| Dracula | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Soundtrack album by | ||||
| Released | 27 August 1999 | |||
| Recorded | August 1998 | |||
| Genre | Contemporary classical | |||
| Label | Nonesuch Records (#79542) | |||
| Producer | Judith Sherman, Michael Riesman, Kurt Munkacsi | |||
| Kronos Quartet chronology | ||||
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Dracula is a soundtrack performed by the Kronos Quartet, with music composed by Philip Glass, for the 1931 film Dracula . [1] [2]
The movie (directed by Tod Browning and starring Bela Lugosi) could be shown to audiences both as a silent movie and as a talkie, though conversation was limited to basic narrative elements. Unusually, it did not have a specific score and only two pieces of music on its soundtrack: Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake during the opening credits, and the overture of Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg during a scene at an opera. [3]
Glass was commissioned to write the score by Universal Studios Home Entertainment, which released the movie with the Glass-soundtrack on VHS and DVD in 1999. According to Glass, the choice of chamber music played by a string quartet rather than an orchestral score followed from the movie's setting, "libraries and drawing rooms and gardens." [3]
Kronos and Glass (on piano) performed the score during viewings of the movie across the United States in 1999 and 2000 to promote the album. [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] Other promotion efforts by Universal, which was trying to "reinvigorate and re-market" their Classical Monsters catalog, included discounts for buyers of multiple CDs, and a trailer for the movie on copies of the video release of The Mummy . [3]
Glass and the Quartet have collaborated on a number of albums. Kronos first recorded a Glass composition on the 1985 soundtrack Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters . In 1986, they contributed two tracks to his Songs from Liquid Days . In that same year they recorded a composition of his for their 1986 album Kronos Quartet , their first album on Nonesuch Records, which also releases Glass's music. In 1993, they recorded Kronos Quartet Performs Philip Glass , containing his String Quartets nos. 2, 4, and 5; the latter is the first piece Glass wrote specifically for Kronos. A number of compositions played by Kronos are found on the Philip Glass 10-CD collection Glass Box: A Nonesuch Retrospective, released in 2008.
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   [9] |
The soundtrack and the performances thereof have received mixed reviews. Entertainment Weekly was very positive, praising the "hypnotic new score," [1] while The Essential Monster Movie Guide calls the score "unnecessary," [10] and a Lugosi-biography calls it "ill-considered." [11]
Negative reviews abounded: Allan Kozinn of The New York Times remarked that "the project seems not to have inspired Mr. Glass....Heard alone on CD it is harmless enough, but coupled with the film it does more harm than good." [12] The San Francisco Chronicle said, in anticipation of a performance with the composer on piano, "after previewing CD and video, it is painfully evident that this composer and this film are mismatched." It continued, "Glass' constant score simply sounds busy, its gloomy arpeggios merely getting in the way. The few chords that accompany moments of shock verge on the cheesy....the Glass music seems to suck away the film's life blood. Who's the vampire now?" [2] Likewise negative, but this time after a live performance of the movie and music at Royce Hall, on the UCLA campus, was Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times : "As a public event, however, the Royce concert, performed by Glass and the Kronos Quartet and conducted by Michael Riesman, was a distinct disappointment." [13]
Others were more positive. Roger Ebert praised the score, writing: "The Glass score is effective in the way it suggests not just moody creepiness, but the urgency and need behind Dracula's vampirism. It evokes a blood-thirst that is 500 years old." [14] Self-proclaimed "film purists" Bill Hunt and Todd Doogan called the soundtrack "quite cool" and commented that it "fits the film perfectly." [15] After commenting on what he called the low artistic quality of the film, Philip Kennicott of The Washington Post said: "The delightful thing about Glass's music for film is that there's no need for it. It is a pure artistic addition to something that was not wanting in the first place; and in that act, Glass confirms a kind of reverence for the original. It is, artistically if not financially, an act of selfless collaboration with a partner—the film—that might be considered the culturally undead." [16] Bradley Bambarger, in Billboard , praised the soundtrack as "one of Glass' most lyrical, moving works, regardless of genre." [4] Mark Allender's review on Allmusic likewise ranks the soundtrack very high in Glass's oeuvre:
The music is absolutely beautiful, augmented by the raw, woody sounds of the Kronos Quartet. No refined or reverbed string sounds here; you hear the naked, scratchy sound of a bow on a string all the way through, playing in the interwoven arpeggiated style that is unmistakably Glass. Complex chord structures and dense rhythms permeate the record, making it musically satisfying for both the pedestrian and the sophisticate ear. This will certainly stand out as one of the premiere works in Glass' soundtrack portfolio. [17]
All music is composed by Philip Glass
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Dracula" | 1:12 |
| 2. | "Journey to the Inn" | 0:43 |
| 3. | "The Inn" | 1:16 |
| 4. | "The Crypt" | 1:16 |
| 5. | "Carriage Without a Driver" | 2:11 |
| 6. | "The Castle" | 3:10 |
| 7. | "The Drawing Room" | 1:06 |
| 8. | "'Excellent, Mr. Renfield'" | 2:46 |
| 9. | "The Three Consorts of Dracula" | 1:30 |
| 10. | "The Storm" | 1:29 |
| 11. | "Horrible Tragedy" | 1:22 |
| 12. | "London Fog" | 1:15 |
| 13. | "In the Theatre" | 2:48 |
| 14. | "Lucy's Bitten" | 2:18 |
| 15. | "Seward Sanatorium" | 2:57 |
| 16. | "Renfield" | 2:57 |
| 17. | "In His Cell" | 1:31 |
| 18. | "When the Dream Comes" | 2:07 |
| 19. | "Dracula Enters" | 3:59 |
| 20. | "Or a Wolf" | 4:38 |
| 21. | "Women in White" | 3:07 |
| 22. | "Renfield in the Drawing Room" | 3:26 |
| 23. | "Dr. van Helsing and Dracula" | 3:26 |
| 24. | "Mina on the Terrace" | 4:42 |
| 25. | "Mina's Bedroom/The Abbey" | 3:53 |
| 26. | "The End of Dracula" | 4:06 |
The album was released by Nonesuch with two different covers. One was black with the name "DRACULA" in a panel with an ornamented border; the version currently available has a colored drawing of Count Dracula resembling the movie poster. Unlike most other Kronos releases on Nonesuch, this album does not come as an MP3 download. [18] The soundtrack was included in a 5-CD compilation of Philip Glass soundtracks, released in 2001 (Nonesuch 79660). [4]
Philip Glass is an American composer and pianist. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century. Glass's work has been associated with minimalism, being built up from repetitive phrases and shifting layers. Glass describes himself as a composer of "music with repetitive structures", which he has helped to evolve stylistically.
Terrence Mitchell "Terry" Riley is an American composer and performing musician best known as a pioneer of the minimalist school of composition. Influenced by jazz and Indian classical music, his work became notable for its innovative use of repetition, tape music techniques, improvisation, and delay systems. His best known works are the 1964 composition In C and the 1969 album A Rainbow in Curved Air, both considered landmarks of minimalism and important influences on experimental music, rock, and contemporary electronic music. Subsequent works such as Shri Camel (1980) explored just intonation.
The Kronos Quartet is an American string quartet based in San Francisco. It has been in existence with a rotating membership of musicians for 50 years. The quartet covers a very broad range of musical genres, including contemporary classical music. More than 1,000 works have been written for it.
Osvaldo Noé Golijov is an Argentine composer of classical music and music professor, known for his vocal and orchestral work.
Dracula is a 1931 American pre-Code supernatural horror film directed and co-produced by Tod Browning from a screenplay written by Garrett Fort and starring Bela Lugosi in the title role. It is based on the 1924 stage play Dracula by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, which in turn is adapted from the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. Lugosi portrays Count Dracula, a vampire who emigrates from Transylvania to England and preys upon the blood of living victims, including a young man's fiancée.
Nonesuch Records is an American record company and label owned by Warner Music Group, distributed by Warner Records, and based in New York City. Founded by Jac Holzman in 1964 as a budget classical label, Nonesuch has developed into a label that records critically acclaimed music from a wide range of genres. Robert Hurwitz was president of the company from 1984 to 2017.
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is the soundtrack to the 1985 film Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. It features music written by Philip Glass and performed by, among others, Kronos Quartet. Sections from the soundtrack have been featured in other films and TV shows, including the piece 'Mishima / Opening', which was used to score the end credits of Peter Weir's 1998 film The Truman Show in addition to an appearance on an episode of Mr. Robot.
The Black Cat is a 1934 American pre-Code horror film directed by Edgar G. Ulmer and starring Boris Karloff and Béla Lugosi. It was Universal Pictures' biggest box office hit of the year, and was the first of eight films to feature both Karloff and Lugosi. In 1941, Lugosi appeared in a comedy horror mystery film with the same title, which was also named after and ostensibly "suggested by" Edgar Allan Poe's short story.
Wu Man is a Chinese pipa player and composer. Trained in Pudong-style pipa performance at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, she is known for playing in a broad range of musical styles and introducing the pipa and its Chinese heritage into Western genres. She has performed and recorded extensively with Kronos Quartet and Silk Road Ensemble, and has premiered works by Philip Glass, Lou Harrison, Terry Riley, Bright Sheng, Tan Dun, Zhao Jiping, and Zhou Long, among many others. She has recorded and appeared on over 40 albums, five of which have been nominated for Grammy Awards. In 2013, she was named Instrumentalist of the Year by Musical America, becoming the first performer of a non-Western instrument to receive this award. She also received The United States Artists Award in 2008.
Requiem for a Dream is the soundtrack album from the 2000 film Requiem for a Dream. It was composed by Clint Mansell and performed by the Kronos Quartet. The music for the film is noted for its minimalist qualities in which it uses constant harmonies, a steady pulse, and often variation of musical phrases to drive a point. The album is best known for the track "Lux Aeterna."
Lux Æterna is an orchestral composition by Clint Mansell. Performed by the Kronos Quartet, it forms a leitmotif in the 2000 film Requiem for a Dream, and is the penultimate piece in the movie's soundtrack.
The Fountain: Music from the Motion Picture is the soundtrack album to the 2006 film The Fountain directed by Darren Aronofsky. Released on November 27, 2006, through Nonesuch Records, the album is a collaboration between contemporary classical composer and frequent Aronofsky collaborator Clint Mansell, classical string quartet the Kronos Quartet, and post-rock band Mogwai. The score received mixed reviews from critics and was nominated for several awards.
The discography of the Kronos Quartet includes 43 studio albums, two compilations, five soundtracks, and 29 contributions to other artists' records. The Kronos Quartet plays classical, pop, rock, jazz, folk, world and contemporary classical music and was founded in 1973 by violinist David Harrington. Since 1978, they are based in San Francisco, California. Since 1985, the quartet's music has been released on Nonesuch Records.
Bryce David Dessner is an American composer and guitarist based in Paris, as well as a member of the rock band the National. Dessner's twin brother, Aaron is also a member of the group. Together, they write the music in collaboration with lead singer and lyricist Matt Berninger.
Terry Riley: Requiem for Adam is a studio album by the Kronos Quartet. The music was composed by Terry Riley, commissioned by the quartet; the album is a requiem for Adam Harrington, the son of Kronos co-founder David Harrington.
Five Tango Sensations is a suite of works (Asleep—Loving—Anxiety—Despertar—Fear) for bandoneón and string quartet written in 1989 by Argentine composer Ástor Piazzolla. It was premiered in New York that year and recorded immediately afterwards by the Kronos Quartet and the composer, who played the bandoneón. The record was one of a set of three internationally tinged albums released simultaneously, the Argentine music of this album being accompanied by the music of South-African composer Kevin Volans on Kevin Volans: Hunting:Gathering and the music of Polish composer Witold Lutosławski on Witold Lutosławski: String Quartet.
Pieces of Africa is a 1992 studio album by the Kronos Quartet, containing works commissioned by the quartet, written by seven African composers.
Piano and String Quartet is a composition by American avant-garde composer Morton Feldman. It was commissioned by the Kronos Quartet and pianist Aki Takahashi, who premiered the piece at the 7th annual New Music America Festival in Los Angeles and released a studio recording in 1993.
This is a Nonesuch Records discography, organized by catalog number.
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| Related articles | |
