Film music / Golden-age Hollywood · 1938
The Adventures of Robin Hood
Erich Wolfgang Korngold
The Adventures of Robin Hood · 에리히 볼프강 코른골트
Why listen
Adventure moves at more than one speed here: a brief public gesture can open into a sustained private feeling.
Listen and read
1938 film score; current reference audio is the later Stromberg/Moscow Symphony restoration recording, in its 2015 Naxos edition, not original film audio.
Tracks · previews
English editorial edition
Album story
Try the compact opening, “Main Title - Muted Fanfare,” beside the much longer “Love Scene.” The contrast offers a way into Korngold without a plot synopsis or a catalogue of themes. One prepares you for action; the other asks you to stay with an emotional situation. Listen for how expectation changes when the music has room to linger.
The year 1938 identifies the film and score, not the recording offered here. Our reference is the later Moscow Symphony Orchestra performance conducted by William Stromberg, using John Morgan’s score restoration. Recorded in 2003 and represented by the 2015 Naxos edition, it is a new performance of restored musical material, not cleaned-up audio from the original film. Korngold is the composer; Stromberg is the conductor on this recording.
A score becomes a listening sequence
In a film, a sudden musical turn can answer an image almost before we notice it. On an album, those turns become a structure to follow on their own. Compare the fifth track, whose title collects several scenes, with the sustained span of “Love Scene.” Consider how much information a short transition carries, and how differently a longer passage keeps your attention without requiring another event.
Two moments of recognition
The Academy awarded Korngold the Original Score prize at its 1939 ceremony, honouring films released in 1938. That belongs to the score’s original historical reception. Rob Barnett’s favourable MusicWeb review, first published in 2003, concerns the restoration and modern performance. Keep those moments apart: later recording quality cannot tell us precisely what audiences heard in a cinema decades earlier.
The extra track has another job
The reference edition places theatrical trailer music after “End Cast.” Treat that as a change of purpose rather than an additional dramatic conclusion. A trailer must invite and compress; the preceding sequence can develop and delay. Finish the main programme first, then return to the trailer separately. This also makes a long album easier to navigate: start with contrasting passages, then discover the connections between them.
The album through its tracks
Compare the opening and Love Scene; hear the trailer separately after the main programme.
Main Title - Muted Fanfare
The paired title is a useful instruction: do not let the first gesture settle your impression of the whole cue. Ask how the music adjusts its bearing as it moves from an opening statement towards another dramatic function. You need not attach every phrase to a character. Listen instead for the difference between announcing something and preparing the next moment. Then jump to “Love Scene” and return here. The brief opening may feel more concentrated after that longer stretch. These suggestions refer to Stromberg’s later performance, not to the balance of music, dialogue and effects in the 1938 film. Its clarity is an interpretative opportunity, not proof of the original cinema sound.
Reference · Apple Music: 2015 Naxos reference performance, 26 tracksLove Scene
Among titles crowded with entrances, contests and movement, this cue provides a longer interval for feeling to develop. Follow the length of a phrase before trying to name its theme. Where do you expect a resting point, and what happens to that expectation when the line continues? Comparing this with the opening makes a useful distinction between intensity and speed: an emotional passage need not hurry to feel urgent. There is no need to know what happens to the characters afterwards. Let the music establish its own span of attention. The reference track is a later orchestral performance, so do not expect the dialogue or effects that would shape the scene in the film.
Reference · Apple Music: 2015 Naxos reference performance, 26 tracks
Listen next
Continue with John Williams’s Star Wars for another orchestral approach to adventure and character, without assuming a specific act of borrowing.
Star Wars ↗References & editorial note
Written for English readers. Album facts are referenced below; listening suggestions are editorial interpretations. AI-assisted editorial review; not independently human-reviewed.