HANS ZIMMER

The whole nature of generalizations is that they aren't always correct. I certainly wouldn't say that the whole Thin Red Line Score is based on rock music, but you look at the steady, rhythmic, repetitive building of "Journey to The Line", and you look at the Last Samurai's lyrical, lengthy pieces and rhythmic action cues, and Frost/Nixon's percussive, ostinato based cues, and I personally see a pattern.

That Spanglish cue is a great example; it has a foundation of rugged strings and strumming, and a lyrical tune carried overhead. In pop-music, that tune would be the vocalist, but Zimmer replaces the vocalist with a solo instrument or a massive brass section.

I don't think it's "dumbing him down", to try to identify a pattern, and I don't think we throw out the pattern just because it's not correct in every case. It's just a recurrent feature of his music, not necessarily a master skeleton key for analyzing every piece he's ever written.

I hear the spirit of Vaughan Williams through a lot of his work.

Dude, that's my socalled 'religious sound' you're talking about. Which I've only mentioned, like, 500 times over the years. I even wrote an article on it once, but alas it's no longer online. The grail theme (or rather "The Penitant Man Will Pass") is but one of MANY examples in Williams' oeuvre.

I think, in general, it's fine to use generalizations when speaking about composers to give an idea of what said composer sounds like, when in conversation. However, once you create an oversimplification of a certain composer based on generalizations and then start criticizing this composer based on that oversimplification, you're not treating the composer fairly. What's more, once you're trying to make an academic point on this composer, you're even obligated to paint a more thorough picture of the composers work to give the reader a more wholesome understanding of this composer which cannot be found in general discussions on message boards. And as pointed out above, the examples that speak against the oversimplified generalization of Zimmer are simply too numerous to ignore, and even come a long way in making those generalizations mute. There's simply too much leeway to go, as a reader, hold on, that doesn't sound right.

If you know RVW's music the influence is beyond the pastoral but unlike James Horner* never directly rips off any classical composers, JW channels. IMO RVW is JW's biggest influence, particularly his string writing.

*not having a go, JH uses direct quotes brilliantly.

Now you're nit-picking

Zimmer is tits. good firm round tight young tits. And we love him.

Thanks for summarizing our discussion.

Great post Pawel!

@Pawel: Thanks for the detailed post with a wealth of information. I'll respond to what I can...

1. You seem to admit that the author is completely right on this point...Hans does use a lot of orchestrators, but you go on to say that's not a bad thing, and point out other composers who use orchestrators. I don't think anyone said it was a bad thing; I just thought it was accurate. So, point 1 for Audissino, I suppose.

2. By rock/techno, I don't think that holds true in every single case, but there's still a lot of rock influence on Zimmer's writing. His early Power Anthems are an obvious case, and its easy to point out Days of Thunder or Driving Miss Daisy, or the more modern Rush (which was essentially an instrumental rock album). But I see rock influence in Pirates (John Debney compared Pirates to Led Zeppelin, and I agree). I see rock influence in the building of Time with its slow chord progressions and regular rhythms. I see rock influence in the heavy-metal action music of Black Hawk Down, or in the rhythm based sections of his Dark Knight scores where he works a single chord progression for a while. In terms of dance-based music, well, dance music tends to build over many minutes with repetitive chord structures, slowly adding layers, and look at the 16 minute, "Dark Knight" cue and you find that. Is it descriptive of every one of his scores? Of course not. But is it a viable thread to follow? I'd say yes. And once again, it's not inherently negative at all, I'd say his rock-influenced tracks are the ones that get the most play from me at least.

3. Your points here are valid, but kind of discredit point number 4, where you say its dumb to call RCP a factory. Well, depending on how you think of it, the collaboration process you describe in point 3 might easily be called a factory. Is that a loaded term? Certainly, but when you look through the pages of collaborators in a Hans Zimmer booklet and compare that to, say, Desplat, you do see a difference. I don't think this a bad thing in the slightest, and if this is what Zimmer needs to tackle massive blockbuster projects (while still maintaining artistic integrity, which I think in most cases he does), then I'm all for it. But to say it's unfair to use the term 'factory' or 'industrialized' to describe RCP seems a bit unfair. We can argue all we want about the correct language, but amongst the digital instrument designers, orchestrators, "additional music" writers, interns, etc., there's clearly a lot of people with input, and it's a lot different from Williams sitting with a grand piano and a score book. Audissino uses the word factory, and calls Zimmer more of a producer than a composer. Well, we can debate that, but someone might easily see the way Zimmer gives specific scoring duties to his 'additional music' composers, while he composes the main cues, and call that 'producing'. It's certainly different from what John Williams would do. So we can nitpick his specific language all we like, but what you describe could certainly be described by any reasonable person as a 'scoring factory'.

4. ^^^^ addressed above

5. I think that the reason Audissino's points are still valid here lies in the fact that, in most of the scores that you've mentioned, despite the existence of several cues certainly striving for something greater, there are more cues that stick with what he describes. For example: Gladiator. There's the Gladiator Waltz that definitely incorporates interesting progressions and complex melodies, but inside that very cue is a rhythmic, (almost simplistic), forerunner of the Pirates of the Caribbean theme, there's the slow, homophonic, "Strength and Honor", the pop-music-esque "Now We are Free", etc. None of these are bad cues, but they certainly stick with what Audisinno describes. Or Interstellar, where we have several incredible pieces offset by minute upon minute of sound design and simple piano. And to be clear, Interstellar was my favorite score of 2014; none of these things are bad. For every cue that doesn't fit Audisinno's descriptions, there's plenty that do, look through most of Hans' superhero scores, King Arthur, The Rock, The Peacemaker, Pirates, the Last Samurai, Hans' portions of Kung Fu Panda, these are all scores with plenty of broad strokes and powerful chord-progressions, massive, homophonic, unison orchestral anthems.

6. Not every Hans Zimmer score sounds similar, obviously, but there are lots of scores that share the same aural playground. I'd say that aside from certain ethnic textures, Pearl Harbor, Drop Zone, Gladiator, The Last Samurai, Pirates, The Rock, King Arthur (There's three minutes of King Arthur that's actually identical to three minutes of Pirates: Dead Man's Chest), all these scores share the same style/sound. Then his Dark Knight Scores/Inception/Man of Steel/Batman vs Superman all share many of the same elements. Are there outliers? Of course, plenty. But many of his blockbuster scores share the same pallete.

7. I'd say that in most of the pieces you mention, except portions of Thin Red Line, Hans is still aiming for a rather visceral impact on the listener. That doesn't mean he never writes music with conflicting emotions, it just means that, when he is aiming for a certain emotion, he rarely restrains the music. (This is actually one his greatest strengths in my opinion.) When its supposed to be dissonant (Batman Begins), its as dissonant as possible. When its supposed to be powerful, he's going to unleash the Kraken (Pirates, The Last Samurai, Gladiator, Crimson Tide, The Rock, etc.) When its supposed to be melodramatic (Pearl Harbor, "The Way of the Sword", King Arthur), he lathers on as much drama as possible.

In terms of Virtuoso writing, I agree with you. He's certainly incorporated several great soloists, especially in Interstellar.

8. I think Interstellar specifically contains plenty of incredible textures (Like I said, I adore that score), but you could easily pick apart that score for being really uncomplicated, especially in cues where he has a simple theme noodling for minutes on end over a very thin ambience. There's several cues (A Place Among the Stars, Message from Home...) where the textures are incredibly basic and simple.

Now you've made me want to go listen to Interstellar again.

Overall, you made some great points. I don't think Audissino's analysis holds true in every case, but there are lengthy sections in almost every score he's written that do hold true to it, which is why I thought to post it here. I don't think his analysis is "hogwash" but, as your post illustrates, nor is it as accurate as I had supposed.

1. No, it didn't affect the quality of those scores, which is why, like I said, I don't think its a criticism to point out Hans's orchestrators/arrangers/ghostwriters. Sure, does it seem like it might be letting too much industry creep into art? Maybe. But I'm not the type to pound my fist about such things.

2. I don't think there's much to add here.

3. Williams uses orchestrators, but (and I know this isn't extremely scholarly), compare the liner notes of any Zimmer score to the liner notes of a Williams score. Zimmer has dozens of people working on every score. Like I explained, that's not bad, its just a fact. Certainly INTERSTELLAR has a lot more of just Hans in it, but INTERSTELLAR is the exception to just about anything we can say about HZ. So is it wrong to call RCP a scoring-factory? (Especially when you keep in mind the dozens of underlings composing scores with their own teams of ghostwriters). I don't think so.

5. I don't think the Pirates precursor works at all in the waltz... but now we're just on to opinions. Overall, Zimmer has some scores that show great sophistication, yet I think they all contain cues that could very fairly fit Audissino's description.

6. So perhaps, instead of "quite similar to one another", you would say there's different "zones" of sound? Or do you think every score inhabits its own sonic world?

7. I guess I don't view any of the pieces you've mentioned as not 'direct'. I feel that Zimmer only rarely plays with conflicting emotions...I can really only recall Interstellar's message from space playing very sparse chords over empty space (which was fantastic). But I don't think ethnic wailing women over heat-distorted horizons exactly counts as 'restrained', he's still playing the picture... I'm sure you'll have examples to prove this wrong

8. Agreed.

"Factory" can be a tongue in cheek term, for example if the owner of a restaurant calls his place "Foot Factory". I think in regard to Hans Zimmer's studio the term implies a negative connotation, meaning that music is produced there on a conveyor belt, standardized by computers.
I would prefer the term "manufactory" implying that the creative process is still driven by human beings.

Volker

And we all love to hate him to here and there, now and then

Even for Thor

I can't take Clemmensen's Zimmer related reviews serious any more. I respect the man's competence otherwise but here he is riding his hobby horse. (? Er gibt dem Affen Zucker.) It's clearly part of his marketing strategy.

Volker