@PaulR said:

There are a lot of great films with non existent scores in them.

 

I hesitate to mention this but Apocalypse Now comes to mind.  I know many would disagree and apparently the Golden Globe Award Committee did because they gave both Carmine and Francis Golden Globes.  I thought it was a innovative idea to use electronic elements to sonically represent "the horror!" of Col. Kurtz but the Moog collages just weren't working for me I guess.  As Errikos pointed out it's "all personal preference."  For the record, I think Carmine Coppola was a underrated composer.

Does anybody know if Goodfellas had an original score?  All I remember is a montage of period music.  In fact, I read that they spent almost as much money on licensing fees and royalties than they did on the actual production. 

I'm sure I'll think of more after I press the "Post" button.

Congratulations William for starting yet another thought provoking thread.  

Basic Instinct !

@Errikos said:

I believe that the lesson for all aspiring composers to be learned here, is to get off their - deceptively high - horse, and fathom the fact that the masters of film music always maintain the high standard of their work regardless of that of their collaborators, because they know that in the end, no matter how good or bad the finished film is, it is their name that will be splashed across the big screen for the music credit, no one else's...

This is supposed to be words of wisdom, but it is words of doom. 

The doom of the film composer, who is condemned to writing music for crap. Except for once in a while, when after years of labor  he claws and struggles his way upward to the highest goal conceivable within the art form - to write music for SOMETHING A LITTLE BETTER THAN CRAP!   Even Jerry Goldsmith, at the height of his powers.  As correctly pointed out - Basic Instinct.  A piece of rotting garbage, offered up to a brilliant genius for his music that will forever be sullied by the garbage.

My adivce is - don't get off your high horse.  Get on one.   You will be extremely original at the very least, because absolutely nobody else today even tries.

A lot of films over the last few years are such utter crap with exceptions every now and again. Very few good films are made these days because time and again they have to make money,  unless it's some sort of artistic thing like Glegarry Glenross or working for Robert Altman doing things like Gosford Park etc etc. You have to pander to the lowest common denominators in just about anything these days otherwise you kiss goodbye to 95% of any type of consumer - that's why there's no taste anymore. You can't make money with good taste.  Just look at the way people dress - for Christ Sake - do you think that someone who can't dress themselves properly are going to understand what constitutes a 'good film'?.

When you have these type of conversations you really need to split it into two sections - making money versus good taste that can only be brought about by a previously good education. Anyone can make money if that's their primary goal in life and lets nothing like good taste get in the way. The reason many overly intelligent people don't  make any money is because of just that - they let their intelligence and ergo, conscience get in the way. And that's why Hollywood in particular has no compunction in turning out crap most of the time. Let's face it - we've have 70 years of  f***k***war movies alone. So film music is really so unimportant nowadays because it's generic and sounds the same - that the answer really is in the question posed a the start of this thread.

On a positive note - I like the Swedish original of Wallander for tv (the English version is shit). Not especially original but somehow very relaxing. And the score (I have no idea who did it) is not in anyway overblown and works perfectly.

One ambitious film with no music at all is "Breaking the Waves" by Lars Van Trier.  The film was set up with chapters and titles, and pop songs were played only during the brief showing of the title pages.  It worked.  All in all, I'd rather have no music than the "Various Artists" compilations.

As for crap versus quality, the first run movie palace stuff, most of it is aimed at teenagers.  I just hope people keep supporting the small art house theaters.  

        Tom

I agree about the various artists approach.  I don't care whether or not it works - I dislike the use of pop songs in films. It is  crude and simplistic to slap a song underneath a scene.  Any moron can do that.   It also reduces film music to absolutely the lowest conceivable level artistically.      

Audiences will support the art house films because there will always be a market for truly good films, despite what the MBAs from Harvard who now control the film industry think. 

Some other films that had absolutely no music were the later Bunuel films, Phantom of Liberty and Discreet Charm of the Bourgoisie.  Those are brilliant films, and they did not suffer at all from no music.  If anything they were better because they had an irony and  starkness that any commentary from music would have ruined.  Also, Tarkovsky - who is now considered maybe the greatest of all filmmakers in history - had almost no music in his films.  Stalker had a little, but mostly he avoided it. 

The whole problem with film music is that it is always SAYING SOMETHING.  A scene should simple be allowed to exist for its own reality, without a composer telling you what to think or feel about it. 

Good point, William, but I'd add that a soundtrack's subtlety and sparing use go a long way in adding to the emotional experience of the viewer.  Some pretty good scores wore thin simply because they kept clattering about and overstayed their welcome.  And certainly most film scenes are so carefully contrived that their having "their own reality" is illusory, as it should be.  My biggest peeve, mentioned in another thread, is television's use of droning folky songs, lyrics too low to be understood, which imply they're revealing something wise about the "drama" in the scene.  It was a cheap trick at the get go, and now it's insufferable.  When my girlfriend watches her medical and family drama shows, I sit whining about the lame song soundtracks, so now she's perfectly happy if I don't watch them at all.  Hmm.  Who wins there...

You win, big! Do you know how many men - non musicians - envy you that good excuse you use to avoid those cretinous series (slow death of the soul). They instead have to "bond" with their mates on the couch during that absolute crap aimed 80% at women, when they almost never choose to sit through say a boxing match, a baseball game, etc. even though they are not on every single week-night for hours on end...

 How about Krull?

I know Horner gets a bad rep around here but at least that's him at his most fun and exciting (and with the LSO!) and Krull is about as bad a movie as could be made.

@bluejay said:

I know Horner gets a bad rep around here...

What's wrong with Horner?  I don't know about his present work but I think his score to Glory is still one of the best scores to a war movie ever composed.  The angelic boys choir, which soars above the ensemble, perpetuates the yearning of freedom the former slave soldiers felt and the sacrifice of life and innocence to earn that freedom.  I enjoyed the score more than I did the movie.  

The movie kind of pissed me off because it was historically inaccurate.  In reality, Col. Shaw was a whining mama's boy who had no desire to lead a regiment of black soldiers during the American Civil War because he knew that they would never be used in combat, only as laborers.  Upon constant whining to his parents, who were close personal friends to President Lincoln, did he finally get his way.  But, this is a thread for another forum.

@bluejay said:

 How about Krull?

I know Horner gets a bad rep around here but at least that's him at his most fun and exciting (and with the LSO!) and Krull is about as bad a movie as could be made.

It is fun and exciting, until you hear each of the things he stole deliberately.  That is the problem with Horner - the calculating plagiarism.  It is not influence such as John Williams' many influences within his own originality.  With Horner it is different, and out and out thievery.  And he did this repeatedly.  The fact he has the LSO to record his plagiarisms makes it worse and very depressing to me. 

I don't understand how you can continue to love somebody who does this.  Is this what you do?  To get a musical idea for a film score just listen to a classical symphony.  There's your theme.  The dumbells in the audience will never know because it is from classical music?  Well guess what Horner - I know.  Every time.  I sat in movie theaters hearing to my amazement one stolen theme after another, including actual stolen uncredited orchestrations along with the themes! 

One other thing on Horner - he is an example of the REVERSE of this thread mentioned earlier - bad music for great films.  The example I am thinking of right now is Wrath of Khan.  I recently wanted to see that again for the great story, the best acting ever by Shatner and Nimoy, great FX - but then stopped when I remembered the totally sucking incredibly trite score by Horner, with endlessly repeated augmented arpeggios in the violins signifying "OUTER SPACE" and the evil Khan motif stolen - as usual  - directly from Prokofiev's score to "Alexander Nevsky."

Hahah - I think the Wrath of Khan is a great film within that genre. Ricardo Montalban was great in that and interestingly - it would have been his birthday today. The music in that film is great and you of course know by now Bill that I never comment on James Horner for musical masonic reasons. [:P]

The score for Glory was stolen, I knew that even as a teenager although memory doesn't serve me with the particular source; I think it might have been Carmina Burana, don't quote me, but I certainly remember thinking then how derived it was. Perhaps it was the director's adherence to the temporary track, who knows...

The Wrath of Khan music may be what it is, but I was always impressed with the tutti cue where the two ships are confronting each other in orbit of that planet (Seti A V?).

Horner is a grand larcenist but his score to Aliens - in my opinion his best of the ones I know, is homogeneous and exemplary! Another good job he did was the whimsical, minimal score to one of the best light films ever, Sneakers.

@Errikos said:

The score for Glory was stolen, I knew that even as a teenager although memory doesn't serve me with the particular source; I think it might have been Carmina Burana, don't quote me, but I certainly remember thinking then how derived it was. Perhaps it was the director's adherence to the temporary track, who knows...

 

I believe you're reffering to the attack on Fort Wagner theme which, I'll grant you, does bare some similarities to, not Orff's Carmina Burana (I don't know where people came up with that) but more to that "Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tails or tells" or something (I can never remember the name of that piece) by the British composer Ralph V. Williams.  So goes the Horner debate.  To me, it sounds more like a strong influence rather than an out right rip off.

At least I didn't mention Titanic.

After a brief Google search the name of the piece is Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis,  by Ralph Vaughan Williams and I mean it resembles other portions of the Glory score not just the storming of Fort Wagner Theme.  Let me be clear on that.  I still don't see the connection between Storming Fort Wagner Theme and Carmina Burana.  I'll dig out both works and compare them again.

Why all the fuss? I said I don't exactly recall Horner's source for his Glory soundtrack... Only that I vividly remember thinking it was derivative.

No fuss Errikos.  More like a gentleman's disagreement?  You also said that Horner's Glory score was "Stolen."  To my ears, the score is more residual to other works rather than a derivative and if being residual to other works is a crime then why stop at Horner.

Whether Horner is stealing from others or "paying homage" to others seems to be the source of heated debate amongst his peers.  I can't really comment on that because, as I said before, I don't know about his present day work.  Since Apollo 13, I haven't been keeping abreast of the latest Horner developments as I find his post Apollo 13 body of work to be innocuous and rather bland. 

But then again, maybe I'm right.

I myself have stopped following Horner's offerings long before the Titanic since I didn't deem him worth checking out. I remember thinking as a teenager when I first encountered him that he was very influenced (at best...) by Goldsmith only without his melodic flair, or wonderful dramatic instinct. The soundtracks that have vaguely remained in my memory in a semi-positive fashion are Brainstorm, Cocoon, An American Tail, Aliens, Sneakers. But seriously, who cares... The only really positive thing I can say about him in my opinion, it is that even he has/d more 'character' than the golden boys of today (not the few remaining from the old guard still working)... I swear besides technique, no one I can think of comes even close to eliciting an emotional response in me, scary!! (the handful of exceptions I can come up with are not enough to mitigate for over a decade of soundtrack indigence...)

 Yes, J. S. Bach is a truly great composer.

@William said:

 Yes, J. S. Bach is a truly great composer.

Yes indeed. Unfortunately, many writers that are seduced by film scoring today have either forgotten or are not capable of understanding how great this composer still is. Counterpoint and contrapuntalism in music should be an essential ingredient - NOT block chords followed by an excuse for a melodic phrase - all covered up by clever clever orchestration. Rubbish.

Yes- the piano came about because the harpsichord indeed has no dynamics - but I don't really like Bach on the piano for some reason. It is not written for the piano obviously - it is written for an instrument that plucks - not hammers!