@William said:
Jerry Gerber, your definition of film music is of course correct for most composers, but is completely formed and circumscribed by the commercial practice. You have experienced that kind of scoring because it is what usually takes place. But it is not the ideal of film music. The ideal usually can't be obtained, but it is not to be buried, abandoned or assumed to be non-existent the way you do. The aesthetic reality of an art medium is NOT simply the most usual degradation of that medium. And the simplistic concept that you brought up - that film music has no overall structure unlike symphonies, operas, etc. - is DEAD WRONG in the case of a great film score. To me the greatest film score of all is Herrmann's Vertigo and it is music that is superior to most music in any field written at the time. Including concert hall music. It creates - as Herrmann himself stated as his goal - an overall structure to the film bound together by musical motifs and orchestrations.
What you are doing in your comment is reducing an art form to its worst practices and most degraded examples, and then using that to judge the art from. That is lamentably wrong.
One other thing - you mention that an "amateur" or someone outside of a field is being arrogant in actually conversing and discussing things with professionals. I totally disagree - some of the best comments on this Forum have not been from a clique of composers who look down on non-professionals, but from scientists and engineers who have fascinatingly objective concepts that are often startling and - by virtue of being outside the usual "professional" discourse - inspiring. I love the mix of scientific with musical ideas as there are often fascinating parallels.
William wrote:
Jerry Gerber, your definition of film music is of course correct for most composers, but is completely formed and circumscribed by the commercial practice. You have experienced that kind of scoring because it is what usually takes place. But it is not the ideal of film music.
I agree with the above. There are no inherent technical or aesthetic reasons why the art of film cannot use music differently. Or why films with excellent scripts and intelligent dialogue are rare. Of course it's not the ideal, it's the norm.
William wrote:
And the simplistic concept that you brought up - that film music has no overall structure unlike symphonies, operas, etc. - is DEAD WRONG in the case of a great film score. To me the greatest film score of all is Herrmann's Vertigo and it is music that is superior to most music in any field written at the time. Including concert hall music. It creates - as Herrmann himself stated as his goal - an overall structure to the film bound together by musical motifs and orchestrations.
It's not simplistic at all, it's the usual, normal, everyday way that film music is made. I gave three examples that deviate from the norm, and you added one. No need to shout at me by saying I am "DEAD WRONG", And if you actually take the time to think just a little about what I wrote, you would know that I didn't say film music has no overall structure. I said that transitions between cues are usually not an issue for film music. It's always an issue in music as an independent language and always an issue for music in ballet, dance, Broadway, songwriting and opera..
William wrote:
What you are doing in your comment is reducing an art form to its worst practices and most degraded examples, and then using that to judge the art from. That is lamentably wrong.
William, please try and get some awareness of your own contradictory statements. You have said yourself how much you hate film music, and even when you like a score you have stated that you often hate the movie itself. You use the word "hate" a lot William. Not sure I trust such vehemence. What I am doing is looking at the vast majority of films and making statements about film music based on the norm. If the "norm" is meaningless trash with badly written stories, inane dialogue and highly unoriginal music, well, then that's the norm. I am not "reducing an art form to its worst practices"--filmmakers, movie studios and talentless writers are doing that.
I am aware of deeply artistic films that have been made, most were not blockbusters or highly profitable. I have never said that film cannot be a fine art form; in the hands of gifted directors and screenwriters film is as much a fine art as any other fine art. But remember, the conversation was veering toward the idea that the composers who meet deadlines are "heroes". Does that mean that Debussy, who took 10 years to write his opera, or Brahms, who took 25 years to compose his first symphony are anti-heroes because they didn't have to cope with deadlines that almost guarantee a composer won't write his best music or that he simply hires other composers and/or orchestrators to write under his name? Deadlines are a capitalist invention. Deadlines are usually about financial pressure. Deadlines can even kill--when NASA felt under pressure to launch the Challenger in weather that was too cold, this caused the O-Rings to become so brittle that they failed and produced the fuel leakage that blew up the spacecraft. The O-Ring engineers were warning NASA up until the last minute not to launch the Challenger but NASA ignored the experts who had studied this problem. If we were not such a crazy species always worried about the passing of time we'd be happier, more productive and the quality of our work would improve. So all this talk about how deadlines are so manly and heroic is a bunch of nonsense. Why are we always in such a rush? Anxiety and fear sabotage the intellect. Pressure, in just the right amount, can stimulate progress and growth. No problem there. But too much pressure (like too much of anything that in the right amounts is good) is unhealthy and leads to mistakes and failures. This is why there are so many product recalls--too much pressure to makes stuff too quickly, too much impatience, too much greed, too much emphasis on competition and not enough on cooperation.
William wrote:
One other thing - you mention that an "amateur" or someone outside of a field is being arrogant in actually conversing and discussing things with professionals. I totally disagree - some of the best comments on this Forum have not been from a clique of composers who look down on non-professionals, but from scientists and engineers who have fascinatingly objective concepts that are often startling and - by virtue of being outside the usual "professional" discourse - inspiring. I love the mix of scientific with musical ideas as there are often fascinating parallels.
I did not write or imply that an amateur, or someone outside of a field is arrogant because they are conversing and discussing things with professionals. That's so crazy it's hard to believe you'd even say it. My first reply to this thread was disagreeing with Macker not because he's an amateur nor about Macker not having any valuable comments to make about music, it was in response to a specific thing he said. I have conversations often with people who come from a science background. Many of my classical music theory/composition students have come from computer science and medical backgrounds. I deeply value cross-disciplinary sharing of information and knowledge. I value people who ask questions and know that there is always more to learn in every field. I've been supporting people for decades as their music instructor who are amateurs and want to learn more about music composition as well as young gifted students who want to try and make music their profession.
In this thread I sometimes feel like I am dealing with primate-like behavior as I witness grown men unconsciously practicing their online bonding games to gang up on someone who doesn't agree with everything they say. The silliness of it all...
