Valentine's Day, Sunday, February 14, 2010 at 10:20 am

I had long ago written a paper on the self-borrowing habit of Herrmann. Steiner was anactive self-borrower as well but certainly not as frequently as Herrmann, who was theKing. His creations were literally a gift to himself that just kept on giving! Perhaps somecomposers would prefer not to be so predisposed of this practice (I think Goldsmith wasone of them) because they may not find it necessarily "creative" or interesting ifoverdone. But the practice would certainly be a time & effort saver when a composer hasa deadline to get a big job done. It is unfortunate that composers with contract for-hireprojects seem to always be rushed in the creative process. I wonder if this is essentiallydetrimental? In Herrmann's case with his great talent, I suppose in most cases the qualityand aptness of music for the scenes did not suffer. I have not done a percentage of thecases but perhaps he tended to self-borrow far more in his radio and television scores thathe considered less important than his feature films and concert works. After all, he hardlykept any of his radio and tv scores but insisted on clutching his film scores after arecording and keeping the originals in his collection.The first image below shows two cues from the Crime Classics radio episode, "Deathof a Picture Hanger" dated July 20, 1953. This image is my own personal research handcopythat I worked in back in 1994 at UCLA. Cue I is an example of self-borrowing. Bars1-4 were later utilized in the 1957 Western Saga suite, specifically the "Open Spaces"cue. So below the first image is my hand-copy of "Open Spaces." Instead of just threetrombones as given in the Crime Classics episode, you have two trombones and a tuba, 3trumpets, 4 horns, and timp. Same notes & chords. The first bar is actually a grace bar.Bar 2 shows major tonalities of F maj (F/A/C) to C maj (C/E/G.Death of a Picture Hanger image:{Image http://img688.imageshack.us/img688/2765/img0005n.jpghttp://img688.imageshack.us/img688/2765/img0005n.jpg"Open Spaces" image:{Image http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/5245/img0006gw.jpghttp://img526.imageshack.us/img526/5245/img0006gw.jpg_______________________________________________talkingherrmann mailing list******************Talking Herrmann: 'Dracula Bell'Reply by: Bill Wrobel ()______________________________________________________________________Well, before you curse the darkness, "Jeff," with your apparent sarcasms, why don't youconstructively light a candle and tell us about YOUR researches of Herrmann's primary153