Nick Zwar
Forumsvar Lagt Inn
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Innlegg
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Fair enough, though perhaps I am somewhat puzzled that you are puzzled.
Behold, I understand if you find these speculative threads boring amd uninteresting, but I don’t find it hard to understand why some people do find the interesting.
And once the score is released, well, I guess people listen to it rather than write about it.
It’s not that every score naturally leads itself to discussion. And I mean, everyone is always free to start any type of discussion.Not sure, but I would say a lot of it has to do with the simple fact that people enjoy looking forward to something and enjoy guessing. I mean, even children guess and wonder what they might receive for Christmas, so I suppose the speculation about future releases has a bit of that. There are people who buy a lot more soundtrack CDs than I do (though I have accumulated my share over the decades, no doubt), and so they just wonder what it is that ends up next in their collection. I remember back in the day you could subscribe to FSM CDs and get one every month, so people wondered and speculated “what might be next”. It doesn’t seem puzzling to me why people speculate about such things.
I suppose it greatly depends on how you define “Montage”, obviously, just about every every movie (except perhaps Hitchcock’s ROPE or Sam Mendes’ 1917) is an edited montage made up of different scenes. Now I’m not saying every edited scene is automatically a “Montage” (or you wouldn’t need the term separate from simply “editing”), but the thing is that not everyone defines what a Montage in a movie is the same.
Back in the day, what Eisenstein pioneered was the idea that seemingly unrelated scenes and images can be edited together to create the impression of something else. However, this concept, as you point out, has basically become one of the “basics” of film making, and to differentiate what some may view a “Montage” as what others might see as mere “editing” are fluent to say the least.
I think the training scenes in the ROCKY movies are often perfect examples of elaborate montages that fuse into one scene.
Like, for example, this slick 80s Montage from ROCKY 4 with the pulsating synthesizer driven music. It’s a perfect “Montage” in the sense that the edited scenes don’t have a clear continuity, nor are they scenes from the same time or space, but could have happened at various different times before the fight, yet they fuse into one kinetic and very effectively edited Montage.Wow, just came across this, and what a great recording. Perhaps the best since Karajan’s legendary 1974 account. Makes actually a case for 12-tone music as a venue for personal expression.
Schönberg’s Variations for Orchestra can by thorny, but when it’s performed with such verve and transparency, it’s great.Arnold Schönberg: Variations for Orchestra, Op. 31 / Kirill Petrenko & Berliner Philharmoniker
Any liner notes that offer some insight I didn’t have before and make me learn something are certainly welcomed, not matter what they are. First and foremost, that includes background information about the project (in film music that’s obviously film, but it can also be background information about a particular symphony, concerto, opera, or ballet.
Interpretation and musical analysis, by all means, yes, but with caution, and when it really adds something. As Schilkeman points out, what music “means” is up to the listener, and it should be. Not every film score requires erudite musical “analysis” — most probably don’t — or “interpretation” (because it’s often obvious what the music does and how it does it). Just pick out two famous examples, John Williams’ JAWS or John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN. The later music is very simply, a keyboard driven ostinato figure, and the former, while undoubtedly one of the most important and best film scores of all time (in my humble opinion), is also pretty straight forward. It’s obvious what the music does in JAWS and equally obvious how it accomplishes it. Now sure, you may inject and spotlight a particular interesting compositional technique, or point to cross reference of motives and themes that may not be immediately obvious, but that is what I often see done in liner notes. Sure, some are better than others, some are more in depth than others, but not all film scores demand equal analysis.
I do have some of the printed film scores that have been published in recent years, not, because I’m such a terrific sight reader, but because I wanted to see — on page — how some of the music is notated… (I always wondered how Goldsmith notated some of the synths and especially the “blaster beam”), so that’s very interesting, but I don’t expect liner notes to include a full version of the printed score. But theses scores certainly offer more of a detailed behind the curtain” look at the nuts and bolts of a particular score than liner notes could hope to give.
This topic highly corresponds with my one hit wonder thread. In a way. At least it might have a big overlap.
There may be considerable overlap, though you asked for composers where you basically only like one score, regardless of how many they may have written, whereas Thor asked for composers who only peripherally composed for film.
So while there may be overlap between the threads, their respective core ideas are different.Denny Zeitlin’s INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS
Perfectly fits the description of someone who “dabbled” in film music. His “dayjob” is as a widely respected professor of clinical psychiatry, and his “nightjob” is as a composer of modern and experimental jazz and performer of piano and various keyboards/synthesizers.
He “dabbled” in film music by writing one of the best science-fiction scores of the 70s, for Philip Kaufman’s INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (which I love, both score and film), but turned down subsequent offers to score more movies… maybe because he didn’t have time for a third career. 🙂Apart from Leonard Bernstein (who wrote only one film score), perhaps also John Corigliano, who wrote less than five film scores, and is mostly know for his classical works?
I like Donaggio’s PASSION a lot too, just like I enjoy all the Donaggio/De Palma collaborations. PASSION is of course heavily influenced by lots of works, most notably Ravel’s Pavane Pavane pour une infante défunte, but also Jon Brion’s MAGNOLIA and Morricone’s THE THING among other things. But Donaggio fuses it all together into one highly listenable album.
I liked Pino Donaggio from the first time I ever noticed his name or music, that was way back in the 1980s when I saw DON’T LOOK NOW for the first time. Incidentally, that was also Donaggio’s first film score. And it’s a favorite to this day. To mention my “top 5” Donaggio scores:
DON’T LOOK NOW
That childlike piano theme alone, in a purposely “child-practice” like performance played by Donaggio himself, is just pure gold.BODY DOUBLE
I really love both the score and the movie; like Thor said, the score is highly eclectic, from lush romantic strings to suspense and synths. The “famous” cue “Telescope” is just like mystery-sleaze turned into music (in the best sense).HERCULES
Pino Donaggio in full blown orchestral fantasy mode… you don’t get to hear that often. The movie is a hoot, with Erector-set monsters, goofy plot, and Donaggio’s music just fully embraces the swashbuckling and adventure.ZELLY AND ME
Haven’t seen the movie (though it is one of the few with David Lynch as an actor), but the music is like a summer afternoon, soft and breezy, with a touch of melancholy. It’s got one of those Donaggio themes that lingers and stays in my head long after I stopped playing the album.DRESSED TO KILL
Of course, all the De Palma collaborations are great and interesting… so at first, I even thought to just lump them all together and say “Donaggio/De Palma”, but if I had to pick one more out of this great collaboration (after BODY DOUBLE), it might as well be DRESSED TO KILL. This might be the quintessential Donaggio/De Palma score.Well, just because one has seen a movie once doesn’t necessarily mean one remembers every piece of music and how it was used in the context of the film. Especially not if there are years or even decades between listening to a piece of film music and watching the movie. Not to mention that often I actually have not seen the film and have even no intention to. So if the liner notes provide the appropriate context for the music (and save me from having to watch some movies), I think that is their job. That doesn’t mean all liner notes should always be track-by-track descriptions, of course.
But be that as it may, liner notes often to go beyond that, and do comment on the subtext of the scene or explore what and how the music does to communicate. I’ve seen all kinds of liner notes, some better than others, but it’s not as if liner notes never do into more detail of how the music functions.
The difference is that if you have lengthy “making of” of classic movies, you usually have seen the movie already. I found Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse excellent.
A retrospective or making of or featurette may contain many points of view, many subjective experiences and opinions, and that’s all fine.
Liner notes are more like a short introduction to a work. In any case, I prefer facts over viewpoints in liner notes, and ideally, the notes provide context not readily apparent from the music itself. But if it’s interesting enough, by all means, you can also include personal views and opinions. I do have some classical music liner notes where the performers discuss their particular approach to the work, which of course can be very interesting.
I’m open to various approaches to liner notes, they don’t all have to be the same. But by and large, liner notes should provide context rather than interpretation, facts over opinion, at least, that should be the tendency. They should enable me to get a better understanding/appreciation of the music by providing context and background information that is not evident in the music itself.I love ALIEN, great monster horror movie.
I very much enjoy ALIENS, good sequel, great monster action movie.
ALIEN3 had some interesting things, I love David Fincher as a director, but I guess many people were pissed that it completely destroyed the ending of ALIENS, and I think they do have a point. Still, the atmosphere on the prison planet was quite captivating.
ALIEN: RESURRECTION then went the way many franchises do when they run out of ideas, and inserted more “camp” and more “human” qualities. Those actually annoyed me. I found the ALIENS up to then were horrifying creatures, they were not “evil” but simply dangerous insects. In ALIEN 4, they started to act more “human”, and so they became less interesting to me.
PROMETHEUS was one of the best looking films in the franchise, and it started out with some very interesting concepts and ideas. What I really enjoyed was a movie that took place in the alien universe but wasn’t foremost about aliens hunting humans. What I didn’t like was that so many people in the movie acted like absolute idiots.I haven’t bothered to watch any of the other alien movies yet, though I do have ALIEN:COVENANT on bluray somewhere.
I don’t mind such descriptions or evaluations, but when an author describes, as you say, why THAT particular instrument creates THAT particular association or meaning in a work, it’s likely that it all becomes totally subjective and as such, I don’t really need to see that in liner notes.
Of course, there are many examples where particular compositional techniques are explained and examined in the context of a work, and that’s all fine and well, but I am first and foremost not looking for personal opinions and interpretations in liner notes. I think they should serve as a general introduction to a work that enables the listener to explore and understand the work on his or her own terms.
Now obviously, I enjoy other people’s opinions, otherwise, why spend time on Internet forums, but liner notes are not the place for personal interpretation of music, that’s just not something I seek in liner notes. And in fact, that’s now what I see in most liner notes.
To sum it up: The liner notes should enable the listener to better interpret and understand the music, and not interpret and understand the music for them.
