Nicolai P. Zwar
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When I started collecting music, I was about 14. First LPs, then later my first CDs. Much later again digital downloads (I bought my first one in 2018… but I count them with the rest). I imagined one day, a future version of myself standing in front of my shelf, not just filled with discs, but with a representative collection classical and film music, a shelf filled with emotion and memories… and I guess I am now at that point.
All the major film scores by the likes of Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams, Ennio Morricone… they are there. Classical works from Vivaldi and Bach to Penderecki? They are there.
I don’t necessarily have ALL of their film scores, I certainly don’t have ALL Ennio Morricone scores, but quite a few. iTunes says I have 240 Jerry Goldsmith albums, that’s certainly almost all of his released film scores, but not quite all.
That does not mean my collection is literally “complete”. Can it ever be? “Completeness” implies a certain fixed immobility; I do not like that. Obviously, I still discover new music or new composers to explore. The universe is expanding, and so is the world of music. Take Carl Nielsen, for example. My first Nielsen CD landed on my shelf sometime last century. I liked it, but didn’t pay all that much attention to it. For years, it stood alone. Then in 2016, something shifted. I began exploring him seriously. Now, shelf space has filled up with four complete symphony cycles, plus chamber works and more.
Another more recent revelation was Arnold Bax. No idea why I skipped him for so long. But when I finally tuned in, I heard something raw and luminous. Music that punches and haunts. Some of it sounds like it could have written for mysterious science fiction worlds.
So while my collection is not “literally” complete, and cannot really be for as long as I live, it is complete in another way. It is complete in the sense that it became everything I once hoped it would be. And more. My 14 year old self would be proud of me. Well, at least in that regard. 🙂
Apart from a few doubled up CDs etc. which I keep boxed up in our garage, (some of which I actually got rid of a few years ago), my music collection is an integral part in our living room, always has been. It’s on USM Haller highboards (which means, theoretically, I can expand them), but it’s got room for them all and still some space left. Of course, I have doubled up rows here and there, but since I don’t actually need to access my CDs to play them anymore, that doesn’t bother me.
Anyway, it happens that guests notice the music shelf; it has certainly been a conversation piece now and then.Yes, while I do have THE RED HOUSE on CD, it’s ripped and I only play the files. I only ever play files, actually, so how the CD is split doesn’t really matter to me all that much. Though disc two is 25 minutes long, so it’s not that short. 🙂
My first Miklós Rózsa album was “Miklós Rózsa – Classic Film Music”, Elmer Bernstein conducting the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra. It was also the first CD I ever bought in a store. I didn’t have a CD player back then, but the album was available as a beautiful double LP set or a a single CD… they contained the same tracks and cost the same (at that time, CDs were more expensive than LPs, but since it was two LPs but only one CD, they cost the same.) So I picked the “future proof” CD, even though I had no way to playback the CD then. I bought quite a few more CDs before I ever bought a CD player. (I always buy “software” before “hardware”.) So that album holds a special place in my heart.
But back to business… when you ask about my 5 favorite Miklós Rózsa albums, it starts for me with Rhino’s lavish presentation of BEN HUR. Surely, that is one of the most beautiful soundtrack albums ever produced. It’s just gorgeous, like a book (and it does have a nice booklet). Sure, there was the more extensive presentation by FSM, which featured various additional presentations of the music, and Tadlow’s wonderful new 2CD recording of the score, but as far as presentation goes, the Rhino set wins.
It really is one of the most beautiful presentations of one of the greatest film scores to one of the greatest films of all time… so I’d say the superlatives are justified. Just all around great.But since you asked for five favorite albums, let’s see… right now I’d pick
1. BEN HUR (Rhino 2CD set)
(I have the Tadlow and the FSM as well, and they are all fine. But the Rhino set in its day (1995?) was a real beauty to behold… a stunning, beautifully produced 2CD set.)2. DOUBLE INDEMNITY, THE LOST WEEKEND, THE KILLERS / Sedares: NZSO (Koch)
This is a wonderful album. Each score is presented as a three movement composition, expertly arranged. The scores here all belong to Rózsa’s darker “noir” works. Especially LOST WEEKEND may the the closest Rózsa ever came to write a horror score. Good stuff.3. EL CID (Nic Raine: CPPO, Tadlow)
Just a great recording of perhaps my favorite Rózsa score. I also love Sedares on disc presentation, but Tadlow’s set is just splendid.4. JULIUS CAESAR (Bruce Broughton: SoL, Intrada)
Wow, does this thing sound great. Was a big deal when it was released, new recordings of classic film scores were rare in those days.5. THE RED HOUSE (Wilson: RSNO, Intrada)
May be the most impressionist score Rózsa ever wrote. There is a haunting melancholy weaving through the score, this is one of Rózsa’s must beautiful pieces of music. Never saw the movie, but the music sure stands well on it’s own. Rózsa was of course the most “romantic” of all film composers, but here, his music style seems to take a hint or two from Debussy and Ravel, which makes for a very inspiring sound.I just noticed that the albums I listed are 50% male and 50% female… I assure everyone that was purely coincidental.
A selection of ten of my favorite pop albums, just to show I’m not all Alex North and Pierre Boulez. 🙂
Talk Talk – The Colour of Spring
Peter Gabriel – US
Sting – Ten Summoner’s Tales
Tori Amos – Scarlett’s Walk
Johnny Cash – American IV
Madonna – Confessions on a Dance Floor
Heather Nova – Redbird
Justin Timberlake – FutureSex/LoveSounds
Aimee Mann – @#%&! Smilers
Lana del Rey – Ultraviolence
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.
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 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.)
What sounds “cheap”? Sounds like an orchestra with additional synthesizers.
(Presumably more expensive than just the orchestra without synthesizers.)I don’t know any of his 80s scores that sound “cheap”…. Even the purely electronic ones, like CRIMINAL LAW, tend to be very well constructed.
Goldsmith used almost always “standard” samples, because he treated synthesizers like any other instrument, preferring to find out what he could do with the standard sounds rather than have custom sounds made.
I have always enjoyed Goldsmith’s blend of orchestral and electronic sounds, it gave many of his scores a very unique and individual sound palette.Hollow Man is like a mix of TOTAL RECALL and BASIC INSTINCT (incidentally all Paul Verhoeven films).
It’s one of the great “sci-fi concept” scores Goldsmith was so good at; Goldsmith was excellent at scoring science-fiction movies with musical ideas and motives representing concepts within the movie.
Haha… yeah, the Monkey Island scores by Michael Land are great, I actually do listen to them apart from the game. Of course, I also loved the games. I played Ron Gilbert’s THE RETURN TO MONKEY ISLAND (the belated sequel) when it came out and had a lot more fun playing that than I have from watching most movies today.
As the say gois “A bad Goldsmith is always better than some good by others”
Yeah, that’s true. Interestingly, as far as I’m concerned, HOLLOW MAN and NEMESIS is up there with the best with them.
My latest box set is this:
It’s 12 discs of the music of Pierre Boulez plus one disc with an interview. Perhaps I am strange, could be, but I really enjoy quite a bit of Boulez’ compositions. When I first encountered them, I admit, I was puzzled… His first piano sonatas sounded at first to me like random notes…
It was “Sur Incises” that made me really listen… it was a composition that “clicked”, and it’s one of my favorite works of modern music. I don’t know why, but I find at least some of Boulez’ compositions highly “soothing” in a strange way. I find Boulez was an interesting personality and I’ve seen him a couple of times in concert as a conductor. So while this box doubled up on a few things I already had, I had to get it.I like all Jerry Goldsmith scores (well, okay, except for ANGIE), but of course I don’t like them all the same. Still, I would rank HOLLOW MAN with the best of them, it’s one of the most elegant and exciting scores of his later period. Likewise STAR TREK – NEMESIS, absolutely terrific score. And LOONEY TUNES – BACK IN ACTION is wonderful, very charming and full of energy.
I have always had an affinity for computers, and periodically play video games. By that I mean the first video game I ever played was Pong—I don’t think you can get much older than that. (I did not have this game as a kid, but a friend of mine did.)
Back with some friends in the 80s, I played on the NES completely through the first two Zelda games and Super Mario Bros. 3… Then I didn’t play for years. Then, in the late 90s, I played the first two Tomb Raider games, Total Annihilation, and all the Monkey Island games (that were available at the time). Then I stopped playing for years again. In 2017, I bought the then-new Nintendo Switch because I really, really wanted to play Mario again.
The thing with Super Mario Bros. games is… I have to play them completely through… all the way, every level, every star or moon or whatever. And say what you want—they do get insanely difficult at times. At least for such a casual player as myself.
Which inevitably, sooner or later, leads to situations like the one pictured below (from New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe… perhaps my favorite “classic” Mario game), where I curse that §$%§! piece of §%&! “one-wrong-move-and-you-are-dead” plumber! (Yes, that is an actual screenshot of me playing the game in 2019.)
So I have periods where I play one or more games intensively, and then sometimes years where I don’t play any video games at all.
These last few months, I have not really played many video games because I spend my time on other (presumably more important) things—but I still like video games.As far as music is concerned: yes, some of it has been really great. I mean, by nature, most (though not all) video game music is mood- rather than context-specific, so it is generally not very dramatic music, but rather sets the atmosphere. It must not be too specific or dramatic, because oftentimes it has to be able to be played in a loop, depending on how long a player stays within a certain scene. So it’s different from film scores in many ways. Some of it is quite nice. Grant Kirkhope’s music for Mario + Rabbids, for example, is terrific, with many charming melodies, songs, twists, and turns. The music was performed by the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Nic Raine, so I guess film score fans certainly know these names (James Fitzpatrick was listed as the orchestra manager).
There was some music with a definite “Danny Elfman” touch in an early level of Super Mario Odyssey (I’m pretty sure it was an intentional reference).
I do have a few soundtracks of video games, like the BALDUR’S GATE III soundtrack (which came with the game, which I played a bit last year—but on the PC, not a console), and some of it is indeed very good and very “filmic”.Two “live to picture” concerts I have attended that were splendid:
KOYAANISQATSI
FANTASIA 2000I’m sure because these movies are basically just images and music, they lend themselves to these types of concerts more than movies with lots of sound effects and dialog.
I can see why you said that…. both Tori Amos and Agnes Obel are singer/songwriters with a classical piano background, so I see the connection. I actually do have all of Tori Amos’ albums and liked Agnes Obel from her debut album “Philharmonics”.
Agnes Obel – Aventine
Sorry, I didn’t pay attention to the fact that the cover doesn’t have any text.Yeah, nice box… but I didn’t pick up that one either… I mean, I have all these scores already anyway.
ENTER THE DRAGON is a must, but only in later expanded and remastered editions, as the original album contained inserted yells and “Kung Fu vocals”.
I can say Rózsa, North, Herrmann, Goldsmith and Morricone would be “fixed” as my top five favorite film composers, but I like a lot of other composers as well, so the other five slots may be “rotating”.
I just name these off the top of my head (in chronological order of birthyear)
Miklós Rózsa (1907–1995)
Alex North (1910–1991)
Bernard Herrmann (1911–1975)
Ennio Morricone (1928–2020)
Jerry Goldsmith (1929–2004)
John Williams (1932–)
Howard Shore (1946-)
Elliot Goldenthal (1954–)
James Horner (1953-)
Thomas Newman (1955-)I’m flipping around a few names… I mean, there are so many more that are favorites… There’s John Barry, Leonard Rosenman… Don Davis (because I LOVE his Matrix scores), James Newton Howard (really cools stuff)…, Bruce Broughton… Vangelis (I like his film scores, but don’t consider him primarily a film composer, Hans Zimmer, Maurice Jarre, Danny Elfman… and more… cannot decide really, so I could flip a few names now and then, and probably will. 🙂 Wojciech Kilar is a favorite too…
Not to mention composers such as Shostakovich, Copland, Glass, Nyman, Vangelis… I like them all, but I don’t consider than primarily film composers, even though they obviously were film composers… Ah, well, I did my “off the top of my head top ten” list. 🙂I like quite a bit of Danny Elfman’s music; I first took notice of him in the 1980s. He had done the theme for the funny TV series SLEDGEHAMMER, and then of course came the two punch when he scored Tim Burton’s huge hit BATMAN and the theme for the still running THE SIMPSONS.
My favorite Danny Elfman scores? Hmmm… off the top of my head:EDWARD SCISSORHANDS (1990)
Just a beautiful score… love it from start to finish.ALICE IN WONDERLAND & ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS (2010/2016)
Danny Elfman meets Philip Glass with chorus.PLANET OF THE APES (2001)
I didn’t care for the movie, but wow, what a score. At the time I said it sounded like the Vienna Philharmonic took acid and started banging and clanging on anything that made noise. Forget “heavy metal”, this is much more in your stomach.FIFTY SHADES OF GREY/DARKER/FREED (2015-2018)
These scores for the silly “pseudo-BDSM” love story show a different side of Elfman. While the movies are of course high-concept fan-fiction nonsense, the music is elegant and has class, and goes well around the selection of classical pieces and pop songs also used in the movie.DOLORES CLAIBORNE (1995)
Elfman provides a restrained and brooding score for one of the best Stephen King adaptations ever.Bonus mention:
THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS (1993)
Of course, it’s a film score, but basically it’s a musical, so I mention it apart from this others. But yes, I love it. Great, fun songs, lots of good music. And the album with Patrick Stewart’s narration is just perfect.I mentioned only film scores, I put his concert works aside for now and did not include them in consideration.
