broadcasts, record the audio of the film on tape directly from TV speakers. During the mid-70s, things started slowly to change: thanks to the pioonerism and sheer passion of musicians and conductors like Fred Steiner, Christopher Palmer, Elmer Bernstein and Charles Gerhardt, an impressive array of classic film music rerecordings found its way onto the market. The Gerhardt-conducted “Classic Film Scores” series for RCA's Readers Digest and Elmer Bernstein's acclaimed “Film Music Collection” showed the power and the beauty of the classic Hollywood symphonic film score to a whole new generation, starting a renewed awareness for this amazing musical treasure chest.

Morgan, Stromberg & Bonn are the ideal heirs of those pioneers, keeping the tradition of classic film music alive and kicking, thanks to their recordings of dozens of film scores by the Golden Age greats like Steiner, Korngold, Waxman, Herrmann, Newman and Tiomkin, while keeping an eye also on the lesser-known repertoire of undeservedly forgotten film composers like Hugo Friedhofer, Frank Skinner, Hans J. Salter and Adolph Deutsch. The impressive work of research, restoration and reconstruction shows great passion and dedication, a rare quality in today's recording industry. The trio of musicians is really committed to the subject matter and they all admit that they're first and foremost fans of this music. As much impressive is the absolute fidelity to the spirit of the original film recordings, which translates into a very exciting and energized orchestral performance by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, the ensemble that plays in these recordings since the mid 90s.

It's quite known that many of the full scores of the period are now forever lost or destroyed, while lots of the original film recordings are in a bad shape, after years of deterioration and lack of care from the studios' part. In this sense, the amazing feats of these three musicians take a shape much similar to the role of the archaeologist in search of a hidden and forgotten treasure, or even the job of the art restorer, who slowly and patiently peels away dozens of years of dust from an old fresco painting and brings it back to its original beauty.

After several years of collaboration with classical label Naxos, the trio decided to start their own label, properly called Tribute Film Classics. Their first recordings under this new banner – Herrmann's Mysterious Island, Fahrenheit 451 and The Kentuckian and Steiner's She – were immediately (and rightfully) acclaimed among the audience of film score collectors as some of the best film music rerecordings ever produced. New recordings of Steiner's The Charge of the Light Brigade and Korngold's The Prince And The Pauper will be issued in the coming weeks and several new titles are already in the pipeline (all the CD are available through Screen Archives Entertainment, the official distributor of the label).

In this exclusive interview for Colonne Sonore, Morgan, Stromberg & Bonn talk in-depth about their work, their passion for the music and their role on the various projects, putting the spotlight on an aspect of film music that's tremendously important from both historical and archival points of view, but above all, it's a significant cultural undertaking.

ColonneSonore: First of all, I'd like to start with some background information about all of you. How and when did you become involved into the film music industry? And then, how did you meet with each other?


John W. Morgan: From my earliest memories, I have been around music. My parents had a lot of opera, operetta, and classical symphonic records, as well as a piano, which I started lessons at a very early age. When King Kong appeared on television in 1957 and played all week on our local channel, I was very impressed with the music and this really piqued my interest in film music. I always had noticed it and slowly would recognize the styles and methods of [Max] Steiner, [Bernard] Herrmann, [Franz] Waxman, [Alfred] Newman and others. I also was fascinated with the music from the Universal horror films, which years later paid off when we did recordings of the music of [Hans J.] Salter, [Frank] Skinner, etc. Like many others of my era, I would tape on reel to reel music portions from films broadcast on television.
The late fifties and sixties were a terrific time for the great films of the thirties and forties. These films were shown at all times on local television on such programs as The Early Show, The Late Show, The Late Late Show, The Million Dollar Movie, etc. All the great films from Warners, Fox, RKO, Universal, MGM, Paramount were just part of our surroundings and the films were immensely popular by introducing new audiences to them.
Prior to moving to Los Angeles to dip my feet into film music, I got to know Fred Steiner through the music of Max Steiner and Alfred Newman. Fred was sort of my mentor and when the 1976 rerecording of Steiner’s King Kong was in the planning stage, I was delighted to be able to pick the sections to be recorded, as well as writing some of the liner notes, and the biggest thrill, was traveling to London for the recording. It was and is one of the highlights of my musical life. At that time I had no real interest in reconstructing classic scores, and with Christopher Palmer doing this work, I remained essentially a fan. Those days were great as we waited patiently for the next Charles Gerhardt RCA film music recording to come out. It was the beginning of interest in recording classic film scores, and every release was highly anticipated.
I knew Bill Stromberg since he was 3 years old. I was a friend of his fathers, a film maker. I met Anna through Bill at the Warner Bros. music department, where they both were working at the time.

William Stromberg: I’ve known John all my life and he introduced me to film music when I was a kid. I started playing the French Horn and studying composition when I was about ten years old, and later on started composing and conducting my own film scores. Eventually I became John’s conductor. John and I had always wanted to reconstruct and perform classic film music, so when Marco Polo Records gave us a chance, I became the conductor since I knew the music so well. I met my wife Anna years later, and she began helping us with recontructions and preparing orchestral parts.

Anna Bonn: I began studying classical piano at a young age and realized that I enjoyed composing my own music more than practicing my lessons. After about 10 years of piano lessons I studied music composition at the University of Southern California. After earning a Bachelors Degree in composition I went on to the complete the film scoring graduate program at USC.  It was here that I had the good fortune to study with film music legends such as David Raksin, Buddy Baker, Joe Harnell, Fred Karlin and others.  
I first met Bill in 1998 while working at Warner Bros. We were both part of the music team for their animated series: Pinky and the Brain, Animaniacs, Batman and Superman. We were also doing music preparation for many Warner Bros. films at the time. Soon after, Bill and I co-composed music for the films The Inner Circle, Dismembered, and The Visage. It wasn’t long after I met Bill that I was introduced to his lifelong friend John and we found ourselves often contributing to each other’s projects. Bill and I became much more that just friends and were married in 2004.

The Ghost of FrankensteinCS: It's now quite a few years that you started to work on film music classic scores restoration and re-recordings. How did it all started out?


JM: Writer Tony Thomas knew Hans J. Salter, who was in the 90s and fairly forgotten. Tony asked me if it would be possible for me to prepare some of his music for a recording. Somehow, Tony connected with Klaus Heymann, head of Marco Polo and convinced him to record an album of Salter film music, while Hans was still alive. I met with Hans and we became friends. Unfortunately, Universal had thrown away all their full scores from this period, and so it was up to me to take Salter’s conductor short scores, which is like a three-line piano reduction, and reorchestrate the entire thing. I was green and really scared to some degree. When I orchestrated for [Bruce] Broughton or even [Alex] North, I was the first and principal orchestrator, so what I did wasn’t really compared to something else. I just did my thing. The pressure of redoing a score the way it was done originally took much more time because you were always comparing it to the original and trying to make sure all the nuances and little details were there. Most of these nuances were not in the conductor books, so I had to listen the the score...with dialogue and sound effects over and over again, trying to make it as right as possible.
By this time, Bill Jr. had made his way to Los Angeles, was married and had a bevy of kids and trying to break into the business himself. He got his own film scores and we would often orchestrate for each other and even write cues for the other’s film scores.
I really thought of this Salter project as a one-time thing, as my real ambition was to compose my own scores. Anyway, I picked Ghost of Frankenstein and House of Frankenstein to reconstruct and spent a few months trying to make everything correct. Marco Polo, nor I, knew what orchestra or what conductor would record this, but I sent my score overseas for copying. I also sent an audio cassette taken off the film tracks to help whatever conductor maybe doing this out as far as style and tempo and things like that. It was recorded in Ireland without my presence. I was somewhat disappointed because many of the tempos were impossibly slow and many copyist errors crept into the music, but there was no one in Ireland familiar enough with t he music to make corrections. Despite all that, it was certainly exciting hearing the music and Hans was so delighted that his music got a new recording in stereo sound. Actually, Bill got his feet wet when I ran out of time and he reconstructed a couple of cues.
Besides being a good orchestrator, one must really know the era and the music of the period. Any good orchestrator can orchestrate music, but when you are reconstructing a score, you must know the principles and performance/composing practices of the time. There are too many traps and holes to fill in and if you don't know what's going on, you are a dead duck.
The album was a success as far as sales were concerned and so Tony Thomas again approached Klaus about doing a couple of more film music CDs. Marco Polo had some kind of deal with Berlin where they would share costs of a recording and Berlin would keep radio broadcast rights or something like that. Well, we got pretty elaborate with our next two. We did a "Historical Romance" album, which included extended suites from Gunga Din and The Charge of the Light Brigade. Bill prepared Gunga Din and I prepared Light Brigade, and we also did an album entitled "Captain Blood", with extended suites from Blood, The Three Musketeers and Scaramouche. About 70% of this music needed orchestration-reconstruction because of missing full scores. It took Bill and me several months to put everything together. Then we were offered to do a film music series for Marco Polo and were able to use the very fine Moscow Symphony Orchestra. This started way back in 1994. The most important aspect was convincing Klaus that Bill Stromberg would be the best conductor for this music.

WS: We used to complain and wonder why some of our favorite film scores were not available in new recordings. Charles Gerhardt got the ball rolling with his wonderful recordings of suites, but we wanted to hear much more. We got tired of waiting for someone to record a complete King Kong for instance, so when we got the chance, we decided to just do it ourselves.

AB: After I met Bill and John, I began to contribute to some of their rerecordings by doing takedowns and copying parts from reconstructed cues. I traveled to Russia with them multiple times for their recording sessions and became more and more involved with each trip.

CS: A lot of your previous work was released through Naxos and Marco Polo labels. Which were the reasons that pushed you to go on with your own independent label, Tribute Film Classics?

JM: We thought the time was right. The work from Naxos was becoming less and less frequent. We started by doing 4 albums per year, but after about 10 years, we were down to about 1 album per year on an average, although we always recorded two albums per trip.

WS: Simply, we wanted to record a lot more scores than Naxos would allow so we decided to start our own company to record more on the side. They didn’t like the idea of us recording with our own company so they said goodbye.

AB: I was never officially involved with Naxos and Marco Polo other than limited work for hire jobs doing music preparation. With the decresing frequency of albums being released by Naxos we decided to band together and start our own record label. Tribute Film Classics is completely owned and operated by Bill, John and myself. We were fortunate to join forces with Craig Spaulding at Screen Archives Entertainment who handles all of our distribution. We would not have the resources to get our albums out to the buying public without Craig.  He is an great contributor and an integral part of our success.

CS: Is there a particular recording from the earlier years that you'd like to redo or revisit now?

JM: Many of the earlier ones we would like to rerecord and update everything with better recording or more of the music. We have, however, updated several of our earlier recordings such as House and Ghost Of Frankenstein, Charge of the Light Brigade, Adventures of Mark Twain, Devotion, but scores like Gunga Din and Captain Blood certainly could use complete recordings.

WS: There are quite a few that I know I could do so much better now. I would like another shot at [Philip] Sainton’s Moby Dick, Alfred Newman’s Hunchback of Notre Dame, and even Steiner’s King Kong. Having had so much experience with these great composers, I have become a much more confident conductor.

Stromberg conducts the Moscow Symphony OrchestraCS: Is there a specific criteria with which you choose the scores you want to re-record? Or you all simply pick-and-choose from your own personal list of all-time favourite film scores?

JM: One of the attractions of Marco Polo is they let us completely choose what we record. When we do Steiner or Herrmann, they don’t insist on adding Gone With the Wind or Psycho for sales or anything. Since we initially did two CDs per trip, I try to have at least one CD that will be fairly easy to promote. Not all our CDs do as well as King Kong or The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, but we try to include oddities with the heavy hitters, such as the Hugo Friedhofer album.

WS: First of all, the music must be able to stand on it’s own away from the film. Most of our favorite scores happen to be very musical on their own. We also consider the scores that fans of classic film music have been wanting, scores where the original tracks are missing or destroyed.

AB: We base our decisions of what to record on a combination of criteria. Of course, we do choose to record albums by our favorite composers in which we are all personally interested. We take into strong consideration scores that have not been previously represented in the CD market, and we also listen to our customers suggestions. Often times we hear requests for the same scores over and over. Our continued success is based heavily on whether or not soundtrack collectors are willing to buy what we release.  
We take great pleasure in being able to bring to the public music that has never before been heard. For instance, our recording of Bernard Herrmann’s Fahrenheit 451 has a number of cues and portions of cues that Francois Truffaut, the director had cut from the film. Bill, John and I pieced them back together and recorded them on our album to be heard for the first time.
It is unfortunate that some of the Hollywood studios did not archive many of their classic scores, and for some films the music has been completely lost over time. There is a tremendous amount of work that goes into reconstrucing a score. Occasionally we are able to get copies of all the scores and parts, but usually we have to reconstruct missing cues and most of the parts must be recopied. There have been many albums where John has reconstruced the entire film of at least a major portion. In cases like these we are at the mercy of what the studios or private collectors have in their archives. It is necessary to at least have the composers original sketches or a piano reduction in order to have a place to start.

CS: One of the most important aspect of your work is the restoration and preservation of the actual scores. It's known that a lot of material (score sheets, acetates, manuscripts etc.) from the Golden Age is now forever lost or destroyed. Generally, how do you deal with the process of reconstructing a film score? Where do you start? Do you use the actual film as a reference point?

JM: First  off, we try let the music itself determine the length of any given score. For instance, many scores need a full CD release, some scores work by doing 15 or 30 minutes, so I hope we are able to extract all the music we feel works as music away from the film.
By laying down the music on a tape, I can listen and relisten in order to get the best stuff. When a full score is missing, we usually have a piano reduction score or the original composer sketches. These are fairly incomplete as far as details, so a lot of listening to the original tracks are required to make the orchestration as authentic as possible. On old tracks, this is difficult because the music is recorded under dialog and sound effects and sometimes you can’t tell if a bass drum or a plucked bass is doing something. You have to study surviving scores of that composer of the period---even from scores you aren’t recording--so you can hear and see what other situations are and you can make informed “guesses”. In some cases, you have to go entirely by ear or might only have a violin part of something. This can take a great deal of time and it is full of frustrations.

Stromberg conducts the Moscow Symphony OrchestraCS: Which were the most difficult scores to restore in this sense?

JM: Captain Blood by Korngold was missing a lot of full scores, and the piano conductor scores sometimes only was a violin part, so a lot of tedious work had to be done. Bill Stromberg did our Gunga Din suite and for the main title only had a violin part. The Webb we had very sparse conductor books without much indication of instrumentation. To further complicate matters, the dubbing of the music in the film was very low so it was difficult to hear details. I had some other non-Val Lewton Webb full scores of the period, so I kind of understood his style and what an orchestrator would put into the music. Again, guess work, but based on knowledge of the idiom, composers and style. They all have their own difficulties when reconstructing. Whether Friedhofer, or Victor Young, or Max Steiner or Korngold, getting it right can be daunting. Personally, the scores of King Kong, She, Charge Of The Light Brigade, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Uninvited, House of Frankenstein, Gulliver's Travels, The Wolf Man, Escape Me Never bring back both happy and frustrating memories.

CS: Where the reconstructed printed scores are archived? If there would be someone who is interested in doing another recording or even performing a concert using your own reconstruction in the future, will this be possible?

JM: Marco Polo in Hong Kong has all the instrumental parts to the scores they financed, but all our reconstructed scores and parts for Tribute productions will eventually go to Brigham Young University in Utah for study and safe keeping. This includes all the scores I have reconstructed from 1992 on. BYU is a good home. They have Max Steiner holdings, as well as the Hugo Friedhofer papers.

AB: We currently have copies of all the parts and scores from our albums released under the Tribute Film Classics label and many of the scores from those released by Naxos. Our main goal is to keep classic film music alive so that it is never forgotten. We have created suites of many of these scores and they are available as rentals for orchestral performance. As symphonies around the world are doing more and more film music concerts, we hope to have many of our suites performed.

CS: It's now several years that you work with the Moscow Symphony Orchestra. I feel an amazing energy and panache in their playing, especially in the latest Herrmann recordings you did. It's clear you have a very special relationship with this ensemble. How the orchestra and the musicians evolved through the years, according to your experience, from one recording to the other?


WS: Thank you very much for that. To be honest, and I don’t mean to sound egotistical, the biggest improvement has been on my part. Having conducted so many of these great classic scores I’ve grown and become much more confident in my conducting which translates to the orchestra’s performance being much more dynamic. They have all become familiar with my style and are able to follow me much better now. The orchestra personel has changed a bit over the years, but we almost always have first class musicians. I would say about fifty percent of the original players we had on our first recording sessions are still in the orchestra and many of them have become my friend. It makes the recording sessions go very smoothely when you are working with friends who all try to do the best they can for you. I’ve learnes to speak a lot more Russian and that helps as well.

CS: How the various players relate to the music they're performing? Are they listeners/followers of film music or even just to some film composers? Do they ask questions about the sense, the history and the nature of the music they're performing?

WS: They seem to really enjoy performing film music because it is very challanging for them. Some of them seem a bit bored with the standard classical repatoir so our bringing American film music, which is often as well written as any Mahler, Beethoven, or Tchaikovsky symphony, gives them a chance to play something they haven’t played a million times before. They are quite impressed with composers like Steiner, Korngold, and Herrmann.

Erich Wolfgang KorngoldCS: Generally, you remain very faithful to the tempi and the specific textures of the original film recordings, which could be very demanding in several occasions. Your recording of Korngold's The Sea Hawk and Robin Hood are especially breathtaking in this sense. How much difficult is staying so close to Korngold's or Steiner's or Herrmann's markings?

WS: Thanks again for your nice comments. It is incredibly difficult to recreate a score exactly the way it is in the film and it would be foolish to try. We try to come as close as possible but allow the music to breathe on it’s own. We keep in mind that many of the people who want to hear our recordings want it to be as faithful to the original as possible. I think my familiarity with the scores and John’s perfect reconstructions help to make our recordings come out very faithful to the original but with new modern recording techniques. Most of the film scores we rerecord, I’ve seen the films hundreds of times so I have all of the tempos memorized. I usually visualize the film in my head when I’m conducting – even quoting the dialogue to myself as I conduct. Sometimes the players in the orchestra give me funny looks because I seem to speed up or slow down for no appearent reason because that’s the way it went in the film.

CS: Film music is very different to classical music in this aspect. A lot of listeners want to have a very faithful reconstruction/restoration of the original recording and performance. Is there room anyway for some kind of personal interpretation from your part, so to speak? Or is this something that doesn't pertain to this kind of recordings?


WS: Music is a living art and open for many different interpretations. You can hear so many different elements from performance to performance. That’s what makes it so interesting. I hear something new everytime I perform a piece of music for film or concert. When we are doing our new recordings I try to maintain the composers original intent, although I may play the piece faster or slower. Most people don’t seem to mind if a cue is performed too fast, but they seem to hate it when it is too slow. I try to keep the tempi up to the film’s and make sure that the energy is every bit as intense as the original.

JM: The actual recording done for the film and heard in the film is the only legitimate and proper performance for that particular film. Whether it is badly played, or badly recorded makes no difference. It belongs to the film as much as the actors, photography, etc. As an example was when they tried to rerecord [Walt Disney's] Fantasia [score] in digital sound for a re-release some years back. Irwin Kostal had all the original music and timing sheets, but trying to imitate every nuance and "hit" rendered the music forced and not natural. Of course, this is an unusual case, as  [conductor Leopold] Stokowski performed the music first, with all the rubatos and idiosyncrasies and the Disney people animated to that, but it just didn't feel like it belonged to that film.
Film Music can have two criteria. Since its function is primarily to enhance a film, the most important aspect is how does the music work within the framework of the film. In this function it becomes part of FILM art. Much film music that is considered a great film score may not be great music in the sense of standing alone as music. It can be repetitive, meandering, formless and sometimes even played badly on purpose for a dramatic effect, but nevertheless a great FILM score WITH the film. Now, when we rerecord a score for an album, our primary concern is not at all how the music works with the film, but how does it work AWAY from the film--as music. Of course Bill Stromberg and I are flattered when we get comments from film buffs who say we captured the sound and feel of the original performance, but I get an even bigger thrill when I read a review from someone who hasn't seen the film, but finds the music compelling and interesting and fun on its own.
When Bill conducts this music, he certainly has studied both the film and its music. He understands the music's meaning as drama, but he also understands that this is a performance of a musical work and his feeling for the music. I have heard many performances (on acetates) from most the Golden Age greats and often a great musical performance of a cue must be eliminated and a lesser one substituted because the initial great performance just didn't hit all the filmic marks, so to speak. Herrmann disliked his film performances as he did all film composer's performances because he was aware of the conductor "hitting" cues and varying tempos to make that hit. It distracted from the music. I feel much the same way, but I certainly don't say rerecordings are automatically better...they're not. In fact, in Herrmann's rerecordings, I feel he was much too leisurely with the music in more cases than not, but I do think any GOOD music certainly can stand up to different interpretations. Complex orchestrated music can never display all its details in one reading or performance.

Bernard HerrmannCS: I can only imagine how thrilling should be to look at the manuscripts of giants like Herrmann, Korngold, Waxman and Steiner. What did you learn and discover while actually reading and studying the music of these masters? Who was the “craziest” of them all in terms of writing?


JM: I think Herrmann and Steiner were both the craziest of them all. Herrmann often had these very odd and unorthodox  orchestra combinations. His music looked deceptively simple on paper, but was fantastic when it is played properly.
With Steiner, I am amazed at the virtuosic playing he demands of his music. When I set out to orchestrate a Steiner score, I look at his sketches and think to myself, “No way can any living musician play this difficult music”. Well, they do. His music is always playable, although devilish difficult to bring off.

WS: They’re all a little crazy at times. Korngold is probably the most difficult because he often crams so much information into a short amount of time at a very fast tempo. Steiner is so rewarding to perform because his writing is so smooth and always sounds wonderful right away. I’ve learned a lot from Herrmann which has benefitted my own composing. I’ve discovered that if the orchestra reads his music exactly the way he wrote it, it will always sound like the original. He uses dynamics (loud & soft) better than any composer I’ve experienced. For instance, he would often write for all of the clarinets to be very loud and mark the strings very soft at the same time. Most composers don’t think that way. It seems simple, but it’s what gives Herrmann his unique and distinct sound.

AB: It is a great pleasure to be able to work with their original manuscripts. So many of these composers from the past were so well versed in the classical repertoire and their music is complex. I enjoy seeing the anecdotes and drawings on Steiner's sketches. It makes you realize that these great composers were real people that had to deal with some of the same dilemmas in which composers in Hollywood today deal with such as, disagreements with directors, pleasing the studio heads, and looming deadlines. I’ve also found it to be a great continued education in music by studying the orchestrations of Korngold and Herrmann. These two composers especially were able to create such interesting colors through their choice of instrumentation.

CS: You chose to restore and record film scores from the Golden Age so far. Are you interested in recording also film scores from a more recent past, like the 60s or the early 70s? I'd love to hear your take on some Elmer Bernstein, Henry Mancini and Jerry Goldsmith...

WS: Absolutely I would love to do some later scores, especially Goldsmith. Don’t worry, we will.

AB: I would love to be able to record some music from the 60s and 70s.  Some of my favorite film music comes from this era. I enjoy listening to scores by Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams, Lalo Schifrin, David Shire and Ernest Gold.  So much interesting music came out of this era that was hip and had so much energy.  Ultimately, I would love to have the opportunity to rerecord music from John Williams' disaster films or some of Jerry Goldsmith’s earlier films. I never know what the future will hold, but these are dreams of mine.

JM: One reason for our choice of golden age scores, other than our love and passion for the music, is the fact that most really needs an up-to-date recording to bring out the glories and intricacies of the music. With music from the 60s on there is always a good chance of the original tracks surviving in great sound, and being released, which would make little commercial sense, although I am never against a new interpretation of first-rate film scores. We did make it to a 1970 score when we rerecorded Malcom Arnold’s David Copperfield.

CS: Listening to your recordings of these classic film scores makes us realize how much film music is now a totally different thing. Music doesn't seem to be so upfront and important anymore, except for a few cases. You all work in today Hollywood film music industry as composers, orchestrators, conductors and arrangers. How would you describe the role of the contemporary film composer in Hollywood?

JM: SAD!

WS: Until film makers, at least in Hollywood, become a little more couragious, I’m afraid film composers will continue to be asked to provide another layer of sound effects instead of music. There are so many talented composers working today, but most often they are put into a straightjacket and not allowed to compose the kind of brilliant music they are capable of because the film makers are afraid of music that might call attention to itself by having a melody and creative orchestration. Too few composers are allowed to express themselves the way they used to. Unfortunately to work in Hollywood today, a composer must learn how to stay out of the way of other elements in the film like the sound effects. It certainly isn’t the artform it once was, and I think that is why I am drawn to the music of the golden age. It allows me to work on music that is bold and creative from a period when composers were more respected. I try to remain optimistic about the future of the art of film music, but it is becoming very difficult. There are still a few nice scores now and again, but most of the great scores are coming from European and smaller independent films. I hope things will begin to change a little.

AB: The business has changed tremendously. Composers today work at a fast pace under almost impossible deadlines. These deadlines are passed along to the orchestrators, music editors and copyists. Often time I am amazed when a score is completed that everyone was able to get their jobs accomplished succesfully. It seems like the deadlines are getting shorter and shorter each year, and I really noticed a change in the last few years especially.
The publics’ tastes have changed over the years. Scoring for film is in a constant state of development and change. We live in a post MTV era where fast paced video game inspired styles of filmmaking are the norm.  The music follows suit with driving synths and scores less melodically based. On the other hand, minimalist scores have become the scoring style for dramas and other genres. So many filmmakers nowadays prefer to have the music less in the forefront and not acting so much as its own character. I am hopeful that this is just a trend and the big traditional orchestral scores will a voice will have a comeback. Currently, I’m working on the music preparation for Elliot Goldenthal’s score for Michael Mann’s [upcoming] film Public Enemies and I’m happy to say that there is new quality music being recorded today!

CS: What can you say to us about your upcoming releases?

JM: The Charge Of The Light Brigade and The Prince And The Pauper are two of our very best recordings we have ever done. They exceeded our expectations. They also happen to be our most expensive recordings ever, so we hope the music public will embrace them. I know Bill and Anna and I are very proud of them.

CS: John, Bill & Anna, thank you very much for being so kind and for spending some of your time answering to my questions. I also want to thank you for your amazing and loving work you are doing on film music preservation and restoration. I admire your passion and dedication. It's a huge task, but it's important to keep a fundamental piece of history and culture of film alive. Thanks! And keep up the good work!

JM: Thanks for you support and the opportunity to spout off about our work.
John Morgan, William Stromberg & Anna Bonn insieme alla Moscow Symphony Orchestra

A very special thanks to John W. Morgan, William Stromberg and Anna Bonn for their warm kindness. Thanks to Alessio Coatto for his helpful collaboration.

© ColonneSonore.net/Ottava Arte, 2009

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