Hollywood’s “Golden Age” was, of course, black and white. What gave the pre-World War II talkies their “color” was their ornate, even gaudy, music.
Many of those scores were the product of migr composers and their American followers, who wrote in a reactionary tuneful, tonal, lush Wagnerian style. Although the language of a Europe that was no more, it became the sound of American cinema.
That, to some extent, is the theme of the Pacific Symphony’s American Compos- ers Festival this year, taken from a chapter in “Artists in Exile,” the latest intriguing book by the orchestra’s artistic advisor, Joseph Horowitz.
The festival began Thursday night at the Rene and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall in Costa Mesa with a long program by both European and American film composers of yore. The odd man out was James Newton Howard, who demonstrated how the “Golden Age” sensibility
