Nick Zwar
Forumsvar Lagt Inn
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Innlegg
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Almost wrote itself, a sign I’ve been through this all too often over the years. 🙂
Still, I tried to find a new spin to build on.
Ha that one… a “classic”.
Okay, hold on…
(Enters stage…. solemny):
Complete or not complete – that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the cuts and fades of a tightly trimmed 30-minute Varese release, or to take arms against missing tracks and motifs and, by including them, to reveal all there is? A score may bleed when chopped, but swell when whole. Yet not every cue deserves the stage. The answer then, as ever, lies not in dogma.
Despite the fact that this is an old question, which Thor and I have discussed elsewhere before, I’m not ideological about it. I’m certainly not on a purist crusade to catalog and include every timpani thump and violin squeal from reel one to end credits and more. (Unless I like that one particular violin squeal, that is!) It’s not ideology. It’s about outcome. It’s about what works. Case by case. Score by score. Composer by composer. I don’t think every album plays best when released C&C, though some do. But it’s not even about “best” – sometimes, it’s just good to have options.
Film music is an art that lives at the crossroads of storytelling and structure, just like some classical music. A good film score develops, it unfolds. Like a Mahler Symphony or a Strauss Tone Poem or a Wagner Opera, the music alone leads you through a narrative as surely as any dialogue or camera move, independently from the movie. So it’s no surprise that a classically trained composer would often shape a score symphonically, because that’s what that type of music is.
Take Jerry Goldsmith. I remember Jerry Goldsmith was mentioned years ago in Grammophon as a superb musical architect. He didn’t just write a bunch of themes and cues for scenes – his film music is often classically developed, movement by movement. Expanding his scores isn’t indulgence, it has often shown to be excavation. You dig down and discover how every cue supports the next. Tension, release, development, climax – it’s all there. Presenting his work in full, in sequence, lets the listener hear the bones beneath the beauty.
Then you swing to the other side of the pendulum: Hans Zimmer. His music breathes in long, moody cues – it’s less architectural than Goldsmith’s. Zimmer’s music is less about structure, it’s more about atmosphere and emotional immersion. (I don’t mean to say these things are at odds – I’m just saying composers may be inclined differently.) Zimmer’s albums often ditch the “C&C” narrative roadmap (which usually isn’t pronounced in the fabric of the music anyway) in favor of a more mood-oriented arc. On album, Zimmer often rearranges and reshapes his cues for a coherent, more atmospheric album “flow,” and it works. I often like the way Zimmer presents his music on album – the man knows his medium.
So no, the answer isn’t always complete and chronological. And it sure as hell isn’t never. It’s case by case. Composer by composer.
Having said that, that’s about listening experience. But when it comes to releases? While I don’t think that all scores “need” C&C releases – certainly not – I definitely tend towards “complete” editions (not necessarily chronological). Why? There’s always that one cue. The sleeper. The heartbreaker. The five-note miracle someone out there loves just craves like oxygen. And if that snippet of music doesn’t fit the composer’s polished vision of the album? If that cue is not on there, somebody may be disappointed. So what the hell – if there is a way, include it anyway. Music is personal. Let it breathe.
That’s why I tip my hat to releases that include the original album, or original album edits, and the full film score, and bonus tracks, and extras… The album the composer wanted, the score as heard in the film, and the kitchen sink for the obsessives.
Look at FSM’s Days of Heaven: There is the original soundtrack album, then there are the actually used film tracks, and finally, another full “complete” version of the score made out of everything left on the cutting room floor. Three ways to hear that one masterpiece. That’s not overkill – that is respect. For the music, and for the people who love it.
Just my two cents. 🙂
When it comes to Rózsa, I started with “Double Indemnity” before I changed that to “The Red House”, until I settled for “The Lost Weekend”… Rózsa really did some great work in that period. As I said, I probably could fill the list with just Rózsa and Herrmann. 🙂
Well, Djawadi was born and raised in Germany, speaks fluently German and has the German citizenship, so I would qualify that as him being “fully” German. 🙂
Yes, his father is Iranian, but I don’t even think Djawadi speaks Farsi. Not even sure whether he has the Iranian citizenship? (If he had, which could be, though I never saw it mentioned, I would consider him “fully” German and “fully” Iranian though. 🙂 ).I would add GAME OF THRONES (All seasons) by Ramin Djawadi.
Really excellently scored series, with many different themes and a rich orchestral vocabulary.OK, ok, I give this a shot… 10 Golden Age must-haves, cut-off point at 1948, and only one per composer. Were it not for the “one per composer”, it would be easy, I could just list every Miklós Rózsa or Bernard Herrmann score. But I stick to the parameters.
In chronological order:
Aaron Copland: The City (1939)
Erich Wolfgang Korngold: The Sea Hawk (1940)
Roy Webb: The Curse of the Cat People (1944)
Hans J. Salter & Paul Dessau: House of Frankenstein (1944)
Franz Waxman: Rebecca (1940)
Bernard Herrmann: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)
Miklós Rózsa: The Lost Weekend (1945)
Max Steiner: Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
Dimitri Tiomkin: Red River (1948)
Ralph Vaughan Williams: Scott of the Antarctic (1948)
I’m actually not too worried about tariffs. Not because I don’t think they are harmful, but precisely because I believe they are harmful. I can repeat what I said already some time ago on the Film Score Monthly Message Board. Tariffs are of course a political instrument, which can be sensible or beneficial or not, depending on why and how they are implemented, but they should be implemented with caution and for a specific time and for specific things. The current situation, smacking tariffs on everything across the board, is foolish, it’s stupid, and therefore is likely more of a short burning fire. I don’t think — at this point — that we’ll have long lasting super tariffs across the globe… as that would benefit no one, really. Not the EU, not the US, not China, really nobody. That’s why they won’t last. It’s just economic “saber-rattling” right now, it’ll pass. In fact, since I wrote these last words on FSM, ALREADY the US has done a sudden U-term and stopped the proposed tariffs for 90 days. Possibly because it’s already become clear how much economic damage this would do. The key to prosperity is global international free trade, with clear and specific rules, not isolationism. It’s okay to restrict certain things for certain reasons, but nobody, really no country at all, benefits from a trade war tariffs.
