"Too off-topic?" - Errikos

Not at all, the Outer Limits is a classic and Hammer House of Horror has some great episodes.  Also, some other lesser known anthologies (which are now forbidden by the network money people)  like "Ghost Stories" from the 90s, an obscure one that created some very good ones.  

Outer Limits is particularly interesting because it has not only some great episodes - like "Forms of Things Unknown" by Joseph Stefano (who was the screenwriter of Psycho and became a major part of OL)  but also briilliant music by the mysterious, reclusive composer Dominic Frontiere.  He was a "Production Executive" as well as composer.  I dont know exactly why, but perhaps because the producer realized how important his music was for the show.  The group that made Outer Limits is a very inspiring bunch of ragtag filmmaker/special FX innovators who worked totally independent of the network, just making stuff up as they went.  That was in a time long ago, the 1960s, when you could get away with that.  Now you have to be a lone filmmaker to do it.  

Btw I have to mention a very little known anthology that is equally great - "Thriller" which was introduced (and ocassionaly starred in) by Boris Karloff.  It had some lame episodes, but a few of them are among the weirdest and greatest television ever put on the air, and in fact surpass any movies of the time.  One is an adaptation of Robert E Howard's horrific "Pigeons from Hell" that is unforgettable (no matter how hard you try). But some others were original stories that - like the Outer Limits - were actually more surreal than most surreal films.

It is also interesting how all these series had such great music scores - they seem to go hand-in-hand and inspire each other.       

William,

No need to apologize.  You called me out on something that needed to be corrected.  I would have done the same thing.  In fact, this discussion has caused a rediscovery of Serling's work for me.  I've always been interested in irony and irony is a common element in Serling's work. I remember an interview where he seemed to stress about ideas because he said they were a precious commodity and production had to go on with or without a script.

That brings me to Gene Roddenberry.  I was reading a book about the original Star Trek series and I can't imagine the stress that he went through.  His wife said that crunch time came around the end of the seasons and Gene would start a script for an episode and would have no idea where it would end.  Yeah, like you said, basically just making stuff up as they went.  His wife, who played a recurring role as a nurse in the show, would literally run down to the studio and deliver pages of script hot off of Gene's typewriter.  Those pages were filmed that same day.  That's insane!  But they had to get the show on the air.

Errikos,

As a youngster I would sneak up past my bed time and watch many of those shows you and William mentioned late at night.  You're right, the episodes were hit and miss along with the music but when they were good they were really good.

I remember a show from the late 80's early 90's called Friday the 13th.  No, it had nothing to do with the hockey masked lunatic slaughtering horny teenagers.  Basically, it was about a souvenir store owner who made a pact with the Devil to curse all of his souvenirs into instruments of evil which would find their way into the hands of unwitting customers.  Of course, the premise became tiresome after about season 3 or 4 but it was a fun watch.  It was produced by the same people who produced the movie franchise, hence the name. 

And I agree, the TZ theme was a little overrated but it's pretty much an icon now. 

I think it's hard to compare the majority of latter era film composers with giants like Herrmann, Rozsa, or Alfred Newman. Those men were helping to invent the entire form, they blazed trails left and right. The former two were great composers even with their concert music.

The top film composers post-Rozsa are guys like Morricone, Williams, Goldsmith imo. And even they borrowed liberally...the difference is that (unlike the majority of film composers today) they all also studied art music along with their film heroes.

That famous Twilight Zone main title theme replaced Bernard Herrmann's more subtle theme which was in the first season.  I was just reading recently that it was composed by Marius Constant in two sections, which were to be used as part of a "library" of music that Twilight Zone amassed for use in multiple episodes.  Though some of the episodes were through-scored, some of them used a library but it was their own library,  Somewhat like the Outer Limits had a stock of cues that Dominic Frontiere had composed.  The Constant themes had not been used because they were so "weird" and modern. But later the main theme was created by putting those two together.  

I'm not suggesting that Constant's theme was bad for the TZ - as a matter of fact it did have that ominous ticking motif that very aptly went with that equally ominous counterclockwise ticking clock that featured in the opening montage, as well as being a subliminal countdown for whatever calamity was to plague the protagonist. I didn't know it was the result of collation though. I have a fantastic (no pun), huge book on horror/fantasy film/TV music called Musique Fantastique (Larson). Maybe the story of the TZ theme is detailed in there, I can't remember.

By the way, all film composers borrow and/or steal of course, but Morricone or Barry for example do that a lot less than say Steiner, Tiomkin, Waxman, Webb, and all that old guard who in all their musical greatness they very much were a poor man's Strauss and Rachmaninov (Wagner really where it all began). Some of them, like Rozsa for instance, do venture a little into "modern" orchestrations and expressionism on occasion, but they are very much rooted on late-romanticism whether the film is a thriller or romance (Herrmann being a great exception, his own voice being too strong and one whose influences were more aesthetically modern). This is not a criticism, just a fact; they wrote great music. Later composers are more varied and eclectic in their musical expressions and so their own disparate styles come through easier (say Mancini, Jarre, Goldsmith, Morricone, Barry, Williams, Delerue, etc.).

Finally yes, all these people were very versed in art music. It would be very hard to compose Casablanca, North by Northwest, Cinema Paradiso, Papillon, Goldfinger, and Star Wars on 'dubstep' and 'gangrene style' principles with arpeggiators and Cine-Ork.

Be that as it may, I have to repeat -reluctantly- that the most original of all must be Hans (again, no pun); Koyaanisqatsi being the closest archetype I can think of (no comparison obviously...)

"dubstep' and 'gangrene style' principles with arpeggiators and Cine-Ork.

Be that as it may, I have to repeat -reluctantly- that the most original of all must be Hans (again, no pun); Koyaanisqatsi being the closest archetype I can think of (no comparison obviously...) - Errikos

Errikos, I love Cine-Ork and in fact use it regularly.  

What does that mean about "Hans"?   Run that past me again with a slight decrease of irony though I know that is counter to your most basic nature.

Hans is absolutely original in that there are no precedents in orchestral music for his symphonic tripe. The reason of course is that nobody writing orchestral music builds a work the way a teenager builds a song on a sequencer: First lay down the beat and bass dude (2nd violins spiccati and low strings) , then some basic harmony (brass pads, choirs), and then some basic melody (characterless meandering 1st violins lines etc.). Even in the works of the pioneers of 'Minimal' music, harmonic movement is intentionally not too sophisticated, however rhythm and orchestration are accomplished. Glass is the least sophisticated of that bunch (hence the reference) but, like I said, no comparison.

Hans is original (and abominable and otherwise unimaginative), but never forget how much help from actual professionals he's got. Every musical ork copying him (because it's retardedly easy) should quit and work at the original KFC instead (see posts above).

What upsets me is not just Hans's "style"  (which is so well described by Errikos), but the fact that just about every television series or documentary has copied this style. I was watching 'Planet earth II'. While the documentary itself is amazingly well done, the music was a big let down. It was all about taikos and spiccatos, alternatine between tonic and domionant two note repetitions. Any child could write with a sequencer and with no knowledge of harmony.  I hear the same music all around in movies and TV. So banal and trite and stupid.

Oh feck, I just know I am putting myself in the firing line here, but whatever - it's all good fun eh chaps!

The Zimmer bashing has the ring of truth about it when it comes to the technical side of his music, but to my ears, he has actually produced some very decent tunes and emotive cues over the years, in fact some great music, perfectly suited to its medium. Errikos has pointed out (and so have I in the past) that he IS an original and that counts for a lot of his success and the incessant aping in every teenage bedroom in the world. Of course, what has also counted in his success is the fact that his style is popular with producers and directors and his CV, bolstered by his track record, is very impressive.

He is not JW or BH as I'm sure he would admit, he is a different paradigm in non-digetic music and one that is (sadly -see I am on your sides!!) more in tune with the present zietgeist - if only  because of the accessibility and ubiquity of the techniques he uses in those damn bedrooms.

I'd rather rail against the internet and how it has devalued music in all senses (monetary, aesthetically and technically) than against HZ...but perhaps that's a digression.

Be gentle.....

"he has actually produced some very decent tunes..."  mh-7635

What are those? 

William, you are going to give me  a hiding to nothing and as it is all subjective, I shan't bother. 😉

Suffice to say we shall have to differ about HZ but I am in complete agreement with all here about the period of scoring prior to the present day, becfause I too am old school - it's just that I don't think todays practices are all bad compared to the past. (I'm not suggesting you think like that!). For example, have you seen 'The Arrival'? - a really cool, contemprorary way to score a film in my view.

I still say the internet is responsible for the demise of many, many professions but especially ours, in so many insidious ways - symptoms of which bring forth discussions like this.

No actually I wanted to hear decent tunes by Zimmer, seriously.  What are they?  

mh - 

I am not questioning that he is competent in producing scores for big budget movies. ... obviously he is, or else why would he be so successful. He has enough clout to hire big orchestra to generate his big thump thump sound...and I am sure he works very very hard.

But that doesnt mean his music has quality. The music is very low quality. The public doesnt know and doesnt care. It only listens to what is fed into its ears. If it is JW music in Star wars or ET, they will listen. If it is HZ in Batman they will listen.  But there is a world of difference in these as we know.

Now try to imaging JW scoring Batman, or Gladiator...we can only dream about how it would have sounded. 

And then imagine HZ scoring Star wars or Schindlers list or E.T....I am sure he would have finished the job, but THANK GOD the world didnt go in that direction, but even if it did, the public wouldnt have known what was missed.

Nothing is absolute here but yet we known there is a world of difference.

I heard several cues of The Arrival and I understnd Mike's point. Not all music (and budget) for film has to employ a 120-piece orchestra, who said that? In fact I recall one of the most powerful and apt soundtracks I've ever heard was Joe Lo Duca's to the original Evil Dead. Another is Eyes Wide Shut where a single piano note or two suffice to create/complement a complex emotion and effect (although it is temp music from Ligeti). This Arrival thing did not impress me much as absolute music but it could be perfectly suited to the film, much like Nyman's to Gattaca (meaning the music sounds not too impressive if you have not seen the film). The visuals and music go so well together in Gattaca, that both media gain additional dimensions - that's how the magic happens and that may be the case with this Arrival film.

I know and respect some earlier Hans - say The Last Samurai - but any melodies of note, none I'm aware of (Gladiator has a theme, not a melody, and it is Vangelis' really). Otherwise, if Hans can only score stutters for any and every kind of subject and genre that he is given, that's not a style anymore, but charlatanism instead. As far as the mega sound and whatever quality if any in the music he achieves, he has a lot of help so no credit there either.

Imagine how I feel about the apes...

I am a huge Bernard Herrmann fan and I am appalled at how often his music is used but uncredited (The Artist, etc.) especially when it's not a work in public domain. One of my favorites is The Octopus from the soundtrack to Beneath the 12-Mile Reef BMG/RCA Victor 0707-2-RG. Everything he did was stellar.

But even I must admit that even the soundtrack from Vertigo (arguably his best work) could not exist without the legacy of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and Rachmaninoff's Isle of the Dead (1909) and Symphony No. 2 (1906-07), and Ravel's Daphnis Et Chloé  -And that trickles down to every film composer who can now also lean a little on Ligeti and Górecki. I have yet to hear film music that does not have some Classical or Romantic DNA in it. -Unless it's one of those sine wave drone soundtracks. And I find that to be a cop-out.

Just like Fred Steiner so wisely seized upon Ravel's Daphnis Et Chloé: 2. Entrance of Daphnis and Chloe and 11. Invocation to Pan by the Nymphs and the Prayer of Daphnis for his work on Star Trek. Great stuff that worked with the genre.

Basically, John Williams owes debts directly Rachmaninoff, Vaughan Williams, Ravel, and Holst. All sci-fi film composers have been touched by Holst. And all of this debt to Holst would not have been possible without Rachmaninoff's 2-minute Intermezzo from the opera Aleko that was written in 1892; and the absolute gold standard of Dies irae expanded to it's maximum possible effect in Isle of the Dead which was written in 1909.

It's pretty much impossible not to have something sound like something else. I suppose the trick is in not being so blatant or overly-seduved by the sheer beauty of what the greats have left us. This is something I struggle against.

We have all inherited such a treasure of great music and it is my hope that we will draw on the beautiful to write the new.

OP: Thank you for this lively discussion.

Anand,

I know where you are coming from and that's cool. Don't get me wrong, I too prefer the more traditional approach to scoring, but all you've just written is subjective and therefore nothing else can be said about it - opinions will always differ and there is no right or wrong, yes? That said, allow me to be subjective for a moment too, as you mentioned Batman. The Dark Knight scores are excellent in my view, brooding, portentious and dramatic. That 2 note minor third theme (oh allright then, motif 😛) is remarkably powerful in situ and is a wonderful psychological portrayal of Bales' brooding character. I feel the same way about the Superman theme (yes, theme this time!) too - another growing, dawning, pent -up feel which works very well for me.

 I can't make some of you erudite gentlemen (no irony, I mean that really - some very impressive soundtrack knowledge on show here), believe that a particular melody or cue by HZ is good and so despite Williams' insistence, I am not going to list all of the scores I deem good. I just don't think HZ deserves such a bad press, his aesthetic paradigm is different, that's all - the music is utility music and it does the job admirably, which neatly brings me on to Errikos' point about absolute music.

It seems to me that absolute music is where the greats mentioned in this thread have an added bonus in their work as  a lot of it does translate into music for musics' sake. Here is a thought on what might be a contributing factor to some film musics successful autonomy.

One of the benefits of not working to a click (like JW) when cueing is that one can think in terms of pure musical flow complete with rubato to enhance the expression and accomodate synch if needed. Working this way comes naturally with traditional training and being a performer on an instrument and is more likely to yield a satisfying feel because the linear flow will breathe more. That's not to say it can't be done as well under a click approach, it's just that the mental process of composing and the formulation of line and cadence is not being aggresively dictated to by a click and as a result the feel can sometimes be emancipated to a certain extent. Perhaps it is this approach to writing that partly contributes to the musics own sense of purpose away from any synch. Does that make sense, or was that a load of bullshit?..it makes sense to me anyways.. 

I'm sure we'd all agree with James' pitch that originality is hard to find and yet HZ did it!!!!!

Mike....the Devils' advocate) Hewer 😈

When you think of Raiders of the Lost Ark, you think of the Raiders March.

When you think of Star Wars you think of the Imperial March.

When you think of E.T. It's hard not to hear the theme in your head.

When you think of Patton you hear the echoing trumpets.

When you think of Psycho you hear the screeching violins.

When you think of Jaws...etc.

But when you think of Interstellar Ah... I think of ah... irritating drones and loud swaths of sound. 

When you think of Batman Begins.  Ah... Yeah... what is it? Arpeggiated synths with a block chord string progression?

When you think of Inception.  Ah... I think it's a chord progression that just gets louder and louder and now my head hurts.

I believe this all started back in the 90's when documentary filmmaking style was in vogue.  Themes and old school film scoring just doesn't work very well for that gritty, raw, what-you-see-is what-you-get style.  I think that was when the sound designs and bass drones became popular and now they are just used for everything.  Oh, that and beats.  Everything has to have a completely inapropriate dance beat to it now. 

Don't get me wrong.  I'm not saying everything on screen has to have a theme or melodies.  in fact, some of the aforementioned examples above are not themes or melodies at all.  But think of a movie (not sequels or reboots of older material)  made within the last twenty years that has a discernable music accompaniment and is memorable.  They just don't do that anymore and I think it's a shame.

And Errikos is right you don't need a big orchestra to make a good score.  I would add Carpenter's Halloween to his list.  Nor do you need a score at all, I've mentioned Goodfellas on another thread as an example of a montage of Pop songs.  The film has no original or even incidental music whatsoever it's just Pop songs strung together in a clever way.  

Also, I'm not necessarily bashing Zimmer.  As I mentioned in a previous post I liked the music to Rainman.  In fact when I think of that movie I think of the minimal in-your-own-little-world score Zimmer composed.  I also liked his score to the first Sherlock Holmes movie although it did kind of remind me of Morricone's score to The Untouchables.   

@jasensmith said:

And Errikos is right you don't need a big orchestra to make a good score. 

Yeah true, I and I would bet that if John Williams (or Hermann or any of the truly great masters) were just given a piano to score an entire film they would do an amazing job and we wont miss the orchestra. Most of the emotional content of great music is in the tonal "landscape", and orchestration merely colors it.   Ravels piano compositions are a case in point, and his orchestral music simple adds color. This is striking especially considering he was one of the greatest orchestrators. 

And recently Guy Bacos demonstated this so nicely with the piano reduction of his waltz. All the tonal content is already there in the notes! Color comes in later, if at all.

This will be my struggle all my life...how to write effectively for the piano. 

I know there are many ways of composing, but this is the way I would like to do it, not least because almost every classical composer thought this way. (To quote Ravel, compostion and orchestration are two different things....)

Well that came over as a little brusque William, especially after a bit of gentle humour in my post. I really don't know how to take your post, perhaps an emoticon or too would have helped - is there one for bludgeoning someone elses' opinion with one equally matched and no better?

Never mind, it does highlight how fatuous a subjective discussion like this can be at times, but then again, comparing eggs to apples is always going to be floored and mired as one opinion tries to overcome another.

I actually love Elfmans' score and theme to Batman and also think it is better than HZs'. Musically it plays on a lot of the cliches we expect in the genre, but it also reminds us why some of them took hold - they do work in good hands. I do find it more than a little ironic that he (Elfman) is being hailed here when he also needs an orchestrator. I'm sure HZ has been pilloried and sullied for similar reasons. Ah well no accounting for subjective taste eh, so long as it suits.

 The 2 Batman films  are obviously different films  and for me, the grittier realism of the Dark Knight benefits from a different, perhaps less fantastical approach....now obviously that is only my opinion and I am not trying to force it down anyones gullet, it isn't insulting, too forthright ,nor wrong (or even correct!) - it merely sets up a premise for more debate if anyone feels so inclined.

I might now start a thread entitled "Portentiousness vs Portentiousness (a semantic definition)".....just joking...😊😊