Getting back on topic, I was listening to Bernard Herrmann's work yesterday (the Esa Pekka Solenan recording) and it dawned upon me that Herrmann's style was actually perfectly suited to film scoring.  He used motives and interesting harmonies along with innovative orchestration to underscore his films.  Is it a wonder that most of his themes cannot be whistled while someone like Korngold's material can be?  Herrmann's approach was no less valid, and in fact, probably better suited to working within a new medium as film.  I find that Korngold's and even Williams' seminal works while being amazingly musically virtuosic (and a delight for listening to on CD) are at odds with their respective films at times.  So much activity, especially linear activity, at times convolute the film.  Herrmann's sound world meshes well with dialogue, acting, cinematography because it becomes part of the puzzle.  Now, his music certain has its striking moments to be sure.  The bombast of Cape Fear or those slicing strings from Psycho make an indelible impression on the viewer but it's still part of the movie.

The big problem with the chord approach these days is that I hear very little evidence that these bigtime film composers have any real grounding in harmony and as such use the big triadic, diatonic chords and double them with every instrument in the orchestra to give their music weight which is all wrong.  Also, MIDI orchestration has been a significant detriment to true orchestral arranging.  Playing every part on a keyboard into a DAW is not the same as writing out sections on a concert score- that method allows composers to graphically as well as musically see the density of their music.  It also allows for a more sensitive, refined approach to orchestration.  There's less of a need to load up the line with various instruments or extra superfluous lines.  If one listens to Goldsmith's music, even at its most active, there was really only 1 or 2 main ideas happening at once.  That lent a sense of clarity to the music.  Alexandre Desplat is one of the few current composers who embodies this sense of refinement in his scores.  

And getting back to Herrmann, the same thing applies.  Not a million things going on in his music- just a couple of very important things at any given time.  

@Errikos said:

I am not going into details here on why I think this has eventuated, but why shouldn't this also happen to film music? In different ways it has happened to 'serious' music long ago...

In which ways or sense do you believe this has happend to "serious" music, and when did it happen (where would you approximately locate the "long ago" on a timline)?

@jasensmith said:

And you're right, it does affect the humanities.  It's kind of like what's happening politically in the US right now.  A lot of people vote for the candidate who gives them the most instant gratification.  A science fiction writer (I can't remember the name) wrote something to the effect of once the electorate thinks they can vote themselves a free lunch (instant gratification) the republic is lost.  This culture paradigm is what's ruining music today.

I feel compelled to comment on this one, although it is a political and not a musical issue: those having free lunch in US today (at expense of everbody else) are before all Wall Street banksters, corporate criminals in general and you could also throw in the military-industrial und intelligence complex just for good measure. And these put together (with their minor accomplices in what is called "politics") are, BTW, the reason your country is momentarily going down the drain at free-fall speed.

@PaulR said:

Not necessarily. And just to go against the grain in a devils advocate way - why are themes that necessary when writing to moving pictures? I like themes but they're not a pre-requisite of movie scores are they? Themes can be quite hidden in their structure - look at Thomas Newman for example. He writes themes all the time but most people don't remember them as a bona fide theme and walk down the street whistling them.  Themes are in there though. It's perception. 

Besides, what good is a theme at a basic level? Take the thematic material of The Magnificent Seven. The theme (according to Bernstein) is quite a simple thing and like simple things is quite memorable. But that theme would be nothing if it wasn't for the tremendous orchestration/arrangement that's going on around it. And there are many themes in that film. So the question you could have asked would be more pertinent to orchestration/arrangements rather that simply just thematic material. Anyone can write a theme or a tune (not necessarily memorable) but doing the stuff around it is the really difficult part.

This is, I believe, of general importance: there is no guarantee for anything in writing themes per se, nor are they a prerequisite for composing music of substance (that is, of beauty). I suppose nobody taking part in this discussion has to be reminded that some of the most refined music known to us is completely or largely athematic - Beethoven, Anton Webern or Morton Feldman coming immediately to my mind as being particulary strong cases in point.

Yes, quite true about Beethoven. In fact the useage of motival rather than thematic development in the 5th symphony reminds me of Herrmann's deliberate use of truncated motifs in most of his film scores and - signifcantly - his later chamber music such as "Echoes," a brilliant string quartet.   Beethoven was the first to significantly use a deliberately, consciously  simplified motif to show just how much he could do with it.  And this was even though he was quite capable of creating much more elaborate melodies. 

However, to return to film scoring themes, it is just as practical to create an entire score out of a single melody (with a few interludes).  This can be observed in the great score to Somewhere in Time by John Barry.  He simply didn't need much more after he composed that theme.  Whereas a lesser composer will have to bust his ass doing scene after scene separately, Barry could kick back and do a slight variaton here, a few chords there,  once he had that perfect melody played by rapturous strings.  So that is the OPPOSITE situation from clever motif development and variation. 

@goran c said:

 

Hmm... I'm wondering if you left out the Union Bosses, Trial Lawyers, Government Bureaucrats, and Left-wing political activists (George Soros) on your list on purpose or was that just an oversight.

Well, We'll see how things go come Tuesday.

@goran c said:

 

Hmm... I'm wondering if you left out the Union Bosses, Trial Lawyers, Government Bureaucrats, and Left-wing political activists (George Soros) on your list on purpose or was that just an oversight.

Well, We'll see how things go come Tuesday.

George Soros is a Left-wing political activist? Is this supposed to be a joke? The rest you mention can be included only insofar as they function as even lesser "minor accomplices" of the principal scoundrels mentioned above (which many of them actually do), unless you are prepared to indulge in political and economic illiteracy of "America is getting taken over by Trade Unions, godless Liberals and other "Communists""-lunatics. 

US is becoming an outright dictatorship of the (American) finance capital - that is the actual takover taking place, not the fictional one by "Leftists", "Trade-Unionists", "Communists" or any other "enemies of America" from the Tea Party repertoire of delusions.

@William said:

However, to return to film scoring themes, it is just as practical to create an entire score out of a single melody (with a few interludes).  This can be observed in the great score to Somewhere in Time by John Barry.  He simply didn't need much more after he composed that theme.  Whereas a lesser composer will have to bust his ass doing scene after scene separately, Barry could kick back and do a slight variaton here, a few chords there,  once he had that perfect melody played by rapturous strings.  So that is the OPPOSITE situation from clever motif development and variation. 

I agree William.  The "Somewhere in Time" theme is one of my favorite soundtracks.  Of course, Barry did have a little help from Rachmanoff but I agree his melody, or theme if you will, pretty much carried all the way through in that movie.  I own that soundtrack and, you're right, it's just variations of the same theme with some other incidental music here and there.

I think in many ways it depends on the film.  The one theme pony for Somewhere in Time worked very well but, of course, it wouldn't work for everything.  I was watching Scarface (1983 version) the other day and I was impressed with how Giorgio Moroder assigned different themes to just about every major character in the film and it didn't sound pertentious at all like it usually does.  I think the reason for that was all of the variations of each theme.  You hardly noticed those themes were there yet they moved you all the same.  I know some complain that the nearly electronic score for Scarface was a bit contrived but not too shaby for a former Disco/Pop record producer.  I really liked those themes. 

@goran c said:

George Soros is a Left-wing political activist? Is this supposed to be a joke? The rest you mention can be included only insofar as they function as even lesser "minor accomplices" of the principal scoundrels mentioned above (which many of them actually do), unless you are prepared to indulge in political and economic illiteracy of "America is getting taken over by Trade Unions, godless Liberals and other "Communists""-lunatics. 

US is becoming an outright dictatorship of the (American) finance capital - that is the actual takover taking place, not the fictional one by "Leftists", "Trade-Unionists", "Communists" or any other "enemies of America" from the Tea Party repertoire of delusions.

 

Goran,

let me guess, aside from Music, you like to discuss politics?  Well, perhaps we both have something in common afterall.  As much as I would love to engage in political skirmishes with you, I think you would agree that this perhaps isn't the forum for that and out of respect to the moderator and other forumites we should fire our volleys at each other some place else.  I'm quite fond of posting on news forums and I'm sure you'll find me posting in the political section of most of your major news blogs.  Look me up and I'll do my best to set you 'right.'   

You're right (er, left maybe) I probably started it with my first post but I said that to make a point about how one could compare the political scene in the states to the state of affairs in the music world today.  It's just an observation.  Don't take it to heart.

I agree, please keep micro-politics out of these discussions if possible, as I can very precariously fall into the trap myself...

As far as Moroder is concerned, it is not an accident that he won the Oscar for 'Midnight Express' beating incredible scores like 'Heaven Can Wait', 'Boys From Brazil', and 'Superman'(!!)...

About the 'serious' music thing I believe the other thread is more suited to an analysis, but quickly here, I believe that whole populations of mal-aspirers were encouraged to continue writing hilarious modern morceaux regardless of the quality, for at least "they were on the right track"; eventually they never wrote a bar worth anybody's hearing, but they did get degrees officially branding them 'Composers'. Anybody that wrote anything harmonic would get a professorial response like "if I wanted to listen to Haydn I'd listen to the real thing and not a poor imitation"... Nobody writing a sorry imitation of Webern or Boulez got the same; the least the procensors - oh, I meant professors -  could have done, is apply the same standards for everyone. Instead, standards kept falling and falling until these post-thinking, post-mortem, errr - I mean post-modern days, everything is a soup. Now, finally you can write minuets at university, as much as you can write palindromic, pseudo game-theory based, half-integral serial spectral pieces and get through. In these politically quorrect, ahhh I mean correct (what's wrong with me today...), brotherly and sisterly times we live, there can be no disrespect, no dismissal of anybody's ideas or artistic expression... After all, who's to say what's right anymore? What would he know?...

Timeline? I'd say this goes back to the late '60s in the US, for Europe I'd say it took two or three more decades for us to catch up.

@jasensmith said:

Goran,

let me guess, aside from Music, you like to discuss politics?  Well, perhaps we both have something in common afterall.  As much as I would love to engage in political skirmishes with you, I think you would agree that this perhaps isn't the forum for that and out of respect to the moderator and other forumites we should fire our volleys at each other some place else.  I'm quite fond of posting on news forums and I'm sure you'll find me posting in the political section of most of your major news blogs.  Look me up and I'll do my best to set you 'right.'   

You're right (er, left maybe) I probably started it with my first post but I said that to make a point about how one could compare the political scene in the states to the state of affairs in the music world today.  It's just an observation.  Don't take it to heart.

A fair decision, notice taken.

@Another User said:

Now, finally you can write minuets at university, as much as you can write palindromic, pseudo game-theory based, half-integral serial spectral pieces and get through.

Not necessarily an unhealthy phenomenon, the minuets :)

@Another User said:

Not necessarily an unhealthy phenomenon, the minuets 😊

There should be a whole semester spent in university courses on the composition of minuets![Y]

@Errikos said:

. Anybody that wrote anything harmonic would get a professorial response like "if I wanted to listen to Haydn I'd listen to the real thing and not a poor imitation"... Nobody writing a sorry imitation of Webern or Boulez got the same; the least the processors - oh, I meant professors -  could have done, is apply the same standards for everyone. Instead, standards kept falling and falling until these post-thinking, post-mortem, errr - I mean post-modern days, everything is a soup. Now, finally you can write minuets at university, as much as you can write palindromic, pseudo game-theory based, half-integral serial spectral pieces and get through. In these politically quorrect, ahhh I mean correct (what's wrong with me today...), brotherly and sisterly times we live, there can be no disrespect, no dismissal of anybody's ideas or artistic expression... After all, who's to say what's right anymore? What would he know?...

Yeah that is really true unfortunately.  There is a double standard when it comes to tonal vs. atonal music.  If you write something terrible that is tonal, everybody laughs at you.  If you write something terrible that is atonal everyone exclaims that you are a genius because they are afraid that the fact they are experiencing pain while listening to your music is the result of their not being sophisticated enough to appreciate your genius.  So that is why university professors uniformly go into atonal music.  It is a great cover.  With tonal music, you are naked before the world and your competitors are Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Mahler, etc.  With atonalism, you have many places to hide and no competition because there are no masters of atonal music.  Just "pioneers" who went forward alone into their brave new world, leaving all the audiences in concert halls behind.  Because in the opinion of these composers audiences are too stupid to understand their great music.

If you really want to do something radical today - write some tonal music.  That is absolute insanity for someone safely ensconced within the illusory comforts of the academic world.

@William said:

There is a double standard when it comes to tonal vs. atonal music.  If you write something terrible that is tonal, everybody laughs at you. 

I remember when a very fanatical and knowledgeable lecturer reminded us (as we were vomiting over something) of one of Cage's famous dicta that went something like: "If you think that something is awful, listen to it again, and again, and again.... Eventually you'll find that it is not awful, but actually very interesting"... I asked him whether he would be prepared to apply that to himself and test it by listening to Andrew Lloyd Webber's 'Phantom of the Opera' over and over, and whether he thought he would end up finding it very interesting. (Silence)....

People tend to forget how hard it is today to write something tonal that will sound fresh and interesting to trained ears (I am not referring to Webber).

Tonal vs. atonal.... Please! Wasn't Stravinsky's example/experiment enough?... And to combine this with the original thread's topic of themes - and I will add musical "giftedness", I think it was David in some earlier post that remarked on how people have forgotten that music is an art that has been developing for many hundreds, actually thousands of years, and people today confuse its totality with one of its recent by-products, pop-music (as a blanket for everything).

Well in the days of Guido d'Arezzo and for hundreds of years before and after, not everyone was admitted as a music student. The master carefully screened and accepted only a handful on whom to pass down the secrets of the venerable art. Other than that, there were no printed materials in order to self-study. No orchestration or counterpoint  books, and certainly no sampled 8-part choral chunks by Hollywoodsteals available for hacks to "write" motets with. Maybe not such a bad idea today....

@Errikos said:

I remember when a very fanatical and knowledgeable lecturer reminded us (as we were vomiting over something) of one of Cage's famous dicta that went something like: "If you think that something is awful, listen to it again, and again, and again.... Eventually you'll find that it is not awful, but actually very interesting"

Good point!

Get someone who specializes in atonal to write some tonal music. It works one way but seldom the other. And lets not get  minimalism mixed up with nihilism. 

It's a lot like art. A lot of art is whacko, of-the-wall stylistically. It's basically crap most of the time but the more it gets intellectualized the more intellectuals start to believe it out of herd instinct. Ironically the proles don't. Get one of these so-called artists to paint something they usually hate - like say a Turner and see what comes out. The minute you start pricing things up - anything goes.

@Errikos said:

music is an art that has been developing for many hundreds, actually thousands of years

Yes, but it is also a language, isn't it?  In other words, it communicates instantly from one person to another.  But one of the overriding characteristics of all modern music has been that each composer, in order to be original at all costs, must develop HIS OWN LANGUAGE.  And be damned to anyone who does not understand him.  So what you have by this analogy is almost exactly what happened in the 20th century.  Every composer gibbering incomprehensibly (except for a few annointed disciples) in his own language. 

I am not trying to reject all modern music though.  There are many great composers in the modern era.  But the escalation of "advancements" in musical language has resulted in more and more phonies, not to mention even great composers such as Stravinsky getting sucked into meaninglessness.  Who here for example likes to listen to "Rite of Spring" ?  Probably everyone. It is total fun and inspiration to listen to.  But who listens to "History of a Soldier" ?  For fun?  Honestly.  So even great musical minds have gotten sucked into this maelstrom. The basic universal concept among modernism has been above all - ORIGINALITY AT ALL COSTS INCLUDING QUALITY.  This is in contrast to the fact that many of the greatest composers such as Bach were NOT VERY ORIGINAL.  They were in fact old fogeys in their own day who were not "advancing" music but instead refining and making it more perfect.  Another example of this phenomenon - Shakespeare.  He was so unoriginal that  some of his plays are REWRITES.  But he is also the greatest playwright/poet of the English language.  This basic fact - that art is a meaningful language connected to and not severed from the past - has been absolutely forgotten in all the modern era.

BTW the mention of John Cage is appropriate to this.  That is a particularly disgusting example of the hypocrisy of someone who is a complete phony.    He is not really a composer at all as far as I know.  But no one in intellectual circles is aware of that because absolutely anyone today can be a modernistic composer simply by claiming to be one.   He started off as a Dadaist, and applied those principles of artistic anarchy and nihilism - which were abandoned by the surrealists as no longer useful for creating anything meaningful - to music. 

Right. I remember back when I had lost all balance and was so confused by having strapped myself into a straitjacket, a teacher of mine advised me: "Don't try to write the masterpiece every time, just write what comes to you; if there is any Beethoven in there (pointing at my chest) it will come out anyway". 

That didn't help then unfortunately, but it was good advice and something that should be impressed upon every student of composition, instead of extolling other people's techniques and pseudo-revolutions, thus inviting students to become apes really, instead of encouraging them to express themselves (well they do but only in so many words, not by curriculum). 

@Another User said:

BTW the mention of John Cage is appropriate to this.  That is a particularly disgusting example of the hypocrisy of someone who is a complete phony.    He is not really a composer at all as far as I know.  But no one in intellectual circles is aware of that because absolutely anyone today can be a modernistic composer simply by claiming to be one.   He started off as a Dadaist, and applied those principles of artistic anarchy and nihilism - which were abandoned by the surrealists as no longer useful for creating anything meaningful - to music.

Hey MikeZaz - how you doing mate. Good to to see you here after so long. Fantastic. How's Trevor mate? Alright?

Didn't I mention to you the last time that you talk fucking shyte. Well you're still talking fucking shyte Mike. Good to hear from you again mate. Keep up the good work. :)