Three rough journeymen

"I consider the Western and jazz to be the only two art forms that are originally American." The quote is attributed to the legendary Clint Eastwood. For us, the silent film of the season is the most important silent western by the great "Grapes of Wrath" director John Ford. The western heroes, cowboys and crooks of the western follow their real-life role models as artificial figures (long before Lucky Luke) only a few years apart; they are even more contemporaries of the audience than illustrative nostalgia. The streams of settlers, life on the frontier of the land made their own (the "frontier") - all this is still a bit of the "real" world in the years of the early Westerns.

This is also where we find ourselves in "Drei raue Gesellen" or "Three Bad Men", which Ford shot in 1926 as his last silent film. Of course, everything that makes a good western is here: suspense, drama, plus the right amount of humor.

Our friend Timothy Brock, one of the most important silent film conductors and composers in the world, wrote his score for this film in 2010 with his own family history in mind. His grandfather had told him about old family memories from the "Oklahoma Land Rush". On this basis, he decided to develop his score with an authentic sound of his American homeland. This year in March, we will already be hearing music in this vein, including music by Roy Harris - who, like Aaron Copland, David Diamond and Virgil Thomson, was the inspiration for this film score with its clearly American tonal language. Of course, it also contains other ingredients that we classically associate with the Western: Western songs and old Irish folk tunes.

John Ford / Timothy Brock
(1894-1973 /*1963)
THREE BAD MEN
THREE ROUGH FELLOWS
Western from 1926

CAPITOL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Conductor: Timothy Brock