Movie Soundtracks: Classical?

[Grazioso]

hahahaha...puh-lease...all you have to do is simply listen to the music that's all, no one has to "study" anything here, get real....name me one film composer who's music even begins to approach the profundity of a Bela Bartok, Anton Webern or Igor Stravinsky. Go ahead name me one, no one in their right mind would make such a claim, not even those film composers!

If you refuse to think about or study film and film music, and instead--judging by the implications of your posts--just approach it half-awake as disposable entertainment, of course you won't get what everyone is talking about here, just as you can't fully appreciate or adequately judge Bartok, Webern, or Stravinsky without digging into their works and understanding music theory and history.

[anasazi]

I have a large number of movie soundtracks on my shelves.  Well, I love movies, or I did.  And I often liked the music in them. I think at one time I wanted to think of them as sort of classical.  Probably because at that time many of them were composed by Herrmann or Rozsa or other composers with some classical background. 

But overall, I would not say they (soundtracks) were more classical than simply the use of the orchestra and some various compositional techniques.  At one time, soundtrack albums were produced by either the composer themself or someone with a music background.  Many of these albums combined shorter tracks, added endings and made the listening experience a little closer to listening to classical music.  Today, we just get albums that are the exact same thing we hear in the theater or on the DVD.  What works with the film, works with the film, but it doesn't usually make a great listening experience that way (unless you are simply listening to it to re-live the flm). 

So I would mostly offer that today, movie soundtracks are not 'classical' to me and are more of a media branding convention (if anything).

[sound67]

Today, we just get albums that are the exact same thing we hear in the theater or on the DVD.  What works with the film, works with the film, but it doesn't usually make a great listening experience that way (unless you are simply listening to it to re-live the flm). 

This has less to do with the nature of the releases but with the very inferior talent of many of today's most popular film "composers": men like Hans Zimmer or Danny Elfman never studied composition proper (they enter their "sketches" as keyboard samples e.g.) and the resulting scores, while usually arranged and orchestrated by the real pros, are often insipid and simplistic. In particular, the influence of Hans Zimmer and his "Media Ventures" team of composers is lamentable. Even e.g. Howard Shore's work on the Lord of the Rings trilogy, despite being moulded along classical lines, is unsubtle and structurally weak when compared to the work of the classic film composers or more recent masters like Goldsmith and Williams.

There are exceptions, of course: John Corigliano, his former pupil Elliot Goldenthal, Michael Giacchino and others are able to provide music that can stand comparison with their older colleagues.

Thomas

[Morn]

But overall, I would not say they (soundtracks) were more classical than simply the use of the orchestra and some various compositional techniques.  At one time, soundtrack albums were produced by either the composer themself or someone with a music background.  Many of these albums combined shorter tracks, added endings and made the listening experience a little closer to listening to classical music.  Today, we just get albums that are the exact same thing we hear in the theater or on the DVD.  What works with the film, works with the film, but it doesn't usually make a great listening experience that way (unless you are simply listening to it to re-live the flm). 

Note, that that's actually what film music fans generally demand. If you really love a composer, you tend to want to hear every note they wrote for that particular film. There's always the skip button too. Note I don't think film music fans listen to film music because it has the same.... sort of listening experience to symphonies. They know and expect it's structure. The development structure of film music is not so much geared towards a listening experience, but rather variations on themes and orchestration to echo in music what's happening to characters and ideas of the film, and there can be a lot of artful intelligence in the way a composer does this, it's just a very non-linear development structure which people most familiar with classical music might have trouble with.
What do I mean by non-linear development structure? Well lets say you start a film with an old man, and go to a flashback to tell his life story. You may start with a fully developed theme, and then jump to a completely undeveloped version of it with the flashback.... This is what film music development is supposed to be, purposeful but not for a listening experience so much, that doesn't mean it's not enjoyable to listen to, it just means you should not expect it to develop in a way a symphony would.

[vandermolen]

I consider movie soundtracks to be 'classical' wherever they use instruments which I typically associate with Western Art Music. So I file my 'Titanic', 'Finding Neverland' and 'The Piano' soundtracks along with my other classical discs.


<awaits derision for confessing to owning the first of the above-mentioned soundtrack CDs>

Don't worry, I have just been listening to Trevor Jones's score for "The Dark Crystal"

[Norbeone]

name me one film composer who's music even begins to approach the profundity of a Bela Bartok, Anton Webern or Igor Stravinsky. Go ahead name me one, no one in their right mind would make such a claim, not even those film composers!

All three of those composers are great composers, undoubtedly. But are you willing to suggest that every work of theirs is better than every piece of film music? A pretty strange and maybe silly question but one that I think may suit your unconditional preferral of the classical composer over the film composer.

I can identify greater musical depth and greater quality of contruction in some scores (or individual tracks) from Elfman, Goldsmith, Rota and Morricone that is is not available to see or hear in some works by many of the classical composers that I know and love. That is a fact that I have absolutely no qualms in admitting. I think your have a certain musical arrogance and snobbery that won't allow you to admit that such a thing is possible.

[Israfel the Black]

As I pointed out earlier, John Carpenter's Halloween is a prime example of that, and thats why its considered one of the most successful in the genre of film music. But despite this does it compare with transcendant levels found in Bach? Does Berrmann's Psycho or Vertigo compare with Bartok's String Quartets or Concerto for Orchestra? Does any film score compare to those levels of profundity ? I think not.

Yes, easily. Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra does not aspire to be much of a profound experience. It quotes and attempts to parody bits of Shotakovich and does some other minor things with light melodies and timbre. I consider it more of a technical exercise than a great work of artistic expression. It could easily be argued it is one of his less ambitions efforts due to its accessible themes and melodies, which departs from the more philosophical avant-garde modernist style he was typical to. Nevertheless, your ears do the talking and says it's great, despite its context or true technical merits. Therefore, you really have no intellectual argument here on the quality of film music since you openly reject studying it or learning the circumstances in which many of the great pieces are constructed, and thus your opinion is reduced to mere subjective preference. This is perfectly fine, however, but it is a mistake to presume film music simply cannot compare on some objective standards of profundity, since the only thing that constitutes profundity to you is if it is pretty for the ears.

thats a big claim.

It is an accurate claim. The audacity of it is, of course, relative to the interpreter.

one that i have yet to hear...and ive heard most of the highly regarded ones! fun sure, entertaining yes, but truly profound & life changing? and no one is denying that certain scores are milestones within film music, but very few are, a lot of them rip of copland or ravel or etc, formalic....and film music at its most successful compared with art music's greatest heights? nah, i still stand what i said earlier, it never comes close...people here can point me to a bunch of books but it still wont change my opinion of that. I have to hear it!

Nino Rota's score for La Strada I consider immensely profound, and both the film and its respective score have had a great philosophical impact on my life. Another example is the score for Wong Kar Wai's In The Mood for Love and Richard Einhorn's transcendental score for Carl Theodor Dreyer's 1928 masterpiece The Passion of Joan of Arc (which I recommend to any music lover). Once again, this is coming from someone who appreciates program music of tone poems, operas, musicals, and of course film. You have already established you have no respect for any of these mediums as a great form of musical artistic expression. This alone says enough about your views. You also seem to adopt the 71 dB school of logic that presupposes all music cannot be reevaluated, further appreciated and understood as a great piece of art through education (yet likely are open to the change of musical value on personal experience and maturity, which essentially is the same rationale, but one independent of embracing the intellectual academia). Of course, in the academic realm for the past 5 centuries theorists and art critics would completely dismiss those who base artistic appraisal on gut reaction alone, abandoning the possibilities of learning the complexities, nuances, context, and meaning of a particular work. Nevertheless, it is not your shallow views on art that I wish to question here, but merely point out that, yes, this music is profound for many, even if is not for you and your limited 18th Century standards.

and there are many excellent & highly entertaining films that dont even use orchestras or acoustical instruments at all.....they simply use a lot of popular music, or next to no music at all etc. And in many films the background music is largely mixed lower than the more important sonics, like dialog, sound etc...throughout the duration of the film....

This is trivial logic. Not every film is piece of art. Just like there are many theater programs which do not utilize an original or great score. Even in absolute music you have pieces written to play in the background at weddings or for whatever less ambitious reasons. It is absurd to reduce the entirety of film music and its accolades due to what is merely lack of ambition for artistic greatness in a score by a particular filmmaker. You cannot expect a great film score in a movie from a director who does not wish to utilize film music as anything more than narrative device -- only great artists will produce great art.

[Bogey]

....I have the following cds that I would like to pass on.  I am downsizing my soundtrack collection and rather give 'em to a good home than resell.  They are all used, and I believe I bought all of them used.  Fairly good shape.  I believe the Braveheart my have a gliche at the end, but it did not bother me as I never listened to it anyway.  Cannot exactly recall.  Think of this as a very poor B-Movie equivalent to Harry's Refusal Bin.   I will be happy to cover shipping as well.  I just need a PM with an address:

Braveheart: James Horner

Seabiscuit: Randy Newman

Shine: David Hirschfield

The Matrix: Don Davis

American Beauty: Thomas Newman

Babe: Nigel Westlake

The X-Men: Michael "K-Men"

Edward Scissorhands: Danny Elfman

There may be more down the road.

[MN Dave]

....I have the following cds that I would like to pass on.  I am downsizing my soundtrack collection and rather give 'em to a good home than resell.  They are all used, and I believe I bought all of them used.  Fairly good shape.  I believe the Braveheart my have a gliche at the end, but it did not bother me as I never listened to it anyway.  Cannot exactly recall.  Think of this as a very poor B-Movie equivalent to Harry's Refusal Bin.   I will be happy to cover shipping as well.  I just need a PM with an address:

Braveheart: James Horner

Seabiscuit: Randy Newman

Shine: David Hirschfield

The Matrix: Don Davis

American Beauty: Thomas Newman

Babe: Nigel Westlake

The X-Men: Michael "K-Men"

Edward Scissorhands: Danny Elfman

There may be more down the road.

If you ever think of giving away or even selling the soundtrack to the first Conan movie, let me know. It's supposed to be awesome.

[Bogey]

If you ever think of giving away or even selling the soundtrack to the first Conan movie, let me know. It's supposed to be awesome.

[MN Dave]

Do you have it? People rave about it. I just added it to my CD Universe wish list.

[Bogey]

Do you have it? People rave about it. I just added it to my CD Universe wish list.

No.  I always wanted the rare version with extra tracks so never picked it up hoping that it would be eventually be re-released by someone like Varese Sarabande through their soundtrack club or possibly Film Score Monthly.  However, I have lost a lot of interest in listening to many soundtracks on their own and stopped looking many moons ago.  If I see one I will snag it for you.

[MN Dave]

No.  I always wanted the rare version with extra tracks so never picked it up hoping that it would be eventually be re-released by someone like Varese Sarabande through their soundtrack club or possibly Film Score Monthly.  However, I have lost a lot of interest in listening to many soundtracks on their own and stopped looking many moons ago.  If I see one I will snag it for you.

Thank you very much but don't bother. I'll pick it up eventually.