June 11, 2007

• Midway Anniversary

  Today marks the 65th Anniversary (sorry folks my math was off when I wrote this last week) of the Battle of Midway, often considered the most important naval battle of WWII.  The three day battle was memorialized in a 1976 title film which was one of the first big war movies I saw on the big screen.  There were some great battle sequences (for a 10-year old) that captured the horror and suspense of the war and there was that eventual victory that played out through the uplifting march by none other than John Williams.  Williams would record the "Midway March" with the Boston Pops and it has since appeared on other film music compilations.  Varese released a re-recording of the complete score which makes for an interesting listen.  It mixes some of the standard drama cues that play against the tension and also includes an exquisite performance of "Men of the Yorktown March."  It's a far cry from the superb "Hymn to the Fallen" from Saving Private Ryan but one is reminded how much patriotic music Williams has written. 

                 

  I'm heading to a concert with the maestro tonight and I wonder if music from this film might pop up.  Guess we will see.

  In somewhat related film music news, Film Score Monthly's newest releases arrived yesterday.  In keeping with today's theme, there is the complete release of Frank De Vol's score for 1967's The Dirty Dozen.  This is an impressive disc 2 seconds shy of the 80 minute mark by the way.  You can't get more complete than that.  The original LP was reissued a couple of times, more recently on the short-lived Chapter III (guess they should have been called Chapter XI) along with a Jeff Alexander score for Dirty Dingus Magee--incidentally the only time a film I had music for showed up in Beyond Balderdash!
  
  DeVol's music is barely represented on disc so it is good to have this score available.  The score only tracks lend more respect to this music than one may have had for it in its more truncated pop form.  It may also be the only main title written for snare drum solo...lol.

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