Ahh, Gianna! You took me back... All those years ago, when we were young and hopeful, and "tore" at each other while Hans shed tears of laughter over this, counting his money...
I wasn't going to comment but it will also serve as a segue to my response to Dewdman42's points on Mozart and electronics. By the way, collegiality goes both ways. Just because I laugh at Hans as a composer - at least his school of film composition of the last, I don't know, 20 odd years (although I thought The Last Samurai was not bad), it doesn't mean that I am biased... I don't know the man personally. I just respond to his "philosophy" and musical choices for films he has scored and that I have seen.
I said it when it was pertinent, and I say it again now, that what Hans did with the cello for the Joker could only impress someone with only the most superficial understanding of synthesis. As an idea for characterisation for the film, you can take it or leave it. But to call it a 'brilliant' example of synthesis is simply a joke. Which is apt if you think about it.
But how can you like Superman? It's one of his worst! The poster example of what not to do! I remember the scene where Superman first discovers his ability to fly. He bursts into the sky exhilarated and soars over creation. How does Hans 'serve this scene'? Dukudaka-dukudaka-dukudaka-dukudaka and in the minor!!! That's all he can muster, the one trick limping pony.
This brings me to Dewdman42: You seem pretty confident about what Mozart would do were he alive today. I am not so certain. Most of the orchestral Composers alive today are pretty happy composing solely for acoustic forces (including orchestra). Very-very few of them also compose electronic music. Even fewer compose for film. And while you and Anand agreed on the orchestra's potential as far as timbral possibilities are concerned, I am going to concede that electronic music has the greater range in that regard.
But not the electronic music that you are talking about (I am guessing). Certainly not the kind that people like Cliff Martinez, Aphex Twin, or Hans are offering, and not that they should or are bad at what they do - the first two.
If you are genuinely interested in the cutting edge of what pioneering electronic music sounds like, I suggest you dive into the realm of academic computer music. Imagine music that doesn't start with a sequencer or a sampler like, say, Omnisphere. Electronic music with no beat. No ostinato. Imagine hitherto unimagined sounds that you create from scratch(!) without sampling(!!), by way of computer programming. Algorithmic or other. No music keyboard during composition, no sampled acoustic instruments like the VSL (heavily frowned upon, you should make your own instrumental samples - if you must, and then only to render them completely unrecognisable). Then examine possible, very complex structures and sonic manipulations, determined or indeterminate, that can be implemented though algorithmic programming, synthesis, etc.
jsg: Your article really took me back... I got my DX7 in 1984. I was a kid then, my parents could afford the latest (OK, not the Synclavier), so I got it. I knew nothing about synthesis then - you could make a point that it was wasted on me but, through playing those sounds, my compositional thoughts grew deeper, more acute.
In that same article you suggest that if no live players are ever going to perform an orchestral work, why does it have to be confined to what's possible and written down professionally, or words to that effect. I can't think of a reason either. However, that takes us immediately away from the realm of orchestral composition, and into the realm of computer composition, exclusively. I perceive such works purely as computer music works, and not as orchestral works; not even in potentia! One composes for orchestra or one doesn't (even if it is a hybrid score). A free-composed quasi-simulation of the sonorities of instruments existing in the physical world, one that does not take on account all their physical properties, qualities, and limitations, is not a composition for said instruments. The staves on the score may just as well read 'Instrument 1', 'Instrument 2' etc., instead of 'Flute', 'Oboe' etc.
I never said that a composer must by definition be either/or in my post, but I can see how you could infer that from my strong positions. Of course, anyone can be an acoustic as well as computer music composer. He can be a gynaecologist! Like Borodin. My point was that it is one thing to claim professionalism (in all its facets!) for oneself - in multiple musical disciplines to boot - and another to be recognised as such by others. I proffered my own standards for professionalism, others may have their own. Borodin certainly was recognised by top professionals in both fields.
Macker: What was that Rosana thing about? As soon as I heard a few seconds of that awful rendition, the uploader - whoever he was - removed it...
