[Thor Joachim Haga]

Funny you should ask this now, Graham. One of the last threads I did on FSM before I retired from that place, was a thread not unlike yours.

I’ve never had any issues with Tiomkin’s “tunesmith” abilities. In fact, that was a strength. Simplicity can be great. But it’s the overbearing quality of a lot of his work otherwise that sometimes goes on my nerves, like other people have said here.

That being said, I’ve landed on seven Tiomkin albums in my collection at this time – DUEL IN THE SUN, IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, RED RIVER, WILD IS THE WIND, THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA, THE GUNS OF NAVARONE and THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. Whenever needed for most of these, I’ve made my own whittled playlists that work quite well — weeds out some of the excessive, bombastic stuff and leaves some neat albums. Since you recently acquired FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, I want to share with you my playlist of that, i.e. the Nic Raine version. 58 minutes, makes the album come to life in a whole other way than dredging your way through all of it (razmatazz or not):