In the days leading up to our concert, Together We Sing, the author of our programme notes provides an alternative look at the pieces featured on Saturday 6th June. The series may be interspersed with other posts but will be more or less daily! We hope you enjoy it.
Ain’t No Grave Can Hold My Body Down!
Silent movies were rarely silent: from their very beginning film makers have always employed music as a narrative tool to set the mood, heighten tension or provide ironic contrast. Who can forget Wagner’s, Ride of the Valkyries in Apocalypse Now, Rossini’s, The William Tell Overture in The Lone Ranger, Beethoven’s, Ode to Joy in A Clockwork Orange or Orff’s, O Fortuna from Carmina Burana in virtually everything else apart from Pride and Prejudice.
Back in the 1890s, of course, the music was typically live with pianists, organists, or small orchestras improvising or following cue sheets and compiled scores. It was also often classical (not least because the composers didn’t have to be paid) and it wasn’t until 1908 that the first music to be written specifically for a film was commissioned. The film? The 15-minute, silent, French L’Assassinat du duc de Guise. And the composer? Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns.
Ain’t no grave can hold my body down.
They ain’t no grave can keep a sinnuh underground.
Oh, I will listen for the trumpet sound.
Ain’t no grave can hold my body down.
And it too made it into the movies. In 1967, Harry Dean Stanton’s version featured in, Cool Hand Luke (strangely, as Luke – Paul Newman – was digging a grave), while Johnny Cash’s cover was used in Quentin Tarantino’s, Django Unchained, and the trailer for, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.
Of course, naturally, wherever cinema went, TV followed, though the proposal for a late-night version of The Great British Bake Off using Beethoven’s, Moonlight Frittata, as the backing track sadly never made it to the screen.
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