Buch/Zeitschrift - Miklós Rózsa-Magazin "Pro Musica Sana" online

[Gast Stefan Jania]

Die Rózsa-Society hat die ersten 17 Ausgaben (1972-1976) ihres Magazins "Pro Musica Sana" nun als PDF kostenlos online gestellt. Rózsa-Fans werden hier fündig (unter "Pro Musica Sana Archive"):

The Miklós Rózsa Society Website

Introducing the PMS Archive

John Fitzpatrick

Digitizing our old content has been a goal for some time. Until recently the task of scanning and converting to .pdf was considered too difficult. The faded pages and highly variable typescripts seemed to resist effective conversion. But Doug Raynes persisted. Frank DeWald, Ralph Erkelenz, and Hank Verryt joined him in an international coalition of the willing. Hank has coordinated the project and brought the material online. And suddenly what seemed impossible now lies before us. My deepest thanks to our bold colleagues (all of whom are at work on additional projects) for making this possible.

To state the obvious: this is a documentary archive of primarily historical interest. Not everything you read there is true. The opinions expressed herein do not necessarily represent the present-day views of the writers. For example, I felt compelled to write the very first feature article in PMS. It was a short appreciation of Young Bess, a score that was virtually unknown in 1972. Somebody had to start the ball rolling, and I am proud that I rose to the task. I am also more aware with every passing year that I was woefully ill equipped for it. Not long ago, while doing some research on this score (yes, I still rank near the summit of Rózsas oeuvre), I couldnt even bear to look at my old article. Now anybody may do so. To quote another Deborah Kerr movie: When you write about thisand you willbe kind.

Scanning and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) are imperfect processes. Quite a few new typos are introduced in any digitizing process, and despite everybodys efforts, not all of these have been weeded out. If you see such whoppers as Anothep Ben-Hur, Kahalevsky, and (my favorite) Dearborn, HI (i.e., Hawaii!), you will be correct to assume that these are artifacts of the conversion process. This is not to deny another obvious fact: there were plenty of genuine errors in the original publications. We have decided to let these stand in the interest of historical accuracy. Todays reader will have no way of knowing whether any given error is new or old and (if the latter), whether it originated with the writer, the typist, or the editor. Let me confess up front to the very first howler, which appears in Dr. Rózsas letter in PMS 1. Be assured that the maestro did not misspell the name of his old friend Arthur Honegger. I did. Not only that, I also mispronounced it for years, on the mistaken assumption that a composer who lived in France and wrote in French must have had a French name. Dr. Rózsa was too kind a gentleman to ever correct me, though I know he must have winced sometimes at the young Americans gaucherie. In fact, MR (with some very rare exceptions) never offered any criticism of PMS or of the Society, despite my frequent requests for comment. Almost every issue was received with manifest delight as the best one yet. Surely the maestro knew otherwise. But he also knew something more important: that we were all allies in a good cause and that encouragement is ultimately more productive than negativity. Would that present-day denizens of Internet message boards were as wise as he!

Rózsas elegance of style and manners did not extend to his handwriting, which took the form of hasty ballpoint scrawls on fragile onionskin stationery or cramped postcards. (You can see some samples in Jeffrey Danes book.) Since Rózsa himself was almost our sole source of information in those early days, you will find quite a few misspelled performer names here. It took us years to straighten out the spelling of the pianist Erzsébet Tusa. More than names are at issue. MR wrote to us casually and not as a scholar or trained journalist. When he said that all copies of the Background to Violence score had been destroyed, he had apparently forgotten the copy he had donated to Syracuse University a decade earlier. And when he spoke of a future performance . . . Well, we all know that not everything goes according to plan. Did Pinchas Zukerman actually play the Violin Concerto with Rózsa conducting the Royal Philharmonic in 197374? Nobody else has reported on such an event.

But enough apologies. PMS belongs to the historical record. Its role in the Rózsa revival and the film music renaissance is something that the three surviving founders remain proud of. These issues may not be 100 percent accurate. Their critical judgments may be jejune or worse. But if nothing else they will take you back to a time when people were barely aware if the composer was still alive, when we doubted if he would ever write another film score, when the total current Rózsa discography amounted to four or five familiar soundtracks plus the Heifetz Concerto (there was virtually no Herrmann or Korngold at all), and when Christopher Palmer and Charles Gerhardt were nearly unknown. It was a time when some young people with (dare I say?) the audacity of hope decided to take a first step.

[Ludwig]

Danke für den Hinweis

[Goldenage]

Es gibt auch ein neues, interessantes Buch über den BEN-HUR-Score:

Miklós Rózsa's Ben-Hur: A Film Score Guide Scarecrow Film Score Guides: Amazon.de: Roger Hickman: Bücher

Leider ziemlich teuer.

[Gast Stefan Jania]

Kennst Du das Buch? Kannst Du es empfehlen? Bei dem Original-Preis ist der Preis bei Amazon.de durchaus okay.

[Goldenage]

Ich bin erst auf S. 48. Anfangs gibt es biographische Notizen und Anekdoten, und Rózsas frühere Filmmusiken werden besprochen. Ab S. 53 geht es dann um den Film BEN-HUR und danach um die Musik dazu.

Es liest sich recht verständlich, ist aber besonders für Musiker geeignet, da viele Notenbeispiele und musikalische Begriffe vorkommen.

[Gast Stefan Jania]

Um mal wieder etwas Werbung für die alten Hefte zu machen. Aktuell stehen die Ausgaben 1 - 50 kostenlos online. Viel Zeug zum Lesen. Das Heft drehte sich nicht nur um Rozsa. In den Ausgaben 34 und 36 geht es z.B. detailiert um John Coriglianos Altered States (inkl. langem Interview) und Alex Norths Dragonslayer.

Link zur Startseite: Miklós Rózsa Society

Direkter Link zu den Heften: Pro Musica Sana Archive

Einige schon vormals online gewesene PDFs wurden inzwischen überarbeitet und sehen nun besser aus.

Übrigens: das Zitat oben in meinem ersten Beitrag sieht im neuen Forum aber gar nicht mehr hübsch aus.

[Gast]

Hat zwar über zwei Jahre gedauert, aber nun sind alle Ausgaben bis #56 (Herbst '98) online. Inhaltsangaben und Download unter folgendem Link.

 

Pro Musica Sana Archive

 

[Gast Stefan Jania]

Bis auf fünf Ausgaben sind mittlerweile alle Hefte online. Dazu als "Extra" eine 190-seitige Analyse von Ralph Erkelenz zu Ben-Hur, die es über fünf Hefte verteilt gab, aber 2010 noch eimal überarbeitet wurde. Link zu den Heften siehe oben, Link zum PDF der Ben-Hur-Analyse hier auf der Features-Seite.