Leonard Rosenman, 1924 - 2008

Thanks to regular reader Michael for forwarding his thoughts on the death of film composer Leonard Rosenman:

"A sad piece of news today with the passing of one of the last surviving Golden Age composers, Leonard Rosenman. The composer was suffering the onset of dementia - a cruel fate for a fine mind - before he left this earth.

"His filmography is eclectic but impressive, most notable being the remarkable one-two punch for the James Dean films REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE and EAST OF EDEN. The 'Planetarium' and 'Knife Fight' sequences of REBEL are starkly at odds with the pop-scoring of most teenage dramas since. (Sadly, though Dean went to bat for his old piano teacher Rosenman, George Stevens would have none of it and went with the more conventional Tiomkin for GIANT.)

"He was, along with Alex North, a revolutionary influence on the sound of the Hollywood film score in the 1950s, writing the first certifiably atonal film score for THE COBWEB.

"He wrote a mass for a nuclear weapon in BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES. He was, long before Howard Shore, the first film composer to really explore the world of Middle Earth in Ralph Bakshi's cult animation LORD OF THE RINGS. And much against his wishes - he was no fan of some of Kubrick's choices - he was an Oscar winner for the adaptation of music for BARRY LYNDON. (Proving no-one ever gets credit for the right achievements in Hollywood, he won a second Oscar not for any of his compositions, but for arranging Woody Guthrie's music for Hal Ashby's 1976 BOUND FOR GLORY).

"The distinctiveness of his sound and his commitment to maintaining a profile as a concert composer led him to become marginalised as a creative force in film-making later years.

"To go from Nicholas Ray and Elia Kazan films to lesser sequels of the APES, STAR TREK and ROBOCOP series was possibly a sign of a changing industry. Whether to his credit or not, his cerebral efforts for those later films often presumed more intelligence than those film-makers had in mind.

"See here for an article on his life and achievements.

"Probably the most interesting release of his music for those interested in film history is this recording by classical giant John Adams of suites from REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE and EAST OF EDEN."