A Transylvanian Rhapsody from Young Frankenstein, for violin & piano (arr. by Feldman)

• Composer: John Morris
• Period: Contemporary (1950- )

Review

When the violin appears in music associated with the devil, supernatural, or horror, it is common for composers to give it high, piercing, staccato music, using the unstable "evil" interval of the tritone ("the devil in music," the interval from A to E flat or D sharp). Composers from Tartini (The Devil's Trill) to Saint-Saëns (Danse macabre) to Stravinsky (The Soldier's Tale) have carried on this tradition. So have film composers. John Williams (The Witches of Eastwick), Danny Elfman (Beetlejuice), Jerry Goldsmith (Gremlins), and countless others used violins playing tritone double stops as a mainstay of their scores. John Morris, however, did not. He gave the violin a lovely, calming Romantic theme in Young Frankenstein, the classic comedy and parody written by Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks and directed by Brooks, loosely based on Mary Shelley's Gothic classic novel, but more directly inspired by the original Universal films of Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein. The reason is that in Wilder and Brooks' story, this theme, when played on the violin, has the nearly magical ability to calm the rampaging Monster -- in fact, it reduces him to blubbering sentimentality. The theme has its element of parody. It is written in slightly over-the-top sequences and has a strong Hungarian Gypsy violin flavor. After the success of the film, Morris provided a concert version of the violin theme, which he called Transylvanian Rhapsody. (Incidentally, a Hungarian-British composer named Mátyás Seiber (1905 - 1960) in 1941 wrote a piece of the same name.) After a growling statement of the ominous opening chords of the film score (a clear evocation of the mood and sound of the classic Universal pictures monster music scores), the nostalgic and soaring violin theme sounds and works up all its uncanny mixture of passion and schmalz, a strange combination that makes it work with the film as well as in its concert version. At the end, there is an answering statement of the main opening chords to conclude the excerpt. For a 2000 Deutsche Grammophon CD release of a recital of supernatural-oriented violin music played by violinist Gil Shaham and pianist Jonathan Feldman, Morris approved (with some editing) an arrangement of the Transylvanian Rhapsody made by Feldman. It is effective, with rich piano chords maintaining the Romantic flavor of the film music. ~ Joseph Stevenson, Rovi

Albums with Excerpt Performances of the Work

Title	Date
Devil's Dance	2000

Previous:	A Transporting Transmittance, for transverse flute & disklavier
Next:	A Travelling Spirit, for voice & recorder