I’m unsure if this has been discussed before, but I’m very curious about what type of music Halley’s symphonies were supposed to be like. Does anyone know specifically the type of orchestra his music sounded like? Was it Romantic, Baroque etc? I also don’t know the type of music she liked specifically, which obviously would reflect the type of sound he would have created. Personally, the one composer I equate with Hally is Ralph Vaughan Williams, but that’s simply because he’s one of my favourite composers. Perhaps that is not the style she intended and is indeed something more along the lines of Mozart. Ideas?
I’m unsure if this has been discussed before, but I’m very curious about what type of music Halley’s symphonies were supposed to be like. Does anyone know specifically the type of orchestra his music sounded like? Was it Romantic, Baroque etc? I also don’t know the type of music she liked specifically, which obviously would reflect the type of sound he would have created. Personally, the one composer I equate with Hally is Ralph Vaughan Williams, but that’s simply because he’s one of my favourite composers. Perhaps that is not the style she intended and is indeed something more along the lines of Mozart. Ideas?
Try Rachmaninov…
Gustav Mahler
I’m very curious about what type of music Halley’s symphonies were supposed to be like. Does anyone know specifically the type of orchestra his music sounded like?
According to this (scroll to the bottom of the page): http://facetsofaynrand.com/book/chap7.html
the music she had in mind for Halley’s fifth concerto (no symphonies mentioned) was this, presumably without the singing:
I understand she listened to Rachmaninov’s Second Concerto, third movement while writing the closing part of Atlas Shrugged… which mentions Halley’s Concerto of Deliverance being played. So perhaps they are similar, and if not all that similar, at least similar in “spirit.”
I understand she listened to Rachmaninov’s Second Concerto, third movement while writing the closing part of Atlas Shrugged
Do you have a citation? Facets of Ayn Rand by Mary Ann Sures (linked above) says something else. Also, there’s a Peikoff podcast that covers the same ground, and basically agrees with her.
http://www.peikoff.com/2009/09/28/episode-081-9282009/
About 7 minutes in.
Do you have a citation? Facets of Ayn Rand by Mary Ann Sures (linked above) says something else. Also, there’s a Peikoff podcast that covers the same ground, and basically agrees with her.
http://www.peikoff.c…de-081-9282009/
About 7 minutes in.
Well, this is MOST peculiar. I read this in “Essays on Atlas Shrugged.” I went to the relevant chapter, which turned out to be excerpts from Facets of Ayn Rand. I couldn’t find anything there about what she listened to.
So where am I getting this from? I _distinctly_ remember reading this recently.
So where am I getting this from? I _distinctly_ remember reading this recently.
Beats me. Of course, the finale of the Rach 2nd is referenced in The Fountainhead, maybe you’re conflating the two.
Beats me. Of course, the finale of the Rach 2nd is referenced in The Fountainhead, maybe you’re conflating the two.
I am pretty confident that’s not it. I noticed that reference a year or so before the Essays on Atlas Shrugged came out, in fact that is what caused me to dig up the Rach CD and seek out that specific movement and pay attention to it, after which of course I loved it. (I don’t know why I didn’t notice it when I first played the CD!) Wherever it was I read this, I know I was thinking “and she mentioned it in the Fountainhead too!”
I now have it running through my head as an “ear worm” and for some reason I am not at all desperate to cure it.
On a different but related subject, many have griped that Halley was left out of the movie, but I think that was a smart move. Whatever music they used for him would have had to be superlatively good, and there’s no guarantee anyone would have been available to do that. More likely it would have been middlin’ stuff, and half the fans of the novel would have simply seized on it as another reason to hate the movie.
I now have it running through my head as an “ear worm” and for some reason I am not at all desperate to cure it.
If you’re going to have a tune stuck in your head, the Rach 2nd concerto is one of the better choices. Unlike, say, the Rach 2nd symphony, where it’s liable to morph into a nagging pop song lyric.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v60qgwtOQCI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgIy9-eyDcg
On a different but related subject, many have griped that Halley was left out of the movie, but I think that was a smart move. Whatever music they used for him would have had to be superlatively good, and there’s no guarantee anyone would have been available to do that. More likely it would have been middlin’ stuff, and half the fans of the novel would have simply seized on it as another reason to hate the movie.
I think they should have had the composer take the melody from the Mussorgsky piece that Rand liked (embedded above), and spun it out. Like Max Steiner did with “As Time Goes By” in Casablanca.
Thanks! I figured it was along the Romantic stream. I would have been surprised if she was referring to something along the lines of Vivaldi. Rachmaninoff seems fitting.
I’m unsure if this has been discussed before, but I’m very curious about what type of music Halley’s symphonies were supposed to be like. Does anyone know specifically the type of orchestra his music sounded like? Was it Romantic, Baroque etc? I also don’t know the type of music she liked specifically, which obviously would reflect the type of sound he would have created. Personally, the one composer I equate with Hally is Ralph Vaughan Williams, but that’s simply because he’s one of my favourite composers. Perhaps that is not the style she intended and is indeed something more along the lines of Mozart. Ideas?
His greatest work was a piano concerto (and I can safely assume it was Romantic). And I don’t know if this helps, but I’m almost certain that Miss Rand once wrote that anything by Rachmaninoff, the piano virtuoso/composer, was good.
Gustav Mahler
Definitely not Gustav Mahler. Yeah, Mahler composed, but he was mostly a conductor, and never a pianist. (Halley played his masterpiece on the piano.) And Mahler was not a Romanticist. I read a biography on him called Mahler, A Life. And I’ve reread RM at least 10 times. Trust me.
I think that prototype of Richard Halley was Rachmaninov
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I think that prototype of Richard Halley was Rachmaninov
Dearest Leonid–I got that from We the Living, where Kira always wrote, Dearest Leo–, we agree!
I think that prototype of Richard Halley was Rachmaninov
I’ve always thought that, too.
See the bottom of this page for support for the idea of Rachmaninov as the prototype for Halley:
Definitely Rachmaninoff