That's a good point smp3602 made - Torn Curtain was originally a tremendous, powerful score (which has recently been re-recorded) for an ensemble of nine horns, six trombones, violas, basses, percussion, and twelve flutes. Nothing else. It was then replaced by Hitchcock who had words with Herrmann right at the rehearsal, because the cretinous production heads were insisting on a more "pop" score. So a pleasant, harmless little composer was brought in to replace Herrmann with something more palatable to morons and studio heads. (Sorry to be redundant.)

@SMP3602 said:

There you go again, Dave... always ripping on poor Zimmer. [[[;)]]] S

SMP,

Actually I haven't said much about Hans Zimmer. It's true he is a practitioner of a new harmonic language in film that many find trite and boring but I can live with a lot of his work.

My breach isn't against a person or persons. I've just sighted some examples of very successful film composers writing awful music. I figure it might help some younger guys to re-evaluate what they're hearing.

When I was young I thought Return To Forever was the second coming. I read a review in Downbeat where the guy dismissed RtoF as leaden hyperbole. He far preferred Herbie Hancock's Headhunters. I was intrigued that my heroes were being besmirched. It wasn't long until I agreed with the critic (and do to this day.) I still listen to Headhunters (Thrust) and don't even know where the RtoF is. I'm grateful someone more mature then I made an honest critical evaluation in an area where I hoped to one day be and expert. It was helpful and guiding to have that input.

I don't want to bag on anybody really. I have to admit though: an eighty piece orchestra playing a few minor and major chords with no distinguishing melody does break my heart (even though the timpani/cymbal swells always manage to charm so.)

[[[;)]]]

Dave Connor

What Dave says here is exactly what I have noticed repeatedly - the use of a fabulous studio orchestra in film scores to make the most pathetically lame nursery school ditty sound passable. Try playing one of these scores on a piano. You would probably laugh it out of the room. Now try playing a Brahms Symphony on a piano. You would be impressed all over again by the genius of it. And it was originally scored for ORCHESTRA. Not piano. Likewise for a great film composition like Herrmann's. For example "Vertigo." It sounds beautiful on piano. The reason I mention doing this kind of minimizing of the score to one timber is that I believe if you have something stupid-sounding until it is orchestrated, all you are doing is orchestration, not composition. This is the danger with samples, because they offer the composer so many entrancing sounds that he may simply be demonstrating those sounds, and not do anything worthwhile with them.

What an extraordinarily interesting conversation I've stumbled across here. Numerous good points....

A couple of my own:

Recently I was at a talk by Elmer Bernstein where he casually stated that in the old days he would have the orchestra for a week to do a main title cue. I think every composer in the audience died a little at that moment...
What do we get now 2-4 weeks for the whole thing BUT with 790 sets of tiny changes (enabled by our wonderful technology). It is truly a different planet...

Another great point from a previous posting: if it doesn't make decent sense when played on the piano, then it is not the real deal. 90 players churning out dire harmony with no voice leading etc etc is very sad. There is plenty of very colouristic music that is great (Ravel, Messaien, even arguably Ligeti, Grisey etc), but the reason it works so beautifully is because as well as the colours being great THE NOTES ARE GREAT AS WELL!

All the best from the sunny UK...

O.K., to get something scandalous going related to this topic, here is my contribution - what is the worst film score you've ever heard?

I think the worst I've heard is the score to "4-D Man." At least among ones that come immediately to mind. This was a lesser 50s sci-fi film, not too bad really, but not too good either - but it had an incredibly, ridiculously intrusive big band jazz score. Now I agree with Max Steiner that film music should be noticed, but this was grotesquely out of character with the film and served only to show off the cool cats who were playing it fff every time they could.

Another bad score is not one, but several all lumped together - those atrocious early-sampler scores that have been plastered over silent movies recently. Part of this can be ascribed to low technology sampling, but sorry - not all of it. I remember hearing a score to a C.B. Demille silent film, that had an almost completely dry "timpani roll" accomplished by the composer hitting AS FAST AS HE COULD a single note sample. It was close to nauseating. Another characteristic of these silent film scores is that they are remarkably out of character with the original films. There is no attempt at "harmonizing" with the musical practice of the time in any way.

Carl Davis and Timothy Brock have done some brilliant scores recently to silent classics by Harold Lloyd and F. W. Murnau that accomplish this very thing - writing a contemporary score but with a "feel" that does not contradict the silent era.

I'm sure there are plenty of more recent scores to point out.

O.K. - here's another one:

James Horner, "Star Trek II."

When I first saw this film and heard this music I almost puked. (Though not from the film - it's a pretty good one if you like Star Trek.)

Outer Space = Augmented triad played by near-catatonic-by-arpeggio violinists

Khan = Motif stolen from Prokofiev "Alexander Nevsky."

Anything Else = Incredibly, shamelessly plagiarized John Williams-style cliches - you name 'em. They're all here. Every last one of them. This composer is the single most shockingly blatant plagiarist in the history of music, bar none.

William,

You know better than to get me started on that film composer and that film.

My contribution to your post will be to point out the lovely strains of Mahler's 7th that are to be found uncredited in that film as well.

Shameless is right.

Dave Connor

On your earlier post: There's a score that I think was a Titanic failure but I can't remember the name of the film.

Dave,

You've got me stumped. I can't imagine what you're refering to. Wait a minute! There was an incredibly long, melodramatic and overproduced potboiler by a director who said he was the King of the World. I can't think of the title though. Sorry.

BTW I thought of another - and this is by a great composer: Max Steiner. He was obviously one of the finest ever, but he did one that was so atrocious I was constantly irritated and driven almost to desperation trying - concentrating as hard as I could - not to hear the music as I watched the film. It was "Lady in White." Yes, not that famous a film, but a fairly good 40s mystery, based on a novel by Wilkie Collins, a great Victorian mystery writer. It was astounding how much the music conflicted - gratingly - with the film, even to the point of trying to assert itself over dialogue. And it was not the mix, since this was a major studio film and perfect technically. It was clearly a situation of the music being severely out of touch with the film's needs. And some films are so needy. Especially Victorian mysteries...

Outer Space = Augmented triad played by near-catatonic-by-arpeggio violinists

Hang on...you mean outer space doesn't sound like that??

Re worst score nominations: I heard a stinker last night. 25th hour by Terence Blanchard. Not good. Too much of everything and wall to wall noodling. Also a pseudo Lisa Gerrard thing. Ouch.

Also a generalised worst score nomination for anything by David Arnold. Sorry David.

By the way a UK paper recently carried an interview of Ennio Morricone (IMHO a seriously good composer) by the aforementioned Arnold. Quite funny.

I agree about Morricone. I haven't heard those other ones (consciously) and maybe that's a good thing from what you say.

Morpheus,

Morricone?

Oh yeah. Lots of fans of his around here. Great writer. Certainly one of my favorites.

William,

Max Steiner? Is it just me or is the theme for Gone With The Wind, simplistic, laborious and overblown?

King of the World? You mean King Kong the great film with a great score by Mr. Steiner? Or that awful film and score that just sort of sank into the depths?

Dave Connor

You have a point there, Dave. Perhaps I am being a bit too positive about old Max. I agree on Gone with the Wind (gag). I wish it had just gone.

Why is the director of Lord of the Rings remaking King Kong? Why bother? You can't beat the original version with Fay Wray. Its impossible. Just leave it alone Jackson and do something original.

Make a film of Asimov's Foundation Trilogy. Your'e good at doing things in threes. Now, that would be worth waiting for.

Very good point Paul.

I was actually grateful that Mr. Jackson was going to do a version of the film having been so disappointed with the DeLaurentis version. But you're right: what's the point? That incredible movie will never be outdone - it's amazing. The first blockbuster.

Steiner did a great job on that film. I do wonder what Korngold thought of the theme to GWTW. I can't imagine he liked it at all.

Dave Connor

I agree with the puzzlement on remaking Kong which is a masterpiece and one of the great original stories of the cinema and probably the whole 20th century. It is a story of mythic significance, and was created just for that movie. Also I don't care if Kong will look more realistic - the original has character and was hand-made and hand-animated, and that is a thousand times more significant than CGI "realism."

A favorite anecdote of David Raksin regarding Steiner and Korngold:

Korngold's wife, "Erich, it seems that Max's music is getting better and your's is slipping."

Korngold, "Of course, he's been copying from me and I've been copying from him."

DC

Haha! Good! On Kong, I don't care if the computer graphics look brilliant, which they undoubtably will. But Jackson will struggle to get that feel of the original time and the pathos in my view. New audiences probably won't care though. So, OK, never mind.

Hitchcock on Tallulah Bankhead and the film Lifeboat. The crew complained Ms Bankhead refused to wear undergarments and it was causing camera angle problems because of the space. Hitchcock replied that he didn't know if it was a problem for the cameraman or the hairdresser.

Another. An actress asked Hitchcock which side her best profile was. Hitchcock replied ' Your'e sitting on it my dear'.

Yes Hitch was a character. I often am struck by how even in this time of immense overpopulation, there is absolutely NO ONE remotely like that one particular person. Even though many desperately want to be. He is one of those few whom you really want to be immortal (unlike most people whose mortality is an immense relief to themselves and others).

@William said:

I agree with the puzzlement on remaking Kong which is a masterpiece and one of the great original stories of the cinema and probably the whole 20th century. It is a story of mythic significance, and was created just for that movie. Also I don't care if Kong will look more realistic - the original has character and was hand-made and hand-animated, and that is a thousand times more significant than CGI "realism."

You obviously do not understand CGI (I hate that term) [:)] .I work in computer games... We have many animators here who painstakingly move each character frame by frame to achieve 'cgi animation'.... and the modellers who build the actual 3d models out of polygons.... vertex by vertex, and then they paint the texture maps which are then wrapped around the wireframe models. These are everybit just as hand crafted as stop motion... just as your compositions are no doubt just as hand crafted on your midikeyboard. Have you ever seen how texture maps are painted... well it's by using a program like Photoshop and a wacom tablet (a digital pen that you actually grasp and paint on the screen with, pressure and angle sensitive so you can shade as if it were a real airbrush.
.I am a traditional artist... you give me a pencil and i'll draw whatever, but I now also use computers because it is another medium. But no less artistic ability is required.

I am aware of the complexity of CGI since I do it and 3D animation. I am working right now on a video production using Poser 5 and Bryce and love using them. But I also have worked in traditional stop motion by hand and because of that I like its old-fashioned nature. The best animated films ever made are probably the Brothers Quay shorts, which are militantly old-fashioned, handmade, all-film, non-digital surrealism. I don't like the way stop motion animation has been assumed to be less valuable merely because it does not look as superficially realistic.