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| Robbins |
Howards End: (Richard Robbins) One constant of
cinema from the 1960's to the 2000's was Merchant Ivory Productions, the
partnership of director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant (and
typically screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala) that brought a long series
of period piece movies to the screen, most famously concentrating on
Edwardian England in the early 20th Century. The artistic and critical
height of their activity came in a period from the middle of the 1980's
to the early 1990's, during which time they received the bulk of their
mainstream awards consideration from the likes of BAFTA and AMPAS. Their
trilogy of adaptations of E. M. Forster novels began with
A Room with
a View in 1985 and ended with
Howards End in 1992, the latter
garnering an immensely positive critical response and turning a fair
profit after its substantial showing at the year's awards. Similar
socio-economic examinations are expressed through character drama in
these stories, and
Howards End in particular was a poignant
representation of battling classes and segments of society that must
resolve themselves for the betterment of England in the end. You have
wealthy industrialists, liberal and reformed bourgeoisie, and
impoverished lower classes all intermingling with each other when
members of their families engage in the usual rounds of fornication,
marriage proposals, and betrayals in
Howards End, all of these
characters tied together in the storyline by a common interest in one
beautiful countryside estate that shares the name of the film. The cast
of English actors in their prime was anchored by Anthony Hopkins and
Emma Thompson, whose awkward chemistry was successful enough to catapult
the latter to fame and cause them to reunite the following year for the
next Merchant Ivory movie,
The Remains of the Day. Unless you
have an established taste for these period English social commentaries
that rely upon an endless series of talking heads for their appeal, a
movie like
Howards End could bore you out of your wits. The same
could be said of the music for these pictures, most of which was
provided for Merchant Ivory Productions by either Richard Robbins or
Richard Bennett. While most of the notable entries in the series of
films have been scored by Robbins, his own career's notoriety resulting
from his awards recognition for these efforts during the early 1990's,
his music is arguably inferior in many regards when considered as a
larger sum of work for these Edwardian topics.
The tone of Robbins' contributions to these Merchant
Ivory films is often restrained and understated, approached as though
the music was meant for a mono television presentation rather than a
full-blooded feature. There are assets to the soundtrack for
Howards
End, but they are not of Robbins' own doing. The reason the score
was erroneously nominated for an Oscar (but no other awards) was because
of the adaptation of two Percy Grainger 1910's piano works, "Bridal
Lullaby" and "Mock Morris," into obvious places in the film, the credits
sequences most importantly. These elegant piano performances by English
concert pianist Martin Jones only occupy less than ten minutes of time
on the soundtrack, but their solo tone is easily the most memorable
aspect of the whole. By comparison, Robbins' orchestral soundtrack lacks
passion and sincerity, sleepwalking its way inoffensively through the
film and never lending true emotion to the narrative. His music for
these films always tended to be extremely introverted, but
Howards
End is so badly underdeveloped in its thematic core and instrumental
warmth that it is a practically useless score. Robbins does create
several recurring little motifs to generally distinguish the three
classes, and listeners familiar with this music may recognize some of
this usage as being reprised from his previous scores for Merchant
Ivory's adaptations of Forster. The grim tones of the piano in "The
Basts," for instance, is a common tool to juxtapose against the slight
classical opulence of "Music and Meaning" and "Leonard's Death."
Fluttering woodwind figures introduced in "Helen and Paul Call It Off"
are also a common thread, Robbins' tepid addressing of fleeting romance
in the story. More procedural are the woodwinds of "An Unexpected
Proposal," an arduous cue of nearly comatose personality for the older
characters in the story. A handful of singular moments recall
source-like applications, including "Tango at Simpson's-in-the-Strand"
and the score's liveliest moment, "At a Castle in Shropshire." Robbins'
music of suspense and action is truly awful, the stingers late in "On
the River" and "Leonard's Death" little more than obnoxious cymbal hits.
In none of these cues is there a sense of intimacy or warmth, the
pivotal "Return to Howards End" concluding the score with as stale an
atmosphere of clinical period ambience as the score's barely audible
portions before. This characteristic kills most Robbins scores on album,
and thankfully he would liven up the environment for
The Remains of
the Day the following year. You may as well be asleep when you
listen to
Howards End, because it'll do its best to put in that
state with its total absence of personality and depth.
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The insert includes a short note from the composer about the score, though it
is very difficult to read given the packaging's color scheme.
