Alfred Newman - How Green Was My Valley (1941)

I thought it high time that the great Alfred Newman should be featured here and for one of his most beautiful and touching scores.

Alfred Newman was a remarkable composer during Hollywood's 'golden age' and he received no fewer than 45 Academy Award nominations, making him the second most nominated person in the history of the Academy Awards, tied with John Williams (Newman's scores for The Hurricane and The Prisoner of Zenda were also nominated at a time when composers were not eligible to be nominated in the score category). He won the Oscar 9 times; in 1940 he was nominated for 4 different films. Between 1938 and 1957, he was nominated twenty years in a row. An extraordinary achievemrnt and a remarkable musician.

His intensely romantic style was characterised by a seemingly limitless melodic gift and a penchant for extraordinarily rich multi-layered string writing. He was also a great conductor, and had an uncanny knack for capturing the mood of a story or the personality of a screen character.

His score for this famous film (directed by John Ford, starring Maureen O'Hara, Roddy MacDowall and Walter Pidgeon) is one of his finest, and certainly helped the film win the Academy Award for best picture of its year, though Newman's score was sadly overlooked.

Original stills and posters accompany the separate music soundtrack, conducted by Mr Newman himself. Once again, the concertmaster here is the ubiquitous and wonderfully gifted Louis Kaufman.

Category:

Music

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• Alfred Newman
• How Green Was My Valley