Nick Zwar
Forumsvar Lagt Inn
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Innlegg
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I remember that according to James Horner, Michael Convertino didn’t write any music at all, he realized his scores by performing them on a synthesizer and then turned it to orchestrators to write down the actual notes.
Well, CDs niche within the niche for some time 😉 And not to speak of the prices… As long as thing are not streaming only and I at least can get a (lossless) download I am fine. But downloads are already a similar niche like CDs salewise…
Even more niche. Digital Downloads are the smallest niche when it comes to owning music.
And I can see why. To get the most out of it, you need more hardware set-up than either CD or “out of the box” streaming. You don’t get anything “physical” either, so digital downloads are super niche. I still like them, but I guess few people nowadays bother, certainly no casual listeners.Whatever music one enjoys is a personal thing, and depends on many factors. And of course nostalgia can play a role, but that role isn’t limited to film music. Sure you can have a nostalgic association with a film score, where you grew up loving the movie and so you like the music, but you can just as well have a nostalgic association with that pop song played when you were first in love, or that jazz piece that you associate with that favorite bar you used to go to decades ago.
I have about 35 Thomas Newman albums, and yes, I like him a lot. I agree with Thor, his scores always sound like him, and there is a calm, textural quality to most of his output I very much enjoy. Newman’s music is at times the musical equivalent to relaxing on a warm summer afternoon.
Favorite scores of his are AMERICAN BEAUTY (very original at the time, everybody copied it… quirky), SCENT OF A WOMAN, ANGELS IN AMERICA (one of his more dramatic scores, a great album), THE HORSE WHISPERER and MEET JOE BLACK.
As I said in the related FSM thread, I think in many ways, John Williams is right. Lots of film music is dull or uninspired, simply uninteresting. A lot of film music is just serviceable. It’s composers like Miklós Rózsa, Bernard Herrmann, Alex North, Leonard Rosenman, Jerry Goldsmith, Ennio Morricone that showed film music doesn’t have to be and can be more, but of course a lot of is just forgettable.
Then let’s not forget that Williams has a more modest demeanor to begin with, and some people don’t think much of what they themselves do or have accomplished. Marlon Brando was one of the most respected and revered actors in Hollywood ever, yet he didn’t think highly of acting as a profession, and — like Williams in the interview here — though of it as a good way to make money.
Some of the things Williams said are just blatantly obvious, like “the idea that film music has the same place in the concert hall as the best music in the canon is a mistaken notion, I think”. Well, yeah, to compare “film music” (hundreds of new ones every year) to “the best music in the canon”, well, yeah… can’t argue with that. A lot of film music is ephemeral and fragmentary, and just not very interesting.
However, film music can be as good as any “classical” work, it just usually isn’t.I’ve been a fan of Philip Glass ever since I heard KOYAANISQATSI. I was still in school back, but had a summer internthip at the German distributor of the film, so I got access to all the promotional material, posters, flyers, press books… soundtrack LPs. 🙂
I was music unlike any music I had ever heard, it was neither “classical” classical music, nor was it “modern” classical music, it was something new. It’s the musical equivalent of a mosaic.
I very much like Philip Glass, from his piano Études to his operas (especially Akhnaten). I think his operas, and again especially Akhnaten, while abstract, are probably the most dramatic music Glass has ever written. His largest scale work is probably ITAIPU, which features a large orchestra as well as a large chorus. So yes, Glass has been a “fixture” in my music collection ever since KOYAANISQATSI, which I did see performed live to picture, with Glass at the Keyboard. It’s the type of movie where such concerts actually make sense.My first “encounter” with Max Richter was when I was browsing in my local record store and picked up an interesting looking album: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons Recomposed by Max Richter.
Was an interesting composition, clearly Vivaldi on the one hand, clearly modern relaxing minimalism on the other. I liked that. And of course I encountered what may be his most famous composition, “On the nature of Daylight” at various times and in various places.
I’m also fascinated by his mammoth album project “Sleep” (and it’s many tie-in albums, like “From Sleep”, “Sleep Tranquility Base”, etc.). Indeed very absorbing, meditative music.That was done back in the day of VHS quite often. Movies were shot for wide screens, like 2.20:1 or 2.39:1 ration. Depending on how the negative of the movie is, VHS movies could be shown “letterboxed” (the classic film format, on TV sets of the time then with black bars top and bottom), or “cropped” (meaning the image would be zoomed in until it filled the screen, but you’d lose the image right and/or left (“pan & scan”), or “open matte.
In case of JACOBS LADDER it was then apparently “open matte”, which means while the movie was shot for the wide screen, a larger part of the negative was used for the VHS copy (so top and/or bottom of the picture “opened”), which means that sometimes there are things visible that should not be visible (and were not visible on the film print). Directors and editor usually select what is shown in the frame, but when a copy for VHS is done, sometimes, the frame was just enlarged to fill the 4.3 screen, that’s when microphones or other stuff may enter the picture.
I’m so happy the days of this are over. 😀
I never like VHS pan & scan or open matte versions, but that’s the way movies were released back then.Edit:
A famous example of how different frames effect the experience is Stanley Kubrick’s SHINING. Kubrick shot the movie with an eye on BOTH widescreen (for the theatrical release) and the 4:3 format, which at that time was the format TV screens had. Which is why the 4:3 version of Shining was officially approved.Here’s an example of how Shining looks in either version (you can find these clips on YouTube):
This is matted widescreen and “open matte” TV image. Kubrick kept the microphones out of either. However, most directors who shot their films in wide screen never intended them to be shown “open matte”, which is why (as in case of Jacob’s Ladder), they did not mind microphones (or planes, or signs, or whatever) show up in a part of the frame they knew was not shown later on. Unless someone copied them to VHS “open matte”.
The first time I noticed Wojciech Kilar was from the French animated movie Le Roi et l’Oiseau. That movie has as an interesting production history, as it started in 1948 but it wasn’t until the early 1980s that it was actually finished. It’s a wonderful film, quite different from the more prominent Disney animated features. I still got the original soundtrack LP from the 1980s.
I loved Kilar’s music for this, and (in some concert guide books we had, this was way before the internet) found out he was at that time also a know concert composer.
So my first encounter with Kilar’s music was for an enchanting fairy tale animated movie.
Years later, I was excited when I saw his name on the then upcoming Coppola Dracula movie.
Gorecki not as far as I know, I think Lutoslawski did very early in his career, though not for any “important” feature films, and not later in life.
Francis Ford-Coppola wanted that “Eastern European avant-gardish classical” sound for his Dracula movie, and he asked Lutoslawski, who told Coppola it takes him way too long to write a single minute of music to be commissioned for a film score. That’s how Coppola came to Kilar, who not only belonged to the Polish “triumvirate” (Penderecki, Gorecki, Kilar), but was also an experienced film composer.
Yeah, I noticed and wanted to ask you “wow, that’s a lot of John Williams recordings… what do you have?” I did check my own (considerable, but not as large as yours) John Williams collection. When I typed in “John Williams”, I get results for 170 albums and 12-13 days long, and so I was wondering what the heck am I missing? My actual “John Williams” albums are fewer, because just typing in “John Williams”, the programs also list compilations such as AMAZING STORIES where Williams appears, plus even unrelated recordings by the guitarist John Williams. I have about 125 albums or 9 days of listening time where the composer “John Williams” is the “Album Artist”.
I don’t have any expansions, so that means less minutes there.
That, plus I sometimes (not always) combine two albums into one. When I have both an expanded album and the OST, or the identical album in two different masters, I often combine them in my collection under one “Main Album” (if necessary, the individual discs would then be tagged with the mastering or release information or whatever)
For example here is Presumed Innocent:
Disc 1 is the Varèse Deluxe Edition, Disc 2 is the OST. They are of course two different releases, but in my collection they take up one “album slot”.
That explains my above average album lengths.
I’ve got two Abel Korzeniowski scores, TILL and THE WATCHERS, though I’m not really familiar with them yet. They ended up in my collection, but I have not given them a listen yet.
There are a lot of things I like about PROMETHEUS, it’s a great looking film, with a potentially intriguing premise. It’s in some ways a real “science fiction” film and less of a monster spectacle, and the look reminded me of some of the Analog Magazine covers I enjoyed so much. However, I don’t know why the writers ever thought they could get away with such nincompoop scientists, who were actually supposed to be the experts in their field. 🙂
Well, many consider and mention John Barry as a “British Composer”, even though he worked a lot in Hollywood and actually had American Citizenship, so I consider Zimmer, who does not even have American Citizenship, German, even though he works a lot in Hollywood.
A lot of higher end talent eventually ends up in Hollywood, as that’s where the money is, and often more creative freedom.I remember in an interview where Roland Emmerich where he was quite frustrated with the German film industry and said he just can’t do the movies he wants to do in Germany.
