Scores Which You Simply Cannot Fathom
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I’m talking about scores where you just fail to see what the composer was trying to do. You just don’t “get” it. It’s even more frustrating when you know of people who think VERY highly of such works. I’ll start with Maurice Jarre, and in particular his End Titles from FIREFOX. Is that circus music? I can picture chimpanzees on a flying trapeze. Is this a musical representation of the aircraft? Whatever, it’s also a bloody awful tune.
Not so much a score per se, but I really disliked Terrence Malick’s use of music in A NEW WORLD, that was all over the place… snippets of Wagner, Mozart and Horner, that were like oil and water, they neither mixed, not did they contrast with each other, not sure what Malick wanted to accomplish or say with that, worse, I didn’t even know if he wanted to say anything at all with that, so I found the music in that film both distracting and annoying. (Even though I love all the music used in that movie, just not how it was used in the movie.) I remember I especially disliked how Mozart was used, constantly more or less the same snippet from the piano concerto repeated instead of actually PLAYING the piece, at least the movement, that was really, really annoying. I thought while I was watching this “I dare you to do that one more time”, and there it was…
I have a really hard time coming up with an example here, because in most cases — even when I find the score choice unusual and odd — I can always twist my mind, and my interpretation, to make it fit. For example, the electronic score in IN THE NAME OF THE ROSE; obviously achronological, but fitting in perfectly with the chilly ambiance of the film. Or LADYHAWKE, one of my favourite scores that everybody likes to rag on. The drum kit/pop elements aren’t very widespread in it (much less than what people think), and they do – in fact – add appropriate energy to the riding and fighting scenes.
But I suppose I’ll think of an example if I think long enough.
I somehow never realized that the IN THE NAME OF THE ROSE score was synth before I heard the album years later… I only saw the movie on TV so probably the sound helped 😉
LADYHAWKE is a great fun score which I really like – you know I like Alans Parsons Project – but it is putting me off in the movie, too. Perhaps especially because those synths+drums primarily appear in action scenes and stand that much out. I think that would have really worked without the sythns and drums already.
I thought THE NAME OF THE ROSE worked very well, I thought LADYHAWKE did not (as a film score for that movie). I’ve come around to enjoying it on its own since though.
Dune by Hans Zimmer… I just don’t get the hype, it’s basically boring loud noises to me and not music, not sure what he was trying to achieve with that, particularly after earing what Graeme Revell does on the TV movie.
Part 2 was a bit better or better spotted. But in part 1 I often wished the music wouldn’t overpower everything for example in rather calm desert scenes.
I love the DUNE scores, and yes — the second is far superior. But I can understand it dividing the waters. In either case, it’s very much a score I can “fathom” — all the weird sonorities Zimmer created for an alien world make sense, in my ears.
I very much enjoy DUNE, both part 1 and part 2, and the DUNE Sketchbook too. Wonderful sonorities and engrossing soundscapes, very melodic actually. I think it’s one of Hans Zimmer’s best scores.
Yes, the sounds make sense in general. I just found it didn’t leave enough room for breathing. It was all just loud in the first movie.
Besides that I like both movies a lot (actually I do like Lynch’s version, too), although I didn’t buy the character development in the 2nd, too rushed.
I have just watched Dune part 1. And the music managed to make a long slow movie even longer and slower.
In that sense, I fathom the score and its effect.A score I couldn’t fathom was Ludwig Göransson’s score for Tennet. Most of the time to my ears it was just distracting annoying noise.
Another example, the German movie “Das Leben der Anderen”. The score sounded often like a String quartet from the room next door but had very little to do with the action on screen. At least it felt like that.
LADYHAWKE is a cult classic and so is the score for me. While the Pop Guitar didn’t do much for me- anachronistically speaking the score is odds with the genre. But it does play itself seriously. Its fun and has a great romantic theme. Hardcore orchestral film music fans panned it of course but I grew to love it. Same thing for DUNE (Toto)
I haven’t warmed up to Zimmers DUNE Universe but we shall see.
Score which were or are still hard to get into is for me are the works of Alex North.
I just bought a lot of his RSNO Rerecording’s and now Im getting into A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and CLEOPATRA.
I know Thor loves LADYHAWKE, which is surely one of the most controversial film scores of all time. First time I saw LADYHAWKE, the music really put me off, and I know I was not the only one. It’s not so much that it is “anachronistic”… I mean, one can rightly argue a romantic film score performed by a symphony orchestra in BEN HUR is just as “anachronistic”. It’s a film score, not source music, so it doesn’t have to be “of the time”.
The synthesizers in Vangelis’ score for THE BOUNTY were certainly “anachronistic”, and the electronic music approach for a historical drama a new one, but it worked well, the music supports the movie. That’s where LADYHAWKE failed for me… the music did not support the movie, it distracted from it, it often felt like an intrusive distraction in the movie and worked even against it. I have since come around to enjoy it on album though. 🙂 (Haven’t seen LADYHAWKE in decades.)
Obviously, I disagree with that. All of the important bits of the film are scored traditionally symphonically (with one of the most gorgeous love themes ever written), or with medieval tropes. The backbeat is only used for goofy action setpieces and transportation scenes, in which case it works wonderfully as a pace setter, and in line with the tone.
The backbeat is only used for goofy action setpieces and transportation scenes, in which case it works wonderfully as a pace setter, and in line with the tone.
Have to disagree as well. I think without the drum kit especially the action themes as they are (which I otherwise find great fun) would not throw me out of the mood that quickly.
It’s fine to disagree; reaction to these things is obviously personal and subjective. I saw LADYHAWKE once in the late 80s, and found the music obnoxiously annoying, as if it actively worked to undermine the action on screen. Literally all music? Of course not, I didn’t even remember most of the music, but I did remember that it repeatedly worked against the movie, enough for me to tune out of the movie (and I haven’t seen it since). But if you love the movie or the score, well, good for you, more power to you. I sure don’t want to talk anyone out of it.
Indeed, I like the music on album now as it is. 🙂I like unusual approaches, or perhaps challenges, to generic conventions. Same as I found the contemporary pop songs cute in KING ARTHUR, for example. LADYHAWKE managed to balance that line between conventional and unusual JUST right, in my opinion.
Interessting is that I knew the Ladyhawke score years before I actually saw the movie. Maybe I paid more atention to the music here than I would have done the other way round. In King Arthur the songs didn’t bother me that much. There was another knight movie which also used lots of rock songs. Can’t remember the name but that to me had a bit of a parody effect if I recall right.
I like unusual approaches, or perhaps challenges, to generic conventions.
Sure, if they work, if they are good. In the same way that a score obviously is not good merely for following convention, I don’t think a score is good merely because it is unusual or challenges convention, it has to proof itself with the result.
There was another knight movie which also used lots of rock songs. Can’t remember the name but that to me had a bit of a parody effect if I recall right.
I guess, you are referring to A Knight’s Tale with Heath Ledger, that already promoted the movie in the trailer with Queen’s We will Rock You.
In that context Highlander might be worth mentioning as well even though the rock songs are here reserved rather for the modern times scenes.I saw Ladyhawke in cinema when it came out. Never seen it since. But remember feeling the pop music being ou of place. But after this discussion here I want to watch it again. Maybe in the meantime it feels different. At that time as a relatively fresh film music fan I was of course looking out for something different. But maybe the movie was ahead of its time. I will re-evaluate.
A KNIGHT’S TALE
Ah, thanks, that was indeed the movie title I didn’t remember! If we refer to Pemberton’s KING ARTHUR – LEGEND OF THE SWORD and not the Zimmer one it also had songs and modern elements in the score which somehow didn’t bother me.
In that context Highlander might be worth mentioning as well even though the rock songs are here reserved rather for the modern times scenes.
Yes, that exactly that makes the difference here to me. The only song in the “past” scenes is “Who wants to live forever” and that was not that much arranged as a pop/rock song. Although probably that would have fitted here for me because of the different times.
Has anyone seen CORRUPTION? It’s a 1968 piece of Brit exploitation, with Peter Cushing (he HATED the film) as a surgeon who has to kill young women for their glands (or something). To see Peter Cushing on a train letching over some bird opposite him in a mini skirt, then killing her (and getting his tongue down her throat and everything), later killing another young girl, stripping her and rubbing his blood-drenched hands all over her tits… then he cuts her head off. How he could go home to his beloved wife Helen and chat cheerfully about the day’s filming I’ll never know.
Bill McGuffie did the score. It’s like somebody has suddenly put on a “Live at Ronnie Scottt’s” jazz record. And all this for scenes of Cushing chasing dolly birds along the beach so that he can mutilate them. Perhaps if there had been a backstory of Cushing as a frustrated jazz musician….
I was watching through OBI WAN KENOBI again last week, on Disney+. It’s my favourite TV show in the STAR WARS universe, and I’m bummed that it was cancelled after just one season. But there’s one thing I cannot FATHOM with it, and that’s the score. For the first couple episodes, it’s scored by an absolutely atrocious, trailer-like wishy-washy sound (composed by Natalie Holt, I believe). A couple of episodes in, I believe for a light sabre duel, they called upon the talent of William Ross to provide a more orchestral backdrop – which they then follow from thereon out. Not terribly exciting orchestral music, just a lot of movement without any theme or form. But it was at least a small step up. And until the very last episode, there are NO references to the existing John Williams themes.
I mean, yes, it’s fine to do your own thing, and in some cases that’s even preferred. Nobody will reach Williams’ level anyway. But when you’re dealing with so many CLASSIC characters from the CLASSIC films, you’re obligated, I think, to use the existing themes, at least to some extent. Feel free to mix it with our own themes or music, if necessary.
This was a show that absolutely SCREAMED for pastiche and references, and they failed so miserably.
So yes, while this may not be exactly what Graham asked for, this is a score I absolutely cannot fathom.
they called upon the talent of William Ross to provide a more orchestral backdrop
Any reason you didn’t mention that Williams actually wrote a new OBI-WAN theme for it and that Ross adapted it for various tracks? Holt’s tracks are indeed typical bland as many TV scores are. The Ross-Williams ones are at least somewhat entertaining. I have not seen the show, actually any of the newer shows besides bits and pieces. Just don’t have Disney+ and don’t want to invest into it currently.
Yes, of course, Williams did the theme – which is fine, but also rather lacklustre by his standards. But that is even MORE reason to weave your own music around the Williams benchmark in this particular case, IMO. Something John Powell did wonderfully in SOLO, btw.
Yes, not William’s best but hard to work around the fact that Obi-Wan already had a theme… Indeed, Powell’s SOLO score is more fun than the movie and William’s theme is also better 😉
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