Program Notes

“There’s land.  Living green earth. What land? Where am I? It’s Dingel Bay. It’s …. Ireland!”

           The veteran actor, Jimmy Stewart, once said that, in the movies, he was always striving to produce believability with little ‘pieces of time’. And believability was crucial in Stewart’s portrayal of legendary flier, Charles Lindbergh, and the ‘man against the elements’ story of his 1927 solo flight across the Atlantic. In The Spirit of St. Louis (1957), directed by Billy Wilder, Stewart is carried aloft, not only by his replica of Lindbergh’s single engine monoplane, but the heroic, emotional score of Franz Waxman. So much depended on Waxman because of the limited use of dialogue and action, as the story unfolds against the long overwater flight.

Wilder’s star was really too old to play Lindbergh. Stewart was 48, Lindbergh  25 when he flew into history. But this was more then an actor playing a role. Growing up in Indiana, Pennsylvania, where his father ran a hardware store, Stewart once recalled how he put a model of Lindbergh’s plane in the window of his dad’s store, hanging betweeen a Woolworth building replica and one of the Eiffel Tower. Young Stewart, 19, would check the teletype at the Indiana Evening Gazette for Lindbergh’s progress, then run across the street to the store to move the model closer to France. By the time he filmed The Spirit of St. Louis, there was another affinity with Lindbergh. By 1941, Stewart, a bona fide movie star, had obtained his private and commercial pilot’s license and eight months before Pearl Harbor, reported for induction into the Army … as a private. When he was discharged four years later, he was Colonel in the U. S. Army Air Corp, and had flown twenty combat missions on B-24’s over Nazi-occupied Europe. A strong propoent of airpower, he enthusiastically took part in films that showed off the Air Force, like Stategic Air Command (1955), or, as narrator of the drama about edge-of-space test flying, X-15 (1961.)

Early in The Spirit of St. Louis  project, there was an effort to aquire the rights to the little-known ‘Lindbergh’s Flight’ canata by Paul Hindemith and Bertholt Brecht. That fell through and Wilder again turned to his friend Waxman. Wilder knew he needed strong musical accompaniment for his story because, as he said, “Mr. Lindbergh was a very difficult man to make into a movie hero. He had become a Scandanavian,Viking hero, without flesh and blood. [There were] no characters fighting against Lindy, no conflict, just one man against the elements.”

Waxman felt that “film music must make its point immediately because it is heard only once by an audience that is unprepared and didn’t come to the theater to hear film music anyway”.  The Ireland cue finds Stewart still over the Atlantic after the long night of fighting off sleep. Suddenly two fishing vessels appear, then tiny islands, and at last, the coast of Ireland. Waxman uses the film’s basic In Flight theme and then places it counter to an Irish jig for Stewart’s vocally jubilant landfall at Dingel Bay. (It’s one of Stewart’s ’pieces of time’.) As pilot and plane skim the masts of fishing vessels, villages and an ancient Irish castle, Waxman celebrates the triumph of the moment, signaling the movies audience that the hardest part is over and Paris lies just ahead.

A big fan of this film is director Steven Spielberg, who spoke glowingly of Wilder and Waxman in Cameron Crowe’s book, ‘Conversations with Wilder’. Crowe said Spielberg was able to describe in great detail the in-flight sequence and then hummed Waxman’s score note for note, including the Irish elements Waxman incorporated.

It is interesting how the passage of time has placed greater emphasis and recognition on Waxman’s contribution to the movie. In the original 1957 soundtrack recording, the notes on the back of the LP, (the long-playing record,) are mainly about Lindbergh the man. There is only one paragraph given over to the movie itself and one sentence about the music.  However, that sentence is factual in stating that ‘in the music ….we are able to experience again some of the great emotions evoked by this epic story.’

–Jim Brown

A Suite for Narrator and Orchestra

Music by Franz Waxman
Poem by James Forsyth
Orchestral Adaptation by Arnold Freed

Part I; Prelude and Building the Spirit
Part 2: In Flight
Part 3: Arrival: Ireland, Plymouth & Le Bourget

Charles A. Lindbergh’s crossing the Atlantic Ocean from New York to Paris in a single engine plane – The Spirit of St. Louis – in May 1927 is certainly one of the more remarkable events of the twentieth century. This larger-than-life story as narrated by way of the poem by James Forsyth and as set to music by Franz Waxman gives us a sense of the vulnerability of pilot and plane as they confronted the elemental forces of nature that could easily have turned triumph into tragedy.

Constructed in three parts Building the Spirit, In Flight and Arrival, the suite opens with a Prelude of broad and majestic dimensions. The theme, built on open fifths, will appear in many forms by way of augmentation, diminution and fragmentation. sometimes acting as a bass supporting the musical structure above and at other times in combination with different thematic material, this potent leit-motiv functions as a binding force throughout the piece. Powerfully resident chords in the full orchestra supported beneath by the theme of the Prelude played by the cellos and basses close off this section.

A tightly constructed sixteenth note theme supplies the energy behind Building the Spirit. Moving through the lower strings, into the higher, the tension increases by way of an expanded woodwind and percussion section (3 pianos 2 harps, celeste, electric keyboard) and then subsides but still keeps its rhythmic uneasiness. The driving force of the theme returns briefly and the section closes with horns and trumpets stating the theme of the Prelude.

A succession of rising fifths (variation on the Prelude) in the strings, winds vibraphone and harp open In Flight sustained by quietly moving triplets in the strings, a solo trumpet enters with a broad and expressive theme. Changing in
character and elaborated upon by way of different orchestral colorations, its second appearance is with the full string section and trumpets while the winds and horns carry forward the triplet figuration. Short contrasting episodes appear between each of the reprises of the theme which leads into section B that strongly suggests
a storm sequence. The motivic nature of the material is powerful and rhythmically driven.

The sections builds in intensity, arrives at its own climax and then leads into a brief and exultant restatement of the Prelude. The music subsides and closes quietly with the open fifth motiv played by the horns.

In Asleep, we hear music of hallucinatory nature where we are made aware of the pilot loosing contact with reality. Quietly and with a sense of mystery, repeated chords in the violins, piano, harp and woodwinds open this section. Superimposed on this orchestral fabric is the melody played by the cellos and electric keyboard. Hallucinations of a more violent intrude with the theme and again suggest a motivic reference to the Prelude. A brief entry of the In Flight theme appears against the turbulence of this section which then subsides in intensity and ends softly.

Arrival, the concluding part of the suite, is divided into three sections: Ireland, Plymouth and Le Bourget. The gigue has for centuries been associated with the folk music of Ireland and therefore it comes as no surprise to the composer using this dance form as the basis for the section titled Ireland. Starting modestly in the violas at first in fragmented form, the theme moves to the woodwinds played in its entirety
and then to the violins. The woodwinds take up the gigue again, while at the same time, the strings introduce the In Flight theme in an altered form as a steadily rising scale-like figure. It changes again to more closely resemble the original theme. As the music becomes more intense, it reaches its climax with the introduction of the third element superimposed on the other two melodies – the theme of the Prelude.
The music gradually diminishes and ends as it began with a fragmentation of the gigue by the violas.

The music to Plymouth introduces a theme suggesting a combination of the Prelude and In Flight. It is supported by a succession of open fifths played pizzicato in the bases and cellos and them with more prominence in the upper strings (arco) and woodwinds. This introduction sets the stage for a hymn-like melody that characterizes the St. Christopher medal Lindbergh took with him on the plane.

It is followed by an expansive statement of In Flight and then we hear the opening bars of La Marseillaise to suggest the approach to the Paris airfield Le Bourget.

Le Bourget opens with a martial-like theme played by the open trumpet. Moving
successively through various sections of the orchestra, the march reaches its high point with a forceful statement by the entire ensemble. The hymn returns in the horns and trombones against the countermelody in the upper strings. A succession of overlapping fifths in the full orchestra is introduced leading into an augmentation
of the St. Christopher hymn supported by the restless syncopated figure in the percussion and woodwinds. Tension builds and more animated figurations appear which introduce a stretto-like use of the opening theme of the Prelude. The work closes with a reintroduction of the resonant chords of the Prelude.

Arnold Freed, 1996