Film (movie) Music

[vandermolen]

Played the Zimmer Gladiator score today, which I like as I do Gregson-Williams's Narnia Score. I can understand why some people are very critical of this type of music but I feel that both scores worked well in context.

The end of the traditional symphony orchestra soundtrack score may date back to the Bernard Herrmann/Alfred Hitchcock dispute over the score for "Torn Curtain".

[sound67]

Please? Star Wars, Star Trek, Jaws, Indiana Jones, etc.etc.etc.? 

Thomas

[karlhenning]

Played the Zimmer Gladiator score today, which I like as I do Gregson-Williams's Narnia Score. I can understand why some people are very critical of this type of music but I feel that both scores worked well in context.

And indeed, that is what they ought to do.

[sound67]

Karl, you're a continual disappointment. All this has been discussed here over and over.

Thomas

[sound67]

Just begun "FLAC'ing" my Hindemith CDs, one of them is an intriguing (silent-)film score written for an ensemble of Salonorchester size.



Unfortunately it is not possible to assess its impact in the film, since no copy of Fanck's Im Kampf mit dem Berge has survived.

Thomas

[Senta]

A new subtopic for Vandermelon's thread, if you will:

What are some soundtracks that you enjoy that have been connected to a movie released in the past six or seven years?  The reason I ask, is that I have bought very little in recent years and was wondering what efforts I should check out.

Thanks.

Hey Bogey,

There are a few standouts in recent years that I'd recommend highly:

John Williams: Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) Beautiful, subtle Oriental-themed score with prominent cello, Yo-Yo Ma has performed this music often in concert with Williams recently.

John Williams: The Terminal (2004) So underrated! Belies Williams' original roots as a jazz pianist, lush, romantic with jazz harmonies and some delightful clarinet work.

Also definitely his Catch Me If You Can (2002), with the 60s jazz references is very good and War of the Worlds (2005) for something rather more dark. Munich I never got into so much, though many like it.

You mentioned as well you like jazz scores, so a couple to try there would be:

Rolfe Kent: Sideways (2004) - Groovy jazz combo score and a cute film as well.

Michael Giacchino: The Incredibles (2004) - Basically an updated take on John Barry's Bond music for this Pixar animated film, very enjoyable listen.

Um...let's see....another children's movie that had a very good score was The Polar Express (2004) by Alan Silvestri, which had a nice title song too.

A few more lovely scores:

Alexandre Desplat: Girl With a Pearl Earring (2003) - Very beautiful, haunting score which reminds of Phillip Glass...this was for the film about Vermeer's famous painting.

George Fenton: Deep Blue (2003) - This is another arrangement of his great music for the BBC nature series Blue Planet about ocean life, Deep Blue was the film version and was actually recorded by the Berlin Phil.

James Newton Howard: The Village (2004) - Gorgeous music, like a mashup of Part's Tabula Rasa and VW Lark Ascending, with Hilary Hahn as soloist.

James Newton Howard: Lady in the Water (2006) - Yeah, the film sucked, but the score was magical...one of those better away from the film...

Howard usually writes very good efforts as above for director M. Night Shyamalan, though the films are kinda....hit or miss. Signs (2002) is another impressive one, with some cool minmalistic writing and fun nods to Herrmann.

Also can't go without mentioning Phillip Glass and The Illusionist (2006), he's written a few scores in recent years which sound similar to some degree, but this one was my favorite.

[eyeresist]

Glass wrote a soundtrack for the Lugosi Dracula - it's on the DVD, played by the Kronos Quartet. He was going for that air of strange unease that modern quartet writing can achieve, but I found it only adequate.

[Bogey]

Michael Giacchino: The Incredibles (2004) - Basically an updated take on John Barry's Bond music for this Pixar animated film, very enjoyable listen.

Thanks for the post.  The funny thing about the above is that Barry was hired to do this score, but then let Pixar know that he did not want to use the "Bond sound" for the score.     So they said that they will get someone that will. 

[Bogey]

Glass wrote a soundtrack for the Lugosi Dracula - it's on the DVD, played by the Kronos Quartet. He was going for that air of strange unease that modern quartet writing can achieve, but I found it only adequate.

Agreed. The cover was better than the music.

[vandermolen]

Please? Star Wars, Star Trek, Jaws, Indiana Jones, etc.etc.etc.? 

Thomas

Of these only the score for Jaws would be on my list worthy to stand alongside the Nine Symphonies of Beethoven and the four by Brahms, eight and three-quarters by Bruckner etcetcetc 

[sound67]

Of these only the score for Jaws would be on my list worthy to stand alongside the Nine Symphonies of Beethoven and the four by Brahms, eight and three-quarters by Bruckner etcetcetc 

Seriously though, there have been many powerful "symphonic" scores in (Hollywood) films since TORN CURTAIN, though I'd agree it is a case study why it went out of fashion between, say, 1965 and the early 70s - until SF and disaster movies brought it back.

Wasn't even Hitch's fault really. He had been pressurized by the "suits" (and, in particular, Universal boss Lew Wasserman), to not use Herrmann on the film but get a pop composer instead who could provide "a commercially exploitable theme song".

In the end, neither Wasserman nor Hitchcock got their wish: John Addison didn't provide a "pop score" (though his jazz-tinged theme is lighter in touch than Herrmann's "bells and whistles" would have been) - nor did they use the song that Addison wrote. 

Same thing happened again on FRENZY. After listening to parts of Henry Mancini's score, Hitch said: "If I want Herrmann, I'd get Herrmann" - a comment which much puzzled Mancini, who insists that his score sounded "nothing like Herrmann". Mancini was excused from the film, and Ron Goodwin wrote a score that wasn't remotely "pop" either. In between, Hitch had written new memos for the composer which almost entirely contradicted the ones he had given Mancini to work from. Now, talk about directors exercising control over music ...

Speaking of John Addison, there is a highly entertaining sampler now in Chandos' British Film Music series:



One of the better efforts in the series, both interpretively and in the selections. Addison had a deft touch for comedy, but he could also swash'n-buckle if needed (e.g. on James Goldstone's aptly titled, but ill-fated, Swashbucker of 1976).

Thomas

[jochanaan]

Of these only the score for Jaws would be on my list worthy to stand alongside the Nine Symphonies of Beethoven and the four by Brahms, eight and three-quarters by Bruckner etcetcetc 

But then, film scoring is a different kettle of fish.

Actually (I've said this before), film scoring is more the equivalent of opera writing, or more precisely, of operetta/musical theater scoring.  In either case, you have the challenge of fitting musical craft into a dramatic framework.  The difference is that composers and conductors for opera have more control over pacing and other musical details in the final product.  So perhaps we should be comparing Williams et al, not with Beethoven and other primarily instrumental composers, but with Verdi and others who specialized in opera.

When Korngold came to Hollywood, he had already composed a very fine opera, Die Tote Stadt, so he was familiar with the challenges of composing for drama.  Prokofieff and Shostakovich had also composed stage works before taking up film.  (Those who think of Shostakovich as consistently "dark" should listen to his hilarious musical comedy Cheryomushki. )  But, interestingly, Schoenberg and Stravinsky had completed many stage works before their abortive experiences with Hollywood...

[anasazi]

Isn't "King's Row" by Korngold, too? The score that John Williams lifted most of the Star Wars theme from.

Yeah, but only if you define the Star Wars theme as only the first five notes (the first three being the triplet pick-up beat).  Certainly, Williams theme pays homage to Korngolds great scores, but there are certainly many counterfeits today in Hollywood that need somebody else to help them, or maybe just some software. Williams is the last of a dying breed (at least in tinseltown) who you could give only a pencil and a page of manuscript paper, send into a room with no piano, no phone, no tv, etc.   Just a desk and a chair.  And an hour later he would appear with a manuscript page filed with musical notes. 

Yes, I love a great number of film scores. I would not even know how to begin to limit them to five or ten, anymore than I could limit my favorite piano concertos to five or ten.

[sound67]

Yeah, but only if you define the Star Wars theme as only the first five notes (the first three being the triplet pick-up beat).  Certainly, Williams theme pays homage to Korngolds great scores,

Which he readily acknowledged when he asked about it.

but there are certainly many counterfeits today in Hollywood that need somebody else to help them, or maybe just some software.

Indeed. Hans Zimmer belongs to this breed, as does Danny Elfman. They play their themes on the keyboard or use a sampler to sketch a raw version of the kind of music they want, and then assistants and orchestrators do the "real" work. Zimmer is more open about the process than Elfman is. It's not a new phenomenon either. As I said earlier, the "musical directors" of Hollywood studies weren't always full pros either, they included former Kaffeehaus violinists and silent film conductors, but weren't composers. With the tide of European emigré composers flooding in, the situation improved considerably after about 1935. Still, Miklós Rózsa wasn't completely wrong when he described the bulk of film music coming out of Hollywood in the 40s: "The general idiom was conservative and meretricious in the extreme -diluted Rachmaninov and Broadway."

Yes, I love a great number of film scores. I would not even know how to begin to limit them to five or ten

Since I'm not intimately involved with the film music scene any more (bought a lot more Shostakovich film music those past eight years than that of any "modern" film composer), I think I could list ten favorites that I keep returning to on a regular basis, and by limiting it to American film music - a more exhaustive list of simply great scores I posted earlier:



1. Vertigo (1958, Bernard Herrmann) - to me, the "ultimate" film score in that it is everything a film score should be, and can be. I much prefer the McNeely recording to the soundtrack.


2. Fahrenheit 451 (1966, Bernard Herrmann) - my favorite among Herrmann's "sensitive/poetic" scores, a representative suite of which is on this CD - Salonen recorded the same selection, but the Seattle performance has more warmth. There are complete albums of the soundtrack (for one of which I contributed the liner notes), but all the great cues are here.


3. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946, Hugo Friedhofer) - the score that kicked off Friedhofer's career (he worked as an orchestrator under Korngold) as an independent composer. Because of his refusal to write the music in the above-mentioned "Broadway-cum-Rachmaninov" style and opting for Coplandia instead (effectively out-Copland-ing Copland), nobody in the studio talked to him for a while, until he had won the Oscar. The number one Americana score!


4. Ivanhoe (1951, Miklós Rózsa) - Rózsa did some research into old English music for this one, but his own style, naturally, comes through in every bar of the score. The Broughton re-recording for Intrada is the best version, superbly played and engineered. One of the great action-adventure scores in Hollywood history.


5. Under Fire (1983, Jerry Goldsmith) - Hands down my favorite Goldsmith score, with a solo guitar part written for Pat Metheny. Unfortunately, the recording on the official album was not the same as the film version. "Bajos Fuego" e.g. is much more exciting in the original version.


6. Legend (1985, Jerry Goldsmith) - His greatest post-1982 score, which was replaced in the American release version with a synthetic score by Tangerine Dream(!) (yeah right, directors are the wise, ultimate arbiters on film music  ) but intact in the European version. Memorable cue after memorable cue.


7. Willow (1988, James Horner) - Although, with its dizzying stylistic variety that covers everything from Beethoven to Penderecki, often simultaneously!) it plays right into the hands of those who accuse film music of "stylistic buccaneering" (a term coined by Goldsmith) - and I don't just mean certified poo-poo heads like "James", it's a roller-coaster ride tour de force, because of those same elements. It's the virtuosity and ingenuity with which they are combined that, IMHO, makes this the greatest James Horner score - and a sad reminder how exciting his career was before he got bogged down in cannibalising his own music again and again and again. THAT's virtuoso poly-stilistic writing, forget Schnittke! 


8. Careful, He Might Hear You (1984, Ray Cook) - An absolutely stunning score by Australian composer Ray Cook, who scored only three films and died in 1989 at age 53). For two solo violins and orchestra, sensitively chamber-music-like and sweepingly romantic by turns.


9. Young Sherlock Holmes (1985, Bruce Broughton) - It may not be the most original of Broughton's many fine scores (it includes an unforgivable ersatz-Orff choral piece (not that the real Orff is much good)), but it has so many great moments it may be my ultimate favorite, my desert island film score. I never tire of listening to it.


10. Planet of the Apes (1968, Jerry Goldsmith) - Between 1966 and the mid 70s, one memorable Goldsmith score followed another, and this may be greatest of all of them. From the days when Hollywood studios weren't opposed to taking risks musically.

No big surprises, safe choices mostly - but these are the ones I listen to most often.

Thomas

[sound67]

Sidenote: When Truffaut (certainly as sensitive an artist as Kubrick or Scorsese  ) asked Herrmann to score Fahrenheit 451, Herrmann said "But you're great friends with Boulez and Stockhausen. Why don't you ask them?" Replies Truffaut: "Because they'll give me music of the 20th century. You'll give me music of the 21st".

Thomas

[Dancing Divertimentian]

Sidenote: When Truffaut (certainly as sensitive an artist as Kubrick or Scorsese  ) asked Herrmann to score Fahrenheit 451, Herrmann said "But you're great friends with Boulez and Stockhausen. Why don't you ask them?" Replies Truffaut: "Because they'll give me music of the 20th century. You'll give me music of the 21st".

Thomas

[Kullervo]

But it sounds like music from the early 20th Century.

[sound67]

Indicates that by the 21st, the music of the so-called avantgardists would be passé. 

Which it kind of is. I don't seem too many people rushing to keep up with the Jameses.

Thomas

[karlhenning]

But it sounds like music from the early 20th Century.

Right. Still, it was a very gracious compliment on Truffaut's part. Musicological rubbish, but Hermann seems to have found it believable 

[ezodisy]

lol!