Leonard Rosenman's score for Beneath the Planet of the Apes.

Is this score anything at all like Jerry Goldsmith's for the first Ape flick? Knowing what little I do of Rosenman, is it safe to assume it is a continuation of Goldsmith's style?

And, is it obvious I haven't seen the film?

NP -- nothing at all right now...

JJ, a Rosenman Rookie

It's a wild mix...

Goldsmith's POTA score is an amazing accomplishment that is welded wonderfully to the film. I always liked the "fun" of his score for "Escape" more to listen to.

I love their CDs, but they take an inordinate amount time to get my CDs to me.

I ordered mine a over a week ago, and it's still not here.

It took them 2 weeks to get Patton to me.

FSM (I know you guys lurk):
get off your stinkin' butt and get my CD to me. You already got my 20 bucks did you not?

and yes, I am VERY impatient

[This message has been edited by JJH (edited 19 May 2000).]

indeed. I was probably a bit harsh.

(rub rub rub rub)

NP: CAPRICORN ONE (no, that's not what they're up to next ... heh, like I could tell you ... )

(actually, I knew about BENEATH many MONTHS ago -- but I didn't know about OMEGA MAN until it showed up, so I expect to be surprised some of the time myself -- JJH, they tend to be late delivering to me as well, so don't feel singled out. Their office is small, their staff minimal. And don't be so sure that they bother lurking here. I kind of suspect they don't. I don't KNOW that, I just suspect it.)

This is not the most melodic music I've ever heard, but I think it's always fascinating to hear the various orchestrations. The action music is certainly different, too.
But I must say, I really don't like the mass thingy. It's just too darn strange. I guess it's supposed to be what with mutants and all, but it's still weird hearing the choir refer to "redeemer" and "God."

Liner notes and production are excellent as usual. You know, not to get on my high horse about CDRs -- I think there's something sort of democratic about them, I own a few and will inevitably own others -- I'd never want a CDR of an FSM or Prometheus or Intrada release. An investment in their real product is an investment in the future: getting more stuff like this. (It also means I still don't have the last three Goldsmith releases from Prometheus. There IS the money problem ... well, some things are worth paying for ... )

(ah, now the distorted version of "All Things Bright and Beautiful" -- I always admired how Rosenman managed to communicate the freakish nature of the mutants by showing how even their most potentially beautiful music is screwed up)

Because of the Varese album, I kind of doubt FSM would reissue ESCAPE. I was told that the cues missing from the Varese ESCAPE were considered too damaged to use, but there they are on the boot, and the fragment you can hear at DECONSTRUCTING sounds decent to me. I'm no audiophile, however.

NP: BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES (thank God this is both the OST AND the bizarre concept version of the album -- I'd have been driven mad if I only had the latter, but since I have both, I can enjoy it -- what a time-warp the thing is.)

who scored that movie?
I'm not much of an Apes afficianado, so forgive my ignorance.

also, the liner notes of the CD mention a TV series, that Roddy Macdowall played in. Who might have scored on that series?

NP - From Me Flows What You Call Time, Toru Takemitsu

If anyone's confused by now, here's the series list:

PLANET: Goldsmith
BENEATH: Rosenman
ESCAPE: Goldsmith
CONQUEST: Scott
BATTLE: Rosenman

Goldsmith was originally supposed to score BENEATH, but director Franklin J. Schaffner talked Fox into letting Goldsmith score PATTON instead. I'm sure Goldsmith was asked to score the last two sequels as well, but didn't want to, or couldn't. Although it's obvious they were temped with his music. One thing I like about Tom Scott's CONQUEST score is that, although a relative neophyte, he was able to mimic the basic series style, and yet write something very recognizably his own. CONQUEST was done the same year as THE CULPEPPER CATTLE COMPANY -- which, ironically, featured original cues by Scott, AND a lot of leftover temp music from Goldsmith's earlier FLIM-FLAM MAN. Same thing happened on CONQUEST, but in that case, just that one scarecrow cue from PLANET was left over.

Following BATTLE FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES (1973), Fox produced one season's worth of a PLANET OF THE APES TV show, starring Roddy McDowall (Galen), Mark Lenard (Urko), Booth Colman (Zaius), Ron Harper (Virdon) and James Naughton (Burke). Lalo Schifrin wrote the main title theme and the first one or two episode scores. It's interesting that Schifrin's music was more in the Rosenman mode than the Goldsmith -- he borrowed that rising brass figure that appears in pretty much EVERY Rosenman score -- but he also put a bit of his own spin on it, I'd like to hear some of that music preserved. Other scores for the series, some of them really good, were done by Earle Hagen and Richard LaSalle.

That old APES series is now repackaged as a series of so-called TV movies, two-hour blocks consisting of two back-to-back episodes, a few of them bearing some really outrageous titles, including TREACHERY AND GREED ON THE PLANET OF THE APES and LIFE, LIBERTY AND PURSUIT ON THE PLANET OF THE APES. I actually think that series wasn't bad at all, and would love to see one particular episode that wasn't collected, but was beautifully novelized by George Alec Effinger (a better writer than any of those who actually worked on the series), called "The Good Seeds."

The following year, 1975, saw the broadcasting of the completely insane PLANET OF THE APES Saturday morning cartoon, which seemed to use BENEATH as its principal model, but added jeeps and tanks and so on. The whole thing, as I recall it, revolved around battling with the human mutants under the ground. No idea who wrote the music -- probably Hoyt Curtin or someone like that. I haven't seen an episode in a quarter of a century. There WERE very serious SF novelizations of the series, which are strange to read given the triviality of the original conception. (One could start a whole other thread about the APES novelizations; one will not, not today.)

I REALLY like Goldsmith's score. As "experimental" as it is, you can tell it's Goldsmith through and through. Well, and I guess the same goes for the Rosenman.

But I still tend to think of the Rosenman in a way that a music critic in either Gramophon or Classic CD once described Arvo Pärt's Passio: "It should be abominable."

Yet, Rosenman's orchestral soundscapes are very addictive to me. Much moreso than Goldsmith's effort. 'cept the mass. It may genious, but I don't have to like it.
This is one of those things that is hard to explain.
I really do need to get some more of his recordings.

quote:

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Originally posted by Eric Paddon:
Even so, I have always felt that the film series does not make for good viewing in consecutive order because you can see every plot hole at every turn

---

Ha, that's for sure. A couple of years ago my lovely long time girlfriend - who had not seen any of the apes movies before - and I were watching the first three apes movies in a row (one per day). There are many holes in there indeed. And we really had to laugh at one of the funniest running gags in the movie series.
In the original apes movie, the astronauts crash land in the water, and one of the astronauts has already died because of a failed life support system. In the second movie, the astronauts arrive with another spacecraft of the same type and crash land on solid ground; the spacecraft is a total wreck and one astronaut dies as a result of that crash. In the third movie, the apes crash land in the water again, though I think this time no one dies... perhaps the apes are more resitant? Anyway, there seems to be no question that this type of spacecraft is a virtual death cell! Three hazardous crash landings and two deaths in a row. Good heavens, the irresponsible engineers who designed that thing should really go back to the drawing board.

NP: Leonard Rosenman BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES (FSM)
Yipee! The thing arrived today... what a score. And it's great to have the old LP recording as a bonus!