{"id":5832,"date":"2012-12-06T16:11:09","date_gmt":"2012-12-06T21:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=5832"},"modified":"2012-12-06T16:11:09","modified_gmt":"2012-12-06T21:11:09","slug":"cd-fall-of-the-roman-empire-the-1964","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=5832","title":{"rendered":"CD: Fall of the Roman Empire, The (1964)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Soundtrack \u00a0Reviews<\/a> \/ <\/em>F<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Rating: Excellent<\/p>\n

Label: La-La Land Records<\/a>\/ Released: March 13, 2012<\/p>\n

Tracks & Album Length: 27 tracks \/ (65:00)<\/p>\n

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Special Notes: 24-page colour booklet with liner notes by Jeff Bond \/ Limited to 2500 copies.<\/p>\n

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Composer: Dimitri Tiomkin<\/p>\n

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Review:<\/p>\n

Since the late thirties, Dimitri Tiomkin had scored almost a picture per year, amassing an enormous C.V. for many classic westerns, historical epics, dramas, and suspense films, and The Fall of the Roman Empire<\/strong> represents one of his last major works before essentially retiring in 1970.<\/p>\n

Fall<\/strong> was also the second of three scores for producer Samuel Bronston, the impresario known for bringing sprawling big budget productions to international audiences, with matching epics scores. Tiomkin\u2019s other works \u2013 55 Days at Peking<\/a> <\/strong>[M<\/a>] (1963), and Circus World<\/strong> (1964) \u2013 aren\u2019t as potent as Fall<\/strong> perhaps because the ancient Roman backdrop allowed Tiomkin to indulge in musicological research, and filter his discoveries through his own oddball blend of bombast, idiosyncratic brass performances, penchant for gushing strings, and a level of melodic ebullience few contemporaries could maintain over the course of a lengthy film.<\/p>\n

Fall<\/strong> also has all the elements of a great epic, including a sweeping love theme that\u2019s also a dirge when performed with a cathedral organ, and a melancholy theme for unfulfilled romance. There\u2019s also the heavy use of brass which blare out the heroic theme (\u201cFanfares and Flourishes\u201d) for the action cues, plus the composer\u2019s boisterous writing which gives flat scenes energy, and further pushes the impact of already kinetic action montages.<\/p>\n

La-La Land\u2019s CD packs together all available material from prior releases, as well as new bonus material into the longest record of the original score tracks. A major problem with the Bronston productions was the mounting disorganization and financial unaccountability which led to the producer\u2019s downfall, and ensured archival elements weren\u2019t properly preserved. Even Miklos Rozsa\u2019s El Cid<\/a><\/strong> [M<\/a>] (1961) didn\u2019t survive beyond a few scant cues which producers were able to lift from the mixed soundtrack. Whereas Rozsa recorded a wholly separate soundtrack album for that score, Tiomkin recorded just an extra cue for the original LP release, making the Columbia album a faithful presentation of the original music, albeit more brief.<\/p>\n

LLL\u2019s CD includes the Columbia material and extra cues from the 1991 Cloud Nine CD, plus a bonus suite of 8 mono tracks likely lifted from the film’s rear surround tracks. (The CD\u2019s liner notes are sparse on any restoration details.) Although it would\u2019ve been more pleasing to integrate all of the cues to create a chronological narrative, LLL\u2019s CD is still a solid production, with detailed liner notes on Bronston, the film\u2019s production, and Tiomkin\u2019s writing of the score (which is perhaps one of his more accessible works).<\/p>\n

Tiomkin\u2019s sound is big and often furiously energetic even in scenes where there are no grand battles or chase scenes, yet his style was a perfect match for the film\u2019s epic scope, and the conflicts between a Roman Emperor (played with beautiful bravado by Christopher Plummer) and rival Livius (Stephen Boyd). There\u2019s an inherent dourness to Plummer\u2019s character, if not scenes where political intrigue takes place in grim, chilly forest locations, but the film\u2019s mood is frequently injected with the composer\u2019s outrageous style, such as the flaring, shrill brass in \u201cDawn of Love,\u201d or unsubtle nods to the composer\u2019s idol, Tchaikovsky, in the swirling, dance-like \u201cPersian Battle.\u201d<\/p>\n

The colour and set design \u2013 both blazing, and massive in scale \u2013 are supported by the score which may not be as historically evocative as Rozsa\u2019s Spanish flavoured El Cid<\/strong> or his score for Bronston\u2019s Jesus epic \/ hippy tribute King of Kings<\/a> <\/strong>(1961), but it nails the idealism and delusions of the Roman empire which promised much to its citizens and believers of its emperor cult; and celebrated bloody entertainment like a primordial reality show, where contestants existed for the benefit of the egotistical upper class. Tiomkin\u2019s love theme augers the ego with the script\u2019s tragic relationships, and (thankfully) his love theme isn\u2019t presented in some terribly dated pop rendition (as with Peking<\/strong>). The \u201cIntermezzo\u201d works in Italian, and instrumentally isn\u2019t wholly designed to sell a pop single like Peking<\/strong>\u2019s Exit Music.<\/p>\n

Fans wanting more music will have to consult Prometheus\u2019 2011 set, where Nic Raine conducts the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, and offers up more than 2.5 hours of music.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2012 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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External References:<\/p>\n

IMDB <\/a>— DVD Review<\/a> — \u00a0Soundtrack Album<\/a> — Composer Filmography<\/a><\/p>\n

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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Soundtrack Reviews<\/a> <\/em>\/\u00a0F<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to:\u00a0Home \/\u00a0Soundtrack \u00a0Reviews \/ F . Rating: Excellent Label: La-La Land Records\/ Released: March 13, 2012 Tracks & Album Length: 27 tracks \/ (65:00) . Special Notes: 24-page colour booklet with liner notes by Jeff Bond \/ Limited to 2500 copies. . Composer: Dimitri Tiomkin . . Review: Since the late thirties, Dimitri Tiomkin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[20],"tags":[374],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-1w4","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5832"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5832"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5856,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5832\/revisions\/5856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}