Nick Zwar
Forumsvar Lagt Inn
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Innlegg
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Top Ten Film scores:
Of course, this is an “old favorite topic”. And that question gets often asked like it’s a clean question. But there are many ways to answer it. What am I going to list? I can love the way the music sits in the movie, how it underscores scenes. Or I can love it on its own, stripped of image, just as music, without much concern about the movie. Or both.
So I try to “go with the flow” and lists scores that are… well… simply favorites. Maybe it’s one of the scores that pulled me into the world of film music. Maybe it’s the one that lit the match for your favorite composer. Or maybe it’s the one that really kept lingering and spoke to me and I wondered: “What is this? And why does it feel like it knows me?”Okay, so here is mine, my personal “top ten” list. Not etched in stone, it’s a “new” list every time I’m asked, though perennial favorites keep shaking hands on this list. So it’s not about rankings. It’s chronological in the way the music came out (not in the way I encountered it… would be a different chronology). It’s about those scores that, for one reason or another, are “essential” for me.
Miklós Rózsa: EL CID (1955)
Ah, wonderful music. The first time I saw this on TV I did not have a lot of Róza music, maybe just one CD or so. This movie changed that.Jerome Moross: THE BIG COUNTRY (1958)
The perfect, quintessential Western score. And sheesh, I’m not really a genre guy, but I think I always liked Westerns a bit more than the other genres. This one I first saw as a kid, and it stuck.Bernard Herrmann: NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959)
It’s nervous, sleek, always on the move… just one of Herrmann’s coolest scores. And the music is thrilling, often nervous; it is the anxiety Herrmann scores, civilization is a chase scene, and the music knows it.Alex North: THE MISFITS (1961)
I have always loved Alex North’s film music. When I first noticed his music, it was when I caught a movie called BITE THE BULLET channel zapping as a teenager… at first, I thought the music must have been composed by Jerry Goldsmith, but it turned out to by by Alex North, a composer I had never heard of. And there are many favorites I could list, including of course his big epic scores for SPARTACUS and CLEOPATRA. But there is something about his music for THE MISFITS which makes it an album I just love. The music is dry and haunted, a mix of American West, but mixed with a bit of (then) contemporary jazz/rock/pop sounds. Very eloquent at times.Leonard Rosenman: THE CAR (1977)
Dissonant, aggressive, and that great “Dies Irae” tune… from the “Main Title” forward the music announces: “Here comes Evil”. Of course, it’s ludicrously silly, because “Evil” in this movie comes in form of a murder-shark… I mean murder-car, but it’s a lot of fun. Indeed, JAWS in the desert with a car instead of a shark. Yes, it sounds as bonkers as it is, the car doesn’t just kill people, it kills sound reason. But who cares when you get such a terrific piece of horror scoring that is composed through by Hollywood’s most forward looking composer? Rosenman has written more famous works, but this is one of his best.Ennio Morricone: ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968)
This music doesn’t accompany myth, it is myth. Every theme is a psychological symbol, the feminine, the outlaw, the man with the harmonica, Morton, Cheyenne. I guess so much has been said about this score, I don’t have to add anything.John Williams: STAR WARS (1977–2019)
Same with STAR WARS… it’s the biggest longest opera of pop culture… I can take or leave STAR WARS (except for the first two movies, which are really great), but the music in all movies has been fantastic.Jerry Goldsmith: STAR TREK – THE MOTION PICTURE (1979)
Adventure and awe. That’s what this is. This is, perhaps along with STAR WARS, the one film score that single handedly made me a film score afficionado… and a Goldsmith fan.Philip Glass: KOYAANISQATSI (1982)
I came across this when I had a summer job at a film distributor. I had never heard anything like it, it was like a new type of music…. Music as a mosaic. Mesmerizing.Howard Shore: THE LORD OF THE RINGS (2001–2003)
Wow, Shore… now this is another big, long piece of wonder. Ancient modes, prophetic themes, leitmotifs that grow like characters. Shore’s music doesn’t just support the story, it is part of the story, Shore’s music completes it. This is the sound of Tolkien’s myth remembering itself. I always loved it, but I love it now even more than when I first heard it.I don’t know the exact reasons, so I’m just guessing, but if 50%(!) of the sellers do not do it, there are obviously very good reasons for not doing it. I mean, 50% is a lot. That is really a lot. So there are obviously hurdles. I mean, if you are a small scale seller who sells his inventory anyway, and the UK or any other country is more bureaucratic or has problems, you might just cross this off your list. I’m sure it is not because sellers specifically want to annoy UK citizens.
This may be, but the question is why they refuse to ship to the UK. I know at least from one seller (but not CDs, clothes) who stopped selling to the UK completely. Why? Because she didn’t feel like it? No, but because the hassle wasn’t worth it. Apart from the considerable additional paperwork that was allegedly necessary (I didn’t dig into that, so I don’t know), what happened a lot with UK shipments was this: Items shipped, entered UK, stuck in customs. Customer did not pick up package to pay additional fees. Customer demanded refund because he never received the item. (Easy to do with Paypal.) Seller maybe (or even maybe not sometimes) received back the package. Stuck with a lot of hassle, a lot of expenses, and maybe even with lost merchandise. Once that happens to a seller a couple of times, he is likely cross the UK from the list of countries he’s selling to. Stuff like that seems to have happened a lot after Brexit.
I just wanted to order Intrada’s new FIRST BLOOD, I added Music Box Record’s new L’ÉTÉ MEURTRIER by Georges Delerue, so I had at least two CDs to order.
This would have cost me $71.98 at Intrada… because the shipping is so darn high. Add to that, there’s a good chance I’d have to pay additional fees then the package arrives. The exact same order at Music Box Records cost me €55.25, so considerably less, even though the actual FIRST BLOOD CD costs considerably more there. It’s crazy how much shipping from the US has become.I have no idea why and how Norway would be effected by all of this, I’m just pretty sure the culprit in most cases is not the actual store. I’m sure they don’t mind selling CDs or anything else to Norwegians or Norway just out of spite. But I understand that it’s annoying if you don’t even know what these “restrictions” are.
There is a lot of dissonance in tonal music… in fact, one could argue that actual “dissonance” can be found only in tonal music, because dissonance usually refers to harmonic tension, whereas atonal music lacks a harmonic tonal center to begin with, so there is neither “dissonance” nor “consonance” (its opposite) in atonal music.
There is a lot of dissonance in the music of Richard Wagner, Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, or Hector Berlioz, yet their music remains (mostly) tonal. On the other hand, Olivier Messiaen’s music often ventures deep into atonal territory (though it’s never strict about it, and it’s not “12-tone”… just not always within a certain harmonic tonal center), but I don’t find it particularly dissonant.In all fairness, I am sure it wasn’t Music Box who did the punishing. After Brexit, sending something commercially the UK from Europe became a costly bureaucratic undertaking, that many companies simply (and understandably) said “f$%! that”.
The other way around, too, which is why I don’t order anything from the UK anymore. Ironically, it’s cheaper for me to order Varèse Sarabande CDs from their US store than it is from the “international” (but in reality only “UK”) store.I have to admit, I don’t have a “problem” with dissonance or atonal music per se, I don’t see it just “interesting on an academic level”, but enjoy much of it on a very visceral, deeply engrossing — sometimes even soothing — level. I know most people probably just enjoy “tonal” or “melodic” music and don’t listen to any more abstract music at all, but I was always drawn to these type of compositions. Now if I were to view (or perhaps better “hear”) them as mere “paper music”, music with an “interesting” concept on paper or in (music) theory but just awful to listen to, I would not find much pleasure in listening to it.
One of my favorite works is Pierre Boulez “Sur Incices”. Now this is a composition by one of the most radical and uncompromising composers of “paper music” there is, and I understand why Boulez was a very important but also highly divisive composer. Still, when I hear “Sur Incices”, it’s like bathing in a soothing kaleidoscope of musical shimmers, colors, rhythms, and sounds. I find that music very spiritual, actually, and my mind can deeply relax to these sounds. Why? I don’t know. Then again, I don’t know why I like any piece of music, really. Because I don’t like music for rational reasons, but because some music somehow resonates with me. All the “talk” and “writing” about music is just an attempt to get a grasp on how and what a certain score does and why it speaks to some, and perhaps not to others.
By no means does that mean I like all dissonant (though I don’t find Sur Incises dissonant in any way) or atonal (Sur Incises is certainly not classical “tonal” music though) music, no more than I like all tonal or melodic music. Obviously not.
But perhaps because I already grew up with a lot of “classical” classical music (Brahms, Beethoven, Wagner, Schubert, etc.), I found it very interesting when I came across radically different works by composers such as Stravinsky, Schönberg, Webern, Ligeti (this one indeed via 2001), Stockhausen as a teenager. Again, I didn’t like all their music right away, but I found it quite interesting.
Yes, Morricone collections are great. I like them a lot, and they introduced me to a lot of his music. I have the “An Ennio Morricone Anthology” pictured by Thor up there, and a number of additional compilations. That’s because Morricone often composed self contained themes, which work great in a collection of individual pieces from individual movies. Compilations are a great way to get to know some of Morricone’s vast output.
I think my first (and I still have it) was this 3LP set, which I picked up in the 80s in Munich (it’s an ebay Link, so I don’t know for how long it will be there)Ennio Morricone – The Italian Western
Funny thing: Over the years, I tried to actually get all the Western scores in this collection.
I got most of them, but UN FIUME DI DOLLARI remains elusive.
Yes, I can see that… flea markets, garage sales, etc. are probably your best bet to find a bargain. Lukas of course is currently selling of lots of used film scores for good prices (as far as I can see… I haven’t bought anything there… because I bought most of the stuff I wanted back when it came out… few CDs nowadays that I missed), but of course these are still regular “collector’s prices”, not “garage sale prices” from people who don’t know what they’ve got.
I lucked out recently and found the “missing pieces” in my Ligeti collection… I did have already all the Teldec recordings, but only some of the “Ligeti Edition” from Sony… now it’s complete.
Not sure, but I almost think that was the last major “gap” in my collection that “needed” closing. (It was irking me… as I bought the first of these 20 years ago, and by now this was “almost complete” but not quite, so there were a couple of CDs missing… and now I finally got them.)I have not bought and sold anything via Facebook groups, but I know that there is some trading of film scores going on.
I have replaced jewel cases, no problem, though I do not tolerate scratches on CDs. I suppose most people would go up the wall if their CDs arrived just flimsily put into an envelope. (I think I would too.)
When I started to buy music, there was a large record store here in Cologne, the Cologne Saturn Music Dome. It claimed to be the store with the largest record collection in the world. I don’t know if that was true, but I have never seen a larger one. At their height in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the classical music selection alone was on two department store floors, floor one was opera, choir, vocal, solo recitals, floor two was orchestral, chamber, modern/avant-garde etc. Their soundtrack section was huge too. If something was out on CD, they had it. Even in their later days, when they started to “size down” on CDs, they still had a large soundtrack selection where you could even find Intrada and La-La Land special releases (like the 3CD CONAN or the John Williams Harry Potter Box from LLL) next to “regular” soundtrack releases. Over the years, though, I saw the store shrinking… some floors were diverted to other business or rented out, and in the final years, all of the CDs were on one double sized floor, … and even that floor space was shared with a (considerable) selection of DVDs and Blurays and Vinyls and Posters/Memorabilia. But a few years ago, that all stopped. Nowadays, the former record store is a gamer location, “Xperion”, the rest of the floors are office floors. They don’t sell any CDs anymore in that store (they do still sell some CDs in their regular electronic chain stores).
CDs are like vinyl now… there are a few dedicated collectors who still buy (and sell) stuff, there are labels who still print LPs and CDs and cater to that niche, but it is no longer a mass market with mass market overflow (that then ends up on the used market). This will never going to change back. Quite the contrary, I’m actually quite amazed how resilient CDs are and how persistent the niche is. But it’s a niche, and even when it is a persistent niche, it is nevertheless a niche that is still shrinking. So you are right, I don’t see how you will ever get a vendor like OneCentCDs, I guess they had their time and then it was over.It’s a new entity like ‘onecentCDs’ that I need to step forward
Interesting story, never heard of them… but the story suggests that they eventually discarded the business because there was no longer money to be made in used CDs and were likely being even stuck on surplus inventory. I don’t think those times are comin’ back. 🙂
Because shipping a CD without jewel case without being tracked… I don’t know. I guess most buyers would not want their CDs sent way (the danger that the CD becomes scratched or just gets lost is enormous). Often times, when CDs are in a jewel case, the jewel case arrives cracked; you know of people are irked just because of scratched jewel cases. I imagine it would be worse if the CD gets scratched.
So usually, people want their packages tracked and their CDs in jewel cases and securely wrapped.You say that as if Discogs’ Shipping rates are “ludicrous”, though I don’t know what you mean… they just list what it costs to ship from one country to another. (As far as I can tell, just sampled.) I don’t see how they can ship any cheaper? I mean, how’d you ship? What does it cost to ship a CD from Norway to the EU or the US? Is that so much cheaper? The cheapest I could send a trackable CD to Norway (DHL) would be €16.-
