I saw the movie “Master and Commander” last Friday, and I give it my warm recommendation. The climax wasn’t disappointing, exactly, but it was less than one might hope; still, watching Russell Crowe is always enjoyable. Despite his penchant for rough behavior and womanizing, I’ll take his unapologetic masculinity over the Men Without Chests such as Keanu Reeves, Ethan Hawke, and the other vacant male leads who wander around movie sets in southern California.
One thing that stuck out was the music on the soundtrack. Of the recurring themes, two of them weren’t contemporary to the time in which the movie was set (1805). The first was “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis,” by Ralph Vaughn Williams. Normally, I require my composers to be dead prior to 1900 in order to give them a listen, but Vaughn Williams is one of the few moderns I can stomach. His “Fantasia” is a deeply profound interpretation of Tallis, and one of my favorite works ever — but it’s a 20th-century take on a turn-of-the-17th-century piece.
Likewise, the third movement of Corelli’s Christmas Concerto in G minor gets a lot of eartime, and with good reason: it’s got a sumptuous, rich emotional texture, but it is 1) a Christmas piece; and 2) composed well over a century before the fictional events in the movie. Which is like playing, say, ragtime in a modern-day movie: it’s not wrong, but it is incongruous.
Nevertheless, the music did mesh well with the movie itself, and I seriously doubt very many people had a problem with the music.
(You can download an excerpt from the third movement of Corelli’s concerto. I don’t think I’m violating the Fair Use Doctrine by excerpting this wonderful CD by I Musici, especially when I’m telling everyone to hunt down this CD for Christmas — it’s a refreshing break from saccharine secular songs and wonderful but overplayed hymns.)
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Eric,
since I haven’t seen the movie I can’t comment on its appropriateness for the context, but this piece has been famous from the time it was published.
Christmas Concerti used to be quite popular in the Baroque period; there are some other charming ones by Manfredini et al. from Corelli’s time. We play the “Pastorale” from the Corelli at Midnight Mass in the years I can persuade the string players to give up their home time.
If by “famous” you mean “well known in circles where people listen to Baroque composers,” then I’ll take your word for it. I don’t think the general public has been overexposed to Corelli, however, so I’m doing my part to remedy that.
Well, I doubt your average sailor would have known this music, but it was certainly well known.
Remember that Handel’s and others’ oratorios were considered *popular* entertainment — it would not have been unheard-of for the Corelli to appear on a concert program with other composers’ music. In fact, Italian composers were all the rage in 18th-century England. It was only in the 1740s that Gay and Pepusch torpedoed the Italian opera in the 1720s with The Beggar’s Opera. After that, the entertainment had to be mainly in English.