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Who: The St. Louis Symphony conducted by Steven Jarvi
What: Casablanca
When: February 15 and 16, 2014
Where: Powell Symphony Hall

[Want to find out more about the music of "Casablanca"?  Check out my preview article!]

As often as I've seen the 1942 film "Casablanca," it wasn't until I heard Max Steiner's score performed live with the movie this past Saturday that I fully appreciated how important the music is in establishing the mood of key scenes and in advancing the story.

Everybody knows "As Time Goes By," of course.  Originally written by Herman Hupfeld for a 1931 Broadway show "Everybody's Welcome," the song is used in the film in various transformations to represent the ultimately impossible romance between Humphrey Bogart's embittered Rick and Ingrid Bergman's idealistic Ilsa.  Major, minor, fully realized or broken and fragmented, it haunts all their scenes and mirrors their thoughts.  It was always there in the background when I'd seen the film before, of course, but hearing it performed live made its importance that much clearer.

The same is true of the effective ways Steiner uses the Nazi anthem "Deutschland Über Alles" and the French national anthem "La Marseillaise" to symbolize the battle between the forces of fascism and the values fascists in general and Nazis in particular hated: liberté, egalité, fraternité.  The Nazi anthem, in one form or another, inevitably accompanies scenes in which the fascist threat is either on screen in the persona of the smirking Major Strasser (Conrad Veidt) or lurking as a presence in the plot.  "La Marseillaise" wins in the end, of course, as Rich and Louis (Claude Rains) stride off into the fog to carry on the fight.

And, of course, "La Marseillaise" figures prominently in one of the most famous scenes in the film.  A group of Nazi officers in Rick's Café have commandeered the piano and are giving voice to an aggressive version of the 1840s song "Die Wacht Am Rhein" ("Watch on the Rhine").  Sensing the rising anger in the room, Viktor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) signals the band to strike up "La Marseillaise" and the Nazis soon find themselves drowned out and silenced.  It's a powerful scene in its own right, but when backed up by the power of a live orchestra, it's simply overwhelming.

Many other moments in "Casablanca" take on added resonance when the music is heard this clearly.  American popular music figures prominently in all the scenes in Rick's Café Américain and Patrick Russ's ingenious live performing version of the score often has the live orchestra acting as a kind of back-up ensemble for the on-screen band, giving the music just a bit of extra punch.  I was particularly taken with the way the orchestra joined the "call and response" bits during M.K. Jerome and Jack Scholl's "Knock on Wood"—great fun.

Conducting for a live showing of a movie is, as I have noted before, a fairly specialized skill. It’s probably not part of the basic training of most classically educated conductors.  Nevertheless St. Louis Symphony Resident Conductor Steven Jarvi, aided by podium-mounted screens, did an excellent job and the musicians sounded as fine as always.  The expanded percussion battery—including multiple xylophones and marimbas along with piano and celesta—was kept especially busy.

If I have a criticism, it's that the balance between the voice tracks on the film and the live orchestra was rarely ideal, and important bits of dialog often got lost.  This seems to be a chronic problem with film events at Powell, either because of issues with the house sound system or hall acoustics, or both.  For people like my wife and me who practically have "Casablanca" memorized that probably didn't matter much, but I wonder if some of the younger folks knew what they were missing.

And that's a pity, because the dialog needs to be heard.  That's because, in my view, "Casablanca" is a film that still resonates today.  Nazi Germany may be a thing of the past, but home-grown fascist movements are flexing their muscles in far too many Western nations these days.  They hate liberté, egalité, and fraternité just as much now as they did in 1942.  Rod Serling said it best in the epilog to the 1963 "Twilight Zone" episode "He's Alive": "Where will he go next, this phantom from another time, this resurrected ghost of a previous nightmare - Chicago? Los Angeles? Miami, Florida? Vincennes, Indiana? Syracuse, New York? Anyplace, everyplace, where there's hate, where there's prejudice, where there's bigotry. He's alive. He's alive so long as these evils exist. Remember that when he comes to your town. Remember it when you hear his voice speaking out through others. Remember it when you hear a name called, a minority attacked, any blind, unreasoning assault on a people or any human being. He's alive because through these things we keep him alive."

The regular subscription season returns this weekend as Bernard Labadie conducts The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra with soloists Philip Ross (oboe), Andrew Gott (bassoon), Kristin Ahlstrom (violin), and Melissa Brooks (cello) in a program of music by Rameau, Haydn, and Mozart.  Performances take place on Friday at 10:30 AM, Saturday at 8 PM and Sunday at 3 PM, February 21-23, at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand.  For more information: stlsymphony.org.

Here's lookin' at you, kid: Fourteen fun facts about the music of "Casablanca"

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This Saturday and Sunday (February 15 and 16) the symphony celebrates Valentine's Day weekend by showing on of the great romantic films of all time, "Casablanca," with the orchestra playing the score live. Since Valentine's Day is on the 14th, here are 14 factoids about the music of "Casablanca," cribbed from imdb.com and other sources.

1. Dooley Wilson (Sam) couldn't play the piano. He was a professional drummer who faked it. The real pianist was Elliot Carpenter, a veteran of the James Reese Europe band who was also a conductor, author, and songwriter. Carpenter was playing behind a curtain but positioned such that Dooley could watch, and copy, his hand movements. Interestingly, Wilson was the only cast member who ever visited the real Casablanca.

2. Sam's piano sold for more than $600,000 at a New York auction in December 2012. The small, portable upright had only 58 keys. “It’s a cafe piano,” said the auctioneer at Sotheby’s, David N. Redden. “It was designed to be wheeled from table to table. The pianist would move it to the next table. It’s rather like the violinist coming round to each table.”

3. Warner Bros. had intended to use the "Horst-Wessel-Lied", the anthem of the Nazi party, during the "battle of the anthems" sequence. The copyright was controlled by a German company, however, so Warners dropped that anthem for the 1840s song "Die Wacht Am Rhein" ("Watch on the Rhine") rather than violate the rights (which would have prompted the German copyright holder on the song to prohibit the movie from being shown in any country not at war with Germany).

4. Many of the extras in that scene had real tears in their eyes. A large number of them were actual refugees from Nazi persecution in Germany and elsewhere in Europe and were overcome by the emotions the scene brought out.

5. The winner in that battle, the French national anthem "La Marseillaise," reoccurs throughout the film. It stands as a symbol for all the values fascists in general and Nazis in particular hated: liberté, egalité, fraternité (liberty, equality, brotherhood). The film begins and ends with "La Marseillaise"—a reminder that the fight for those values would go on.

6. That great romantic ballad "As Time Goes By" was written by lifelong bachelor Herman Hupfeld. It debuted in 1931's Broadway show "Everybody's Welcome", sung by Frances Williams,

7. The composer of the "Casablanca" score, Max Steiner, didn't want "As Time Goes By" used as the identifying song for Rick and Ilsa. After shooting had completed, Steiner said he would rather compose an original song in order to qualify for royalties. However, Hal B. Wallis replied that since the filming had ended, Ingrid Bergman had cut her hair very short for "For Whom the Bell Tolls" (1943) and she therefore could not re-shoot already-completed scenes that had used "As Time Goes By". In a 1943 interview Steiner finally admitted that the song "must have had something to attract so much attention".

8. "As Time Goes By" was a personal favorite of playwright and high school teacher Murray Burnett, whose unsuccessful play "Everybody Comes to Rick's" was the basis for "Casablanca." Burnett visited Vienna in 1938, just after the Nazis had entered. Later, after visiting a café in south France where a black pianist had entertained a mixed crowd of Nazis, French and refugees, Burnett was inspired to write his play.

9. After the film's release, "As Time Goes By" stayed on radio's "Hit Parade" for 21 weeks. However, because of the coincidental musicians' union recording ban, the 1931 Rudy Vallee version (which includes the rarely-sung verse) became the smash hit.

10. Because "As Time Goes By" had been written years before the film was made, it was deemed not eligible for an Oscar, and was not nominated for Best Song of the Year. The song is, nevertheless, number 2 on the American Film Institute's (AFI) 100 Years... 100 Songs list.

11. The music heard over the film's opening credits was a retread. Steiner had originally written and used the theme for the 1934 John Ford film, "The Lost Patrol". Steiner slightly altered the tempo and instrumentation of this theme music for "Casablanca".

12. Although M.K. Jerome and Jack Scholl are listed in the opening credits for "Songs", they are in fact represented by only one song ("Knock on Wood"). The other song they wrote for "Casablanca," "Dat's What Noah Done," was cut from the picture.

13. According to The Making of Casablanca: Bogart, Bergman, and World War II By Aljean Harmetz, Corinna Mura, the female guitarist who sings "Tango Della Rose" at Rick's, was a popular singer who had her own radio program, performed three times for F.D.R., and appeared on Broadway and on the opera stage. "Trained by her parents to be a coloratura soprano from the time she learned to talk," writes Harmetz, "Mura ran away from opera as an adolescent. One of her partisans was Edwin Schallert, drama reviewer for the Los Angeles Time. Schallert gave Mura a grade of A+ and said she always performed brilliantly with the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera. Even though she was under contract to RKO for a while and she would come back to Warner Bros. in 1943 to sing the love song Steiner wrote for 'Passage to Marseille,' Mura's success on the stage never translated to movies."

14. American popular music is a constant presence in Rick's Café. "The carpet of background music," writes Harmetz, "includes 'Crazy Rhythm,' 'Baby Face,' 'I'm Just Wild About Harry,' 'Heaven Can Wait,' 'Love for Sale,' 'Avalon,' 'If I Could be with You One Hour Tonight,' 'You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby,' and 'It had to Be You.' Often the songs underscore the dramatic content. When Ilsa enters the café for the first time, the band plays 'Speak to Me of Love'."

The essentials: The St. Louis Symphony presents "Casablanca," with the score performed live by the orchestra under Steven Jarvi, Saturday at 7 PM and Sunday at 2 PM, February 15 and 16. Showings take place at Powell Hall in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org.