Afterthought - Apples v Oranges
All the fanboy talk here of Zimmer jolted me into a realisation - apples and oranges are being conflated; knowingly or unknowingly. How many music-makers hired for film scoring really are composers, as distinct from what I'd call "music mechanics"? What's the difference?
Usually, composers and mechanics come from two very different cultural backgrounds: middle class and working class, respectively. During the European modern era (from about 1500), the middle class grew and became distinctive owing largely to the exalted role and status of the intellect within their mental physiology. Indeed Hegel insisted (incorrectly, as neurobiologists now tell us) that the intellect is - or should be - sovereign in the mind. Working-class culture, by contrast, characteristically treats the intellect as a service faculty and chooses not to let it ever dominate the mind anything like as much as in middle-class culture.
Popular music is essentially a working-class endeavour; 'serious music' written by composers, essentially middle class. A simple, straightforward, widely recognised typology thus far, right?
Probably so, at least up until the internet age began to bypass or undermine traditional cultural norms, standards and strictures. But furthermore, especially nowadays, we are blighted by a certain widespread and particularly toxic type of so-called "personality disorder". These types are fundamentally weak in musical intuition and sensibilities but try to compensate by forcing the intellect to outwardly mimic a normal personality. And they can all too often manage to masquerade as musically competent and intellectually able to compose music. Yes I'm talking about our old foe - aka the most toxic personality on the planet - NPD.
NPDs typically do not respect boundaries - whether interpersonal, cultural or national. Honesty is ruthlessly pushed aside as needed by the crucial expediencies of maintaining control over their supremely important "fuel supply", (i.e. attention, status, acquisition of character traits and residual benefits). Empathy with others is poor or non-existent. Management of their public image is their art. Controlling others in order to secure their fuel supply is their game.
NPDs have a gaping void where a real, normal, adult personality should be. Instead, they acquire character traits from others and use these to concoct what seems, outwardly, to be a good, sound character of their own. Thus they are unable to speak truthfully and honestly from their heart or soul. This is one of the most obvious giveaways when an NPD attempts to create music, especially orchestral music.
The NPD intellect, despite all its cunning and ingenuity, cannot fake good music. It ends up sounding like it comes from a music-mechanic totally out of his depth and class. Honest, normal mechanics of course know their limitations and don't attempt to stray beyond their well-established boundaries. NPDs don't bother with such 'trivialities'. Elsewhere in modern life, NPDs have been able to hide in plain sight - but not in music!
I'm in no way professionally qualified to diagnose NPD. However, as the fast-growing wealth of incisive tutorial videos (including many by licensed clinicians) on the topic tends to indicate, making an informal, well-informed guess at a diagnosis of NPD is well within the capabilities of most of us, once we've taken the trouble to learn conscientiously as much as possible about NPD. So I'll leave it to you to learn to make your own guesses. Join the new game in town!
Good hunting!
