No worries. I didn't even think you were dismissive or anything and it wasn't Russia my argument was about.

I just didn't agree with your idea that if Tarkovsky's existence hadn't been poisoned by the regime he would have lived a long and happy life, gracing us with his works.

I'll give you an example. I am an English teacher working in an international company which is known all over the world. As a business, its primary goal is to keep afloat on the market and make revenue. In order to achieve this goal one needs to make certain steps which are not the same as the ones needed if your goal is to teach someone English. The two can coincide occasionally, but it's rather an exception than a rule.

If Tarkovsky had to go commercial for even just a second, it would be the end of him as we know him, I believe. This is not to drop a shaddow on you or reduce what you do, it's about Tarkovsky. That's all.

@The Minstrel said:

Wow. I hadn't quited realized that composing film music in the style of Hans Zimmer where morally comparable to working as an assassin or exploiting third world countries, and that the current musical trends would lead to the utter annihilation of our civilization. This thread has been a real wake-up call.

There could potentially be a great composer inside The Minstrel; he summarized everything in two lines! What he says with irony though, I say with conviction, with one modification: I don't believe a professional assassin poses such a threat to our civilization, save for him getting a contract to "off" the next Mozart. If I could "press a button", I'd rather he continued his pitiful profession than all the Zimmerites put together (not Zimmer).

@Goran Now, as far as the more elevated discussion regarding talent is concerned, I brought up the example of the 16 year-olds, not to say that they represent the pinnacle of the art of musical composition, and I agree that the 30 year-old Mozart and Chopin are better than their 16 year-old counterparts (I'm not sure about Mendelssohn if I stretch that to 18 years of age). I also agree that those teenagers were "better" than the 30 year-old Beethoven, however he overtook them a couple of years later. I thought all this went without saying... I made that example to demonstrate that when the 'Gift' has hit early, it has resulted in some unbelievable musical works that rank with the very best any century has to offer, before those kids had enough time to "work hard", to "cultivate musical sensibilities" (to the same extent a 30 year-old has had), or to amass enough experience which potentially can result in the writing of a masterpiece. 

Be that as it may, - and if I may expand the age limit of those youngsters to 17-8, then I'd give up Les Troyens, the complete catalogue of Bruckner and Taneev (and certainly the minor Draeseke and his Tragic - for me he sits somewhere between Gliere and Schmidt) with tears of joy, if I could have Chopin's op.10 for my own. And if I can stretch the youths' ages up to say 23-5, then some of Mozart's, Chopin's, Prokofiev's, Mendelssohn's, Schubert's, Rossini's, Strauss', and Scriabin's offerings up to that point - and forgetting for the moment the eras before and after them - eclipse most other music excepting their own of a later date, and that of the great masters. I am saying this not to initiate a draw of comparisons, but to emphasize that if great composition was the result of talent combined with hard work and the "cultivation of musical sensibilities" on an equal basis, those early works would not have been as brilliant, as perfect as they were. Also, I never said that the gift is something that has to appear early in life or never at all (if Janacek had died before he turned 60 we probably would not know of him today). I also never said that talent alone can create great art. It does require the will, the application and discipline, the "cultivation of musical sensibilities", and the element of luck, in order for it to be allowed to shine through, to be expressed.

However, I am saying that the genetic 'Gift' is by far the most important element, along with something to which I neglected to refer last time, and which is the 'Innate Musical Personality'. These two make the difference between what is accomplished/good/well-crafted music, and what is Great music. Those qualities by far outweigh 'hard work' and the rest, without replacing them (I can't be any clearer than this). So I disagree that the incalculable difference of quality and substance in Ravel's work compared to his classmates can be attributed to them "not possessing the same amount of self-criticism, cultivated the same musical sensibilities, or worked on those as well on his technical proficiency with the same rigour and consistency". The first goes straight out the window when we consider the example of Mussorgsky vs. Balakirev and Rimsky, the second follows when we remember that back then there were no CDs or the Internet, everybody went to each other's house and the same concerts, studied the same scores with the same teachers, and constantly compared notes and showed one another their works, so everybody was aware of everyone else and what they were doing at all times. Finally the third follows the same route when we compare hard working French composers of the time with the almost hobbyist (but gifted...) Poulenc, Italian rigorous and consistent composers with the lazy Rossini, or their Russian, also non-existent, counterparts with the self-proclaimed "inert" Scriabin. And there are numerous other examples... Whatever little differences between Ravel and his classmates in terms of musical experience or work ethic are not enough to account for the vast artistic disparities between their work and the master's.

Also, how many decades of instruction in harmony, counterpoint, and orchestration does one require before he can write Barber's Adagio? It looks like an empty manuscript where a 10 year-old drew some semi-breves and minims here and there. But what music!...I'll also take that any day over Tallis' Spem in Alium (be that the great work that it is).

Now I consider some things self evident, but just in case: I'm not saying that hard work etc. won't improve everybody's skills, or won't allow whatever gift anyone possesses to shine to its potential. With the exception of one's gift and innate musical personality - and you will note I'm saying innate, not merely musical personality which is heavily influenced by period, geography etc. I mean that almost ineffable musical signature that identifies the composer in a piece we hear for the first time (the greater the innate personality the faster this happens) - everything else one can endeavour to acquire and improve to the best of his ability during the course of his life. However, you can't buy those two qualities; you either possess them or you don't (you are a composer or you are not). And all composers possess them to different degrees. I don't talk much about luck and circumstance for two reasons: a) Luck is something outside ourselves and what we control (I'm referring to war, accidents, bad health, etc.), and b) Circumstance is something on which we can have some control (access to money, making the right connections/decisions), but it is something that also lies outside of strictly musical discipline, even if I agree that it can in reality prove to be a more determining factor in terms of survival.

Also, it is a convention for me to say for example "I admire Bruckner because of his 5th and 9th". That doesn't mean I admire Bruckner the man (please...) It is to the work that I am referring. In that respect, I don't care whether he slaved for a decade over a measure, or he wrote both symphonies while reading the morning paper in the toilet in two sessions. I don't care whether he worked hard or not because I'm not admiring him. I am admiring the work for its qualities, per se; not the discipline that went before it (that's a different kind of admiration which I also extend).

As far as the plague being as rare as a masterpiece, don't forget that the former wasn't always rare, the latter always has been, but just in case you're thinking of introducing deformities or other repellant curiosities and ideas, I hereby qualify what I meant, by saying that talent is also admired because of its rarity; if everyone possessed it, it wouldn't be worth bothering with. I could have turned around and say I don't sit there and admire the 'hard work' of a specialist fixing a sewer, but I knew what you meant...

@everybody Insofar as money and art are concerned, let's not forget that before Romanticism - whether it hit with Beethoven, before, or after in music - composers were hardly preoccupied with posterity and the masterpiece for a number of reasons: They were contracted employees for the most part, required to produce a lot of music on frequent demand. No matter how gifted one is, one can't produce landmarks on every page or opus (no one has!) when there's no time for reflection, contemplation, revision. And why should there be? Works were rarely if at all performed a second time (except opera), there were no recordings, and most of all, no mentality that the composer is a higher form of being, bringing us universal insight and Truth; that came later. It was professional pride into one's work and healthy competition that allowed the gifted composers to stand out and above the rest.

Coming to today, not everyone has inherited money or is otherwise employed, allowing him to take their time over every semiquaver, or uncompromisingly reject any musical requirement by a commissioner or a director; not everyone is prepared to live in conditions comparable to former Soviet squalor, particularly if those conditions are not shared by most everyone else in his community. If that weren't enough, all the members of the musical pantheon (with very few exceptions) proved that one can compose intentionally mediocre works on demand (for specific amateur musicians for one example), and the greatest works of music ever offered humanity at the same time. So if you can live from composition when people accept your mediocre music while you're also concentrating in doing your best as often as you can, I have no problem. It is not up to me or anyone else to say "how much is enough". Personally, if I could get paid €2,000,000 per contract I'd take it.

So the question for me is not "how much is the money"; it's "how important is the money" and "what do I have to do/write to get it"... For example, I would not consciously compromise the art and the standards by becoming the conduit through which mutants that never belonged in the industry are finally allowed access, effectively debunking it...

 dagmarpiano

No I don't think your stuff is hackwork, it sounded good.  Obviously going off on tangents here...  (sorry I signed back on  )

 That is a great post by Errikos.  Holy crap!  He should be teaching class! 

One example of somebody who never went to school was Erich Korngold - he didn't need to.  He wrote the Sinfonietta when he was 16!  Has anybody here heard that ?   Listen to it.  It is Mozart-level genius, and absolutely unfathomable how a callow teenager could write that.  It shows what Errikos is talking about in an extreme degree.  He just had it in him.  No need for hard work. 

That corresponds in an extreme way to something I've always thought - if you can write a good melody, you can do anything in music.  If you can't, everything you do will be forgotten, guaranteed. 

(Naturally I'm a bit concerned about whether or not my melodies are good...)

@William said:

 That is a great post by Errikos.  Holy crap!  He should be teaching class! 

One example of somebody who never went to school was Erich Korngold - he didn't need to.  He wrote the Sinfonietta when he was 16!  Has anybody here heard that ?   Listen to it.  It is Mozart-level genius, and absolutely unfathomable how a callow teenager could write that.  It shows what Errikos is talking about in an extreme degree.  He just had it in him.  No need for hard work. 

That corresponds in an extreme way to something I've always thought - if you can write a good melody, you can do anything in music.  If you can't, everything you do will be forgotten, guaranteed. 

(Naturally I'm a bit concerned about whether or not my melodies are good...)

Thanks a lot!

I've never heard the Sinfonietta, and would be keen to at some opportunity. I also agree with the first part of your aphorism regarding melody, and I know people who agree with the whole thing. In fact, off-hand, I can think of ONLY two great composers (out of so many), with no gift for melody whatsoever, and no great gift for harmony either - they seem to go hand in hand most of the time, and that deficiency actually was so important as to steer their careers to the directions they took:

Sometimes I think of Stravinsky as a magnificent, technicolor, circus-like juggling, pyrotechnic charlatan!! Because he could absolutely not come up with the first note of a melody (spare me the folksong stuff, that was a desperate half-measure for such an otherwise cosmopolitan and urbane man), he just used his incredible ear and innate musical personality and incredible technique to fill the obvious void, coming up with unprecedented awe-inspiring dazzling musical events, even for a Russian. That is yet another reason why his music sounded so new and fresh, he freed himself single-handedly from the ties of strict motivic considerations - they became thematically equal to his exorbitant flights and inventions in his work. No matter what anyone says, practically all of his greatest music was episodic in character, for that was the form which fitted his particular gifts the best. He was like a cripple who through talent, invention, determination, and all the rest, managed to tower above able-bodied people in physical feats.

The other great composer that was plagued by the same impotence was of course Bartok, who went to the ends of the known universe in desperate search for the rudiments of melodic structures (musicological interests my ****), and as with Stravinsky, he reluctantly fell back to a very inventive and intelligent use of folksong (for who would do that happily all of his mature career if he could write his own melodies?). It is no coincidence for me, that these two composers were unequivocally the two pioneers, masters of rhythm. I believe it came as naturally to them as melody and harmony come to others.

Come to think of it, even Beethoven was possibly one of the least gifted melodists of his time, and he also had to deal with that and find his own solutions inside the bag of his remaining monumental gifts (including the rhythmic vitality). In fact he is considered by some as the father of symphonic melody.

To downgrade the point a little, I find in film-music that those who are extremely and "naturally" gifted in one of these two respects, they are deficient in the other (I'm not talking about their imitators). For example Williams and Morricone. 

Now I know this is a shocking, radical post for most, I expect people will have the strongest of disagreements, and I'm stuffed if I know what it all has to do with VSL's competition with HS...

P.S.: WIlliam you don't have to worry about the quality of your melodies in Earth and Paradise - I'll be reviewing them shortly, and I'm encouraging everyone here to buy them. They are great!

@ Errikos

Since the amount of time required to further engage in detailed discussion of the points you have made has to go into other activities, I'll just sum up what seem to me to be the most important differences between our views on the issue:

a) You consider talent and innate musical personalities as naturally given factors which can be refined, but not developed in the strict sense of the word. I don't - I have no belief in crucial or even dominant importance of any innate talent whatsoever, and believe that what we refer to as talent is essentially developed by a combination of factors, all of which have to be at least partially present to lead to excellent results. To put it short: what you call talent is in my opinion innate only in very limited and elementary sense, the major part of what we understand under talent is actually developed through a combination of experience, skill and acquired insight, theoretical as well as intuitive.

On a sidnote, the examples you bring I find to be unconvincing, as they leave some of the crucial aspects of the whole story aside (Mozart-Mendelssohn-Prokofiev-Chopin starting with the best of the best quality of musical education and guided composition and starting studying musical literature at an extremely early age, that is, amassing a 10 or even 12-year of intensive listening and composing experience until the age of 16 (the same BTW goes for Korngold), Mussorgsky not being self-critical (which is incorrect, Mussorgsky was a vey self-critical composer, the booze notwithstanding), Scriabin talking of his "inertia" etc.)

b) This is, I guess, to a certain amount a level of personal preference: I would gladly give up Chopin's Op.10 for any single one of Taneiev's mature chamber works, Les Troyens, any symphony by Draeseke or any Bruckner symphony beginning with the 1st. I also don't consider Draeseke to be a minor composer: in my opinion, his 2nd and 3rd Symphony (not to forget the Gudrun Ouverture) stand on the same level with the very best of Brahms' symphonic movements, and at times even surpass them in terms of originality of their formal solutions and their motivic intricacies (the 2nd Movement of the 2nd Symphony particularly being a case in point). The same goes for Taneiev, whose best chamber works I find to be no less masterly then any other I know of.

P.S. The assesment of Stravinsky and Bartok as having no melodic gift strikes me as strange - I find many of their melodic as well as harmonic solutions and idiosyncrasies very memorable as well as very refined (not that I could care less if they didn't posess any "melodic gift" at all, as melody is not the dominant or decisive factor in how I percieve music). Beethoven on the other side seems to me also to be quite "unmelodic" in this sense - which, again, doesn't exactly bother me when listening to Diabelli Variations ;-)

@Errikos said:

So I disagree that the incalculable difference of quality and substance in Ravel's work compared to his classmates can be attributed to them "not possessing the same amount of self-criticism, cultivated the same musical sensibilities, or worked on those as well on his technical proficiency with the same rigour and consistency". The first goes straight out the window when we consider the example of Mussorgsky vs. Balakirev and Rimsky

That is a great point, as Mussorgsky was steeped in the same milieu and yet is savagely, uniquely individual in all of music.  His music is like red hot coals or brilliantly gleaming ice compared to the tepid, carefully controlled temperatures of Rimsky Korsakov.  Though I do like Rimsky, Mussogrsky is on another plane of untouchable genius.  And of course, he was totally out of control in his personal life.

One thing on this I disagree with in general is Beethoven's melody - he did truly great themes, such as the main theme last movement of the 9th,  or several in the 7th or 3rd, but I think because of his extreme mastery of symphonic development they are so perfectly subsumed into the structure  that one stops thinking of them as isolated melodies.   Very interesting discussion by Errikos and Goran...

@Another User said:

The same goes for Taneiev, whose best chamber works I find to be no less masterly then any other I know of.

I think that sentence says it all. I won't argue against Taneev's (or even Draeseke's) mastery, when I have seen and heard the incredible technique he imparted to his students, especially polyphony (Rachmaninov, Scriabin, etc.). That is not what I've been arguing about. There's a lot of mastery in his works sure (as in Draeseke's, as in Franck's, as in so many others'), but little genius, and that makes all the difference.

Anyway, I always say that a lot of worthy composers are unduly neglected, hopefully people like Goran can get together and form societies for different such composers, and perhaps there can be series of concerts organized dedicated to them, or labels recording them (ex. BIS is recording the complete works of Skalkottas - opus numbers comparable to Beethoven's!), how about it sponsors?

@dagmarpiano said:

In my 20s I was obsessed with artistic purity, against anything. I had a great time, met some interesting people, got a big record deal which I frittered away by upsetting everyone who had any power just for my own amusement.

Aged about 33, after a life of poverty, I decided for an experiment to see what would happen if I channeled my energy into making money from music instead seeking artistic nirvana.

Some important things happened:

1. I made money for the first time in my life, more than I ever expected to make (I had small ambitions, so I don't mean millions, I just mean I never expected to have the kind of money I have now; a real living, a nice house).

2. I did music which I found more interesting to make, which took a more open mind, which took more listening, learning and thinking than I ever did before.

3. I did music at a higher level of technical excellence.

4. When I did side projects for old times' sake, for the artistic fun of it, they were better on every level than the stuff I did when I thought I was a tortured artist, because I'd matured and developed while under commercial pressures.

So, in fact during my tortured artist years really I just had ambitions beyond my own ability. I got very closed minded about what I thought was good, I stopped listening to anyone except myself and I got stuck in a rut.  I also ended up depressed and lost my enthusiasm for music.  Ok, I also had some fun and I did make some important leaps of imagination, but I think I progressed further artistically when I stopped trying to be artistic and instead focused on money and the market. It made me work harder, I became happier, I listened more and developed an open mind.

So Tarkovsky's statement is fine for him and his life, but it's not my experience.

😊

Don, I really appreciate the honesty of your sharing. Most refreshing. I had a lot of experiences on the radio/ad agency side of the fence before I went back to writing. I call this period in my 20s, "the other side of the music business," because at that level you see how it all works. I took a lot of that information and created a course called Marketing Your Music and You. It's the slowest selling thing at Alexander Publishing.

There's always this battle between art and bucks. I think in music we need to understand the reality that NASA has had to work with: no bucks, no Buck Rogers. If only we could bring back Leopold Mozart and get his opinion on all this!

I agree to some extent with dagmarpiano's comfortable concept though I certainly have not had the slightest success with that approach.  But you must keep in mind that the forbiddingly uncompromising Tarkovsky is now considered by many filmmakers, historians and critics the greatest filmmaker of all time.  Also, having seen his films which are truly great, and read "Sculpting in Time"  which is the best thing I have ever read about cinema, I tend to take him seriously.  I suppose he represents one farthest end of the spectrum between money and art. 

 I guess Jerry Bruckheimer is on the other end.  

What makes me laugh is when you get a topic like this...i.e. this string library etc and some poor son of a bitch always comes out with..... Vivaldi sounds great on this library etc etc etc.

OF COURSE VIVALDI SOUNDS GREAT!!!!2@@F**K££@@. VIVALDI WOULD SOUND GREAT IF YOU SAMPLED MY FARTS AND PLAYED IT LIVE ON A SYNTH FFS.

Why do you think east west uses Thomas Bergenson for his particular brand of Hollywood throw - back music? Because he's brilliant at it, that's why. And it SOUNDS good and musically it's very good in that genre no doubt. Very few people that can do that though; so buyer beware. You're always going to be disappointed with your results if you're not anywhere near Bergenson's  ability. It's called salesmanship and the east west children love all that shyte.

Edit: And to be fair and balanced - not many people can sound like Guy Bacos does for Vienna either, whether you like the music or not. Liking anyone's music or not is NOT the issue when discussing string libraries afaic. It's all about sound.

 I just told them that on that  thread about VSL vs HS #2 or whatever and they don't get it and never will. 

"John Williams sound"  -   "Hollywood sound" - it's all nothing but imitation. 

@William said:

 I just told them that on that  thread about VSL vs HS #2 or whatever and they don't get it and never will. 

"John Williams sound"  -   "Hollywood sound" - it's all nothing but imitation. 

I haven't had a chance to read all this topic Bill. But the way I see it - and I have to come clean and say I am in fact banned from the east west forum - is those particular clientele desperately want to sound like Hans or any of the disciples - like Trevor for instance. What they don't understand is that a string library should really have nothing to do with the way anyone WRITES the music in the first place. This is SOUND we're talking about. You can sound like Hans using VSL, HS or even a cheapjack synth. But they think HS will make them WRITE like Hans. You can't sound like a fucking clone of anyone unless you WRITE like them.

Why do you think no one EVER sounds like Bernard Herrmann? Because they can't WRITE to that standard in the first place. A 2 chord ostinato section just isn't going to cut it if you're trying to emulate say, Vertigo. You need to understand particular brands of minimalism, romanticism, immense amounts of musical study, maybe a touch of blood pressure, heavy drinking, several wives and 100 cigs a day etc - and phenomenal orchestration technique, before you even attempt that. Too difficult. With HZ it's all about sound and effect. It's the equivalent of a chinese takeaway. Too easy. I admire Hans - he's good at what he does. I don't admire fucking clones and that's not his fault after all.

What I like in a way about VSL is they don't constantly jack you up with cheap sales routines. It's always the  music with them. Not just the sound. I listened to the recording of the sales routine yesterday for HS with Bergenson and it's a great sound. But the majority of these poor saps will never in million years get anywhere near that SOUND because they can't WRITE.  Bergenson WRITES better music than HZ - probably. Bacos does - probably. But when you're a clone none of that matters. Forget about studying the width and breadth of music. Just get right in there and study HZ and forget everything else, although I doubt if HZ did when he started. East West are clever and they play to that - everyone has to make living after all. Most filmscore music today is like going to the dentist.

Years ago on this forum I believe, there was a topic about the so-called Hollywood strings sound. It's a a sound that is brought about by the WRITING - if nobody believes that then you might as well start asking the players what make of violin or cello they use.

Yours

Mark Antony,

Good day.

@PaulR said:

What I like in a way about VSL is they don't constantly jack you up with cheap sales routines. It's always the  music with them.

Yeah, that is it exactly and why VSL is superior.  It has always been an intensely musical study with the creators of VSL  - determining how exactly to capture what the instruments do in playing almost any style, which is an awesome challenge that they took on straight, with no shortcuts.  That is why the VSL library has such depth that it can do any style.  So that is what I objected to about "Hollywood sound" or "John Williams sound" - those sounds are simply musical sounds. 

@Another User said:

Years ago on this forum I believe, there was a topic about the so-called Hollywood strings sound. It's a a sound that is brought about by the WRITING - if nobody believes that then you might as well start asking the players what make of violin or cello they use.

They won't write any better with VSL or the Berlin Philharmonic at their feet, that's the point. They worry about the mix instead of how rueful their compositions are. They're in the wrong profession these people, perhaps they should become mixing engineers... Why are they so obsessed with so-called realism instead of being obsessed with music? Because it's easy to demand the former from developers and engineers; they'd have to take 10 years off their middle-earthen lives to learn about the latter though.

If we're to be honest, what they're after is not the "Hollywood Sound", at least not most of them. They call it that for they don't want to call it something else - like the "Clones' Sound". For let's say that today's computer/samples technology was available 15-20 years ago, and people were trying to get their mixes to sound "Hollywoodian" then too... What would the right paradigm be? What was the "Hollywood Sound" back then? Was it Basic Instinct's? Dancing with Wolves'? Saving Private Ryan's? Edward Scissorhands'? Titanic's? Even though these scores were recorded and mixed specifically for Hollywood, they sound pretty different to me (not just compositionally - but could the perceived sonic differences themselves be epiphenomenal due to the great heterogeneity of the actual compositions?)

In short, these people today have as their specific and primary goal the emulation of other people's music (say Hans'), to the point of indistinguishability. They want to contribute nothing themselves (well, they couldn't...), but they can't even get that quite right either (that's how numbingly hopeless they are), which is why they persist in covering all bases so to speak, asking for symphonic forces that have been sampled with the right kind of frequency responses, ambience, etc. If they could, they would ask for recordings of 2-4-minute, fully orchestrated generic chugga-chugga passages. What am I thinking?... Dan, great money opportunity here!...

@Errikos said:

They worry about the mix instead of how rueful their compositions are. They're in the wrong profession these people, perhaps they should become mixing engineers... Why are they so obsessed with so-called realism instead of being obsessed with music?

CCCs (Chugga-Chugga Composers) should really be assigned a special place in Musical Purgatory. Nothing eternal mind you - I am not unfeeling - but a Period of Punishment of around 6 months, in which they would be forced to play cello in a section of one thousand, doubling at the octave the basses (250 players) for 24 hours a day an ostinato consisting of sforzandi staccati a-c-b-g-a-f-e-g repeated without cessation.  The Punishment would be monitored by Dr. T.  Here's a recent photo of him with his guards behind him supervising some punishment of boys who never practice their piano lessons: