@Errikos said:

Alas, this is much harder than mastering a DAW and copy-paste skills and, as it happens, seemingly unnecessary in today's film/video/TV worlds...

However, this is exactly what directors and producers want. The composer is very rarely allowed to write the music they want to, even if it is what suits the picture best. Consequently most film and TV composers are all about keeping the client happy, not making waves, and consequently writing nothing that is worth listening to, when compared with history's rich tapestry of music.

DG

@muziksculp said:

So.. who are the great modern classical composers these days, and what are some of their great works that you can refer me to,  that have composed interesting, and delightiful music during the past five to ten years ?     

You can start with this list http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_21st-century_classical_composers but remember that even J.S.Bach starts to be widely known almost 100 years after his death and for example work of Schubert was almost not known during his short life. If you want to know where the film music composers stands, try to read this great book http://www.amazon.com/History-Film-Music-Mervyn-Cooke/dp/0521010489. You will soon realise that for example H. Zimmer is one of the most nonoriginal film music composer of all time  😮 

This is just my opinion...

Yes Toru Takemitsu, one of the greatest composers of last decades of 20 century.

An interesting debate and I personally find myself "between the chairs" in any discussed aspects: 

1) Yes I belong to those who flood this forum with music from our long musical tradition and do no filmusic at all. And I know what I am doing, and siimply just like it 😊 (I simply do not need no film just to work reasonable on good music. A great and interesting score is for me reason enough. But this is my personal attitude. Other will do great things on their own completly different way. )

 2) On the other hand I always have the strongest sympathies for those who are in danger to be deprecated in any way, especially when it comes to those who are creative (that's also the reason why i mostly do music of less known composers). And of course there are great musicians working for films, doing incredible good things, why should'nd they and their music be as good as a music ever could be.  Are we sure, that Mozart or Beethoven would have rejected interesting filmmusicjobs if hey have had the chance to do so. I personally think they would have had much fun to do filmmusic if they would have had the chance.

 3) Yes of course VSL offer some of the most reasonable and powerfull products in the world of sampling. But don't think, that buying anything easier affordable makes anything faster or easier to handle. No matter how bombastic it is ever named. For me I often prefer my VSL-Libraries since it is just that much easier to get what I need aswell because it is mostly already easily available in VSL but also because the Libraries and software simple work pretty (hardare-)efficient and rocksolid, what is at least as I remember from others not necessarily always the case with other comptitors. I personally do not think the Learning curve is that much steeper than with other plugs, but the Variety is in VSL definitly mostly much broader than nearly anywhere else.

However I am very curious for the next Filmmusic mozart and hope he will posst all his stuff right here......👍

@fahl5 said:

Are we sure, that Mozart or Beethoven would have rejected interesting filmmusicjobs if hey have had the chance to do so. I personally think they would have had much fun to do filmmusic if they would have had the chance.

 

Stravinskij rejected with words: "You dont have such money to pay me" 🎉 He knows that film music is 90% about money not art. 😊

I am not sure if I really would have paid Stravinsky how beautiful his Ballet-music ever would be (which are also not that far from Filmmusic in many aspects). At least Prokofiev, Shostakovich Korngold, or Waxmann Steve Reich and many other great musicians have done great things, no matter how god or bad they have been payed.

In short I don not want to deprecate neither those who are inspired by films to produce music nor those who aork without. If the resulting music is worth listening should decide nothing else than the ears who do so.

Thats why I as good lod european will go on flooding this forum with Works of our musical tradition, while I am in the same time pretty curious for all others who post music here how ever it might be motivated...😃

"Most film music is garbage, in terms of music qualtiy. In fact by definition it can't be first rate music, or there would be no need for the film. "  - DG

I swore I would never post any more arguing on this Forum but this must be addressed.  I realize that DG has a lot of knowledge and experience, but this statement is negative, dismissive, and rejects an entire art form in one thoughtless sentence. 

The same thing - precisely - could be stated about ballet and opera.  Since they are combinations of dance with music, or theater with music, then by this faulty logic their music cannot be as good as pure concert music.  And of course that is completely false.  The concept that only concert music can be great music is absurd. 

Ballet, opera and film music are hybrid art forms, and their music can be as great as any other in the hands of a composer who likes to work in such a medium. 

Also, to state that film music is inherently bad because it is conventionally bad due to lackluster efforts in  commercial productions is equally absurd.  Conventional practice is not the same as artistic possibilities. 

Not only can film music be as great as any other music, some of it - i.e. Herrmann, Goldsmith, Konrngold, and many others - is superior to much of the concert music of the time. 

I don't like these negative sweeping condemnations of an an entire art form that has vast potential. 

Bill, I agree with all the composers that you mention. However, I was talking about current film composers (all of the ones you mentioned are dead) and in any case "most" implies the majority, and film music includes made for TV films, so I dare you to watch the SyFy channel, for example, for a day and then come back and tell me that you still disagree with what I said.😉

DG

what ever some guys do bad, others might do better.......😛

I know Hetoreyns piece "Warbird vs. Farragut" and if my memory serves me right, it's featured as a demo track somewhere on this site. It's has a very classic sci-fi vibe to it and as long as people write music like this instead of succumbing to some miserable conclusion that in the shadow of the immortalized greats, everything one could possibly compose can only be garbage, it's all good. :)

Plenty of people have jumped in before I got a chance to address Muzicsculp's tongue-in-cheek, but otherwise legitimate query. The discussion has taken a turn as is customary in the forum and I would attempt to make some practical sense of it.

Suffice to say that modern symphonic music is not in competition with film-music in any way - never has been, especially quality-wise. All one has to say is Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Brahms, Stravinsky, etc., or even just Bach, or Mozart, or Beethoven, etc., and the discussion ends before it even begins. 

It is exactly the opposite. The greats of film-music (Steiner, Herrmann, Williams, Goldsmith, Jarre, Morricone, et al.), they learned their lessons from having studied the masters, and applied the techniques of serious symphonic music to their soundtracks as needed, as well as stamped their work with their own voice and authenticity, and we are all grateful for their results, and in turn have learned from them.

The other opinion I wish to offer is that to just throw a huge list of names and random works from the modern symphonic repertoire to people completely unfamiliar with serious music is not particularly useful. It is like throwing somebody into the ocean without land in sight, without compass or direction. Asking someone to listen to Saariaho and Murail when they have never listened to Debussy or Bartok does answer the question posed, but it is a meaningless exercise.

I'm guessing that Muzicsculp's idea of symphonic music ends with Beethoven or thereabouts and spontaneously begins again with Williams and Zimmer. I would advise that a bridge of sorts be created that will elucidate the connections between modern music's orchestral tools and, moreso, film-music's copies thereof.

Limiting the repertoire to orchestral works, I would say, listen to:

Claude Debussy: La Mer, Iberia, Jeux.

Maurice Ravel (virtually anything however personal favourites include): Le Tombeau de Couperin, Daphnis and Chloe (complete, not the suites), Concerto for Piano N.2.

Igor Stravinsky: The Firebird (Suite if you must but full score much richer), Petrouchka, The Rite of Spring, and for some more austere scoring (with choir - bonus!) Symphony of Psalms.

Sergei Prokofiev: The Buffoon (same as with Firebird), Symphony N.5, Romeo and Juliet (same as with Buffoon), Piano Concerti Nos.2 and 3, Violin Concerto N.1

Bela Bartok: Music for Strings Percussion and Celesta, Piano Concerto N.2, Concerto for Orchestra, The Miraculous Mandarin.

For choir enthusiasts that would like to hear what real writing for voices and orchestra can sound like aside from Carmina Burana, listen to Gustav Mahler's 8th Symphony (Symphony of a Thousand) and Arnold Schoenberg's Gurrelieder.

George Antheil's Ballet Mecanique, Edgar Varese's Ionization, or other works by early modernists can serve as another bridge to composers with different sensibilities and orchestral devices, such as Iannis Xenakis, Gyorgy Ligeti, Krzysztof Penderecki, etc. And only after those we can start discussing Kaija Saariaho, Gerard Grisey, Tristan Murail, Alfred Schnittke, Helmut Lachenmann, etc.

One will achieve and learn NOTHING should one listen to the above works without the corresponding scores!

In addition, the word 'delightful' is not one that springs to mind when considering modern music. However, for the uninitiated that wishes to straightaway hear something "current" that inheres immediate pleasure qualities, I would suggest:

Carl Vine: Piano Concerto, and Symphonies Nos. 3 and 5

Einojuhani Rautavaara: Isle of Bliss, Piano Concerto N.3

Aaron Jay Kernis: Symphony in Waves, Colored Field

Following all this, compare the breadth of indigence and charlatanism of 95% of current film/game/TV music to what you have explored. Do this seriously and no matter how un/talented you are, your work will automatically commence to improve; as if magically...

P.S.: I am not suggesting that film-music should sound like concert music, in fact they should be quite different. However, I am saying that current film-music has ceased for the most part to be informed by its mother (serious music), and has turned to other - base and paralysing - sources (and practitioners) for its inspiration, and the resulting cost has been painfully apparent for many years now.

P.S.2: I am not here to extol modern music. In fact I believe that especially during the last few decades it has plateaued into a sulphurous swamp of cacophony, rehashing the cud of more technical cliches than film and pop musics put together (allowing for some exceptions). In fact, as with Hollywood, everybody thinks that they are a valid composer in this field as well, provided they employ some academically 'acknowledged' techniques (mainly pertaining to 'gestures'). Emetic stuff but that's another thread....

@JimmyHellfire said:

I know Hetoreyns piece "Warbird vs. Farragut" and if my memory serves me right, it's featured as a demo track somewhere on this site. It's has a very classic sci-fi vibe to it and as long as people write music like this instead of succumbing to some miserable conclusion that in the shadow of the immortalized greats, everything one could possibly compose can only be garbage, it's all good. 😊

Thanks man 😄 I appreciate the nice comments.

I totally agree that in todays world there's way too much 'Generic Epic' and so few big fantasy film scores that actually excite. Other than being 'BIG' most scores for films are done in e-flat and consist of string and horn chugging. One major thing I like about working with the Vancouver B movie Factory is that for the music score I get to do whatever the hell I want with no executive veto screwing with me. As a result I think I've made some of my more interesting and exciting music scores with them.

I guess my point is that music .. film or classical .. doesn't have to be a magnificent exercise in applied mathematics, and frankly that kind of music does nothing to excite me. But film music should have integrity life and dignity. If all it is a just a bunch of staccatto hits with no sense of emotional connection then it's most likely just going to be crap that services a film.

Personally I've always tried to write my music to be of the highest emotional value. I'm no mozart .. but I'm not trying to be .. but that doesn't mean it's not worthy. My recent effort (listed under the thread 'kick ass film music') is very satisfying for me because it was a chance to write something warm and loving, yet with mystery and high octane action with some kick ass beats, bass and synths complimenting the orchestra. Does that make it low brow rubbish? .. some would say so ... but I dare anyone to listen to the track and not find themselves excited, and above all leaving that track feeling all warm and fuzzy at the end.

At the end of it all .. isn't music all about how it affects you? There's lots of great film music out there .. I dearly love the music that Jerry Goldsmith wrote .. and not everything he did was gold .. but damn I learned so much from him, and I'm glad he's an influence for me. I feel that I've really found my voice in music lately and I find it worthy .. worthy of being heard. Assuming all the music snobs .. who think that unless you're schooled in the complete works of every legend that you obviously can't write anything good .. give me a chance!

I suspect I'll be famous about 200 years after I'm dead 😛

Dunno guys, I completely understand the gripe about modern film music being less than the classical greats .. but I think that's because no one's bothering to listen to the younger, and practically unknown composers who never get a chance to be heard.

Just my $0.02 worth 😛

@DG said:

Bill, I agree with all the composers that you mention. However, I was talking about current film composers (all of the ones you mentioned are dead) and in any case "most" implies the majority, and film music includes made for TV films, so I dare you to watch the SyFy channel, for example, for a day and then come back and tell me that you still disagree with what I said.😉

DG

DG, you have me there. 

By the way,  I have to add that I don't like to contradict DG  😝  because I have heard his music and it is uniformly excellent and imaginative composing with the best mixing and programming  -  even though he is too modest to post it here.    

A great listening/learning resource that covers the scope mentioned earlier:

https://www.digitalconcerthall.com

I personally didn't go through such a linear, historical, progression at first having a piano teacher who worked me through Bartok's Mikrokosmos.  In this way I got the gift of an embodied sense of some of the concerns of the contemporary music of the 1920s - 1930s Europe.  I always felt more at home in the contemporary idiom than the Classical stuff my father liked to play and listen to.  It just felt more "now" that the older music and I've continued to take "delight", yes, in the new music of the day ever since... that is once I'd caught up with it in my listening.

Of course, a deep study of the past is extremely useful in developing a deeper sense of where these musical traditions and innovations come from.  But my own experience demonstrates that it's not a pre-requisite to an appreciation of more contemporary approaches to music.

Rautavaara's music is delicious.  He writes beautiful concerti for piano, flute and harp that are all rewarding listens.  

But I've got to once again promote Takemitsu's music as a really interesting case of a composer with a deep connection to the roots of the twentieth century orchestral idiom.  As the years went by his oeuvre showed an increasing and easily discernible relationship with past traditions of writing coming out of Debussy, Ravel and Messiaen, but always with a remarkable stamp of originality that was all his own.  

And there's been real innovations in some of the film music of the past as well.  Listen the score Bernard Herrmann composed for the sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951).  Much of the introductory music pre-figures the minimalism of the early '70s, Glass and Reich by a good twenty years.  His work with Hitchcock is also singular.

Best to all,

Kenneth.

@Errikos said:

P.S.2: I am not here to extol modern music. In fact I believe that especially during the last few decades it has plateaued into a sulphurous swamp of cacophony, rehashing the cud of more technical cliches than film and pop musics put together (allowing for some exceptions). In fact, as with Hollywood, everybody thinks that they are a valid composer in this field as well, provided they employ some academically 'acknowledged' techniques (mainly pertaining to 'gestures'). Emetic stuff but that's another thread....

As usual, I fully agree with the main thrust of your full post above, so I'am just quoting the second post scriptum ...

It is an another thread, but just out of curiosity: can you name a few exceptions you are referring to above? (I'm asking because even though I agree with much of what you wrote I still find many pieces of younger generation composers standig in the tradition of the Modernist Revolution (which I am a staunch defender of, independently of the fact that I myself am in a period of composing what would best be described as "New "Old" Music" (which is an another topic as well 😊  to exhibit real skill, inspiration and compositional integrity in general.)  

To come back to the very first question without to much words:

There is a simple but very good reason why here is "not much" ( I would prefer to say "not only") filmmusic posted here (there is still enough currently aswell in the Demozone):

In my eyes it is the wonderful fact, that VSL (at least in my ears) reached a quality, which do reasonably allows the attempt to realize serious challenges from the musical tradition. (And I do really enjoy especially this very much).

Be happy VSL brought it that far! Thats also not that bad for those who are more interested in the filmmusic-genre in a more strict sense.

I think that 90% of users that posting so called film music doesnt even write for movie and never will be. They think the film music is easier to compose because of a lot of prerecorded and preproduced patterns. And also because 90% of todays film/trailer music sounds same. With VSL we can reach more and I hope we want 😃. I am big fan of film music, but seriously composed (sorry, but four minutes drum pattern with same strings ostinato pattern doesnt belongs here) with at least minimal artistic message.