Nicolai P. Zwar
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The voice of a composer is not unlike the voice of anyone here in this forum. Could you recognize who wrote a post without a name attached? If so, that’s like a composer’s voice you are familiar with. Even if he or she says something never said before, you recognize: yes, that’s that voice, that’s what the person writes.
If not, maybe you’re not too familiar with that voice yet. Or maybe you never paid attention to it. Maybe that person never had anything to say that interested you, so it’s irrelevant to you.
That’s exactly how it is with the singular voice of a composer.
Well, yeah, I define “film music” as music specifically composed for a film, as opposed to “music in a film”. I don’t consider Bartók or Strauss film music, even though they’ve been used in films.
Musicians just continued doing for film what they had done for the theatre.
That’s really it… Musicians just kept doing for film what they had already been doing anyway (not just for theatre). And yep, that’s basically it, that’s the story.
The identity of film music comes from its function, not from its style of form, which can be any musical style. Which is why there is not “one prototype” of film music.
There is music, and there is, let’s say, the “the toolbox of musical techniques”. This toolbox has been developed and used and re-used and advanced and expanded for as long as there is music, particular Western (classical) music. And “underscoring” (figuratively), characterization, atmosphere, drama… composers had been doing that long before cameras existed. Vivaldi “scoring” dogs in The Four Seasons is one example I already mentioned. Take Beethoven’s Egmont or Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The latter functions basically like a modern film score.
None of this was really “proto‑film music” in the sense that it was just waiting for film to be invented… But it was simply music doing what music had always done. Film inherited those techniques wholesale. And of course, it especially used and used and (perhaps) overused some of these techniques. It didn’t need to invent them; it just applied them to a new medium.
That’s why I said there is not any one particular musical technique or characteristic that is in any way unique to film music per se, not one (just like there is not any one particular musical technique or characteristic that is unique to any other type of music), but there are techniques that film music particularly prominently and predominantly applies.
Let’s not forget the fury Modest Mussorgsky unleashed in “Night on Bald Mountain”, incidentally also used in FANTASIA.
But you can go back all the way to Vivaldi, who famously incorporated a barking dog in the “Spring” part of the Four Seasons.I love silence. I need silence. Without silence, music would not mean anything and vice versa.
I’m the type of person who sits awake and upright in a dark room in silence, contemplating, startling others when they enter and turn on the light.If you want an “on the nose” example, perhaps and of course Beethoven’s thunderstorm in his sixth Symphony, which Disney illustrated indeed as… a thunderstorm.
Yes, we’re not really in disagreement.
One core difference between orchestral and electronic music is, as you said, that orchestral music is practically always written down. Notes on paper, which are to be performed. And different performers perform the same piece, the same notes, differently.
Not all electronic music is written down (though a lot of it actually is… especially when it’s mixed with orchestral music, as in the scores by Jerry Goldsmith (I have some actual scores here) or also classical works, like Piere Boulez’ Répons which is written for orchestra and real-time computer-driven sound transformation via the 4X digital signal processor!
Anyway, of course, not all electronic music is written down, often times (though not always) it doesn’t even require more than one performer.
However, I found Alan Howarth’s performance of ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 recreates the exact vibe and sound of John Carpenter’s original score quite well, possibly because he’s worked with Carpenter and knows exactly what he did. It’s also not overly complicated music, with repeated ostinatos and clear chords. So once you get the “sound”, it’s fairly easy to recreate a performance that aligns well with a previous performance.I think even if Vangelis wrote down EXACTLY what tech and inputs he used, people wouldn’t be able to replicate the broad, intuitive, almost improvised way he played the synths.
This is true, which is why I am not talking about absolutes. I am talking about degrees. I am not taking the human out of the equation, no two performances of any piece of music are alike. My response was to Malte that it might be easier with an orchestra, which is what I objected to. Because it is easier for one person to recreate the same electronic sound of another person (especially if he’s got the same (type of) synthesizer), than it is for 100 people to recreate the same sound of 100 different people on 100 different instruments. That was my argument in context.
I don’t think Blade Runner is a particularly good example, because it’s not a purely electronic score. There is such a multitude of electronic and acoustic elements in the score, which I agree cannot be “replicated”. I love Edgar Rothermich’s performance of Blade Runner, it’s an excellent album and both the performance and sound are excellent, but of course, it’s not a direct replication of Vangelis’ sound. It is, as I noted up there, synthesizers “in a room” (by which I mean synthesizers and accoustic instruments mixed and actually recorded). That’s just like another “orchestral” recording… two of these will never sound “alike”.
However, when it comes to purely electronic synthesized music, then it’s easier to recreate a performance, as you can eliminate a lot of the “human” (or acoustic) elements.
I love Elliot Goldenthal, and for me, if pressed, Alien 3 is still his magnum opus… that score is just… wow! It got everything. Hyperaggressive and snarling atonal passages out to attack you as well as some of Goldenthal’s most poetically mythic writing, it’s just a powerhouse of a score. But I love just about everything he’s done, but Alien 3 will be very hard to top. It’s just one of the best film scores.
I disagree, it is much more difficult to “re-create” the sound of an orchestral recording with another orchestra than it would be to recreate a synthesizer recording with another synthesizer. Synthesizers are by there very nature more deterministic and predictable in their output, whereas an orchestra his 50 to 100 people, all different, all with unique instruments… no matter how the Vienna Philharmonic plays a piece, no matter who conducts, they will never ever sound like the Berlin Philharmonic or vice versa. Of course, if you record multiple synthesizers “in a room”, it becomes more tricky (because the room is then “analog”), but should still be easier than an orchestra.
Whereas I’ve heard Alan Howarth recreate John Carpenter scores that sound just like the original film score tracks (except when they purposely divert from it, when Howarth embellishes expands on them).
Er… dear genie… “If you do not abide by these demands, you are swept off the face of the earth. Gone forever.”
Not sure I’ll take the risk, as I’ve never done the research to know about what tracks or parts have appeared on any compilation. Certainly not bootlegs, as there are innumerable.
But my one pick would be and has been for a while:
Maurice Jarre: 5 Card Stud.I’m not aware of any release ever anywhere of this score or tracks… even though it features a Maurice Jarre composed Dean Martin song. But if that’s ever been released anywhere, I’m certainly not aware of it.
I’ve known them since childhood, PEANUTS was quite popular.
I consider “Linus & Lucy” a true classic, one of the most charming pieces ever written for television. I love it.t may be something between the still old traditions being very present to actually not caring for it. For sure it’s not the education itself as women at least over here tend to have the far better grades that men.
It does not have anything to do with “tradition” per se. I remember a US law firm in Los Angeles, I knew a lot of people there personally. They hire both men and women. And they had both men and women working there. But all the partners were men (not sure if that’s still the case). Why? Because women didn’t get the opportunity? Because the established partners were sexist and didn’t want women in power positions? No, quite the contrary. They’s have loved for a women to go up all the way to the highest ranks, if anything, they’d have favored women, not the other way around. But they just could not hold the women. High-end salary and luxury sedans and whatnot did not compensate women enough to put in the 80-100 hours of work (including weekends) in a highly competitive field that were just needed to become a “partner”. Not because women couldn’t. They just didn’t want to. Far more men were readily willing to jump at the chance to trade off their spare time for prestigious positions then women were.
I don’t think this has anything to do with “film music”. Men and women are very similar, but certainly no the same, there are quite a few differences. Men tend to be more into “things” and stuff… HiFi settings, floor standing loudspeakers, stereo shops, they are all populated by men. Music collectors of all kind tend to be far more frequently men then women. And not just music, but also books or keychains or model trains or whatever.
Women tend to be more centered around social things and interactions, whereas men tend to focus more on things and stuff. There’s this famous Bechdel Test for movies, how characters are written, but a few years ago, I compared that to an interesting study, that featured random conversations of people in the foyer of a large theater (or something, not sure), and it was actually easy to determine blind (just written transcripts) whether the conversations were between males or females, because male conversation where almost exclusively about “stuff” (the play itself, football, news, fishing… whatever), whereas the female only conversations tended to be around social issues (work, relationships, children, neighbors, other people in the room) etc.
Note, these are of course tendencies, not absolutes. They are not fixed or immutable. Of course men talk about work, relationships, children, neighbors, other people in the room, and women talk about stuff like football, news, fishing, but statistically, and that’s what’s relevant, they statistically always skew in certain directions. Men and women tend to have different insterests and put their focus there. That’s even true for primates. I have read some interesting books by Frans de Waal, and one thing of note was that even chimpanzee children favored different toys depending on their sex, with male ape kids preferring trucks and female ape kids preferring dolls. So it’s not just “humans”.And I think that’s obvious in all forums, not just film music forums. Obviously, women are just as invited and welcome to participate in these conversations, probably even more so (since they are comparatively rare), but obviously, the male/female ration in these forums are heavily skewed towards male. That’s true for classical music forums as well, and it’s also true for forums like ROON Community or HiFi community… it does change, however, when the forum tend to be more around social issue, health care, beauty, etc, you will see higher female participation there.
That is incidentally true cross culturally, you find these statistics in USA, Europe, Scandinavia, etc.Bill Conti is probably underrated. By me, that is. I mean, I’ve known him for as long as I listen to film scores, have a selection of his scores, like a lot — I love the theme from THE RIGHT STUFF ever since I heard it at the Academy Awards, and the DYNASTY theme is one of the greatest TV themes ever — but I never lingered or delved on it. Shame on me.
But I think ROCKY (all of them), NORTH AND SOUTH. and THE BIG BLUE are great.
I shall put on more Conti these next weeks.
Ozawa’s Prokofiev cycle only got mediocre reviews… I’m no expert on Prokofiev Symphony recordings, but I really like this recording of Symphony No. 2.
Not sure, in fact, I have no idea, perhaps because I don’t have film scores on my radar — let alone listen to music — that could be improved by removing its gimmicks to begin with.
Crazy. For fun, I looked up where Jurassic Park is now, which was the big deal until Titanic. It’s not even in the top 50 now.
It’s on 43 worldwide, if that’s consolation.
Alan Hovhaness is an interesting composer, his music is very filmic, dramatic. My first encounter with his music was STAR DAWN (released on Delos Records), which I bought in 1995. I picked it up because of the cover and wanted to explore some new composers, and that CD is still very special to me. It contains the titular symphony, and the charming chamber score for THE FLOWERING PEACH (incidental music for the stage play). If you want to hear beautiful, elegant passages for brass, that’s a very good start. It was my start in any case.
Two of his most famous works are his Symphony No. 2 “Mysterious Mountain” and the orchesterpiece “And God created Whales”, which includes actual whale song.
Hovhaness was a highly prolific composer, who wrote many different types of music, large orchestral works, piano works, etc…. even though I always enjoyed his music whenever I encountered it, I’m afraid I have neglected him far too long.Hovhaness never followed any musical trends, so he was never a “serialist” or a “minimalist” or anything. He once said, and I just looked up the quote, it’s in one of the CD booklets I have: “My purpose is to create music not for snobs, but for all people, music which is beautiful and healing. To attempt what old Chinese painters called ‘spirit resonance’ in melody and sound.”
That’s very much like Hovhaness’ music sounds: straightforward expression, direct, without mannerisms or artificiality. Very accessible music, so while his “Symphony No. 2 “Mysterious Mountain” sounds like a logical start (it’s been recorded several times), you may just browse your preferred streaming service for some Hovhaness and jump right in. 🙂
Yesterday, I listened for the first time to his Symphony No. 1 and 50, both could also serve as great entry points.No need to be “afraid” of Hovhaness, his music is very accessible, especially if you know film scores.
Yeah, volume 2 includes even Richard Strauss conducting his own music in the 1920s, so that is historically interesting.
Yes, on the DGG Centenary collection, Volume 1.
It was released when Deutsche Grammophon celebrated their 100 Years Anniversary, as part of the DGG Centenary Collection. I picked up a lot of those back in the day, and volume 1 included some odds and ends from the pioneering time of recording days. It includes a voice recording of founder and inventer Emile Berliner, testing the new possibilities of the “Grammophone”. It may be the oldest recording in existence. Also the Philip Sousa March “Hail to the Spirit of Liberty” was probably chosen because it was “loud” and could thus be recorded better than, say, a Chopin Nocture. That recording is from 1898!
So these very old recordings are more of a selection of very early recordings etc… historically very interesting (I think), but of course not for modern “high-fidelity” listening sessions.No, as I said up there Boulez never actually conducted the piece (and was famously dismissive of it). He conducted other works by Messiaen though. I have seven recordings of the Turangalîla myself, though not the one conducted by Chung (though I have other Messiaen recordings by Chung, whom I consider a wonderful Messiaen interpreter. Ironically, despite of having listened to quite a few Turangalîlas, Chung’s I haven’t listened to yet).
In fact, Chung’s recording of “Éclairs Sur L’Au-Delà” was my “entry card” into Messiaen, the first Messiaen recording I bought/heard.Because I just love statistics, I did a cursory check when the music in my collection was recorded (or released… depending on the information available on CD covers, booklets, etc.). As can be expected, up to the 1940s, just a few recordings, then already some more from the 50s… 60s…
So yeah, obviously, many older golden age scores really benefit from newer recordings simply for fidelity.
But there are plenty of other reasons why I enjoy re-recordings too… it’s not an “either/or” thing for me, if I’m really interested in a film score, I’m usually interested in hearing a different recording of it too.
Anyway….
I remember my music teacher in 2nd and 3rd grade very well. He had the gift to have an entire class of kids sit and listen enchantedly to classical music, such as Smetana, Britten, or even Bartók. Maybe as kids we couldn’t even spell their names, but he told us about them, their music, what to listen for, and then… dropped the needle and let the music do its spell.
Ironically, he was skeptical of recordings, almost suspicious of them, a bit like Celibidache. But he used them anyway. What else?
But even back in those early years I started to learn something… something that is true for me to this day. The music isn’t in the recording. It’s not what is written on paper either. It is what happens in your head, it is what you imagine, what you build, what you breathe into it. The recording is just the postcard. The music is the trip. (That’s my analogy… I just come from Italy… forgive me.)Because music is alive. Music is one person or a hundred people banging, scraping, bowing, blowing on metal or wood or whatever… music is a creation of the moment, it happens and already it’s gone again, it is something that exists in the moment of listening. So a recording is a snapshot of a landscape. Maybe it’s a beautiful snapshot, snapshots are great, photos are great. They are art, of course. But a snapshot is not THE landscape. Just like a recording of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony is NOT Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. So I try not to confuse the two. Because if you think the snapshot of a landscape is the real thing, you may be confused to see how the landscape looks at a different season, at a different daytime, with different weather… and the same is true for the recording of music. If you “listen” to the same snapshot over and over, you start expecting not just the same tree, but the same bird on the branch, in the sky… and you expect to see not just the same sky, but the same cloud, the same wind… So yeah, while I love recordings of music and I have thousands of them, they are NOT the actual music. And just like a photo of the exact same landscape, taken at a different time of day, or a different season, or slightly different angle, can be a totally new revelation, because the photo of a landscape is not the landscape, so can a different performance of a great piece of music reveal secrets that were not unlocked before.
Beethoven’s 5th is not something that wants to be fixed. The very first notes are a negotiation… according to Beethoven’s own instruction. That fourth note in the motive? Every conductor stretches it differently, like they are testing how far or short or loud they can go with it… and that’s what they are supposed to do. Or Bach… wow… one of my favorite composers nowadays (used to bore when I was a young lad though). Most people who love Bach don’t end up with a recording of the Well-Tempered Clavier or the Goldberg variations, they and up with a shelf of them. Okay, maybe not a shefl, but you end up with lots of them, because that landscape looks different and is worth looking at winter and summertime, daytime, nighttime, and so on… the music cannot and should not be “contained” to one recording.
Whenever I encounter Mozart’s Requiem, I check how the Rex Tremendae is performed. It can be performed so very differently, yet all true to the written score.
So where does that leave film music? That’s obviously what we’re talking about.. Williams and Rózsa are not Beethoven or Bach, and I don’t mean that in the sense that they are “lesser” composers, but in what their music does and achieves. Nobody needs twelve recordings of JAWS or BEN HUR. Film score are not so much prisms, they are built to hit hard, often on the nose, and not to unfold endlessly. And that’s okay, I love film scores. But even there, I am glad when a new recording shows up. I don’t need a dozen recordings of JAWS or EL CID, but I’m certainly happy to have at least two of them.
Because music should be performed. Not preserved. Not embalmed. Performed. (And then, yeah, sure, also recorded. 🙂 )
So I embrace new recordings of film scores. They sure can make an old favorite war-horse sound fresh and new again, and I’m not just talking about recording quality.
In fact, I am explicitly NOT talking about recording quality, because one thing a new recording of a film score is not: a “substitute” or “replacement” for the original tracks. If you want to hear the original tracks, if you fell in love with the recording you heard in the movie, well, you should get that recording and not hope for another recording to imitate it. Every recording must stand on its own to feet and should be allowed to live and breathe on its own.
My two cents on the subject (though I’ve said more or less the same things elsewhere on the net over the years.)
The “Turangalîla-symphonie” is actually a large scale symphony by Olivier Messiaen, not by Pierre Boulez, who incidentally called the piece once dismissively “Brothel Music”. Olivier Messiaen was a teacher of Boulez, and Boulez actually conducted several of Messiaen’s pieces, but not the “Turangalîla”, which may be Messiaen’s most famous orchestral work.
I had a phase a few years ago where I noticed fascinating differences in articulation in the “”Turangalîla-symphonie”, which is scored for large orchestra, percussion, piano, ondes martenot, celeste, etc.
So I listened to probably over two dozen recordings of this (quite enormous) piece within a comparatively short time span. I guess I was in the mood for it. I find Messiaen quite accessible really, not at all “difficult” music.Yes, that happens, it can happen with composers (I am somewhat in a Lalo Schifrin phase right now), or type of composition (I had a “Bach’s keyboard compositions phase”) or even a single composition (like a “Turangalila phase”, where I probably listened to twenty or more different recordings within the span of a few weeks).
