German Film Music?
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We have a couple of Germans here. It would be interesting to hear some thoughts or recommendations on German scores. Let’s take Hans Zimmer out of the equation for now, since everbody knows his stuff.
Some nice ones, IMO, limiting myself to one per composer:
Annette Focks – SIMON AND THE OAKS
Christoph Zirngibl – FINIS TERRAE
Christopher Franke – BABYLON 5
Ennis Rothoff – GUNS AKIMBO
Franz Waxman – PEYTON PLACE
Frederik Wiedmann – THE FIELD OF LOST SHOES
Gary Marlowe – EVERYTHING WILL CHANGE
The Baldenwegs – ZWINGLI
Harold Faltermeyer – THIEF OF HEARTS
Jürgen Beck – NOT FORGOTTEN
Klaus Badelt – THE TIME MACHINE
Klaus Doldinger – THE NEVERENDING STORY
Klaus Schulze – HAVLANDET
Max Richter – THE LEFTOVERS
Paul Haslinger – HALT AND CATCH FIRE
Paul Kalkbrenner – BERLIN CALLING
Tangerine Dream – THE KEEP
Tom Tykwer (& co.) – PERFUME: THE STORY OF A MURDERER(don’t even get me started on France, we’ll be here all day…)
Not familiar some of those you listed (and even don’t know a few composers at all). Will have to think a little about that 😉
Hi Thor,
This is a subject, that you probably know much more than I do. You already mentioned some highlights.
But when talking about german soundtracks of course Martin Böttcher must be mentioned, who was famous in the 70s for his crime TV Show scores and his music for the Western german Karl May movies.And it’s important to mention probably my personal favourite german soundtrack: Christian Bruhn’s soundtrack for the german dub version of the anime series Captain Future from the 80s.
I remember Bruhn for this and the title song of the animated Wickie series. But there he wrote just the title song. The rest of the score was by Karel Svoboda who scored a lot TV stuff for german TV in the 70s and 80s, especially for children. But he is Czech as you know, not German.
But the Captain Future soundtrack is brillant.Thanks, Gerate! We had a member here called “Captain Future” (aka Volker) back in 2018. He seems to have disappeared(?).
But yes, Martin Böttcher is great. I don’t own any soundtracks by him, but I’ve sampled some over the years. Same with Peter Thomas.
I believe he worked on TATORT, as did a lot of composers (including Doldinger). I feel like there’s a treasure trove of unreleased music there to be discovered and/or released.
I forgot to mention Frank Duval’s gorgeous BITTE LASS DIE BLUMEN LEBEN, btw, a composer who also worked on DERRICK.
I agree to the above! It is a mystery to me that so few of Doldinger’s film and tv works have been released besides mostly theme collections and plenty of his jazz work with his band Passport. He not only wrote for TATORT, he wrote the theme that is still in use largely unchanged besides a arrangement update – I think – from late 80s. His score to DAS BOOT should definately be mentioned.
How could I have forgotten to mention Böttcher on my film score origin post. His Karl May score are also some of my earliest film score memorires.
Peter Thomas’ is also great, he basically shared duties on the Edgar Wallaces movies with Böttcher. His score to RAUMPATROUILLE is also a classic.
CAPTAIN FUTURE is also a favorit of mine by Christian Bruhn. He also did some great so called Christmas mini series like SILAS or JACK HOLBORN.
Frank Duval I also remember from crime series. I like some of the instrumentals but not so much when he(?) sings 😉
Here a just few scores that I quite like:
Rolf Wilhelm – Die Nibelungen (the 1960s version)
Andre Matthias – The Light Thief
Hans-Werner Henze – Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum (The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum)
Chris Hülsbeck – Turrican (80s/90s Video Games which he updated a few year ago with great new arrangments)
Jürgen Knieper – Himmel über Berlin (Knieper also was the main composer for Wim Wender’s movies)
Enjott Schneider – Stalingrad
Karl-Ernst Sasse – various DEFA westerns (the Easter German counterparts of the Western Karl May westerns)And of course there are silent movie scores like Huppertz’ METROPOLIS or DIE NIBELUNGEN. Or Wolfang Zeller’s THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMEND (sadly no official album but two versions availble with the film).
Good additions, Malte!
Since DAS BOOT was brought up, I should also point out that I’m a big Herbert Grönemeyer fan from childhood. Brief backstory: In the 80s and 90s, we sometimes visited some German friends of my parents who lived in Hamburg (they vacationed near our summer house in Denmark every year; hence why we knew them). They also had two sons, a bit older than me, but more or less the same age. While this was before I had German in school, I picked up a few words, including constructing the weird phrase “Volkswagen Geschmack” that I repeated over and over again — which they thought was funny. So during one of our visits there, the two sons had made a mixed tape for me, called “Volkswagen Geschmack”, with a homemade cover:
Long story short (or not so short now), the cassette contained one Grönemeyer album on each side – SPRÜNGE and 4630 BOCHUM. I loved them, and still do.
But only later did I realize he was so multi-talented, both as an actor (in DAS BOOT and other things) and a film composer. Like on THE AMERICAN and A MOST WANTED MAN by Anton Corbijn.
Off topic. But if you like Grönemeyer, then I strongly recommend his unplugged album. Great performances of his greatest songs. One of those passionate live albums that make the studio recordings appear sterile afterwards.
Interessting to see that a German artist has fans outside of Germany 😉 I second that Grönemeyer’s UNPLUGGED is great. And I am also quite fond of his other live album STAND DER DINGE with orchestra.
Too bad that his two(?) film scores, A WANTED MAN and THE AMERICAN, are rather servicable.
That would be cool. Anyone know where Captain Future/Volker went, to complete the German lineup with Malte and GerateWohl? He posted here in the board’s first iteration.
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