I also dedicate my song today to Tracey Adamson from Leeds, West Yorkshire. Tracy celebrates her 50th birthday today. Have a nice day, Tracy and please don’t forget to leave some room for lots of cake and suitable refreshments. Love Bill and Sheila xxx
My song today is ‘Somewhere My Love’ which originated from the lietmotif ‘Lara’s Theme’. ‘Lara’s Theme’ is a name given to a leitmotif that was written for the film ‘Doctor Zhivago’ by composer Maurice Jarre. A leitmotif is a recurrent theme throughout a musical or literary composition, associated with a particular person, idea, or situation. Soon afterward, the leitmotif became the basis of the song "Somewhere, My Love". In 1967, "Somewhere, My Love" won a ‘Grammy Award for Best Performance by a Chorus’, and was nominated for the ‘Grammy Award for Song of the Year’.
While working on the soundtrack for ‘Doctor Zhivago’ Maurice Jarre was asked by director David Lean to come up with a theme for the character of Lara, played by Julie Christie. Initially, Lean had desired to use a well-known Russian song but could not locate the rights to it, and delegated responsibility to Jarre. After several unsuccessful attempts at writing it, Lean suggested to Jarre that he go to the mountains with his girlfriend and write a piece of music for her. Jarre says that the resultant piece was ‘Lara's Theme’, and Lean liked it well enough to use it in numerous tracks for the film. In editing ‘Doctor Zhivago’, Lean and producer Carlo Ponti reduced or outright deleted many of the themes composed by Jarre. Jarre was angry because he felt that an over-reliance on ‘Lara's Theme’ would ruin the soundtrack.
Jarre's esthetic fears notwithstanding, the theme became an instant success and gained fame throughout the world. By special request of Connie Francis, Paul Webster later took the theme and added lyrics to it to create "Somewhere, My Love". Connie Francis, however, withdrew from the project when the lyrics were presented to her because she thought of them as too ‘corny’. A few weeks later, Francis reconsidered her position and recorded the song nonetheless, but by then Ray Conniff had also recorded a version of his own, reaching Number 9 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ chart in 1966. Conniff's version of the song also topped the ‘Easy Listening’ chart in the U.S. for four weeks. Despite Conniff's success, Francis also had her version released as a single, and although it failed to chart in the US, it became one of her biggest successes internationally, becoming one of the ‘Top 5’ in territories such as Scandinavia and Asia. In Italy, her Italian version of the song, ‘Dove non so’, became her last Number 1 success. Various other versions of it have since been released.
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I had returned from having spent a few years living in Canada when I first saw the film ‘Doctor Zhivago’. The scene that I most remembered the film for wasn’t the ravishing and rape of Lara by her mother’s lover, Victor Komaovsky but the journey by sleigh through the snowdrifts of the Russian winter backcloth, combined with the haunting tune of ‘Lara’s Theme’ playing in the background throughout the movie.
FILM SYNOPSIS: During the Russian Revolution, Yuri Zhivago (Omar Sharif), is a young doctor who has been raised by his aunt and uncle following his father's suicide. Yuri falls in love with beautiful Lara Guishar (Julie Christie), who has been having an affair with her mother's lover, Victor Komarovsky (Rod Steiger), an unscrupulous businessman. Yuri, however, ends up marrying his cousin, Tonya (Geraldine Chaplin). But when he and Lara meet again years later, the spark of love reignites.
This snow ride by sled in the film reminded me of my arrival in Canada during the winter of 1964. Meteorological records reveal 1964 was a particularly cold winter. During my initial month, I lived in Quebec before moving to live in Montreal. The Laurentian Mountains are a mountain range in southern Quebec, Canada, north of the St. Lawrence River and Ottawa River, rising to the highest point of 1.166 metres at Mont Raoul Blanchard, northeast of Quebec City in the Laurentides Wildlife. The mountains are so close to Montreal that you can easily go skiing for the day. In winter, there is also dog sledding and ice skating.
I will never forget the sheer exhilaration of sledding through the mountain snow. My only regret at the time was that I didn’t have a beautiful young woman like Laura by my side to keep me company. Instead, I had to make do with a Canadian sled driver who whipped the horses far too much for my liking which were pulling the sleigh. For one mad moment, I wished I’d been sitting alongside him. Had I been, he would have found himself being mysteriously jolted from the sleigh by the elbow of an animal-loving Irish man, recently arrived from England.
Love and peace Bill xxx