MAXIMILIAN RAOUL WALTER STEINER (1888-1971)
SYMPHONIC SUITE, 'GONE WITH THE WIND' arranged and reconstructed by John Wilson
Like two or three other movies in cinema history - Citizen Kane and Casablanca are
others - Gone with the Wind is not so much a film as a whole industry, the subject
of academic analysis and critical exegesis and a focus for anecdote and nostalgic
reminiscence. It has been called 'the most seen film in cinema history' and even
now, 62 years after it was made, it retains the sumptuous glamour and self-confidence
of old Hollywood. The four principals Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Olivia de Havilland,
Leslie Howard no less than the talented supporting cast, were in themselves a guarantee
of audience satisfaction, hand-picked to do justice to Margaret Mitchell's nostalgic
romance, published in 1936 and a legendary best-seller well before the film was even
scripted or cast. Gone with the Wind also made history by being the first film to
be shown with an interval, although today, its 220-minute running time seems not
especially out of the way.
In the tense pre-production period the assumption around MGM was that only the very
best and most distinguished names would be appropriate for such a prestige production.
Max Steiner, as composer, qualified handsomely. He had been born into a prominent
Viennese musical family and his godfather was Richard Strauss. He had been something
of a child prodigy, and when he was fourteen he composed and then conducted an operetta
which ran for a year in the Austrian capital. In subsequent years he conducted musical
comedy in Paris, Berlin, Moscow and Johannesburg and in 1914, after arriving in America,
worked on Broadway as a conductor and arranger.
His move to Hollywood in 1929, after the arrival of sound, was timely. His score
for the 1931 Western Cimarron, famous in its day, helped to win the film a Best Picture
Oscar and he went on to write the music for King Kong, The Charge of the Light Brigade,
and two of John Ford's 1930s melodramas, The Lost Patrol and The Informer. In his
work for RKO, Selznick International and Warner Brothers, he completed more than
300 scores, originating the technique of 'underscoring' music to accompany dialogue
which swiftly became standard practice.
Steiner's music for Gone with the Wind is probably one of the best-known of all film
scores. Its sweeping, romantic themes, especially the now famous opening phrase,
drew its audiences immediately into the romantic, prelapsarian milieu of pre-Civil
War America, a lost world of social stability and sunlit comfort soon to be irrevocably
destroyed.
The Symphonic Suite we hear tonight has been reconstructed by John Wilson from the
film: it will be played at this year's Proms on the 14th August by the BBC Concert
Orchestra under Elmer Bernstein. Tonight we hear its premiere performance.
Programme Notes by Paul Vaughan ©
The Wimbledon Symphony Orchestra is a registered charity (No. 259860)
