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Full orchestral film scores (sheet music) in Los Angeles?


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Hey all,

Is anybody aware of any full orchestral film scores that are available for public viewing in Los Angeles? Supposedly the USC library has Elmer Bernstein and James Newton Howard collections that I'd love to check out. Is there anything else out there?

Sincerely,

~Horneristheman

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They should. I know Syracuse has Rozsa, Eastman has Courage. Library of Congress has some as well.

Generally though it isn't easy to view these things without a proper academic reason. If you all even knew what I went through with the Library of Congress to get El Cid!

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If you all even knew what I went through with the Library of Congress to get El Cid!

Well, now that you brought it up...why not tell? I am personally imagining a Mission: Impossible-esque heist, but I could be wrong....

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Well first they expect you to know the the call number when you walk in there.

To actually access the Library of Congress you need to have an official photo ID made, and sate your reason for requesting access. (Thankfully, the ID is a lifetime pass).

Your bags and coats have to be checked. You cannot bring anything inside the various parts of the library aside from research tools (notebooks, etc). My sister was able to talk her way into bringing in her camera, but that was a good 15 minute ordeal.

You reach the library you need to access (in my case, the performing arts reading room) and you are checked again to make sure you have nothing that isn't allowed in. You then get to fill out a request card for your item, give it to a librarian, and are instructed to take a seat at an assigned table.

They take the request, and in my case it comes up in their computer that neither volume of El Cid (first half of the film was one volume, everything from the entr'acte to the end is another volume) is housed in their on-site collection, even though my search at home told me it was on-site. Their off-site collection is housed somewhere in Maryland, I believe.

They decide to have someone check anyway. So somewhere in the depths of the building, an attendendent finds that El Cid IS on-site and thus the Library's private computer system was wrong!

So it comes up to me, is placed on my desk, and they unbid and open it for me. I ask if it would be possible to make photocopies and was turned down since I had no permission from the publisher. So I go through the score, looking for some of the information I needed - but of course there was no way I could have done the actual musical analysis there, and on their own paper no less! So I request to take it into one of the private piano rooms to "play through some spots" and permission is granted. My sister comes with me.

We are placed in a dark piano room, barely adequate lighting for our true purpose - to photograph the score! My sister did her best, with some decent results (she is training to be a profession photographer, I'd HOPE the results would be decent.). We managed to get about 16 cues done this way before we ran out of time and had to leave.

From there I contact Syracuse University, who also holds a copy of El Cid. On the basis of academic rights and after some exchange of paperwork and credit card numbers they proceeded to photocopy and mail to me about 40% of the score. Enough for what I needed, and of course I got to choose which cues were copied. (As it turns out I could have gotten more than what I requested, but I didn't want to push my luck.)

THAT is what I went through, plus a few minor annoyances along the way as well. Which is why I say, if you have no academic purposes, accessing this stuff is probably more difficult than it's worth - if not impossible in some places!

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Not LA, but close enough if you want to make the effort-- Bernard Herrmann's work is housed at UC Santa Barbara.

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Can't help you with L.A., but for those in the Washington, DC area, the Library of Congress has the full original scores to Horner's ALIENS and Goldsmith's ALIEN available for perusal (no copying) in their rare materials section.

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