A nautical theme this week, as Brit selects pieces from a great movie soundtrack…
Not only is Patrick O’Brian’s ‘Aubrey-Maturin’ series of books one of the great reading experiences available to mankind but it has also spawned a fine movie in Peter Weir’s Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. The film, properly understood, an exploration of all the forms and foibles, strengths and stupidities, of masculinity. But more pertinently to today’s post, it also boasts a quite wonderful soundtrack. The original score by Christopher Gordon is as ominous as rolling thunder at sea, interspersed with salty shanties and reels, but today I’m going to give you the expertly-selected classical string elements. In the novels Captain Jack Aubrey and his particular friend, the surgeon and naturalist Stephen Maturin, are keen amateur musicians, regularly convening in the captain’s cabin to murder a bit of Corelli, but here are some pieces used the soundtrack played as they should be.
The first selection is an anachronism musically, since Master and Commander is set in 1805 and Ralph Vaughan Williams didn’t compose his Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis for another 105 years, but what a gorgeous, soul-stirring piece of music this is. It accompanies the scenes on the Galapagos.
Arcangelo Corelli’s Concerto Grosso Op.6 No 8 in G Minor – aka the “Christmas Concerto” is more the sort of thing that Aubrey and Maturin would have enjoyed at concerts and played at home. The soundtrack makes good use of the Adagio movement…
In an early Lazy Sunday I looked at some great cellists and included a Pablo Casals performance of the Prelude of Bach’s Cello Suite No.1. Master and Commander employs a Yo-Yo Mar rendition…
From the French-American-Chinese Yo-Yo Mar to the German-Japanese Susanna Yoko Henkel. Here she is playing Mozart’s Violin Concerto in G major, K. 216 (3rd movement), in Seoul with the KBS Symphony Orchestra in 2006. The movie soundtrack uses an extract, from about 3 minutes in.
I’ve saved my favourite for last. Boccherini’s sublime String Quintet for 2 violins, viola & 2 cellos in C major (“La Musica Notturna Delle Strade Di Madrid“) plays over the final scene and credits, as we see Aubrey and Maturin attack it with gusto: Russel Crowe a-strummin’ and Paul Bettany a-sawin’. I’d probably have this one on my Desert Island…
Has anyone written a thesis exploring the back and forth of Aubrey and Maturin’s adagio’s as homoerotic musical frottage I wonder?
Oh I expect so.
Well, I’ll go (again) to the foot of our stairs – all that great music packed into one movie? I must get out more. In the meantime I’ll clear my desk (again), as you young whippersnappers are obviously determined to put me out to pasture. I was told by the quack the other day that I needed to get my cholesterol down to where my sperm-count was. My reply is not for a family blog.