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Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- One Victory's Inception, Production, and Impact
- Two The Twenty-Six Victory Episodes
- Postscript
- 1 Robert Russell Bennett: A Grandson's Victory Remembrance
- 2 Victory at Sea: A Chronology
- 3 Digest of Victory's Music-Scoring Statistics
- 4 Sample Shot List (EP26)
- 5 The 1959 Companion Book
- Bibliography
- Index
Episode 14 - “Roman Renaissance”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2024
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- One Victory's Inception, Production, and Impact
- Two The Twenty-Six Victory Episodes
- Postscript
- 1 Robert Russell Bennett: A Grandson's Victory Remembrance
- 2 Victory at Sea: A Chronology
- 3 Digest of Victory's Music-Scoring Statistics
- 4 Sample Shot List (EP26)
- 5 The 1959 Companion Book
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
EP14's focus is Italy and the surrounding Mediterranean. The Allies’ July 1943 invasion of Sicily preceding Italy's capitulation and naval surrender is followed by the 1943–44 assaults on Salerno, Naples, and Anzio. The concluding scenes are in Rome, which the Allies enter in June 1944 as the occupying Germans retreat northward.
The program opens with Hitler's railroad excursion to visit Mussolini in Rome, and the pageantry of his reception there “after four years of war”—though some of Salomon's footage is from Hitler's earlier, mid-1938 travels to Italy. Following a short opening fanfare for trumpets, the oboes and bassoons play GER, accompanied by the snare drum's hard-to-hear sixteenth notes. At 1:34 [A] is a German-style march for Hitler's arrival, followed by an “Italian” march [B] at 2:20, reprised at 2:48. We see an Italian military band, complete with flicorni and sarrusophone, and the music catches the bass drummer's tempo at 2:23 very closely. For the festive evening scenes in Rome from 3:12 a processional-style bass line at 3:23 underpins Rodgers's NAPLES-ROME at 3:39 [C]: “The foundations of fascism are crumbling. Its days are numbered. This is the twilight of an era.”
EP14 transitions at 3:52 to North African scenes of Eisenhower, Montgomery, and other Allied leaders planning the attacks on Sicily and then the Italian mainland. At 4:05 Bennett's trumpeters, in turn, take up three bugle-call figures in counterpoint: A major (trumpet 2, muted), C major (trumpet 1, Harmon mute), E flat major in the lowest voice (trumpet 3, open). Allied troops leave their North African ports, and some Royal Navy men gather topside to sing [D] at 5:00. The men's northward Mediterranean crossing merits an extended sequence: “In the path of the smooth-sailing convoy a storm is waking up—unreasonable, unpredictable, threatening weather.” The music, not much subdued under the narration, is a pair of re-used SONG-SEAS settings, the first at 5:17–5:55, taken from EP5 (18:29–19:07). The second re-use, 5:55–6:40, is from EP3 (19:10–20:00). Though the fresh underscoring that follows at 6:42 [E] accompanies invasion troops receiving their final briefings, there's practically no footage of the Sicilian invasion itself and we learn of the “six weeks of vigorous fighting before Sicily falls.” Captured Germans at 7:12 are led to LSTs headed back across the Mediterranean to North Africa, and at 7:21 an Allied ship founders while hauling German prisoners southward across the Mediterranean.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Music for Victory at SeaRichard Rodgers, Robert Russell Bennett, and the Making of a TV Masterpiece, pp. 233 - 240Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2023