A Place in the Sun: Suite (1951)

Sections
Prelude
Angela
Loon Lake
Farewell & Frenzy
The Farewell

Note
How many times have we all heard a new film score and thought we heard an “old friend”? Plagiarism or coincidence? I think many times it is just plain coincidence, and here is an example of a reverse situation. In 1958 Franz Waxman conducted the West Coast premiere of Dimitri Shostakovich’s Eleventh Symphony. While studying the score, he noticed a striking resemblance between the end of the second movement and the chase fugue “Farewell and Frenzy” in his A Place in the Sun: Suite written seven years earlier for a concert at the Hollywood Bowl. Waxman knew full well that Shostakovich could not possibly have seen the film (since it had not been shown in the Soviet Union), and was genuinely amused at this strange coincidental quirk of music and fate.

This concert suite, arranged by Waxman from his music in the film, contains the sound most people remember from the score: a striking wailing sound of a very high alto saxophone. Waxman auditioned 100 saxophone players before hiring Bill Hamilton to record the soundtrack.

The premiere of the Suite was conducted by the composer with Ted Nash as saxophone soloist on September 25, 1963, at the Hollywood Bowl.

— John Waxman