Marvin Hamlisch RIP

[makropulos]

Marvin Hamlisch, composer of "A Chorus Line", several other Broadway shows and numerous film scores has died in Los Angeles, aged 68. Very sad news. RIP Marvin Hamlisch.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1751084.html

[Mandryka]

Marvin Hamlisch, composer of "A Chorus Line", several other Broadway shows and numerous film scores has died in Los Angeles, aged 68. Very sad news. RIP Marvin Hamlisch.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1751084.html

The only thing I liked about A Chorus Line was the music.

He also co-wrote some great songs.

Sad news.

[Lateralthinking1]

A good songwriter. I liked "The Way We Were". It was remarkably mature, given it was 1974-5.

[Alison]

Was he still writing new stuff ?

[Lateralthinking1]

Was he still writing new stuff ?

Alison, according to Wikipedia, he wrote music for films throughout the 1990s and then for "The Informant" as recently as 2009. But what particularly caught my eye was this:

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra performed a rare Hamlisch classical symphonic suite titled Anatomy of Peace (Symphonic Suite in one Movement For Full Orchestra/Chorus/Child Vocal Soloist) on November 19, 1991. It was also performed in Paris in 1994 to commemorate D-Day. The work was recorded by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in 1992. Anatomy of Peace was a book by Emery Reves which expressed the world federalist sentiments shared by Albert Einstein and many others in the late 1940s, in the period immediately following World War II.

Hamlisch explains: Emery Reves’s call for one law for us all could be defined by a simple, clear, plaintive theme, and the orchestra would represent all the nations of the world and their different rules of law. The suite begins with the nations of the world in loud, cacophonous uproar. Suddenly, a solo flute introduces the One Law theme, beckoning to us all; one law bringing us all together. But each section of the orchestra (our world) initially resists the call, since old habits are hard to break.

The brass and the woodwinds are first to display their dislike of this new idea. But the flute acts as a magnet and slowly its pull (its logic) is felt, first by the woodwinds. When the theme returns, it is not alone. The strings, a big part of our world, must now be convinced, and finally they are. Our theme is now given words, first introduced by a solo child, and then sung again by a children’s chorus. Slowly the irresistibility of the idea begins to weave a spell on the orchestra and the penultimate section of the piece is a contemplative one, as the world thinks about what the new world order would be. Finally, Reves’s dream is musically realized, as the entire orchestra accepts the One Law concept.