Our magnificent Kevin revisits a classic western score. Plus: RIP Morricone.
ELMER BERNSTEIN/SOUNDTRACK FACTORY
When Steve McQueen and Yul Brynner initiated a duel of egos on the set of The Magnificent Seven (1960), they didn’t realise one thing. While they sulked over the respective sizes of their pistols, someone else was about to steal the film. Enter Elmer Bernstein, who drew on the influences of American music pioneer Aaron Copland and The Big Country composer Jerome Moross to galvanise horse-opera music in the early ’60s.
By Bernstein’s account, John Sturges’ Seven Samurai rethink sure needed it. When the composer watched the film, its languid pace surprised him. “I felt that the thing to do was to be like the jockey on a horse,” Bernstein said. “Go with the whip, and drive it along with energy.”
Between his energising score for
The Ten Commandments, experiments in wired jazz (Sweet Smell Of Success, The Man With The Golden Arm) and passion for Copland’s American folk music, Bernstein was well schooled for the job. A full-blooded feat of melody and syncopation, his tall-in-the-saddle main theme brought pace, purpose,
and a vivid sense of place to the Seven. Sixty years on, its brassy, wide-open evocations of noble character and expansive landscapes still sound like western myth writ large. And the tune roars.
But it would be a disservice to reduce Bernstein’s score to one theme. Elsewhere, he furnished Seven with a sumptuous spread of cues, all tethered tightly to plot, place and character. Subjected to acute variations throughout the score, the bandit Calvera’s ostinato cue is thrusting and ominous, notably in its percussive treatment on ‘Calvera’s Return’. The music for the Mexican villagers revels in castanets, guitars, log drums and high flutes; ‘Petra’s Declaration’ is romantic and intimate; ‘Worst Shot’ is a muscular action workout. Towards the close, ‘Calvera Killed’ draws Bernstein’s carefully developed themes together for a mighty clash of cues, as the on-screen confrontations demanded.
The score’s influence duly stretched wide, from Marlboro ads (alas) to Moonraker (Roger Moore’s 007 parodied it, affectionately). Johns Barry and Carpenter paid tribute; Spaced, The Simpsons and Cheers paid reference; Bruce Springsteen and
Big Audio Dynamite doffed Stetsons. As for Bernstein, his hugely diverse filmography ranged from The Great Escape to Ghostbusters, Thoroughly Modern Millie to Far From Heaven. But he never forgot the Seven theme’s show-stopping value. “I always end my film concerts with it,” he said. “I just never know what to follow it with!” Kevin Harley