Schilkeman
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I mean, I’m sure it’s one of the Star Wars movies. Growing up poor, I had about 7 vhs tapes that I would watch when I had the chance. I’ve seen Forrest Gump, Apollo 13, Jurassic Park, and Independence Day a stupid amount of times. The Big Lebowski, maybe, but probably the first Star Wars, or Attack of the Clones, my personal favorite.
When I was coming up in “nerd” circles, the Mt. Rushmore of nerdom, as presented to me, was Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, and Dune. I think three things happened. One, LotR got the greatest genre film adaptation of all time, wildly popularizing the series and fantasy in general. Two, Harry Potter happened, and three, the dum-dums caught on to all the fun we were having and decided to make comic book movies. Dune kind of got lost in the shuffle, and as always, sci-fi, however soft, is more difficult for normies. It’s not a coincidence that the most successful Star Trek movie was that Abrams abomination.
I don’t think Villeneuve’s rather aseptic films will do much to leave a larger legacy for the property, not that that matters to me. I have spoken elsewhere about my disdain for the “fed” mentality film-makers can sometimes have for books, but the books are still there, as thought-provoking and immersive as they ever were.
I remember coming across, what I found out later to be, Beethoven’s 9th on the radio when I was about 12. I just sat there and listened to the whole thing. “Long hair” music was not a part of my upbringing at all, and much to the chagrin of my family when I went on to pursue it. (They wanted me to play Jazz, but my relationship with Jazz is a whole other topic.)
I got into film scores and classical at about the same time, so I think they sort of fed each other. I fell hard for Star Wars when the Special Editions came out, and I recall playing a concert of space music in 7th grade. There was a trumpet solo for Luke’s theme that I was not good enough to get, and I determined that that would not happen again, so I brought my horn home and practiced all summer. It indeed did not happen again. I got a piano book of John Williams music and would play all the themes on trumpet. This is when I became aware of the breadth of his work.
I also taught myself piano to play his music, which funnily enough, I did not understand that bass clef was different from treble, so played all the left-hand stuff in the wrong key (or really, no key). Schindler’s List sounded weird, man! Fun times.
Similarly, the first time I listened to Mahler was a couple of years later. Any thoughts I had of being a composer kind of disappeared that night, as I listened to Bernstein lead the 1st symphony, twice, straight down. Someone had apparently already written the music I heard in my head, and done it much better than I ever could.
In music school, I learned the mastery of Haydn, Handel, and Bach, and learned to even better appreciate the mastery of Beethoven, Brahms, and Mahler. I still struggle with opera lol.
I still only really care about scores in the tradition of Western art music, and while I spent a good decade of my life listening mostly to the 20th and 21st centuries’ best and not-so-best pop music, I have all but completely returned to the sustaining, nurturing, beautiful bosom of classical. What a smart and pretty girl.
I went to music school so that I could tell people when they’re wrong about music. There are a few people, smarter and better than me, who’s opinions I listen to. If you’re going to question what I like, you better bring receipts. I’ll read them, if you have a point, otherwise, the stuff people react to is too often based on feelings and familiarity over knowledge.
I’m amazed that so many seem to sleep on Lincoln. Is it an American thing? Outside of Schindler’s List, and the debatable remake of WSS (no Jerome Robbins really hurts, and the editing lacks Wise’s rhythm), Kushner has written Spielberg’s best scripts. The last Spielberg movie I didn’t really care for was Ready Player One, and before that, A.I. BFG is a charming movie, stunningly produced, with the best Williams score in twenty years.
This new film has Emily Blunt (Do you see her? nice!), an original idea by Spielberg, and an improbable (possibly) final score by John Williams. Oh, and I think it looks pretty good. Kaminski annoys the right people. There’s a lot of certified geniuses working on this film (and David Koepp lol). I’ll watch their “mediocre” any day.
How many scores did Korngold do? There’s at least ten, I think. I’ll go with those. Maybe throw in a Waxman or two.
Captain Blood
Anthony Adverse
The Adventures of Robin Hood
Juarez
The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex
The Sea Hawk
King’s Row
Bride of Frankenstein
Rear Window
Run Silent, Run DeepI don’t know any film score train stuff off the top of my head, but I’m a fan of the operas of Phillip Glass, which is film-score adjacent, I suppose. Sounds like a train to me.
I find RotK moderately interesting because he’s playing with his full deck of themes, and weaving them in a more mechanically satisfying manner. I still think he’s a mediocre orchestrator, resulting in a kind of muddy, green-brown mass of sound. His rather lumpy sense of rhythm (wild for a jazz guy) and the reverberant recording don’t help, although the OST does have impressive dynamic range. The Hobbit OSTs were more neutered, and worse off for it. The complete recordings certainly have their moments (I’m not a complete monster), but Shore’s underscore is just thoroughly uninteresting, and man, is there a lot of it.
Melody and harmony are the musical elements the scores excel at, but I need those themes to be worked in a more symphonic way to hold my interest for the amount of time Shore is asking. As accompaniment, it is exceptional, and enjoyable as part of a company of multi-media arts used to bring those books to life. As music, it might be less compelling to me than Bruckner, which is saying something.
About every three years I convince myself that I should revisit Lord of the Rings, re-buy the OSTs, live with them for about a week, then remember that they are, much like their Wagnerian inspiration, uninteresting to all but the most punctilious harmonic aficionado, or those who just really love when a theme goes with a thing.
I think it’s important to distinguish between texture and timbre. As Copland describes in What to Listen for in Music, texture is more what we would call polyphony, homophony, or monophony, depending. Timbre is the use of instrumental color for effect. His main elements of music are rhythm, harmony, timbre, texture, form, and yes, melody. I feel bad for people who only listen for melodies. Interesting music comes form knowing when and how to use all the elements.
Hollywood films can offer more than just entertainment – especially if they’re made by capable auteur directors
Yeah, I’m always reminded of C.S.Lewis’s take on the “literary reader’ who is more concerned with getting the most out of their reading, often re-reading material for further analysis, or simply the aesthetic pleasure of good writing, than with where the material came from. Or what I call the Ratatouille rule: not everything is great art, but great art can come from anywhere.
In German we often use the terms “E-Musik” (E is short for “ernst” so this stands for “serious music”) and “U-Musik” (U is short for “Unterhaltung” so this stands for “Entertainment music”)
In music school we learn there are three kinds of music, Art, Pop, and Folk. In life, I’ve learned there are two kinds, Interesting and Boring. Of course, what we find interesting correlates directly with how much we know about something, so as I’ve gotten older, and as my ears have gotten better (even if some of the finer points of theory recede from my memory) it’s become mostly all Art all the time.
I had a college professor who told us that if we were ever on a date with someone who described a film as “so good,” we should leave them by the side of the road and drive home. I suppose “fun” qualifies, too.
I keep all my movies and shows in binders, but I only keep a movies I really love. I only keep shows that maintain quality, that are episodic, or have definitive, and good, endings. The only CDs I own are Telarc classical, John Williams OSTs, and Blue Note jazz. The only videogames I play are by Hironobu Sakaguchi and Yuji Horii. I own five comic series and exactly 12 board games. I have 100 issues of Star Wars Insider. I own two bookshelves for my six favorite authors and a smattering of others. I have just enough space left to own the 70s run, and only the 70s run, of Analog: Science Fiction, Science Fact. I have very little money, and even less space. Obviously, my input is higher, or I wouldn’t know what to buy, but really, get rid of stuff, it’s fun.
Hoosiers didn’t lie. Basketball is a big deal here. Unfortunately, the Pacers’ star player and leading points scorer is out indefinitely, so probably not an NBA finals repeat this year. The Colts are looking as good as they have in years, and look good to go deep in the playoffs.
What is this World Cup you speak of? Soccer will never be globally competitive in the US until we adopt a relegation system, and no billionaire team owner is ever going to ok it. Leagues just have to start out that way, I guess.
My first and greatest sports love is auto racing, but I don’t have the space here, or the inclination, to get into my 30 year saga of falling, ever so slowly, out of love with the sport. I still follow it because I can’t help myself, and because Indianapolis is so tied up with it that it’s inescapable.
Pop art trains us to value novelty over craft. I don’t know what makes good film music. There’s plenty of it I find perfectly serviceable in the film that I wouldn’t cross the street for if they were giving away copies for free. I like western art music, and I like composers who write closer to that style. Does that mean Zimmer is a bad film composer? I have serious technical issues with his music. It’s much closer to pop music than art, but it works in the film.
Now treating the music as separate from the film, I am much more critical, and find deficiencies in almost all composers not named Williams or Korngold. As I concluded elsewhere, there’s a difference between film-composers and composers-who-write-for-film, and that one stands on its own much better than the other.
This is the point I’m trying to make. You can defend Gary Glitter’s song because it is about Christmas. It is not about how much he loves teen girls, or more accurately to the Cosby example, how much absolutely can’t stand people who do. That’s fine and understandable, and what I do with Rowling. My next thought, however, is if Gary Glitter is worth keeping around at all. Is a pop tune ever worth the trouble? It’s not for me, but that’s an actual opinion.
Her opinion (more a falsehood), her opening and funding an exclusionary women’s center, her donations to anti-trans causes, yes, it was abusive. It is not, however, present in Harry Potter, which was my point.
I think that point was kind of inherent to my argument, but I also think it’s a little sketchy to bring legality into the discussion, as if it’s not really a problem unless you can serve jail time for it. Abuse is doing something to another we wouldn’t want done to us. I know of plenty of laws in my country, now and in the past, that violate that bit of wisdom. Obviously, there’s a scale to abuse, and that should factor in to whether or not we keep a problematic person’s art around.
As a bit of an art appréciateur, in all its mediums, I have a kind of multi-step process for dealing with problematic artists. The first, being related to the second, is the issue of time. How long ago was the artist alive? While I believe morality does not have a temporal dimension (we were telling people to be kind to one another thousands of years ago), the cultural mores of a time period can at least explain the context of what we would now consider difficult behavior.
The sieve of time sifts all art, which is related to my second point: is the art worth keeping such that I can live with the artist’s problems? Will people still care about this in 100 years? A thousand years? Who knows, but when I look at something like Harry Potter, and see the way people still talk about Mallory, or Shelly, or Baum, I think, sure, Harry Potter will outlive its author. Will people still care about The Cosby Show then? I’m not sure. Comedy often ages like meat.
Which brings me to my final point. How much of the author’s problems are present in the work? For Potter, I read only the good things Rowling wishes to see in the world, and find its basic morality strong and defendable. When Cosby gets pedantic on The Cosby Show, I can no longer hand wave away its respectability politics by thinking “at least he practiced what he preached.” There’s not enough antisemitism in Wagner for me to write off his work only for that reason (I have other reasons lol). This is the most subjective part of the process. Pharos were inherently immoral, but the pyramids still stand. I can appreciate the immense skill that went into making them, even if they were built under duress. The lesser works disappear in the sand, and no one cares.
I’m always a little (not completely) wary of “interpretation” with music. Music has a limited ability to convey concrete meaning without imposition from words or pictures. Unless a composer has stated “this is what I meant,” thus proving my point, what it means to the listener (and what are liner notes writers but listeners?) is a little too subjective for epexegesis.
Film music is, essentially, commentary, and it’s worth exploring the commentary in the liner notes. For me, I would love a more learned musical analysis. As I’ve said elsewhere, the stuff John Williams does between his themes is often more impressive than the themes themselves, and good liner notes could help illustrate this, and make for more careful listeners, rather than calling out every statement of a theme, and what it represents.
Jaws. It’s always a good time for Jaws, but I was checking out the latest remaster to see if it was worth consideration from my limited budget, and the lp program comes across to me as harsh and loud. In an attempt to clean it up, MM seems to have made its flaws more apparent. The original lp on the 90s cd was no audiophile presentation, but it has a naturalness, and extremely 70s analog quality, to it that I appreciate. Since I don’t care about the full score, that’s $40 saved, I suppose.
Yes, I played trumpet for twenty years, and have a degree in music education. Advanced music theory sort of demands being fluent in score reading, and the trumpet, being a transposing instrument, requires aptitude in transposing at sight. None of which addresses the peculiarities of jazz improv, which requires fluency in all twenty-four keys, 7 modes, and every variation of scale imaginable, at all times. Let’s just say I did my best lol.
They also make everyone take piano in music school, so I had three years of that, little of which has stuck with me. I also studied composition while my school schedule allowed for it, and while I was in no danger of becoming a professional composer, I did get some working understanding of counterpoint and orchestration.
I now work as a lightweight film editor, which should give you some indication of my talent. My gift, such as it is, is in interpretation and analysis, not performance (and definitely not education), but I realized that too late, and couldn’t afford to pursue it anyway.
I’m firmly convinced Rare’s success was at least 65% the music for their games, and not the rather floopy, looks-better-on-the-box-than-in-motion gameplay. The soundtrack to Donky Kong Country still makes me feel some kind of way.
The usual suspects on JWfan are grumbling that the free website they sometimes use isn’t 100% overnight. I’ll be happy when FSM is up and running, as I plan on leaving the other site for good.
Not that there aren’t usual suspects on FSM, but the conversation does at least seem to revolve around music there.
I would love it, Thor, if you could bring some of your old thread starters here. I’m not very good at that sort of thing. I like these forums, even if the site does yell at me in Norwegian before I change it.
Medicine Man and Rudy. I’ve been trying to love, rather than only appreciate, Goldsmith. Familiarity breeds affection (or contempt), so they say. I’m aiming for the former.
Since my interest in film music is about 90% John Williams (I’m trying my damndest with Goldsmith), I spent most of my time on JWFan. There are a few cats on there I find mildly-to-completely insufferable, so I have scaled back considerably. Maybe I’m one of them. Probably.
I do feel like I came in a little late to the party (story of my life) and most of the JW centric discussions happened 10-15 years ago. To be fair, he doesn’t write as much these days.
I like FSM, but I just don’t find a ton of film music super engaging. I’m a classical guy at heart, and a lot just doesn’t measure up, or at least doesn’t stand well on its own. Still, film music was my first love in the world of art music. I have a soft spot for it, and I like hearing other people’s enthusiasm. It helps me try new stuff.
I wasn’t really thinking of expansion liner notes, of the type Intrada and LLL put out with their releases, since I don’t really buy those any more. They can indeed be very thorough and informative. OST notes are usually a paragraph or two from the director, if that, and a bunch of promotional photos. In the era before wikipedia, forced to read whatever books on music my local library had, I learned the basics of music history, form, tonal relationships, and interpretive specificity from liner notes on classical albums.