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.
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.