Nick Zwar
Forumsvar Lagt Inn
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Innlegg
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Not so much a “composer”, but the type music I disliked and loathed the most before all others was “easy listening”… anything that was in the direction of Lawrence Welk or Ferrante & Teicher or Bert Kaempfert… you know the style… and that included most of Mancini’s soundtrack albums of the day and what not. When I seriously started listening to music as a teenager, you could give me Stravinsky, Ligeti, Boulez, Schnitte, anything with thorns and spikes, but if you gave me “easy listening”, and you ensured my disdain.
I’m much more mellow about that type of music nowadays and can take it for what it is.Or is it a constant negotiation to have your physical media out and about in the general area of the house/apartment?
Sort of… I got my wife drunk one evening and had her sign this:
Yes, it’s a Weißbier; I don’t think I ever had that particular one myself… I just bought a mixed crate of weißbier and picked that one.
CLOUD ATLAS has a great score by Tom Tykwer & Co and is probably the most expensive German movie ever produced. I love the movie (it is based on my favorite novel of this century) and the music fits.
I also like Terrence Malick’s A HIDDEN LIFE AS, which was a German/US co-production I think, with an excellent score by American composer James Newton Howard.
I guess we need to distinguish… Do we mean film scores by German composers (such as Zimmer, which we excluded because everybody knows him anyway), or German movies, which of course may have non-German composers (like THE NAME OF THE ROSE). I guess it’s more German composers for now.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.
Along with John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith, Ennio Morricone was certainly among my “initial” film composer interests, among the first composers who I knew by name and whose records I bought. His music for the Italian western was of course legendary, and he was a “big” name, probably the most famous film composer in his day. My first Varèse Sarabande album of all time was the soundtrack LP for THE ISLAND. Now at that time, I knew Morricone from some of his western scores, and from the cover (I had not seen the movie), I expected the music to by more “twangy”, perhaps with guitars, horror style. Instead, the music opened with warmth and lyrical beauty. It was totally unexpected at that time, but I enjoyed it quite a bit, it became a Morricone favorite. The whole score is not very long (just about 35 minutes), but it’s quite diverse: next to the lyrical main theme, it’s got suspense (“Boarding Party”), action (“Tue-Barbe Hunts Maynard”), pop (“Beth”) and more. The five minute “Island Magic” is quite a set piece.
I was shocked when Varèse Sarabande finally released that on CD, and it was SOLD OUT before I had a chance to get a copy! Fortunately, I was able to trade in a copy at the FSM board some time after that. So now I’ve got the LP and the CD (here they are today):I always enjoyed Ennio Morricone, I like his inventiveness, he was very good at all kinds of styles.
Apart from THE ISLAND and all the “classics” (Leone Collaborations, The Mission, etc.), other favorites include UN UOMO DA RISPETTARE (a recent favorite), UN GENIO, DUO COMPARI, UN POLLO (one of the most joyful Morricone scores), LOLITA (just beautiful), RED SONJA, and MOSES (the latter is one I often mention as my “favorite” Morricone score, but I like them all. Oh yeah, NOSTROMO is another favorite.
I have over 200 Morricone albums, by no means all, but at least it’s a sizable portion. Included in these are several multi-disc compilation sets, so I should have for quite a few of his movies at least a few tracks.
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…
Today, it’s a beer… because it’s a tradition in our home (from my wife’s side) to start BBQ season, so we have guests (like my mother-in-law, neighbors, etc.), I get to grill and have beer. My wife baked fresh bread (in the background) and made salads… and I in between sneak into my office to do some “important” stuff, like posting here. 🙂
That’s my Easter Weekend Saturday.Nothing yet… but later on this special evening, it will be a Whisk(e)y… most likely be a piece of the Devil’s Cut Bourbon, as that is already open. 🙂
While it would be possible for me do do a wireless setup, I actually don’t stream “wireless” either. My streamer is connected via Ethernet(LAN), so it’s not going over WiFi. Just the operation is via WiFi (Tablet or Smartphone).
Not too long ago, I came across an Ennio Morricone score for a movie starring Kirk Douglas, called “Un Uomo da Rispettare” (The Master Touch) from 1972.
I had never heard of the movie or score before, but this became a favorite right away, it’s musically up there with the best Morricone scores, and I was surprised again by Morricone’s versatility. The score mixes avant-garde techniques with echoplex, Jazz fusion and trumpet (a bit remeniscent of Chet Baker’s sound… Morricone had actually done some collaborations with Chet Baker some years earlier). It’s really a dynamite “jazz(y) album”.This is the first track, it’s almost 12 minutes long.
Un Uomo da RispettareCollection Size/Acquisition Habits:
When I started to seriously buy music some decades ago, I hoped that one day I’d have a satisfying library of music that means something to me, a representative selection of great classical music from every epoch as well as all the interesting important film scores. Some years ago I looked at my collection and thought: wow, well done. You got there. Not sure how much larger this will grow, but it’s pretty sufficient should I ever be cut off from new music to still bring me enjoyment for the rest of my life I guess. 🙂My buying habits of course changed over the years: originally, I searched the record stores and sometimes mail ordered a few albums. One didn’t even know what was out there. As far as film music was concerned, it was best to pick up new film scores when they were released, because re-releases of classic film scores weren’t a thing back then. I mostly missed the first batch of Varèse Club titles, so for me the real turning point was when FSM released STAGECOACH and FANTASTIC VOYAGE… from that point on, I would order often new expanded and remastered/restored releases of film scores via the Internet.
Classical music is different, that was usually still available in the better selected record stores. In recent years I picked up a lot of great deals, because many labels released “boxed sets”, so that’s a lot of music. I still do buy CDs and digital downloads, though I have slowed down a bit nowadays. Not so much because of a lack of interest, but because I have a lot of music. I did pick up the Andris Nelson’s Shostakovich Cycle on Deutsche Grammophon, because Qobuz had a great deal really (around €11.- for ALL of Shostakovich’s symphonies and concertos in — as far as I can tell so far — excellent performances in high-res format).
All my CDs are ripped lossless, for legacy reasons to ALAC format. So all my digital high-res downloads are ALAC as well (except for a few multichannel albums, which are in FLAC format, and five albums in MP3 format that are just available only in that format (like the music for the first Monkey Island games… I guess “high-res” makes not sense for that music anyway. 🙂 ).
In any case, it’s by now clearly over 100,000 lossless/high-res ALAC tracks, mostly classical music and film music, but also of course some pop/jazz/ambient/electronic/lounge music.
The music is on external hard drives and my NAS, I don’t have any music on my actual laptop. I currently use MinimServer for music.Listening Habits:
While I use iTunes to maintain and curate my collection, I don’t use it to play music. My laptop is in a docking station in my home office and is not directly hooked up to my music system. So it’s just build in speakers, not suitable for music listening.At home, I usually listen to music on my stereo system in the living room, where I access the music via tablet or smartphone; I listen to my own music or Qobuz. Since all my CDs are ripped lossless anyway, there isn’t really any point in putting in the actual CDs anymore, so I hardly ever do that. I do have a few playlists, mostly for “occasions” though (like sometimes, when we have guests over, play cards, or something like that), with music that is suited for that kind of thing (so it’s not necessarily “THE OMEN”, though I remember one evening where we had neighbors over who suddenly asked for “Le Sacre du Printemps”… I was happy to oblige and we heard the whole thing at rather decent volume.)
In my car, I have a USB stick with around 350 albums in 256/320 AAC format; these tend to be selected according to what I might enjoy while driving.
On the go or on vacation, I usually listen to music via my phone. I used to have music in AAC format on my phone, but nowadays I tend to use Qobuz with noise cancelling headphones if I listen to music, or I listen to podcasts. I tried Roon and Roon ARC for three months, which worked for me and was great, as my entire experience with Roon was quite satisfactory, but for my own use, Roon is just too expensive, so I did not continue my subscription nor bought a lifetime pass. Roon ARC was neat though, as it enabled me to listen to my entire music collection from anywhere in the world.
Yes, I’m perfectly willing to say TOUCH OF EVIL (or IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT) is more blues than jazz… as you said, the boundaries are not set in stone, they are fleeting. What is “jazz”? Louis Armstrong (my uncle was a big fan and had lots of his music recording) once said “If you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know”, but of course, one has to define it in some way to distinguish it effectively from something else.
Synthesizers are like any other musical instrument, they’re either a benefit or a hazard. If they’re a hazard, it’s not my problem. (I just won’t listen to scores I don’t like.) 🙂
I don’t view them differently from any other musical instrument, whether they are incorporated into a larger orchestral palette, or the main instrument or instrument groups.
BLADE RUNNER is one of my all time favorite movies and film scores… if that qualifies as a synth score (lots of synths, but also other instruments).
“Real” jazz — by that I mean mostly or to a larger degree spontaneous and improvised music — only rarely belongs in film scoring. Because when the director breathes down your neck and asks you to bring that oboe in earlier, you can’t. Improvisation — the soul of jazz — is for obvious reason the enemy of picture-locked precision. A trumpet that plays what it “feels” will always be a threat to a scene that needs what it means. In jazz, you let go, in film, you hit your mark.
Jazz is “free style”, which is often at odds with the needs of film, so why not fake it? But of course, that’s a generalization. There IS room for improvised music in film, and there are some “real” jazz scores. However, some scores that may “feel” like “real” jazz actually aren’t. Why should they? The audience neither cares nor notices if the sax solo is improvised, it’s just whether the music “lands”.
So when some film music feels like it has a “jazz score,” what it often means is that someone composed something that sounds like jazz. That’s certainly true of Alex North’s A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, which “feels” jazzy, but is composed and written out like a classical symphony. It’s all in the score. It walks like jazz, it talks like jazz, but under the hood, it’s not a duck… I mean it ain’t actual jazz.
Also, while the first “talkie” was famously called “The Jazz Singer” and there has been a lot of jazz music on and in film, it wasn’t until the 1950s that the “sound of jazz” started to weave its way in the motion picture scores. For that reason, I don’t know how to list 10 Jazz scores that cover most of film history.
But I try to go for 10 Jazz Milestone Film scores. (I actually break the rules and name 11, but one is a “two for one” entry. 😉 )
Alex North: A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
As I said, it’s not “real” jazz, it’s composed like any other film score. But nevertheless, it is groundbreaking. One of the first major Hollywood scores to incorporate “the sound” of modern jazz. And it’s just a darn great score.Elmer Bernstein: The Man With the Golden Arm (1955)
I haven’t seen the score for this one, but I suppose it’s composed through similar to Streetcar? Still, this is even jazzier, with diegetic and non-diegetic music sometimes blending, and with actual top jazz players perform.Miles Davis: Ascenseur pour l’échafaud (1958
Perhaps the first “real” jazz score? Not sure. I think Miles Davis really improvised the entire score, so yep, this may be the first actual “jazz” score. The soundtrack sure plays like a smoky jazz album.Duke Ellington: Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
Another probably “real” jazz film score, composed by jazz legend Duke Ellington. Great album, feels like pure jazz, and works in the movie.Henry Mancini: The Pink Panther (1963) / Touch of Evil (1958)
I temporarily break rule here an name two Henry Mancini scores, because they are so very different.
All of the above were “dramas”… but isn’t jazz also fun and freestyle? In comes Henry Mancini. It’s perhaps more easy listening than actual jazz, but it’s got a jazzy vibe, and the theme is iconic… so I just had to mention it.
TOUCH OF EVIL I mention because it was quite ingenious to have ALL the film music play as diegetic music from some source. Nice “touch”.Quincey Jones: In the Heat of the Night (1967)
Bluesy, jazzy… not sure how this was composed, but it’s definitely a film score that has a “jazz” feeling to it. And it’s one of Quincey Jones most famous film scores, so I just had to mention it.Lalo Schifrin: Bullitt (1968)
Schifrin was classically trained but always loved Jazz. BULLITT just feels like a very jazzy score, and provided the template for the urban-gritty-jazzy sound many cop dramas and TV shows would have in the 1970s.John Barry: Body Heat (1981)
Hard to write a jazz film score list without mentioning at least John Barry, much of whose film score output of the 1960s was very jazz influenced. But I pick BODY HEAT… not necessarily “real” jazz, but certainly “smoky”, “bluesy”, with a sultry, haunting “jazz sex… I mean sax” part.Pat Metheny: The Falcon and the Snowman (1985)
Jazz fusion, perfectly suited for that movie. Of course, the song “This is not America” became quite famous, but the score is definitely worth hearing. In record stores (when there were such things), it as often in the “Jazz Section” (under Pat Metheny) rather than the soundtrack section, so I include it here. It sure has the sound vibes of the “Pet Metheny Group”, a “real” Jazz band.Jerry Goldsmith: The Russia House (1990)
Goldsmith’s jazziest score, with Michael Lang at the piano, and real jazz music legends Branford Marsalis on saxophone and John Patitucci on bass, so it’s about as much “real” jazz as you can get into a nevertheless meticulously planned and recorded score.
