This is a brilliant and genial concert overture that is close to being a mini-concerto for trumpet as well. The music originates from a film that was an unexpected and celebrated flop at the box office.

Franz Waxman (born Franz Wachsman in Königshutte, Germany, in 1906 and died in Los Angeles in 1967) was one of Hollywood's leading film composers, having escaped Hitler's Germany in 1933 and started his American film work in 1934. He wrote at least 140 film scores—some authorities say the number was 144, while others say "nearly 200."

He contributed one of his most sparkling scores to a film that had music at its core, The Horn Blows at Midnight. Written by Sam Hellman and James V. Kern and directed by Raoul Walsh, this was a fantasy film starring leading radio comedian Jack Benny as Athaneal, a trumpeter-angel sent down from a weirdly corporate heaven by The Big Boss to sound his trumpet to end the world, now regretted by the deity-mogul as "just a six-day job." Athaneal likes Earth so much that he botches the job. When granted a reprieve by Big Boss and another chance to play at midnight, it ensues that he has hocked his trumpet, leading to a slapstick finale.

This finale and a framing device setting the story as a dream were seemingly added when test audiences disliked the odd story. It did not help the film, which sank rapidly and would have been forgotten except that Benny got laughs for the rest of his broadcast career by referring to "that rotten picture" as a way to twit the extreme vanity of his on-air persona.

Despite its failure, the film today has numerous champions who point out that its surreal story was quite in line with Benny's radio humor and believe later audiences are more able to accept the weirdness of the story.

Waxman developed more interest in writing orchestral concert music after he founded the Los Angeles International Music Festival in 1947. One of his specialties was the genre of a brilliant short concerted piece, most notably his Carmen Fantasy on themes from Bizet's opera. When he presented this overture to the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in 1949 he sent along a note that said he composed it at the suggestion of fellow film composer and close friend Bernard Herrmann as a concert overture with an extensive trumpet solo part. The main theme of the overture is the opening title music for The Horn Blows at Midnight.

By this time Benny had made the film such a laughingstock that audiences were amused, and probably surprised to hear that such good music emerged from it. As Waxman's note suggests, the opening theme is a good-hearted trumpet fanfare, and the trumpet player continues to have a romping time with variants and developments of the theme throughout the seven-minute overture, which always retains its richly comedic character. Its first performance was by Leopold Stokowski at the Hollywood Bowl.

© Joseph Stevenson, Rovi