RonPrice

NEW LIFE AND A NEW LARA

Oscar-winning French composer Maurice Jarre who wrote the rich, lyrical scores for films including Doctor Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia, died last weekend in Los Angeles at the age of 84. I post here this prose-poem as a personal quasi-eulogy to this pioneer-traveller in the world of music composition for film.-Ron Price, Tasmania
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Ten weeks after I had come to the firmest and most realistic of decisions I had yet made regarding my future career—the decision to become a primary school teacher--the film Dr. Zhivago was released. During my pre-adult life(1963-1944), I had wanted to be a bricklayer, a fireman and a professional baseball player--in that order. My career as a primary school teacher also proved unrealistic and was short-lived, although it proved to be much more realistic than those other three alternatives mentioned above, all of which were early life enthusiasms born of childhood and adolescent play and dreams.

On 22 December 1965, the day that the film Dr. Zhivago was released, I was on my way to a Baha’i youth winter school at the University of Waterloo campus in Waterloo Ontario. The film was shot in the previous months while my father lay dying in Dundas Ontario, while my mother was finishing her working life and retiring and while I was majoring in history, philosophy and sociology at McMaster University in Hamilton Ontario. In the first year(22/12/65-22/12/66) of the release of Dr. Zhivago, a film that became one of the most popular 20th century movies, I moved to Windsor to study under Dr. Jameson Bond, an anthropologist at the University of Windsor and a Baha’i who had lived in the high Arctic for a dozen years; I also began my teacher training and started a relationship with Miss Judy Gower whom I married in August 1967.

After pondering with some anxiety for eight months(12/65-8/66) the decision to teach school in the Canadian Arctic and after finishing my degree; after selling ice-cream for the Good Humour Company for three summer months and after attending a one week Baha’i youth training institute in Michigan, I left my home town, family and friends and started teaching career on Baffin Island among the Inuit. -Ron Price, Pioneering Over Four Epochs, 30 March 2008.

I knew nothing of Dr. Zhivago
until years later and little of the
Russian revolution or communism,
for that matter, although I had studied
Marx’s Economic and Philosophical
Manuscripts.1 I had discovered my
own romance not unlike Zhivago’s in
a revolution of quite another order in a
snow-bound world of quite another time.

With tragedy and a new high-seriousness
built into my daily life and with decisions
made---the enterprize all came to naught:
the north, the Arctic, the Eskimos, health,
marriage, career and, like Zhivago, I found
an inner poetic beauty, a new life and--like
Zhivago--I created one with my own Lara2
and life went on and on toward my own
mysterious end which has not yet come.

1 Written by Karl Marx in the summer of 1844.
2 While married, but separated from my first wife, I formed a relationship with a woman who became my second wife in December 1975.

Ron Price
30 March 2008

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married for 42 years, a teacher for 35 and a Baha'i for 50

Oblivion

It isn't my kind of music a bit "old". But it fits the movies 100%


And why the hell would you post this in the lyrics forum part ???????? MOVED !

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RonPrice

I Was Thinking of the Lyrics of Lara's Theme and I have not posted at this forum much. I was not aware of the movies section or, in this case, the Music General section. Point noted and point taken.-Ron Price, Tasmania

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married for 42 years, a teacher for 35 and a Baha'i for 50

Oblivion

No problem But lara's theme doesn't have lyrics ??? Or am I mistaking ??

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RonPrice

Somewhere My Love (Lara's Theme)

Lyrics by: Paul Francis Webster
Music by: Maurice Jarre

Arranged by: Ernie Freeman

From the Album: That's Life

From the Film: Doctor Zhivago (1965)

Label: Reprise Records

Recorded: November 17, 1966

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Somewhere, my love, there will be songs to sing

Although the snow covers the hopes of Spring

Somewhere a hill blossoms in green and gold

And there are dreams, all that your heart can hold

Someday we'll meet again, my love

Someday whenever the Spring breaks through



You'll come to me out of the long-ago

Warm as the wind, soft as the kiss of snow

Till then, my sweet, think of me now and then

Godspeed, my love, till you are mine again



<jazz instrumental-first four lines>



Someday we'll meet again, my love

I said "someday whenever that Spring breaks through"



You'll come to me out of the long-ago

Warm as the wind, and as soft as the kiss of snow

Till then, my sweet, think of me now and then

Godspeed, my love, till you are mine again!

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married for 42 years, a teacher for 35 and a Baha'i for 50

CP/M User

Oblivionofsoul wrote:

No problem :) But lara's theme doesn't have lyrics ??? Or am I mistaking ??

Could do - though I'm not familiar with the song and have only ever heard about Dr. Zhivago (never seen it), though popular Instrumental songs such the popular Piano theme song Exodus from the film Exodus I've heard with Lyrics (which was sung by Peter and Gordon)! :-D

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Lord Grendel

I didn't realize he did the score for Lawrence of Arabia.

I am glad that movie soundtracks saved the art of classical composition from near extinction, so many of our greatest contemporary composers have depended upon this format to continue bringing this amazing genre of music to us.

ikvat

and he was the Jean-Michel father!

Lord Grendel

Thanks Olivier, I wasn't sure but that came to mind when I read this post.