This is what the referenced article was addressing among other things - that a great lot of people have been "reduced" to listen and decide what great classical music is, according to how much 'film-music' value that music contains, i.e. anything that contains material that's more or less easily classifiable and pigeon-holeable to one or more of mainstream soundtrack categories: action, drama, comedy, horror/suspense, fantasy, western(!), etc., but this is too superficial (or severely limited) when it comes to listening to superlative classical works, and that is where the example of the 'Out of Africa' main title vs. Prokofiev's 3rd Piano Concerto comes in. John Barry's sensuous beautiful moment is something that instantly captivates a contemporary educated urban (not the genre) audience, and some may actually think it is a superior work to Prokofiev's masterpiece, which in all aspects (inspiration, originality, scope, sophistication, melody, harmony, orchestration, polyphony, form, etc.) drowns the otherwise - like you say, fits the film perfectly, stands on its own as music - great soundtrack.

The problem is, that people today may say exactly what you started your post with: "Music, to me, is emotion". It would be more appropriate to say that most - if not all - music provokes an emotional response. The problem is that the increasingly unsophisticated audiences of today fail to understand that although music provokes an emotional response in them, it also carries stimuli that also provoke a lot of mental calculation, scrutiny, and analysis, which are the result of the composer's self-imposed challenges in a work. The harder and more complex the challenges are, the harder it is for the composer to satisfactorily meet those challenges (the determination of which depends on the musical materials exposed), the higher the expectations and "anxiety" (emotions) on the educated audience. As they monitor in real time the composer's journey and the creative tools he uses to respond to these challenges, the audience's emotions fluctuate in general (ups and downs during the work). If the composer is gifted both in the setting of the materials, but especially in the way he deals with those materials and "makes sense of them", i.e. the way he articulates his journey and solutions, and the more satisfying the mental closure, the greater the emotion and fulfilment the audience will feel in return. And all that is on top of a great tune that might be contained in the work; I mean of course it is part of the whole, but most times it won't be the raison d' etre of a work, as many times it is in film-music.

This failure to notice all this on the part of the modern audience, is due to the - correct for its purposes - superficiality of most film-music, which usually requires digestion and enjoyment on one - maybe two levels (as opposed to Prokofiev's masterpiece, which actually yields infinitely greater fruit when one digs a little deeper, for there actually exists depth there to be dug).

Of course composers should only be reviewed according to the genre to which they contribute, but genres themselves can also be weighed against one another. As far as compositional skills are concerned, if you mean technical skills, they can be reviewed regardless of genre (ex. Williams I would venture is more competent in orchestration - regardless of Spencer's and others' services - than Cage and a host of other classical composers. Hans Zippo on the other hand....)

P.S.: What is an audiovisual editor doing in this forum? Do yo also write, or are you scouting for talent? [;)]

 Those are very interesting ideas Errikos and weslldeckers -  what I often think about the quality (or lack of it)  of film music is that it seems to be "optional."  In other words, a musician can provide a score that is a great piece of music, or a lousy piece of garbage and - amazingly enough - either one of them may work for the film.  This principle is what the Zimmerites are using to get away with semi-musical sludge as opposed to actual music scores.    But on the other hand, a good composer can write something beautiful  musically that is irritating and distracting from the film.  And all this is why it is remarkable how Herrmann and a few others did both - writing good (sometimes great) music that was also absolutely perfect for what the film needed.   

I must say I somewhat disagree with the principle behind this original article however.  Essentially the author is stating that film music is not as good as Beethoven.  In a way, that is a stupid thing to say.  Because it is mixing up many different contexts into an aesthetic mishmash.  One should ask the question - is ANY film music as good as the concert music written at the same time.  If that question is asked, I would answer - some film music is BETTER than much of the concert music written in the 20th century.   EVerybody compares Joe Blow film composer to Stravinsky.  What about  Bernard Herrmann or Jerry Goldsmith to any of the thousands of music professors imitating Berg, Webern, Ligeti, Schoenberg, etc. ad infinitum to the boredom and ear-splitting nausea of their enslaved audiences who gradually decided - over the course of about 20 years - they HATE concert music.  WHY do they hate it?  Did you ever ask that question?  Is it because it is all peerless masterpieces? Or could it be as mediocre in general as the favorite whipping boy of the musical snobs - film music?

@weslldeckers said:

Modern day film composers need to give the producer or director or whoever's in charge, exactly what they want, or they'll get sidetracked and rejected.

The problem is most producers and directors don't really know what they want until they hear it and most, even after hearing it, still don't know what they want. 

H.Z. is the hottest composer in Hollywood today and that means he's the most compositionally handicapped because he could score a film by doing nothing more than play scales on a moog synthesizer and everyone would cheer, applaud, give him the thumbs up sign and rave, "Bravo Hans, yet another triumph!"  Why? because he's H.Z.  Of course if I were to score a film by playing scales on my moog the next thing I'd be scoring is a Shamwow infomercial playing on some obscure cable network at three o' clock in the morning.  And I'd be lucky to get that. 

Until recently, I've never actually scored visual media.  Just for the experience, I offered my services to a film student who was making a Michael Moore styled documentary and for a particular scene he wanted me to compose something in the vein of Carmine Coppola's score for Apocalypes Now.  Impressed by the 20 year old's knowledge of Carmine Coppola I thought he meant something like the surreal spooky moog music playing during the Battle of Do Long Bridge sequence where Willard and Lance are crawling through the trenches at night during a North Vietnamese attack.  Unfortunately, that's not what the young filmaker meant.  He meant the famous beach raid scene where Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" is playing.  He thought Coppola composed "The Ride of the Valkyries."  Robert Duval's character, Colonel Kilgore, even said before starting the music, "I use WAGNER!... My boys love it!"

Do you all see what we're dealing with here?      

Thanks for the sobering anecdote there Jasen; it also reinforces the article's point that audiences today respond to film-like classical music instead of the other way around, which would be responding positively to an instrumental soundtrack because it also shares some artistic traits with the musical landmarks of western tradition. As it happens, your friend is aware of the completely decontextualized version of the 'Valkyries', reminding me of those decontextualized best-sellers of the '70s 'Hooked on Classics' - strip away the great tune from the great work (which of course stands on its own) and collate that with other great such tunes for a disco medley... Thus the tired in the audience today have lost the capacity to follow a great work from beginning to end, and wake up only when the tune comes in, "tuning-off" straight after... What an (an)aesthetic... I suppose I should be elated they are still capable of enjoying some beat-less music.

Of course William is right in elevating Herrmann and Goldsmith on top of most of the modern serious clones; that's what you get when musical creation becomes so blueprinted and cookbooked - "these are today's matrices boys, and those are today's fashionable percussion and woodwinds articulations; go nuts!" Hence, the justified exodus of the already lighter-minded audiences, with the inexorable result that most of the people who will happily sit through Herrmann, Williams, Goldsmith, and Morricone suites, cannot communicate with Brahms, Wagner, let alone Scriabin, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Bartok, Shostakovich, Britten, forget Lutoslawcki, Ligeti, and Xenakis. And I think that this is what the author is addressing, that audiences today are incapable of appreciating the great music of the 20th century (or even 19th, 18th), due to their limited scope; I'm not sure he expects them to delight in some 10th rate Lachenmann hopeful (brrrrr, can you imagine?...)

@Errikos said:

And I think that this is what the author is addressing, that audiences today are incapable of appreciating the great music of the 20th century (or even 19th, 18th), due to their limited scope; I'm not sure he expects them to delight in some 10th rate Lachenmann hopeful (brrrrr, can you imagine?...)

However by the same token, most audiences are not interested in the relationship between arpeggiated bitonal augmented chords with deliberately thwarted resolutions in Vertigo and the simultaneous attraction-repulsion, sex-death dichotomies of that profoundly psychological story.  

They prefer something with a beat.

"Unfortunately, that's not what the young filmaker meant.  He meant the famous beach raid scene where Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" is playing.  He thought Coppola composed "The Ride of the Valkyries"

*ROTFL*

On the other hand, I wouldn´t make a guess how many people actually think that "An der schönen blauen Donau" was composed specifically for Odyssee 2001. :)

So in the end, if the young director doesn´t like your music, just send him 25 clicks down the Lu Dong river.....

@kleinholgi said:

On the other hand, I wouldn´t make a guess how many people actually think that "An der schönen blauen Donau" was composed specifically for Odyssee 2001. 😊

You're not referring to that "paltry" waltzy melody, are you? My favourite soundtrack - and the greatest music of all time - is the one from the film 'Immortal Beloved' (although the composer stole the best bits from Michael Kamen's 'Die Hard' and Maurice Jarre's 'Dead Poets Society'). That, and 'Amadeus' really left me gasping for air! I wonder who it was that scored those beauties? It couldn't have been Hans; could it?...

Less is a lot more when it comes to scoring these days.

One of the really great television series that happened over the last 5 years was obviously Deadwood which was written and scripted on a Shakespearean scale. My God, they even included soliloquies which is not something you see every day in say, Coronation Street.  Apart from the opening 90 second intro music (which in fact was very good and appropriate for the series) the only time you heard any other scoring was when something portentous was about to happen and then it was very much 'played back'. In other words, unobtrusive and quite rare over a one hour episode.

It's very difficult today for morons to be unobtrusive in more or less any walk of life and filmscoring is no exception. Apart from Trevor of course. The very idea that Trevor could even begin to write moronic televisual scores is tant amount to musical treason.

Goof afternoon.

@jasensmith said:

Apparently Mr. Ridder hasn't heard any recent film music as this statement doesn't explain the current state of affairs.

I may sound like I'm mocking Mr. Ridder but I do agree with his overall premis that there is "More to Music Than Music" but I think how much more depends on the listener.  I know friends who are hard core Heavy Metal listeners who rattle off the names of obscure artists most have never heard of and intensely listen to swaths of loud distorted power chords, and high pitched overdriven arpeggio patterns bobbing their heads up and down (called 'head banging').  I just don't hear what it is my friends are hearing.  Is there art or aesthetic nourishment in what they are listening to?  They can't hear what I'm hearing in Prokofiev's Third.  Why is Classical and/or Film music considered high brow while everything else is not? 

I'm sure Mr. Ridder has unfortunately (like the rest of us) heard a lot of recent film-music, but I posted this reference in order to put in 'Perspective' the differences and "distances" in artistic quality that separates the best of soundtracks from the great "classical" (ca. 1700-1970) musical tradition, as he did, let alone the incalculable void between that and the Reznors and Zimmers of this world. I'm sick and tired of hearing and reading the 'wow's and 'aaah's in YouTube or VSL commentaries about the absolute basest, ineptest, and inconsequentialest of musical drivel, and how John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, and Bernard Herrmann are the gods of music in general! - I am glad that a couple of threads appeared addressing Mussorgsky, Mahler, etc.

Yes, the main theme to 'Out of Africa' is great, sensuous, whatever, but it does not belong in the same sentence with Prokofiev's 3rd piano concerto. And even if the example is unfair - 3 minutes compared to 30 - the same could be said about the whole of the Star Wars saga soundtrack - 250 minutes (or whatever) compared to Prokofiev's 30. Nor should it be, and this is not derogatory to Williams' incredible score. What the article points out is the discrepancy in sensibility and artistic quality between one genre and the other. Even Herrmann's best offerings (or Steiner's, Korngold's, etc.), excerpts of which could easily have formed parts of concert works, do not come within intergalactic distance to Prokofiev's 3rd as a whole. Nor should they; it was not their function. 

However, it is the limited sensibilities of today's audiences that have mostly come to appreciate film-like symphonic music that was addressed in the article and I found interesting to share. As far as Jasen's head-banging friends, I am sure they are appreciating far more original music than a lot of directors/producers who pay good money for slightly disguised Anemato-inSpiritoso-Hollywoodsteals-Cinescamples tempo/harmonic flexible tin-cannned scores. 

Strongly agree with the central thesis of this post.

 What I do NOT agree with is that all film composers are inferior to classical composers - which this statement implies. 

I strongly feel that Bernard Herrmann is a major composer - in any category - of the 20th century, regardless of whether he did film music or not.  And that much of his music - as pure music - is BETTER than a lot of Prokofiev's.  Maybe this or that piece, not as good as this or that piece, whatever.  But he would have had nothing to be ashamed of in comparison.   And that people who look down upon him in comparison to Prokofiev do so out of mere conventional prejudice against both film music and cinema in general, which has always struggled against the stigma of being more desired and more needed by more people than any other art form in world history. 

@jasensmith said:

Until recently, I've never actually scored visual media.  Just for the experience, I offered my services to a film student who was making a Michael Moore styled documentary and for a particular scene he wanted me to compose something in the vein of Carmine Coppola's score for Apocalypes Now.  Impressed by the 20 year old's knowledge of Carmine Coppola I thought he meant something like the surreal spooky moog music playing during the Battle of Do Long Bridge sequence where Willard and Lance are crawling through the trenches at night during a North Vietnamese attack.  Unfortunately, that's not what the young filmaker meant.  He meant the famous beach raid scene where Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" is playing.  He thought Coppola composed "The Ride of the Valkyries."  Robert Duval's character, Colonel Kilgore, even said before starting the music, "I use WAGNER!... My boys love it!"

Do you all see what we're dealing with here?      

Mixed feelings. Should one cry or should one laugh?

@PaulR said:

Less is a lot more when it comes to scoring these days.

One of the really great television series that happened over the last 5 years was obviously Deadwood which was written and scripted on a Shakespearean scale. My God, they even included soliloquies which is not something you see every day in say, Coronation Street.  Apart from the opening 90 second intro music (which in fact was very good and appropriate for the series) the only time you heard any other scoring was when something portentous was about to happen and then it was very much 'played back'. In other words, unobtrusive and quite rare over a one hour episode.

It's very difficult today for morons to be unobtrusive in more or less any walk of life and filmscoring is no exception. Apart from Trevor of course. The very idea that Trevor could even begin to write moronic televisual scores is tant amount to musical treason.

Deadwood is a masterpiece by any standards. Imagine a TV-series combining the depth and insight of Shakespeare, Balzac and Marx. Unbelievable that they actually pulled off such a combination, I wouldn't have believed televison today was capable of something like that if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.

This is one time I have to disagree with William (with due dread that he might pulverise his terminal in rage...)

If I say Herrmann for me is a great composer without contextualizing that statement in any way, then what adjective do I use for Puccini? Szymanowcki? Scriabin? Rachmaninov? And then what adjective do I use for Debussy, Ravel, Tchaikovsky? Following that, what adjective would I use for Brahms and Chopin? Then what would remain for Mozart and Bach?

Herrmann was both inspired and characteristic, as well as technically adept. These qualities alone already elevate Herrmann to a select group of composers, regardless of genre, and certainly above most clones of so-called 'serious' music (it's not the objective, it's the results that count).

I have heard most, if not all of the celebrated Herrmann film-music and I always marvel at it. I have only heard one concert work of his, very long ago, and I can't remember it at all. Quite a few people have told me that his concert music is not very impressive, however I have no opinion of my own. If I have to compare Hermann's great soundtracks - which many times can be listened to as pure music, to Prokofiev's output, I would be doing Herrmann a great disservice. I wouldn't know where to begin... Of course there are powerful offerings by Herrmann that I also would rather listen to than some Porkofiev, but that's about it. I won't write an essay today - Prokofiev's achievements and multifarious contributions to the art of music are well documented and easily accessible - but I will bring only one example up: The Hangover Square piano concerto, compared to any of Prokofiev's (or any of his first movements). Herrmann was given the opportunity to compose a concert work without restrictions (artistic or scenic - except the end had to be piano solo), and wrote a work, of which I happily own 2-3 interpretations, as it is good! But it would be like day and night if I have to entertain comparisons with Prokofiev's offerings in the same genre for so many reasons: Depth, breadth, inspiration, piano writing, harmony, rhythm, orhestration, etc. Galaxies apart, and that is not taking anything away from Herrmann who is very deservedly sitting on the high - just not that high - pedestal that his music justifiably afforded him.

That is why 'Perspective' is so important. I recently read on the Internet someone comparing Rolling Stones' contributions to popular music (you know, all genres), as equivalent to those of Justin Bieber. Now tell me again how narrow my field of vision is and about my 'straw' men; tell me how I am buried into the past (although I am young enough), how I refuse to appreciate and equate the quality of the minimal (brain-cell count) school of film-music, when I'm sure someone here - or on YouTube - will start comparing Hans' or Daft Punk's music to Prokofiev's.

Like a theatre composer said, "Would you call someone a novelist if he could neither read nor write?..."

First of all you need to hear more of Herrmann's work, such as "Echoes" his late string quartet which is a masterpiece fully the measure of anything Prokofiev wrote. 

Secondly, you are flatly wrong in this statement:

@Errikos said:

Herrmann was given the opportunity to compose a concert work without restrictions (artistic or scenic - except the end had to be piano solo

This is absolutely false.  The music he had to write was FOR A FILM - not freely composed  concert music in which he could do anything he liked.   Film music is aesthetically very similar to opera despite their conventional differences.  It is a intricately interwoven combination of two artforms which must be modified to fit together, just as opera is modified from its originary sources: theater and music.  One could just as inappropriately compare sections of Verdi's recitative to Beethoven's symhonic development and find Verdi inferior.   

I couldn't access 'Echoes'; I heard another work called 'Souvenirs de Voyage'; a pleasant enough salon piece, definitely Herrmann, but suffering from too much 3rd rate imitation of Ravel's language (de rigueur in Britain I suppose since Vaughn-Williams). However, I heard much of his 1st symphony and his Moby Dick cantata - both including massive Prokofievian passages by the way (as did a lot of the music of the period).

From what I heard in these large scale works, I can understand why Herrmann is mostly revered for his film-music, for that's where he was at his most original and characteristic - and I think I read somewhere how he actually preferred writing programmatic/to picture, rather than pure music. Be that as it may, these works (that I heard for the first time) certainly elevate Herrmann far above Williams or Goldsmith etc. as far as film composers go (I've heard their concert works, as well as Morricone's, Barry's, etc.), above Korngold, above Grofe, but nowhere near where Prokofiev (or Bartok, or Debussy, or Stravinsky, or Mahler, or Sibelius, etc.) reigned. And they don't have to. As far as the piano concerto goes, like you said, Herrmann was usually left to his own devices to write, and in this case he was not restricted by the script (in fact I think the killer-composer's character helped. I doubt Herrmann could have written a concerto for a 'jolly' composer).

Anyway, even his truly superb Psycho and Vertigo, are not Alexander Nevsky or Ivan the Terrible. But so what? I think it is counterproductive to compare the good with the great composers. I'd rather be learning from them, and focus my forum energies to effacing the ones that should never have dared consider becoming composers (not that they have).

I agree with you that Herrmann is unjustifiably neglected as a pure music composer while a lot of other twirps get multiple readings and recordings of puerile works. I certainly would love to have recordings of what I just heard on YouTube; I'll probably buy them, but the point is more of us should bother to discover them, and not restrict ourselves to Citizen Kane.

P.S.: O.K. Dietz, Moby Richard (hilarious![:D])

Is this a joke?  Are you serious? 

All of Alexander Nevsky is not worth  one cue from Vertigo.  Prokofiev's film scores are utterly obliterated in all aesthetically and musicologically measurable aspects by even minor scores by Herrmann.   Apparently you believe Eisenstein's laughable demonstations of how the semi-quavers correspond to the spears that are pointed upwards in the frame.  The single most glaring example in all of film and film music history of pretentious intellectualism being utterly unaware of what is going on in the fim - which is TOTAL BOREDOM AND ARTIFICIALITY.

If you need some help with Eisenstein and his absurdly overrated concepts of montage, see Sculpting in Time by Tarkovsky, a filmmaker who dwarfs Eisenstein.  And if you think that score is superior to Vertigo, you are either

1) Tone deaf or

2) a moron or

3) both.

I am getting a little tired of your arrogant qualified praise of Herrmann, which is something on the order of  "Oh yeah, he's a competent little guy.  Nothing like a real composer, but quite pleasant and... interesting. (As the Emperor said to Tchaikovsky after the premiere of Swan Lake).

You are simply a bigot against film music.  This has become quite clear.  You don't understand the elementary basis of it - an interplay of music and picture - and are incapable of seeing how that causes the music NOT to do everything that is done in the work, as in concert music.  You have a one-track mind that seeks to justify itself by putting things down it does not comprehend.

Instead of getting more irritated and insulting I will just add this - the basic concept of Errikos is "Look at all the great classical composers.  Now look at film composers.  The film composers are pathetic in comparison."

It is a fallacious argument for several reasons: first, as I stated before and was ignored, you cannot compare film music to pure concert music because it is an interplay with cinema, just as opera is an interplay between theater and music.  To say "Bernard Herrmann is not as good a Prokofiev" is ridiculous because Herrmann is doing something fundamentally different (except in the film scores in which Herrmann is vastly superior to Prokofiev).  Also ignored or not understood by this person is what I said about not being free to do anything one wants, as a concert composer is in fact free.  He thinks that because producers gave Herrmann license, well then he could write anything he wanted.  This shows total naivete about film music.  The music is to a large extent DICTATED by the film, and the composer is NOT free even if producers are allowing him freedom.  He is artistically intertwined with the film, and he knows this if he is a good film composer, and this is vastly different from a concert composer's music which is indeed absolutely free (as far as he is capable of being so).  Finally, there is a basic speciousness and actual fallacy in going through the entire century, finding the greatest composer, and then saying "Look how much better he is than those film composers."  The fact is, he is that much better than ALL COMPOSERS.   But Errikos is leaving out all the others because he wants to make a point of disparaging film composers in particular.  It is a perverse and pointless attitude.  Especially in light of the fact that film is a harshly commercial and demanding medium that rarely allows artistic work to be done at a high level.  Stravinsky didn't even write any film music beause of squabbling with deals, etc.  But great concert composers such as Vaughn Williams, Shostakovich and many others did, and without looking down upon the medium as being inferior.  Especially Korngold who was a truly great concert composer, and who viewed his film scores as his "operas without words." 

If you don't like film music, then just say so.  But don't try to elevate your own personal bias into an aesthetic principle.

@William said:

I am getting a little tired of your arrogant qualified praise of Herrmann, which is something on the order of  "Oh yeah, he's a competent little guy.  Nothing like a real composer, but quite pleasant and... interesting. (As the Emperor said to Tchaikovsky after the premiere of Swan Lake).

You are simply a bigot against film music.  This has become quite clear.  You don't understand the elementary basis of it - an interplay of music and picture - and are incapable of seeing how that causes the music NOT to do everything that is done in the work, as in concert music.  You have a one-track mind that seeks to justify itself by putting things down it does not comprehend.

Strongly disagree with this. Errikos never qualified Hermann as a "competent little guy, nothing like a real composer but interesting...". He emphasized more then once that in the domain of film music his best works are masterly. I am by no means a specialist, but what I know of Hermann stands so incomparably higher then anything I have heard from (American or European commercial) cinema in the last 20 years, that I can easily imagine he must belong to the echelon of the most inspired, original and technically proficient film composers ever. However, even his best work for cinema cannot stand comparison with a masterly work of autonomous concert music - which is, however, beside the point when judging the quality of his works by the standards they were supposed to fulfill.

I would like to emphasize that by a "masterly work" I don't understand only the works of the usual suspects - there are many composers of the past and present whose works are unjustifiably forgotten or severly neglected today. Germany alone has figures like Felix Draeseke, Heinrich von Herzogenberg or Josef Rheinberger (to mention just a few) many of whose best works would surely deserve the qualification of a "masterly work" by the same standard of compositional substance and skill one would apply to Brahms or Schumann. The best chamber works of Russians Sergei Taneyev (to mention just his monumental Piano Quintet) or Georgy Catoire should, in my opinion, also be considered to belong to the very apex of chamber music. I know of no piece of film music I could even begin to compare with their works in terms of its self-sufficient, autonomous compositional quality. This does in no way diminish their particular achievement - as film music pieces they can (and the best of them are)  much better suited to the purposes they were composed for then any great work of concert music.

The same applies to, let us say, dance music - are Osvaldo Pugliese's tangos inferior to Taneyev's Piano Quintet in terms of their autonomous compositional substance? Vastly so. Is Taneyev's Piano Quintett inferior to Pugliese's works as music to dance tango argentino to? Maybe even more then the other way around. But that's exactly the point - neither was ment to be written for the other's purpose or criteria, and by that criteria they are both flawed. By the criteria they were written for, however, both are masterly.

@Errikos said:

This is one time I have to disagree with William (with due dread that he might pulverise his terminal in rage...)

 

Wow Errikos, you hit that one right on the head! 

I came into this a little late so I didn't get a chance to read William's deleted posts but I'm guessing he was livid and probably throwing some insults.  I find it interesting that two forumites who are usualy dedicated allies in these little "debates" we have here in our forum are now on opposite sides.  It's almost like watching Mom and Dad have an argument.

@William, if Errikos is correct you must go through a lot of terminals considering your previous passionate posts on this and other threads.  I'm sure the sales clerks at the local Best Buy salavate everytime you walk through door.  "Should we just put this on your tab Mr. Kersten!" 

Back to the matter at hand,

Both William and Errikos have probably forgoten more about Herrmann and Prokofiev than I'll ever know so I won't go into some long dissertation analyzing the two composers' styles pretending like I know what I'm talking about.  Instead, from my limited knowledge, I will just make a simple comparison: Comparing Herrmann and Prokofiev is like comparing the fighting styles of two boxers where one boxer, Herrmann, has an arm, and perhaps even a leg, tied behind his back.  The arm and the leg tied behind the back represent the constraints, both artistic and business of the film industry, the medium that Herrmann composed for.  In a sense it's kind of hard to make a qualified analysis of both fighting styles when one boxer has an arm tied behind his back and is hopping up and down around the ring on one leg (and Herrmann would be in bad shape if this were an a$$ kicking contest wouldn't he).  I understand Herrmann composed concert music but I've never heard it before.  I also understand that Prokofiev scored some films but I don't think I'm familiar with those films.   

Not to turn this into yet another let's all praise Herrmann and bash Zimmer thread what I find so striking about Herrmann's music is that he was able to convey so much emotion with so little orchestration.  A lot of the things he did were so simple that I find myself asking, why didn't a simpleton like me think of that?  In that sense, I agree with William that Herrmann can in fact be put on the same pedestal as Prokofiev as a great composer to be remembered for the ages.

However, I think William may be oversimplifying Errikos's position on film music and this is where I part ways with William.  Considering the copious posts and threads that he's participated in condemning the crap film scores of today created by those charlatan "composters" practically screaming at the top of his keyboard I'm almost certain that Errikos feels that same passion about what is good film music and what is nonsense that William does.  If I were to start a "We Should All Want to Have Hanz Zimmer's Baby" thread I can only imagine the sparks that will fly from both William and Errikos.  In fact, I might just do that under another name as the responses would be very entertaining.  

Thanks Goran for making at least a couple of my points (saving me writing time), and Jasen as usual for the good humour. In fact, I had registered with VSL sometime in 2005 if I'm not mistaken, but wasn't an active forum member until a lot later. I used to read through it for technical information (see DG, Beat, etc. / the VSL team of course), and for entertainment (see Evans (remains unsurpassed even by my standards), William, Paul, Angelo, etc.). I don't know the precise point upon which I became the entertainment...

I came late to this as well, so I also missed the two coveted blank Dead S*** Scrolls, but most of the old guard would know by now that William is actually a violent, untreatable patient in the Montevista Hospital for Psychopaths in Nevada, in the Musical Dilettanti ward. Until recently he was confined to a heavily padded studio with Internet access, when a talented therapist discovered that he could be moved to a normal room if the walls and floor were completely covered with pictures of Bernard Herrmann. His experimental treatment consists of carefully timed, controlled, stimulating VSL forum sessions, where the levels of his hysteria are monitored, followed by relaxation sessions in the ad hoc shrine, where he listens to many a Herrmann track while mumbling insults and throwing darts at portraits of Prokofiev, Wagner, and other composers. However, his latest reaction to my posts must have made it to the top journals (if not the annals) of the discipline.

The points he made in those last few posts are so preposterously ignorant (Bill you do have a split personality), and so off the mark from what I said that I won't rebut, except to mention two brief points: a) I didn't pick Prokofiev as an example; he was the classical composer of choice by the man who wrote the article on which this post was based, and b) I wasn't the one to make those gauche comparisons between Herrmann and Prokofiev in the first place... I think as arrogant and outspoken as Herrmann was, he would have blushed.

P.S.: Goran's post is an example of the sad case of musical affairs. There are so many composers that have written really good music which we'll never hear - I could mention so many myself that would seem obscure to most here, while there are so many extolments and careful multiple listening sessions for so much that is really trite, it breaks my heart for I know how hard it is to be a proper composer for so many reasons, and all these people just disappear, practically unsung, while Fockers like the ones we see on those movie-DVD documentaries get to immortalize their great insights for all the Hobbits to pilgrimize....