The Covered Wagon (HD) (1923) with original Hugo Riesenfeld score

About the movie:
The Covered Wagon, filmed with a budget of over $780,000, was released in 1923 and is considered by many to be the first epic western. The movie, directed by James Cruz and starring J. Warren Kerrigan and Lois Wilson, tells the story of a group of pioneers traveling across the United States from Kansas to Oregon in the 1840’s. Along the way the settlers face many hardships including desert heat, winter snows, hunger and attacks from Indians.

About the music score:
When he wrote the music score for “The Covered Wagon,” Hugo Riesenfeld was one of the most popular film composers in the nation. As was typical at the time, his score was compiled primarily from existing music. While I was fortunate many years ago to purchased original copies of the piano, 1st violin and 2nd violin parts on E-Bay, it seems that a complete set of parts for this movie doesn’t exist. The score, published by Richmond-Robbins, did identify by title and composer multiple pieces of music published by them but most of the other cues were not identified or simply notated as “copyright by…” without giving the title or composer. This required a fair amount of research to identify the title and composer for those cues. Once I had all of the cues identified I gathered full sets of parts for each selection and was able to piece together a working score. For the few pieces of music I was not able to identify I simply orchestrated myself using my piano and violin parts as guides. The result is probably fairly close to what the audience would have heard in a large theatre in 1923. There are multiple cues in the score that are not in any version of the film, these were probably edited out after the New York release in 1923 or possibly in 1926 when the film was re-released.

To see the title of each piece of music at the start of each cue, simply turn on the closed captioning while watching the video.

If you are interested in other films with scores compiled by Hugo Riesenfeld be sure to check out these links.

Beau Geste -    • Beau Geste (1926 ) with original Hugo Ries...  
Old Ironsides -    • Old Ironsides (HD) (1926) with original Ne...  

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Public domain note: All motion pictures made and exhibited before 1929 are indisputably in the public domain in the United States. This public domain status also applies to the music used for this film. My performance of this music, however, is copyright and may not be used without my permission.