Ennio Morricone is well known in the film music business for his westerns and
mafia film scores. But in his enormous output one can also find gems in many
other genres. Sacco and Vanzetti was a film by Italian director Giuliano
Montaldo about the execution of two apparent political agitators in the 1920s.
With this film Morricone found a wonderful opportunity for blending his
masterful melodramatic themes with a vocal performance of enormous magnitude:
that of Joan Baez. Baez, also a socially active voice in the early sixties (at those times in good company with the likes of Bob Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel), complemented Morricone's main theme in such a way that it has transcended the borders of film music and has become an immortal ballad for freedom and liberty for all. Her three part ballad is heartwrenchingly beautiful and poignant, even thirty years later. The lyrics are based on the texts of the liberties and rights of the individual in the USA ("give me your tired and your poor" refers to the inscription at the base of the statue of liberty). Morricone underscores her vocal performances almost in counterpoint but does not distract from the effectiveness of Baez's vocals.
Morricone did not employ a large orchestra; his usual orchestra for Italian movies in the seventies varied from 25 players to about 55 players. Here, the sheer simplicity of thematics, combined with an extremely effective orchestration, clearly shows an optimal effect of dramatic scoring, as the music lives on far beyond the reach of the film itself. The hopelessness for Sacco and Vanzetti is wonderfully depicted by heavily melancholic strings and woodwinds and Morricone's innovativity even reaches as far as creating a theme for the electric chair, consisting of a synthesizerlike sound, resonating and undulating with a chilling intensity. (In previous themes there is some reference to this sound, as if looking forward to an ominous ending.) The Here's To You finale again repeats some of the finest moments of thematical material, accompanied by Baez's unique vocal talents. If anyone does not know this particular piece, this is certainly the chance to hear Morricone at his very best! Although Ennio Morricone has done some remarkable things with vocal performers, this collaboration with Joan Baez is one of his most successful endeavors. A modern masterpiece of film scoring!
Tracklist
A1 Hopes Of Freedom
A2 The Ballad Of Sacco & Vanzetti - Part 1
A3 In Prison
A4 The Ballad Of Sacco & Vanzetti - Part 2
A5 Sacco And His Son
B1 The Ballad Of Sacco & Vanzetti - Part 3
B2 Freedom In Hope
B3 To Die Is A Duty
B4 The Electric Chair
B5Here's To You
(192 kbps, cover art included)
18 Kommentare:
a classic score by maestro morricone - and a wonderful amazon review by rené van os! :-D
cheers, lucky
p.s.: gdm reissued this soundtrack with extra tracks (14 in total) in 2005.
This post has personal significance for me. My great-great uncle served on the jury for the Dedham trial and voted to convict Sacco and Vanzetti. When Governor Alvin Fuller appointed a three-man commission to review the fairness of the trial and the unethical and biased conduct of Judge Webster Thayer in response to world outcry and protests about the verdict, my uncle criticized his decision and his comments were reported in the press. As he and his family slept one night in their Milton home, anarchists bombed and destroyed it. The late historian of anarchism Paul Avrich speculated that the bombers were members of a cell of followers of Luigi Galleani, an anarchist who published Cronaca Sovversiva, a journal in which he advocated assassinations and bombings to effect change. He also wrote La Salute E In Voi, an instruction manual for making bombs. Galleano was deported from the United States in 1919; however, his followers had been identified as suspects in several bombings, an attempt in mass poisoning, and several assassination attempts. On June 2, 1919, Carlo Valdonoci, a former editor of Cronaca Sovversiva and an associate of Sacco and Vanzetti, inadvertently blew himself up when attempting to bomb United States Attorney General Palmer’s home.
Sacco and Vanzetti were followers of Galleani. There is no evidence that they engaged in any acts of violence; however, they virulently opposed what they deemed to be an oppressive economic system and sought to change it. To portray them as simple naïve immigrants victimized by prejudice is to deny them their political commitment and beliefs. When they were captured in Brockton, Massachusetts, they were carrying hand guns and alleged ballistic evidence presented by the state indicated that Sacco’s gun had been used in the Braintree robbery. Ironically one of their acquaintances who allegedly orchestrated the bombings on Wall Street after their arrest had an uncommon surname which was the same as that of my immediate neighbors in the town in which I grew up. I have no doubt that Sacco and Vanzetti were political prisoners and believe that, at a minimum, Vanzetti was innocent. Unfortunately he had already been tried and found guilty for an attempted robbery and attempted murder in Bridgewater on December 24, 1919. That unjust verdict for a crime he did not commit would be submitted to my great-great uncle and the other jurors as evidence that he had a violent criminal past.
The town would help rebuild my great-great uncle’s home. He and his family were not seriously injured but my great-great aunt, my great-grandfather’s sister, would limp for the remainder of her life and she and her children suffered psychological damage. I would meet one of my cousins two-generations removed years later and noticed that he appeared nervous, a condition my great-aunt attributed to the bombing. Notwithstanding Judge Webster Thayer’s inflammatory remarks and anti-immigrant biases, I do not believe my great-great uncle voted as he did based on their immigrant status. I’m not sure about him but his wife and siblings, including my great-great grandfather and great-great grandmother were immigrants. Moreover, they lived in an integrated neighborhood and had friends of diverse ethnicities and race. I do know from conversations with my father that the ballistic evidence was highly influential and the climate of fear surrounding anarchists and “Reds” was a factor.
Ironically Leo need not have feared the commission’s findings. Incredulously they deemed the judge’s comments were not influential and the trial was fair. The commission of prominent Boston Brahmins, including the president of Harvard,
were anti-immigrant and rubberstamped the court proceedings.
I have read extensively about the trial. As noted above, Vanzetti was clearly innocent and I suspect that the ballistic evidence regarding Sacco’s gun had been tampered with.
I cannot defend the trial nor the death penalty to which I am virulently opposed. At a minimum, my father would agree that the finality and injustice of the death penalty would prevent any reconsideration of the facts with testimony from Sacco and Vanzetti.
I have Italian-American friends and we have discussed the trial, verdict, and execution and the chilling effect it had on their first and second-generation parents. They felt themselves to be strangers in a strange land. I am uncertain whether the first-generation Italian wife of Leo’s nephew, my father’s brother, knew of the family connection. She died before I had an opportunity to discuss it with her.
As a socialist living in the destructive capitalist economy of a country seeking to maintain empire, the lesson I derive from the trial and executions is that fear of the other drives people to make extreme and incredibly destructive decisions regarding civil and human rights and the humanity of others. The period in which the trial took place was analogous in some respects with the political climate in Germany during the Baader-Meinhof era. Even today Ulrike Meinhof’s daughter disparages her mother as an agent of the DDR. I have recently read Meinhof’s writings and Heinrich Boell’s novel regarding the willingness of Germans to concede freedoms to security, and wonder why a daughter would deny the sincerity of her mother’s political convictions or fail to recognize their development over time. Disagreeing with the political beliefs does not justify the character assassination. In claiming her mother was an agent, she denies the merit of those criticisms of the Bundesrepublik written by her journalist mother that were valid. One can denounce terrorism without denying the legitimacy of some of Meinhof's critique.
Sadly I do not believe we have learned much from the Sacco-Vanzetti trial and executions. For many in this country, it is forgotten history. For me, the political climate of this country after September 11, 2001 has imposed the same fears and reactionary decisions which constrain our freedoms and deny the humanity of others. The deaths of so many Americans September 11, 2001 are horrific enough but the politicians in this country have waved the flag, condemned dissent as unpatriotic and un-American, and made us complicit in two wars in which many more Afghan and Iraqi civilians were killed and their countries destroyed. We have also ceded our rights and civil liberties to oppressive legislation such as the Patriot Act and uncritically accept widespread electronic surveillance as a necessary evil to protect our safety. I recall the Sikhs and others who were turbans and were erroneously identified as Arabs, as well as the innocent Arabs and Arab-Americans and Muslims, who have been victimized or killed in hate crimes in the aftermath of September 11. Name your scare, Reds, anarchists, Communists, Islam, and we respond like Pavlov’s dogs and react to unknown terror by imposing a climate of terror and fear on ourselves and others. Regrettably we are less vigilant about rightwing Christian extremists who look like us and I believe we will regret our lack of concern.
Thanks for posting this recording. Postings such as this are why I keep returning to this blog. It is a voice for sanity and a promoter of great music. By the way, Massachusetts is a small state with strange connections between generations. For example, Johnny Most, the long-time announcer for the Boston Celtics basketball team, was named after his grandfather Johann Most, a German immigrant who espoused anarchism and propaganda by the deed; that is, use of dynamite as a tool for change. Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman were inspired by Most's theories and Berkman attempted to assassinate Henry Clay Frick in response to Frick’s oversight of the repression and murder of striking workers at Andrew Carnegie’s Homestead Steel Works in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. As a teenager, I was introduced to Frick’s grandson whom my father invited to our home. Frick was doing business with the company for which my father worked and, although we were at best working class, my father was impressed by the Fricks’ success and he and the grandson hit it off. Needless to say, I was not impressed and am equally unimpressed by Carnegie’s philanthropy, which did nothing for his employees or their families and constitutes for me a monetary salve for a terminally ill conscience.
Thansk a lot for letting us share your personal connection with this! All the best to you!
That was very interesting, Feilimid.
Thank you for this.
Thank you, Anonym. Writer Sarah Vowell once commented on The Daily Show about the election Shrub, the second Bush: I talk about going to [George W. Bush's] Inauguration and crying when he took the oath, 'cause I was so afraid he was going to wreck the economy and muck up the drinking water'... the failure of my pessimistic imagination at that moment boggles my mind now.
Frankly, I almost feel that way now and am struck by how my comments on July 1, 2014 about the current state of my country failed to account for the rise of a leading presidential candidate with fascistic tendencies who wants to register Muslims, build a wall to keep Mexicans from crossing the Rio Grande and entering the land we stole from their country in a bogus war, and repeatedly makes bigoted, racist, and sexist comments while promising supporters that he will restore the imperialist role of this country and bully other countries, a restoration that so many of his supporters want. Of course, his party’s candidates glib discussion of carpet bombing, water-boarding, and other heinous acts of war never entail sending their own children to serve.
Were Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley not running for the highest office in our country, many of my friends and I would truly despair at the race- and immigrant-baiting that recalls when the Palmer raids took place and immigrants were rounded up and deported for their political beliefs because of the destructive actions of a few. Sacco and Vanzetti believed in violent anarchism to impose political and economic change; however, there is no evidence that they participated in any violent acts prior to their arrests. There is no doubt that Vanzetti was innocent but I remember the fear of the Reds that my older relatives deeply felt because of the anarchist bombings of the teens and twenties. I can understand it because they were relatively uneducated and relied on the participant press for allegedly objective news.
Some pundits hold that Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted by an all Anglo-Saxon jury and, by believing such, display their ignorance. When my people came to this country, they were colonial subjects (victims) of England’s rule over Ireland and their papers listed them as Irish ethnics but British subjects. One can only conclude that they were Anglo-Saxon only if one is truly ignorant of Irish and Irish-American history, which I might argue is unacceptable given the large presence of Irish and Irish-Americans in eastern Massachusetts where Sacco and Vanzetti were tried.
One can be outraged about the trial given the tolerance of the presiding judge for the prosecution’s misconduct and inflammatory prejudicial anti-anarchist and anti-immigrant remarks. The judge himself made comments to his friends that he would see that the Reds hanged and, too, made prejudicial statements during the trial. However, the notion that Sacco and Vanzetti were simple men who merely held pacifistic leftist views and were scapegoated because they were Italian immigrants is simplistic in my view. Their immigrant status was no doubt a factor because they were “the other”, but they were scapegoated, in large part, because of their political views. Even now, some hold the view in this country that the first amendment consists of irrelevant words because when it comes to this country, one should love it or leave it. That attitude was prevalent and on bumper stickers here during much of my teenage years when this country was hopelessly bogged down in the Vietnam war. The idea of immigrants coming to this country and criticizing was and is anathema to nativists.
Sadly, political ignorance in this country has resulted in the current president being denounced as a fascist socialist, as if the term made any sense, and Bernie Sanders as a communist. I have, no doubt, that the same accusations will be levied against the Democratic nominee whether or not it is Sanders. Consequently, one could be severely depressed about the rise in acceptance of extremist views here, and especially the main stream media’s affording Trump so much publicity because he is sensationalistic and shocking and those traits attract viewers and then doing the same for the white supremacist seditious terrorists who bear arms and have illegally seized Federal property in Oregon.
Almost ninety years after Sacco’s and Vanzetti’s execution, many Americans fear “the other” and want to deprive dissenters of their civil and human rights, and engage in endless warfare abroad. The hysterical fear of Syrian immigrants that undermines what the president wants to do out of humanitarian consideration is despicable. In the city in which my wife and I lived before leaving our native state, there was a large Syrian and Lebanese community. The desire to deprive them of their civil rights based on their religion is all too reminiscent of what was done to Japanese-American citizens and Japanese residents of this country living on the west coast during World War II.
As Trump rants and appeals to many in the Republican party, I am saddened by the lack of awareness about U. S. history, such as the effort to exclude Irish and other Catholics because they allegedly owed fealty to Rome and threatened the Protestant identity of this country and the incarceration and appropriation of propriety of Japanese Americans and residents in this country during World War II despite no evidence for support for Japan’s war effort. The belief that Muslim-Americans must continually prove their loyalty by denouncing Islamists is also disturbing. As an Irish-American raised in Boston, I don’t recall anyone asking us to denounce the IRA when it terrorized London and other British cities. Although Boston was an Irish Republican stronghold and organizations like Northern Aid covertly supported the IRA, I don’t recall anyone monitoring all of us in our churches or organizations or calling for the deportation of undocumented Irish who worked in so many restaurants, pubs, and construction jobs in Boston at that time. Instead, I recall prominent Irish American politicians from Massachusetts and New York calling for raising the immigration quota for Irish. Of course, the undocumented Irish looked like us. Moreover, I don’t recall the British reacting against IRA terrorism by prohibiting Irish immigrants until “they were able to sort it out.”
I don’t recall many raising an outcry about Reagan’s covert weapon sales to Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran less than five years after American embassy workers were held hostage and Khomeini denounced the United States as the Great Satan and called for death to the United States. I don’t recall many raising an outcry about the U. S. government’s support of jihadists in Afghanistan in its proxy war against the Soviet Union. I don’t recall many questioning why we still give so much foreign aid to Egypt and consider Saudi Arabia a staunch ally when the majority of September 11 hijackers came from both countries. For that matter, I don’t recall many questioning why we consider to be a “good ally” Saudi Arabia, a radical Wahabiist regime that has exported its extremist theology and distorted Islamic beliefs for decades, regularly beheaded members of its population, prohibits infidels from visiting Mecca and Medina, and has members of its royal family who supported Al Qaida in 2001 and ISIL today. I defy anyone to articulate for me the difference between Saudi Arabia and the ISIL Caliphate especially given Saudi Arabia’s destruction in Yemen achieved in part with U. S.-provided munitions and support of radical Islamists in Syria.
I don’t recall many American contemporaries holding the majority of European Christians in Nazi- and occupied-Europe morally responsible for silently watching their Jewish neighbors be subjected to discrimination, deportation, and then genocide. Even now some say that we can’t blame everyone who watched and said nothing. If we are willing to hold all Muslims accountable and expect them to cry out, why do we excuse Europeans who didn't speak out or act? Whom do we hold responsible for the silence during the century of Christian terrorism practiced in the North and South of this country against African Americans, Catholics, and Jews by the Klu Klux Klan? Often with the approval of local, state, and Federal law enforcement. The reality is that the specter of hysteria about reds in the Sacco-Vanzetti era now manifests itself as disdain for and bigotry against immigrants and Muslims.
In this country, we fear the other, those who have different religious beliefs, ethnicity, and race, and make unwarranted generalizations and react based on fear. Yet all gun owners would raise a huge outcry if we generalized that, given the number of mass murders in this country, we should bar all gun owners from holding guns or restrict their rights in any way, such as by revising the second amendment or even requiring more stringent registration laws. Of course, a 12-year old black boy is killed for playing with a toy gun and the gun-wielding white supremacist seditionists in Oregon are interviewed by the media and provided a platform to air their views. Unlike Sacco and Vanzetti, they are not regarded as the very real danger they and their ilk represent for representative democracy in this country.
I recall in the 1980s asking a friend why we were opposed to the rise of a radical Islamist state in Iran, yet wholeheartedly supported the jihadists in Afghanistan. Even now we support in Egypt a military coup that overthrew a democratically elected government, slew thousands of citizens, and oppressed human and civil rights, and freedom of the press and speech. Yet were any of those citizens to strike out at the United States because of the U. S. government’s support and weapons sales, we would feign lack of comprehension because, after all, we believe we are only a benevolent force in the world.
We have had more than twelve years of military involvement in the Middle East with miserable results. ISIL filled the vacuum created in Iraq by the disreputable and illegal war against a secular leader in Iraq, whom we once armed to the teeth to fight a war he initiated in Iran, and the support of Malaki despite his discriminatory policies and misgovernance. The former vice-president of a U. S. government that supported and sold weaponry to Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran denounced him as equivalent to Hitler less than a decade later and cited the same horrific acts he committed against his people while we supported him. There is a reason we call Richard Cheney, Dick. Then again, I still think he was second to a president who spoke English as a second language and lacked a first.
People without hope or power turn to terrorism because it is effective. Anwar Sadat, Menachim Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, Eamon DeValera, Gerry Adams, Malcolm McGuinness, Ian Paisley, Nelson Mandella … the list of those denounced as terrorists who became members of governments and whom we subsequently recognized as political leaders is longer than I can describe here. The contras in Nicaragua were terrorists and Pinochet overthrew a democratically elected government in Chile and committed atrocities against Chileans while avidly supported by the U. S. government.
The United States and Britain overthrew a democratically elected government in Iran and installed the Shah because the Iranians and their prime minister wanted to control their own oil resources. But that’s all ancient history, right, and people shouldn’t equate the policies of a government we elect and assert is representative of us with us as people, right?
Of course, that would be as unfair as demonizing all Muslims or gun owners for the actions of a few, right? Our confused and contradictory policies in the Middle East and our support of brutally repressive regimes in Arab countries should hold no consequences, right? So in the spirit of fear-mongering and reactionarism so rampant now, what should we do about Christians opposed to abortion given the number of bombings of abortion providers and slayings of doctors who provide legal abortions? Ban them all until we can sort it out? No, let’s continue to watch Fox news and support the restrictions of other rights until those restrictions affect us. Then we can talk about an oppressive government that deprives us of our freedoms and scratch our heads at how it happened or blame those who don’t agree with us.
Woody Guthrie, Joan Baez, and other artists either sang, wrote poems, novels, and articles about the injustice done to Sacco and Vanzetti. Who is singing or writing now?
Sadly, Pete Seeger is no longer with us. Sorry, Zero, that this repost serves as the basis for a pissed-off American to sound off; however, I cannot forget the lessons we should have learned from Sacco and Vanzetti and the feeling that we are experiencing déjà-vu all over again. It makes me want to holler….
thank you for this. and for hosting the rich selection of informative comments. -a.v.
can you re-up that wonderful album ?
Sacco and Vanzetti (The Italian Years): Mary Ellen Melnick. Original solo piano composition. Check it out.
Wonderful post! Thank you very much from a passionate fan like you! I love your blog..... I'm just sorry that I found it only yesterday!
Andyrock66
Thanks a lot for your comments - now there´s a fresh link.
Hello,
Thank you so much for this great post (and all other great posts too)!
Greetings from Switzerland - Nenest
You are welcome, Nenest. Best wishes!
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