Name Your Favored Composer

[sound67]

You know, wisdom and knowledge are always in the minority. 

You go tell your grandchildren why we figured out the problems of fossil fuels and global warming too late.

Wait: it won't work. We'll all be dead by then.

Thomas

[greg]

North........ that's Santa's composer name, isn't it?

[71 dB]

North........ that's Santa's composer name, isn't it?

Santa does not compose classical music, he's a member of the band Santana.

[knight66]

Santa does not compose classical music, he's a member of the band Santana.

Yes, and he lives in Nebraxas

Mike

[val]

Richard Strauss.

I had never heard of a composer named North.

[sound67]

Richard Strauss.

I had never heard of a composer named North.

It's all right. Keep admitting to your ignorance, boys. 

Thomas

[knight66]

Perhaps this 'North' thing is equivalent to Joe Green and he will be revealed to be a real and famous composer once his name is given to us in the right language. 

Mike

[sound67]

If people don't know Alex North, maybe they know the guy who orchestrated many of his film scores:

Henry Brant. 

Thomas

[knight66]

Mmm, I am happy to take a bet with you over that.  0:)

Mike

[greg]

If people don't know Alex North, maybe they know the guy who orchestrated many of his film scores:

Henry Brant. 

Thomas

Henry Brant orchestrated his film scores?
hmmmmmmmmm

(yes, i know who he is)

[sound67]

Mmm, I am happy to take a bet with you over that.  0:)

Actually he's fairly well known among devotees of contemporary composers. He just died a few months ago. He won a Pulitzer for his "spatial music" concept.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Brant

http://www.jaffe.com/brant.html

Thomas

[greg]

Yeah, and we had a thread about it......

[sound67]

Since you don't know anything about film music, I'll gladly tell you: There is often not enough time to orchestrations, so with a few exceptions (Herrmann, Morricone), film composers farm out the orchestrations to one or more arrangers. But because the short scores usually indicate most of the details (Goldsmith and North wrote in eight staves, their orchestrators were more like "glorified copyists"), so the composer's style is preserved.

Thomas

[gomro]

If people don't know Alex North, maybe they know the guy who orchestrated many of his film scores:

Henry Brant. 

Thomas

Of course, I know of North and Brant, but I had no idea that they had worked together in any way.  Didn't North write the rejected score for 2001: A Space Odyssey? I'm pretty sure that was his.  Kubrick probably should have recruited Brant for that project...you know, the space thing and all.

[M forever]

Too bad North never comitted to something as pompous as the Symphonia Domestica or Ein Heldenleben. He would have been much better known. 

The fanfare North wrote for "2001" is actually really pompous and hollow. Too bad North wasn't able to be as strikingly to-the-point as Strauss was when he thought up the introduction to "Zarathustra", creating this "cosmic" sounding musical sunrise with just a few notes and a minor-major shift. Rarely has a more striking an memorable musical effect been achieved with so sparse and well chosen means.
If he had been able to do something like that, North would have been much better known.

[karlhenning]

Happily, not knowing Alex North is nothing like 'musical illiteracy'.

Why, I earned a Bachelor of Music degree, and not a single professor — not of music history, not of theory, not of orchestration, not of composition — ever so much as breathed the name of Alex North.

To consider Alex North a 'great composer' is the very coinage of eccentricity.

[Dancing Divertimentian]

It's all right. Keep admitting to your ignorance, boys. 

Thomas

That's a cheap shot. You should try to curb your impulses.

[sound67]

That's a cheap shot. You should try to curb your impulses.

Still no sense of humor. Lamentable.  0:)

Thomas

[sound67]

Happily, not knowing Alex North is nothing like 'musical illiteracy'.

Why, I earned a Bachelor of Music degree, and not a single professor — not of music history, not of theory, not of orchestration, not of composition — ever so much as breathed the name of Alex North.

To consider Alex North a 'great composer' is the very coinage of eccentricity.

North was a great film composer. That's what's important. 

And that your prof's didn't know him either is just further proof of the arrogance of (some) academic musical circles towards certain genres of music and /or film as art. 

It'll change. Film as an art is on a steady rise, and so are film studies, while opera e.g. is dwindling further and further into obscurity. I don't say the latter is a good thing. I just say it's happening. That may mean there'll be fewer and fewer "Elektra"s in the future, which is lamentable. That'll also mean no weekdays "aus Licht" at all.

Thomas

[ezodisy]

The fanfare North wrote for "2001" is actually really pompous and hollow. Too bad North wasn't able to be as strikingly to-the-point as Strauss was when he thought up the introduction to "Zarathustra", creating this "cosmic" sounding musical sunrise with just a few notes and a minor-major shift. Rarely has a more striking an memorable musical effect been achieved with so sparse and well chosen means.
If he had been able to do something like that, North would have been much better known.

I don't know who Alex North is, but I do know that sound 67 has some serious problems if he has to belittle someone like Richard Strauss to get his laboured point across. Given the way most answers and assertions come out, it's starting to be quite obvious that he doesn't really know anything about film music in context. In the end though I suppose it's not at all fair to these poor, abused film composers who are mistreated by the "suits", because unlike someone like Richard Strauss, these film composers have their music tied inextricably to really awful, vacuous films which will never be taken seriously, so the genius of the film composer just isn't able to come across. That's probably why sound67 keeps going on and on about how the quality of film music = replay value outside of the picture, because it's just a little bit embarrassing to have to sit through the film itself. This is also why 2001 keeps getting mentioned, as it was the sole chance of one of these minor composers to actually make it into a quality film. Obviously Kubrick made the only possible choice.