Leonard’s Score

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I didn’t know that Leonard Rosenman died two years ago.  If so, I would have written to ask sooner, “Did you really write only one score for 105 films and just recycle it with each new contract?

I first encountered Rosenman’s work with the 1977 animated The Lord of the Rings.  It’s a great work, and I found it again with a digital clean-up and re-balancing that embarrasses the muffled-sock mix of the LP which I owned and overplayed.

But then a strange thing happened. I watched Battle for the Planet of the Apes. Apologies.  However, the battle scenes had the same score.  And then I encountered the score again in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.  And yet again the score appears in Robocop 2.  This afternoon it appeared yet again in the much reviled film, The Car.

Now, it might be that these movies, short on budget, simply hired the cheapest film score hack they could find, but Rosenman has written 105 film and TV scores, so I have to ask, How may more of these 105 are the same?

On IMDB, Rosenman himself is quoted as saying,

“I try to enter directly into the movie’s plot and tell the audience something about the story that they can’t possibly perceive by just watching the film.”

But I think I perceived it.  It’s true that no one less than Elia Kazan gave him his start on East of Eden, but from there, stasis and retread.

From The Prophecy to Sybil and from Race With the Devil to The Jazz Singer, Rosenman’s orchestrations are identical. More, his motifs are repeated throughout the scores, even in the same key.  And the films I named earlier recreate entire passages, minutes on end.

Even so, for me, Rosenman’s score is The Lord of the Rings, where I encountered it first at age 15.  And when I watch The Octopus episode from Jacques Cousteau, Raquel Welch in Fantastic Voyage, or the old TV series Marcus Welby, MD, I will think of Gollum, Galadriel, and Gandalf.

Rest in Belated Peace, Leonard.  And may your music, as well.