Links about Henry Mancini
About Henry Mancini
Excerpts from the Henry Mancini entry at the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (Oxford Music Online):
(b Cleveland, OH, 16 April 1924; d Beverley Hills, CA, 14 June 1994). American arranger, composer, conductor and pianist. Raised in West Aliquippa near Pittsburgh, he learnt the flute and piano as a child. In his early teens he developed an interest in jazz, especially music of the big bands; he began to teach himself arranging, then had lessons with the theatre conductor and arranger Max Adkins in Pittsburgh.
Mancini developed a successful career as a recording and concert artist, and he reworked many of his film scores into best-selling commercial albums, most of them issued by RCA. However, these albums normally contained commercial arrangements of the main themes and consequently are not reliable indicators of his gifts as a dramatic composer. Often he gave 50 or more concerts each year as a guest pianist and/or conductor of bands and ‘pops’ orchestras. Some of his later albums (including recordings with James Galway and Luciano Pavarotti) were milestones of the popular/classical ‘crossover’ approach. He received four Academy Awards (two for best score, two for best song), 20 Grammy Awards and several career achievement awards. In 1989 he co-wrote an engaging and informative memoir.
Mancini's greatest influence as a Hollywood composer was felt from 1958 to about 1965, the period when he pioneered fundamentally new styles. He made imaginative use of jazz and popular idioms, which he applied not only to detective stories and film noir (building upon convention) but also to sophisticated romantic comedy, slapstick and other genres. He became known for well-crafted and dramatically apt theme songs, notably those for Breakfast at Tiffany's (‘Moon River’), The Days of Wine and Roses, Charade and Darling Lili (‘Whistling Away the Dark’) – and for witty instrumental pieces, as for Hatari!, The Pink Panther and The Great Race.
Pictures from Henry Mancini Exhibit
Items in collection
In the Pink by Call Number: M1527.2 M22Piano solos with separate (inserted) flute part. Sample contents: Pink Panther * Baby Elephant Walk * Breakfast at Tiffany's * Medley of Days of Wine and Roses, Charade, and Moon River.
Henry Mancini by ISBN: 9780252036736Publication Date: 2012-02-07Henry Mancini, the first publicly successful and personally recognizable film composer in history, has practically become a Hollywood brand name. In his lifetime, he sold thirty million albums and won four Oscars and twenty Grammy awards. Through Mancini, mere background music in movies became part of pop culture--an expression of sophistication and wit with a modern sense of cool and a lasting lyricism that has not dated. The first comprehensive study of Mancini's music, Henry Mancini: Reinventing Film Music describes how the composer served as a bridge between the Big Band period of World War II and the impatient eclecticism of the Baby Boomer generation, between the grand formal orchestral film scores of the past and a modern American minimalist approach. Mancini's sound seemed to capture the bright, confident, welcoming voice of the middle class's new efficient life: interested in pop songs and jazz, in movies and television, in outreach politics but also conventional stay-at-home comforts. As John Caps shows, Mancini easily combined it all in his music. Mancini wrote his first dramatic music for a radio series in 1950. By the mid-1960s, he wielded influence in Hollywood and around the world with his iconic scores: dynamic jazz for the noirish detective TV show Peter Gunn, the sly theme from The Pink Panther, and his wistful folk song "Moon River" from Breakfast at Tiffany's. Following the evolution of Mancini's style, Caps traces the history of movie scoring in general: from the jazz-pop of the 1960s to the edgier, electro-funk harmonies of the Watergate 1970s, from the revisionist 1980s marked by New Age trends and new jazz chords to the frustrating New Hollywood of the 1990s when films were made by committees of lawyers rather than by artisans. Through insightful close readings of key films, Caps traces Mancini's collaborations with important directors and shows how he homed in on specific dramatic or comic aspects of each film to create musical effects through clever instrumentation, eloquent melodies, and the strong narrative qualities of his scores. Accessible and engaging, this fresh view of Mancini's oeuvre and influence will delight and inform fans of film and popular music.
Did They Mention the Music? by ISBN: 9780815411758Publication Date: 2001-12-17Best known for the "dead-ant" theme to the Pink Panther films, Henry Mancini also composed the music to Peter Gunn, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Orson Welles' Touch of Evil, and the Academy Award winning soundtracks to Victor/Victoria and The Days of Wine and Roses. In a career that lasted over thirty years, Mancini amassed twenty Grammy awards and more nominations than any other composer. In his memoir, written with jazz expert Lees, Mancini discusses his close friendships with Blake Edwards, Julie Andrews, and Paul Newman, his professional collaborations with Johnny Mercer, Luciano Pavarotti, and James Galway, and his achievements as a husband, father, and grandfather. A great memoir loaded with equal parts Hollywood glitz and Italian gusto.
