[Thor Joachim Haga]

Ah, screw it……I debated with myself if I was going to post this, but here goes.

I’ve created a “mental construct” for myself that ranks every single film composer who ever lived. I think about it almost every night before I go to sleep, to counter the extreme tinnitus I struggle with. So there is a constructive use for it, it’s not ALL nerdy obsessions (but it is that too, of course).

It’s a construct that can house even composers I’m not familiar with.

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Imagine a landscape with two mountains side by side, the tops covered in snow, but as you venture down the sides it turns into a dense, forested landscape (mostly pine and spruce) until you reach the ripe, fertile valley below, offset by a winding river. In that valley, you’ll see a town. A relatively big town, housing about 5000 people, but built in the middle ages, so it’s completely surrounded by city walls.

The town is like many other medieval towns, lots of narrow, cobbled streets and alleyways. Brick houses in pink, yellow, green, blue, with black tile roofs. It’s a lively city, with restaurants, cafés, stores, cars, motorcycles, hustle and bustle.

But one thing stands out – in the middle of the town is a huge, more modern building that towers 6-7 stories up, much taller than any other building.

On the top floor of that building, the “penthouse floor”, you’ll find 10 apartments. These apartments house my top 10 favourite film composers. Apartment 1 is obviously the biggest and fanciest, and the occupant OWNS it – for the rest of his life and my life. It’s set in stone. The other 9 are fancy rentals, but there could be some changing here, of who rents what. The occupants of these apartments are the names I mentioned in the first post.

You walk down the corridor, down the stairs and to the floor below. This floor does not have apartments, but is one big room, called “Waiting Room No. 1”. It’s a gentlemen’s club-style room with Chesterfield furniture, red velvet drapes, a rich library, animal trophies on the wall, plenty of whisky and cigars to go around. This floor houses the handful of composers who are JUST outside my top 10. Many of them have been top 10 before, and some might be so again. But right now, they’re here, enjoying life.

You walk down another staircase, into “Waiting Room No. 2”. There are more people here than in Waiting Room No. 1, and many fantastic composers (even some who have been top 10 before!). You continue this process to “Waiting Room No. 3”, “Waiting Room No. 4” and “Waiting Room No. 5”.

In total, there are about 350-400 composers in these 6 floors, all composers that I like. Obviously, the most in Waiting Room No. 5, and the crowd gets succesively smaller as you move upwards. It’s only a matter of ranking “goodness”, really.

But there is one floor left. The ground floor, aka “The Reception”. It’s like a hotel lobby, with fancy marble pillars, a reception area, a bar, plenty of sofas and comfy chairs in bright red leather. Here, you’ll find composers whom I’ve considered good enough to enter the building, but there are some issues that need sorted out. For example, I like a couple or a handful of their works quite a bit, but have issues with the rest, or don’t know the rest. Or I like one particular aspect of their work, but have issues with other things. They need to be checked further until they can move up to the “Waiting Rooms”, if they do at all. You’ll be surprised by some of the great names that exist in The Reception (Bernard Herrmann, for example).

The next category is people who live outside the building, in the town itself, and the various houses. These are composers I don’t know at all, or they’re composers I know (and perhaps even like a few things), but I don’t consider them good enough to enter the building. This constitues most of the people.

Finally, there’s a group of composers living outside the city walls, in the pine forests and surrounding areas, maybe just camp sites and the like. Poor things, these are the composers I actively dislike. Thankfully, not a lot. I could mention Ludwig Göransson, Michael Giacchino and Volker Bertelmann as examples. Alexandre Desplat used to live there, but since I had a walkthrough of his work awhile back, and found eight scores of his that I like, I had to let him through the gate and into the streets, where he now resides.

But the great thing about this model is that it’s a flexible model. You can move up and down the rankings, inside and outside cities and buildings. For example, if you’d asked me in the 90s where I would place Howard Shore, I’d say outside the city walls, for several reasons. Now he’s in Waiting Room No. 5. Mark Isham has similarly had a great evolution – previously outside the walls, now he’s in Waiting Room No. 3. But of course, it goes the other way too.

Another reason for why this model is great, is that if someone just said a random film composer name to me, I would – after a little bit of thinking – be able to place him or her anywhere in this system. If you’d say, for example, Joe Hisaishi, I’d think about it and say……well, maybe Waiting Room No. 4.

So….let’s put some names in the system. The top 10 have already been mentioned earlier in the thread, and needs no repeating.

Who’s in Waiting Room No. 1? Right now, you’ll find the following here: Danny Elfman, Elliot Goldenthal, Georges Delerue, Jerry Goldsmith, Alan Silvestri, Harold Faltermeyer, A.R. Rahman, Franz Waxman.

What about Waiting Room No. 2? Well, for example Alan Menken, Cliff Martinez, Angelo Badalamenti, George Fenton, Patrick Doyle, Basil Poledouris, Max Richter, Angel Illaramendi. I have big collections of these, and even here you’ll find some who have previously been occupants of the top apartments.

And so it goes, on and on.

I have 670 artist folders on my hard drive, and I could divide all of them into these categories.

Anyways, this is what I think about every night before I go to sleep, LOL! 😀