dcoscina
Not to be argumentative [[;)]] but you are starting to push a button. it is the old button of "well, the concert composers already did all that. This film guy is just repeating them."
We heard it with your quote of the professor who set me off - the Bartok "knock off."
And now we hear it again with Varese and Goldsmith.
Sorry, but this does not wash. First of all, I have all of Varese's works in every recording ever done of them. He did not do what Goldsmith did, purely musically speaking. He did something similar, in Poem Electronique and in his use of percussion generally. But it was not the same thing, lifted for film use ala Little James Horner.
But secondly and more importantly, this whole idea that because a harmonic idiom or orchestrational technique was already used in concert music does not mean those composers are doing the same thing as a film composer. These are universes apart, and not one of those concert composers wrote a film score in which those techniques or styles were used. (Unless you're talking about Vaughn Williams, Shostakovich or Copland - some of the few concert composers who crossed over.) It is completely different creation to do something in a film score and frankly, most of the concert composers who did what they did were not skilled enough (in film music that is) to do that particular thing. Perhaps they could have become, but they were not. Any more than a composer can instantly write an opera, when his background has been in chamber music. It requires an entirely different artistic achievement to do this, even if you are using the exact same style you write in concert music but adapting it for film. A demonstration of this in reverse is Herrmann, whose concert music is, with a few exceptions like Souvenirs de Voyage and Silent Noon, not up to the standard he set with his film music.
Not to be argumentative [[;)]] but you are starting to push a button. it is the old button of "well, the concert composers already did all that. This film guy is just repeating them."
We heard it with your quote of the professor who set me off - the Bartok "knock off."
And now we hear it again with Varese and Goldsmith.
Sorry, but this does not wash. First of all, I have all of Varese's works in every recording ever done of them. He did not do what Goldsmith did, purely musically speaking. He did something similar, in Poem Electronique and in his use of percussion generally. But it was not the same thing, lifted for film use ala Little James Horner.
But secondly and more importantly, this whole idea that because a harmonic idiom or orchestrational technique was already used in concert music does not mean those composers are doing the same thing as a film composer. These are universes apart, and not one of those concert composers wrote a film score in which those techniques or styles were used. (Unless you're talking about Vaughn Williams, Shostakovich or Copland - some of the few concert composers who crossed over.) It is completely different creation to do something in a film score and frankly, most of the concert composers who did what they did were not skilled enough (in film music that is) to do that particular thing. Perhaps they could have become, but they were not. Any more than a composer can instantly write an opera, when his background has been in chamber music. It requires an entirely different artistic achievement to do this, even if you are using the exact same style you write in concert music but adapting it for film. A demonstration of this in reverse is Herrmann, whose concert music is, with a few exceptions like Souvenirs de Voyage and Silent Noon, not up to the standard he set with his film music.