[Thor Joachim Haga]

I’ve always been fascinated by composers (be it classical, electronic, pop/rock, whatever) that have mostly stayed within their field, but then DABBLED in film music on a few occasions. So what is ‘dabbling’? Well, just to have some form of parameters for this purpose, let’s say the composer must have scored no more than FIVE films in his or her entire career. Doesn’t matter if they’re composed within the same timeframe or spread out.

With that in mind, what are some dabblers and dabbler scores you’d like to recommend?

[Nick Zwar]

Denny Zeitlin’s INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS
Perfectly fits the description of someone who “dabbled” in film music. His “dayjob” is as a widely respected professor of clinical psychiatry, and his “nightjob” is as a composer of modern and experimental jazz and performer of piano and various keyboards/synthesizers.
He “dabbled” in film music by writing one of the best science-fiction scores of the 70s, for Philip Kaufman’s INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (which I love, both score and film), but turned down subsequent offers to score more movies… maybe because he didn’t have time for a third career. 🙂

Apart from Leonard Bernstein (who wrote only one film score), perhaps also John Corigliano, who wrote less than five film scores, and is mostly know for his classical works?

[GerateWohl]

This topic highly corresponds with my one hit wonder thread. In a way. At least it might have a big overlap.

My top on that list is Jimmy Webb with his The Last Unicorn score.
And I liked a lot Badly Drawn Boy’s score for About A Boy. But, to be honest, I don’t know if he has a hundred scores on his record.

And even though I am not a fan of that score, Neil Young’s appoach for Jim Jarmush’s Dead Man, just improvising on the guitar during the movie I found interesting.

[Malte Müller]

These should fit:

– John Corigliano: only three scores unless I missed anything else (Edit: Sorry, duplicate, missed he was mentioned already)
– Philip Saiton: Moby Dick is the only score I think

[Thor Joachim Haga]

This topic highly corresponds with my one hit wonder thread.

You’re right. My bad. I just wanted to open up for more than one, but less than five — but we could have expanded that other thread to include that. Oh well. What’s done is done. Some good suggestions so far that wouldn’t fit in that, anyway.

It all started when I played FLOWERS OF WAR by Qigang Chen, as mentioned in the “What are you listening to?” thread – a composer that has only THREE film scores, AFAIK. The rest is concert music.

But speaking of Chinese people, I think Tan Dun would qualify too, with five film scores?

[Malte Müller]

We can always move replies if we want to join the topics.

[Nick Zwar]

This topic highly corresponds with my one hit wonder thread. In a way. At least it might have a big overlap.

There may be considerable overlap, though you asked for composers where you basically only like one score, regardless of how many they may have written, whereas Thor asked for composers who only peripherally composed for film.
So while there may be overlap between the threads, their respective core ideas are different.

[Author]

Posts