The Song of Bernadette (Alfred Newman)
(1943)
The Song of Bernadette was released in December of 1943. At the time it was the most expensive 20th Century Fox had made, and it would also go on to become their most successful film made at the time. The film would go on to win four Academy Awards, for Best Actress, Art Direction, Cinematography, and, of course, Alfred Newman’s musical score.
At the time, Newman had been musical director at Fox for nearly four years. He was one of the most trusted associates of the studio chief Darryl Zanuck, and so it’s no surprise that the assignment of scoring a film of such importance to the studio was given to Newman. Out of his record nine Oscar wins, it was the win for this film that he was most proud of. It was his first Oscar of two for original compositions; his second would come for 1955′s Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (which, ironically, also featured Jennifer Jones in a lead role).
Oddly enough however, it was not Newman who was originally going to score the film. Frank Werfel (the author of the 1942 book on which the film was based) recommended his friend Igor Stravinsky to compose the score. His music was ultimately rejected, although he would later use portions of it in his “Symphony in Three Movements”, and Newman replaced him.
Newman approached The Song of Bernadette knowing it was special. Anyone who has seen the film will know what an important role the score plays in conveying the story, and so, Newman began his work at the same time the shooting of the film began. He did extensive research and experimentation for the score, and also visited several cities auditioning choirs. And all whilst working on several other films at the same time.
Newman’s work for the biblical genre is often overshadowed by the more successful works by Miklós Rózsa, such as Ben-Hur and El Cid. Yet Newman, with scores such as this, The Robe, The Egyptian (co-composed with Bernard Herrmann), and The Greatest Story Ever Told, wrote several of the best scores for the genre. This is somewhat curious, since Newman, who clearly had an infinity for scoring such themed films, was by all accounts not a particularly religious man.
Like the film, the score was the biggest musical project in the history studio. Newman asked Zanuck for two months to score the film, which he got. He also got a musical budget of $100,000, and the recording of the score commenced on November 12th 1943 with an 80 piece orchestra and several choirs, and went on for four weeks.
Despite his success as a composer, it was Newman’s conducting abilities for which he was so well known. He is probably the only conductor in Hollywood history who had his own unique sound – the legendary “Newman strings”. Indeed, it was the duty he himself preferred, as he always considered composing a somewhat lonely task.
The importance and functionality of the score for The Song of Bernadette simply cannot be overstated. This is particularly true of the cue “The Vision”, where the haunting choral music brings the scene in question to a level of beauty that the images on screen could not convey alone. There are several other instances like, but that’s the one that stands out for me.
The primary theme for the character of Bernadette is an incredibly simple four note melody for strings, which represents the scene of Bernadette’s first vision. First introduced in the “Overture”, it forms the basis for one of the most beautiful film music cues ever written. In his DVD commentary, Jon Burlingame says the piece “is as though she’s gazing towards heaven”.
Of the scene, Newman said:
“My first reaction to the scene was to “hear” it in terms of the great religious experiences that had previously been interpreted by Wagner in his Grail music and Schubert in his “Ave Maria,” which is a terrifying standard to have to approach. I first wrote for the scene in this vein but I wasn’t happy with anything I did. It then occurred to me that I was wrong in thinking of the scene as a revelation of the Virgin Mary. I read back over Werfel’s book and found that Bernadette had never claimed to have seen anything other than a ‘beautiful lady.’
I now wrote music I thought would describe this extraordinary experience of a young girl who was neither sophisticated enough nor knowledgeable enough to evaluate it as anything more than a lovely vision. With this in mind, I thought the music should not be pious or austere or even mystical, or suggest that the girl was on the first step to sainthood. She was at that point simply an innocent, pure-minded peasant girl, and I took my musical cues from the little gusts of wind and the rustling bushes that accompanied the vision, letting it all grow into a swelling harmony that would express the girl’s emotional reaction. And it was important that it express her reaction, not ours.”
Choirs are used prominently in the score, with the most notable instance probably being “The Grotto”. Newman also utilized a brass choir to suggest the power of the church, and this idea is used to brilliant effect throughout the score, with the primary example being “Commission Convenes”. There are many other beautiful themes that crop up, with my personal favourite being the delightful scherzo in “The Day Begins”.
The “Hallelujah” choral piece heard in “Your Life Begins” was originally written by Newman for his score for The Hunchback of Notre Dame” a few years earlier, and was also utilized in The Robe. There are several other motifs in the score that also crop up in later and earlier scores by Newman, and so those who attack James Horner for self referencing will likely be driven mad once they’ve listened to a few of Newman’s scores (personally, self referencing has never bothered me; what I hate about much of Horner’s work is how blatantly it rips from classical pieces).
The album also contains 3 unused cues, but the scenes for which they may have been intended are not made clear. Nevertheless, they still contain some excellent music.
The popularity of the score led to a major event in film music history when Decca released an album containing twenty four minutes of music from the film. It was only the second instance in which orchestral music from a film had been made available as a commercial recording, the first being Miklós Rózsa’s The Jungle Book. Finally, fifty six years after it was heard in the film, Newman’s score for The Song of Bernadette was finally released in full. The recording quality is superb, considering much of it was recorded in 1943. Even that however, is attributable in the most part to Newman, who had the idea of recording with two microphones , one near the conductor’s podium, and one at the back of the studio.
The score of The Song of Bernadette is a masterpiece, pure and simple. Alfred Newman was a titan of film composing, and in my opinion nobody did as much for film music as he did. If not just for his own original scores, many of the best known film composers of recent years had their careers started by Newman, including John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith. The Song of Bernadette without doubt ranks amongst his finest works, and probably the best he wrote for the biblical genre and for 20th Century Fox. This is certainly one of the most cherished albums in my film score collection, and is an essential addition to the collection of any film music fan.
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Track Listing
Disc 1
1 – Overture
2 – Prelude and Early Dawn
3 – The Day Begins
4 – The Vision
5 – I Saw A Lady
6 – The Betrayal
7 – Good Fortunes
8 – A Mother’s Love
9 – The Grotto
10 – From Her Very Depths
11 – The Officials
12 – A Father’s Promise
13 – The Reverend
14 – The Directives
15 – The Spring
Disc 2
1 – The Miracle
2 – Rumors of Healing
3 – Immaculate Conception
4 – You’re Playing With Fire
5 – Load Well Your Guns
6 – Commission Convenes
7 – Destiny
8 – The Farewell
9 – The Spring Is Not For Me
10 – Your Life Begins
11 – Exit Music
Bonus Tracks
12 – Commission Convenes (Alternate)
13 – Unused Cue #1
14 – Unused Cue #2
15 – Unused Cue #3
Credits
Music Composed and Conducted by Alfred Newman
Orchestrations by Edward Powell
Performed by the 20th Century Fox Symphony Orchestra
Album Produced by Nick Redman & Rick Victor
Awards
Academy Award for Best Original Score (Won)
Insert Notes
Contains notes about the film and the score.
All images and artwork are Copyright © Varese Sarabande
