Miklos Rózsa's 'El Cid'

There has been very little soundtrack activity around here lately, so a recent request allows me to fill that gap and also indulge my taste for promo records.

The main attraction is Miklos Rózsa's 1961 score for the medieval epic El Cid, the tale of Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar ("El Cid," i.e., the Master).

Sophia Loren and Charlton Heston

The film starred the not-very-Spanish Charlton Heston and the very Italian Sophia Loren, along with the usual cast of thousands, seen marauding on the cover above.

Cinemascope action (actually "Super Technirama") was just the thing for the Hungarian emigre Rózsa, who had quite a successful career scoring epics and film noir in particular. He could wrote stirring themes and love music of equal quality and does so in this film.

Heston at large

The real story of El Cid is a complicated one that isn't all that germane to the film music. If you want to be confused by his various wars and his allegiances with both Christian and Muslim rulers alike, Wiki has just the article for you. As for the film, I haven't seen it in more than 50 years, so I can't be of much help. The Wiki article on El Cid the film spells the plot out in detail. It notes in passing that producer Samuel Bronston, who had set up shop in Spain, came up with the idea of making the film to curry favor with Francisco Franco, who saw himself as the reincarnation of El Cid.

Miklos Rózsa in the studio

I can tell you that the music is splendid; one of Rózsa's most famous and accomplished scores. For this record - and I believe for the complete soundtrack - he conducts the Graunke Orchestra of Munich, which specialized in recording soundtracks in the 1960s.

Wiki also provides the wonderful anecdote that Bronston first hired Mario Nascimbene to write the music, but wanted him to base it on Massenet's opera Le Cid, which the Nascimbene refused to do. Enter Rózsa, who eventually had his own problems with the producer. I don't hear any Massenet in the score, but then of the composer's 30 operas I've only heard Werther.

The result is a sweeping film epic (I'm told) and a powerful and varied score, a credit to both the director (Anthony Mann) and composer.

By the way, the El Cid LP came in a gatefold cover; the download includes complete scans, as always.

Finally, let me mention that the record would win no prizes for its sound, which was close and harsh, probably designed for maximum bombast on the huge stereo consoles then in vogue. I've adjusted the sonics to be more pleasing to today's listeners (or at least me).

Bonus: Promo Spots

Somewhere along the line I acquired a recording of promo spots for El Cid, which I've included as a bonus. These are 10 to 60 second radio ads that tout the rave reviews for the film (unsurprisingly). They are quite unexciting, but I love this sort of thing and I suspect some of you may as well. At least I tell myself that.

LINK to soundtrack and promo spots

More Rózsa

To go along with the El Cid score, I've revisited two noted Rózsa scores from the early days of the blog. The links below take you to the original posts.

Quo Vadis. The "story of the love of a victorious Roman warrior for a Christian slave girl," says the liner notes for this 1951 epic with Robert Taylor and Deborah Kerr (not my idea of a slave girl). This falls squarely in the epic realm, and Rózsa was entrusted with the music, which he did well. This 10-incher and the following record were both conducted by the composer.

The Red House. IMDb tells us, "An old man and his sister are concealing a terrible secret from their adopted teen daughter, concerning a hidden abandoned farmhouse, located deep in the woods." It's a horror film from 1947, just the sort of thing for Rózsa to break out the theremin he had previously used for Spellbound and Lost Weekend. His recording first appeared on this EP.