[Wesley]

I can hear certain things in Elmer Bernstein, ’80s Tom Newman, Yuji Nomi, Miklos Rozsa, Morricone, a few others where you immediately know, “That’s him!” It’s like recognizing a person in the dark by his gait; the person himself never recognizes how he moves, but others can register it subconsciously. A lot of music and art becomes more interesting if you can recognize the handwriting. Hacks will repeat something because they don’t know how to do anything else, but the best artists have those signatures which are more intentional, especially in movie music where so much shorthand is necessary to communicate drama in a brief cue. Those signatures could be certain figures, or orchestrational choices, or how he employs his influences.

Leonard Rosenman and his regular use of the ‘pyramid’, for instance, is like his musical slang for vague drama occurring. Some people find its repetition to be really annoying, but if you take it as a holdover from his 12-tone schoolboy days with Schoenberg then you understand why he does it, why he thought it was personally interesting to include, and you can take it as an invitation to explore his influences a little deeper.

I saw an interview with Richard Kraft just the other day where he talked about this.