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@evanevans said:

If a song with ONLY great lyrics is not really a great song, than what is it? It's a poem. Good songs also have great music.

A movie with ONLY a great story was best left as a book.
Are movies with great stories great movies?
Are books with great stories gaurunteed to be a good movie?
Great screenplays emprically all that's necessary for a movie to be great?


The story has got nothing to do with a great film. Nada. It's all about the filmmaking. Stories are best left in books. In fact teh most poorly executed movies are usually those trying to just tell a story. Movies can and do more than that. I know of many films that succeed and have NO story at all. Some of them even with no score.


EEE

Evan is absolutely right when he says this. We tend to see a film dislocated in its parts: story, dialogue, plots, actors, filmmaking, sound and music. that is not a cinematic experience: it is the sum of them all that makes a great film and gives us great pleasures and joy watching it. And that is why there is not that much great films. It is a very difficult artistic expression that needs to be envision as a whole but with the demanding artistry of every of its parts.

Reading a script - even Welles "Citizen Kane" (I have a copy at home)- is a boring thing that says nothing of the quality of the film, its emotional impact, the sheer pleasure of its filmmaking. Listening to its music alone has the same effect. -Sorry Mr Hermann!

I'll make my point with the music but it applies to every parts of a film.

Great film music has nothing to do with superb orchestrations or fantastic themes, not even with impeccable renditions. It has to do with the dialogue the music has with the other parts of a film.

The role of music in film is not the "orchestra in the pit". On the contrary film music plays the same part the chorus does in a greek tragedy or an Aristophane's comedy. It is either a commentary on the scene, a pause in the action, it act as the untold answer or the question. It gives us tools to comprehend the evolution of what is at stake or question the philosophical ideas the film is dealing with. It is this dialogue that makes a great music in a great film. Unfortunately most of the film music are only the contemporary extension of the much needed piano player in the silent film era. One of the role of the piano player at that time was to play over the sound of the projector. There is no dialogue only monologues and...noise.

So how does a chorus works? In various ways.

By contrast: in a battle scene the piano player is always playing the fanfare of the cavalry! That is just noise over noise, making the action bigger, faster, more violent. It is only underlying with a big felt marker what we already know or feel. Replace the fanfare by a "love song" or a lullaby or an "adagio for strings" and immediately the scene reach a great emotional and intellectual impact. The music gives us tools to question the morality of war, the implacable destiny of death. Put a "pop song" and we see the battle scene in all its absurdity. An old folk tune played by a simple instrument (a recorder, an accordion, etc.) and we feel the despair of the "ordinary man". These examples can be found in so many great films and always procure great emotions and sheer intellectual joy! ( See Terence Malik's "The Thin Red Line", Kusturica "Time of the gipsys")

Repetitions. Since film music is all about theme and not about its development (in a classical way) the repetition of it -the leitmotiv- is often used to reveal a moral or philosophical idea. George Delerue's endlessly repeated theme in "Contempt" of Jean-Luc Goddard, gives us a clue on the main character; despite his claiming he'll never have the will to change himself and regain the love of his wife. The whistle melody we hear constantly in Fritz Lang "M" tells us that no mater what we do, danger is always there and , the most frightening, it lies within ourself.

By its absence. Sometime not to put music where we would expect it is the best contribution music can have. In "Torn Curtain" of the great Hitchcock, the absence of any music in the scene where Paul Newman is painfully trying to kill the agent with the door of a stove in a farm house, an electrical iron cord and so on tells us how difficult it really is to kill someone, even if our own life is in danger. The silence makes the scene looks like a laboratory analysis with the crude and terrific yet real sounds of the fight. We are assisting, powerless, to a murder, and like Newman we feel as rats taken in their last corner. No music would have give us this emotion.

I could go on with the use of period or repertoire music for social or political resonances but what I want to say was only that good film music has nothing to do with good music and should always be hear in context with all the other parts of a film. As I said it is the sum of all those parts that makes such a great impact on us, emotionally and intellectually.

For me, listening to a cd of film music is like hearing just one channel of a group conversation.

Ciao.

I did a bad copy-paste and the end of my text was missing from the previous post.

Sorry.

By its absence. Sometime not to put music where we would expect it is the best contribution music can have. In "Torn Curtain" of the great Hitchcock, the absence of any music in the scene where Paul Newman is painfully trying to kill the agent with the door of a stove in a farm house, an electrical iron cord and so on tells us how difficult it really is to kill someone, even if our own life is in danger. The silence makes the scene looks like a laboratory analysis with the crude and terrific yet real sounds of the fight. We are assisting, powerless, to a murder, and like Newman we feel as rats taken in their last corner. No music would have give us this emotion.

I could go on with the use of period or repertoire music for social or political resonances but what I want to say was only that good film music has nothing to do with good music and should always be hear in context with all the other parts of a film. As I said it is the sum of all those parts that makes an great impact on us, emotionally and intellectually.

For me, listening to a cd of film music is like hearing just one channel of a group conversation.

Ciao.

@evanevans said:

"If Mozart was such a genius how come he couldn't write like Stravinsky?" lol Evan Evans

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"He was the despair of my youth and the consolation of my old age" Igor Stravinsky on Mozart.That's wonderful, thanks Dave. I love how Stravinsky said that.

I actually am a secret admirer of Mozart, my quote has always been just for fun. [:)]

Evan Evans

Evan,

My composition teacher Harold (Hal) Johnson gave me that quote. I'm glad it's here for all to see.

Dave Connor

@dpcon said:

My composition teacher Harold (Hal) Johnson gave me that quote. I'm glad it's here for all to see.

Love it.

Just so gosh darn well said. A few carefully selected words. Astonishing. He must have been as good of a speaker as he was a composer. I could just relish the lyricism of syllables. And on top of that to have such poignant meaning, and such deep meaning. WOW.

Evan Evans

@PaulR said:

I realised thats what you originally meant. Weird? Of course he was weird! Like Beethovan and Mozart and all the others were normal, right?

Ah, don´t take me wrong, I love Bach. For me it was just curious to hear that he was an oldfashoned guy. Normally we´re used to learn that all these unforgotten composers were renewers and at some forefront and relovutionary and bla, bla, bla. Actually I didn´t want to make a long story out of it.

Let´s forget about the "story" thing. Basically we all think the same. I used a wrong word, "story". Maybe "subject" would have been better.
But nevertheless film is a narrative medium, and one should be aware in every stage of the production process, what the fuck you want to tell.
I learned in my job as a sound editor /designer that you totally rely on the script how creativly you can use sound. You need subjective shots, actors who are listening and of course (film) time. Especially the first two things have to be in the script, they have to be part of the concept, the subject, otherwise they won´t gonna be shot. I know that the key to great sound design lies in the script. And I´m totally sure that it´s the same for music. The film has to be open to music. The film has to be made for music, it has to need music. Then you not only can do, you have to do something outstanding.
Hm, since 99% percent of the films produced are narrative films with a story, I maybe keep up with my statement. I watch a movie because the story interests me, that comes first. I don´t buy a ticket for just great cinematography when the story sucks. And I don´t want to believe I´m the only one.
Story is not only words, b.t.w.

Evan,

Try this one. Robert Craft questioning Stravinsky on the merits of Richard Strauss' music.

Craft: Do you admit Strauss?

Stravinsky: I admit him to whatever purgatory punishes triumphant banality.

Is that a riot?

Dave Connor

...

By being the reincarnation of Bernard Hermmann I have a little more insight than most. [:)] lol

But seriously, would you guys like to hear a VERY intersting secret about the score to Psycho? This will surprise you all!

[H]

Evan Evans

Evan, just a shot.

Perhaps the music was not written to picture?

Dave Connor

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I suppose evanevans has some "scoop" no one else could know, however I would guess that the secret is the shower scene was originally to have no music but Herrmann surprised Hitchcock (which is what happened).

I agree with much of what groove says. That is a good point to raise with Torn Curtain. The scene involved, in which Hitchcock stated he wanted to show in a direct way how hard it can be to kill a man, was done with no music for a reason. To make it more brutal and inhuman. No matter how great the music is, there is always something of a "commentary" being made as soon as it is heard. In other words, the director wants to "communicate" with us through the composer about the meaning of the scene. When there is no music at all, something else can happen - a raw, unadulterated reality that can be a thousand times more shocking and powerful than any commentary.

Which is an odd thing for a composer to say, but I actually believe it because cinema itself is an art form all by itself and it is debatable whether or not music should be used at all in film.

Though before anyone starts shrieking at me how ridiculous that is I agree that some of the greatest movies ever made are great because of their music scores.

That got off the subject but was suggested by the powerful evidence of that scene in Torn Curtain.

I suppose it's alright to go along these lines. After all, scoring a film is a type of orchestrating of film i.e. arranging the music with the film. This speaks to the correct notion of music as one of the many elements that make up a film (not a profound point but rather curiously debated around here.)

One of my favorite Goldsmith scores is Coma which has a brilliant score. However, there is no music for the first hour. Since the first hour is mainly set in a dry clinical setting of a hospital there is no music. The story as well stays in this clinical environment. The music would have added an element that just isn't on the screen and doesn't need to be either.

As soon as things get dramatic, regardless of the setting and including the hospital, in comes JG like the master that he is. Great great score.

So I agree with the importance of music even if it's found important to keep it out.

Dave Connor

...

To take a hint from Dave and mention something back on orchestration but in the light of film, I'm wondering if anyone has noticed the scores of Roy Webb. Though he wrote an enormous amount of stuff in the 40s, his best music was for the films of Val Lewton - the original Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, Seventh Victim, Isle of the Dead, Leopard Man, Curse of the Cat People, and several others. These have some of the most remarkable music written at the time, both in the impressionistic harmony featuring a lot of bitonality, and in the imaginative approach to the orchestration especially in dealing with the lack of funds on a relatively low budget studio production.

His scoring was for strings, harp, only a couple of brass players, but about six woodwinds with doubling on different instruments - oboe switching to english horn, clarinet to bass clarinet. He got a maximum amount of color and variety in his orchestration, with a minimum number of players. This is almost unheard of today, with the approach of so many composers who in order to show how masterful they are smear huge sections and ensembles (or have their orchestators do so) over simplistic, often monophonic themes.

Also, Webb's music exhibited another rarity of today - subtlety. He would score for example in I Walked with a Zombie a solo flute playing a haunting pianissimo motif over the delicate, ethereal black and white cinematography with no sound effects except maybe a trace of low wind or reverberating footsteps. This exquisite approach is all but forgotten in today's thunderous dolby5.1 cacophony.

Alright.

To the person who can correctly tell me the age Herrmann was when he wrote the score to Psycho, I will send a very special something related to the subject that NO ONE else has.

And yes, it is a trick question. And I'll be making sure you didn't guess. But although it's a trick question, the answer IS TRUE, and will shock you all.

Evan Evans

...

@evanevans said:

Alright.
And yes, it is a trick question. And I'll be making sure you didn't guess. But although it's a trick question, the answer IS TRUE, and will shock you all.
Evan Evans

Hmm, a trick ha? I know! He didn't write the score - you ghost wrote it, pre-incarnation, so he could finish ghost writing the score to Pillow Talk?