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| Danny Elfman's Serenada Schizophrana | |
Grammy-winning, Oscar-nominated composer of music for over 100 films and tv series – Batman, Spiderman, Good Will Hunting, Edward Scissorhands, “The Simpsons”
Work premiered at Carnegie Hall in 2005 – music later featured in IMAX’s Deep Sea 3D
Adding another facet to an already brilliant life in music, Danny Elfman steps out from his career-defining role as a Grammy Award-winning, Oscar-nominated composer of original music for film (Batman, Spiderman, Beetle Juice, The Nightmare Before Christmas) and television (“Pee-Wee’s Playhouse,” “The Simpsons,” “Desperate Housewives”) with the release of Serenada Schizophrana, his first orchestral compo¬sition written specifically for the concert hall.
The world premiere of Serenada Schizophrana at Carnegie Hall on February 23, 2005 drew ecstatic reviews across-the-board from both classical music and pop culture critics. It subsequently received worldwide expo¬¬sure as the featured music in the soundtrack to the IMAX film Deep Sea 3D which was narrated by Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet. The Sony Classical recording is conducted by John Mauceri, best known for his sixteen years as conductor of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra.
The genesis of Serenada Schizophrana was a commission from the American Composers Orchestra (ACO), a new honor for Elfman and a challenge that he welcomed. Without the usual visuals to drive his orchestral music, he writes, “I began composing several dozen short improvisational compositions, none of them related. Slowly, some of them began to develop themselves until I had six separate movements that, in some abstract, absurd way, felt connected.”
Serenada Schizophrana was scored for large orchestra, electronics, two pianos, and female voices. “With six movements, rolling piano solos … and the charming hoots and chirps of eight female voices,” wrote Bernard Holland in the New York Times, “Mr. Elfman gave us music comfortable in its own world and highly professional in its execution … The composer of this piece has an ear for symphonic colors and how to balance them.”
“In keeping with the piece’s title,” Mac Randall also noted at the time in the New York Observer, “the music veered madly from Ellingtonian whimsy to Bernard Herrmannesque agitation … The tortured swing of the third movement conjured up the image of a jazz band on a storm-tossed raft, with trash-can cymbals acting as the crashing waves. And the furious horn-stoked climax and surprising last-second resolution of the closing movement made for a rousing finish.”
For Elfman, a self-taught musician who had never heard any of his orchestral music performed live on stage, it was a “thrilling experience.” Highly influenced by the work of such mid-20th century film composers Bernard Herrmann, Nino Rota, Dimitri Tiomkin, Max Steiner and Erich Korngold, among many others, Elfman’s music is also tempered by Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Orff and Bartók, as well as early Duke Ellington. “I am forever attached to the music of the early 20th century,” Elfman writes. To this mix, he adds his recent discoveries of Harry Partch, Philip Glass and Lou Harrison.
Serenada Schizophrana is a ‘gumbo’ of all these styles and influences, as conjured up by the imaginative and often surreal pen of Danny Elfman. A prolific composer for more than a quarter-century, Elfman has written music for over a hundred films and tv series. He is well-known for his collaborations with equally eccentric director Tim Burton on a partnership that began in 1985 with Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, and went on to include Beetle Juice (1988), Batman (1989, whose theme won the Grammy for Best Instrumental Composition), Edward Scissor¬hands (1990), Batman Returns (1992), Mars Attacks! (1996), Sleepy Hollow (1999), Planet Of the Apes (2001), Big Fish (2003), Charlie and The Chocolate Factory (2005), and Corpse Bride (2005).
For most of this time (until about a decade ago) Elfman was a mainstay of the beloved Los Angeles-based group Oingo Boingo, which was originally assembled in the late-’70s by his older brother, writer-director Richard Elfman, to provide the music for his first movie Forbidden Zone (1980). The group flourished (over the course of eight albums) but also became ubiquitous on movie soundtracks through the ’80s: Fast Times At Ridgemont High (1982), Bachelor Party (1984), Weird Science (whose title song became a pop hit, 1985), Something Wild (1986), to name a few.
Meanwhile, as his working friendship with Burton grew in the ’90s (and Oingo Boingo eventually disbanded), Elfman focused on what turned into a string of some 50 signature movie soundtracks, among them: Dick Tracy (1990), Sommersby (1993), Dolores Claiborne, Dead Presidents, and To Die For (all 1995), Mission Impossible (1996), the Men In Black franchise (1997, 2002), Good Will Hunting (1997), Chicago (2002), and Nacho Libre (2006). Upcoming projects include Disney’s animated Meet the Robinsons, Paramount's adaptation of Charlotte's Web.
Serenada Schizophrana is published by G. Schirmer, Inc./Associated Music Publishers, Inc.
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Danny Elfman was born in 1953 in Los Angeles, California, where he currently resides. Over the last 20 years, he has established himself as one of Hollywood's leading film composers. Elfman has written close to 50 film scores featuring his unique sound, including Batman, Spider-man, Men in Black, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. In addition to these signature soundtracks, he has scored such diverse films as Big Fish, Good Will Hunting, Dolores Claiborne, Midnight Run, To Die For, Dead Presidents, Sommersby, and Chicago. For television, Elfman created the infectious themes to The Simpsons and Desperate Housewives. His honors include a Grammy and three Academy Award nominations.
Elfman's first experience in performance and composition was for a French theatrical troupe "Le Grand Magic Circus" at the age of 18. The following year, he collaborated with his brother Richard performing musical theater on the streets of California. Elfman then worked with a “surrealistic musical cabaret” for six years, using this outlet to explore multifarious musical genres. For 17 years he wrote and performed with his rock band Oingo Boingo, producing such hits as "Weird Science" and "Dead Man's Party."
In 2005, Elfman worked with longtime collaborator Tim Burton on the films Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the stop-motion animated musical Corpse Bride. Other recent projects include the scores for the Disney CGI animated feature A Day in the Life of Wilbur Robinson and Paramount’s adaptation of Charlotte’s Web.
Elfman is self-taught and has had no formal musical training. Serenada Schizophrana is his first orchestral composition written specifically for the concert hall. As the featured music in the soundtrack to the IMAX film Deep Sea 3D, conducted by John Mauceri and narrated by Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet, it is receiving worldwide exposure.
A Note from the Composer
Serenada Schizophrana was a completely new experience for me. As a film composer, I’ve always had visuals to drive my orchestral music. Serenada began as a commission from the American Composers Orchestra in New York with very few restrictions. As I’d never done anything like this before, figuring out how to begin was daunting. I began composing several dozen short improvisational compositions, maybe a minute each. Slowly, some of them began to develop themselves until finally I had six separate movements that, in some abstract, absurd way, felt connected. Free from film restrictions, I more or less let the movements take themselves wherever they wanted to go in a kind of musical stream of consciousness (which, with the way my brain works, was not a very smooth stream.) The finished piece premiered at Carnegie Hall in February 2005 with Steven Sloane conducting. It was, to say the least, a thrilling and surreal experience for me.
Naturally, I have many musical influences. On some level, both conscious and unconscious, they were probably all affecting my writing. They range from the early film composers such as Bernard Herrmann, Nino Rota, Dimitri Tiomkin, Max Steiner and Erich Korngold, to my “classical” influences of Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, Dmitri Shostakovich and Carl Orff. I also cannot omit early Kurt Weill and Duke Ellington as playing an equal role, along with the enigmatic Harry Partch and one of my few living influences, Philip Glass.
In general, I consider myself to be a musical throwback. I am forever attached to the music of the early 20th century when, for me, orchestral music flourished alongside the creation of jazz in a unique and remarkable way. I suppose this piece mixes up all my influences in a kind of musical “gumbo.” I hope it’s interesting and perhaps even entertaining.
– Danny Elfman
Danny Elfman Movement 5 Lyrics
Spanish lyrics by Claudia Brant & Livia Corona
English translation by Livia Corona
I Forget
SOLO
I had a thought that rapidly I lost,
I ask here and there,
where did I leave it?
Not here, not there,
CHORUS
not there or over there,
SOLO
not in the garden nor in the attic,
CHORUS
where could it have gonne?
SOLO
Where did it go?
don't know, don't know,
could I have left it at the café?
CHORUS
On a paper, in the fountain
With the coin I threw in?
Did it go swimming with a fish?
My dog perhaps carried it off, hidden behind his bone.
I sniff the garden secretly - could it be buried there?
Not here, not there, not over there,
I look there, I look here, and nothing, ah ...
A-one, a-two, and a-forgot,
my cleverness has left.
My story is erased again,
there is no today, nor never, nor afterward,
there is no today, nor never, nor afterward...
My reasoning fades out inside a cup of sugar,
my soul is turning into salt inside a drawer.
I am riding on a cloud that rises, rises, and rises,
And it will never stop; it leaves
it flies above the city; it leaves ...
O sensation! an inspiration
is just this moment coming to me!
Fascination and distraction -
tell me what I was talking about?
I go here, I go over there,
I go there, I go over here,
With a black crow that is chasing me. Ah!
I'm looking in the kitchen, in the garbage cans,
Inside a shoe, sunken in the sofa,
My life and reason going incognito are.
I look under the tablecloth, in a loaf of bread,
On scribbles on paper long ago thrown away,
Decorations on cake, in the washing machine.
SOLO
My genius is gone, my idea escaped,
I have forgotten my plan, my story is lost.
CHORUS
How, how?
My thoughts have moved into a tin can.
Between pillow and mattress
my dream has gotten stuck.
Not here, nor there, nor over there,
I look there, and there, and nothing ...
they are swimming in the coffee,
dancing on the wall,
jumping around in a net
or in the soap, or in a vase,
or a balcony, or in the garden,
or in the hall, or among the salt,
or in a drawer, where is it,
where did it go... my life?.
SOLO
My thoughts have moved into a tin can.
My reasoning is fading...into where, into where is ...
SOLO AND CHORUS
Not here, nor there, nor anywhere. Ah!
