Trained musicianship and film music today

I agree. The prequels have many, many (many many many) flaws but they are hardly "forgettable" in the sense of "I can't remember a single scene from that movie after it's finished playing".

I think I'm one of the few of my generation who actually LIKE them.

I'm thinking of starting a 12-step program for sufferers of this affliction. At the end of it, we'll forget any notions of midichlorians and come to accept the true Jedi way.

May the force be with you.

"Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter" - Yoda 2:16

Nope! Try to keep up.

So airplane food, what's up with that!?

Seriously lp, not even Duel of The Fates? Not caring or liking it is fair enough but forgettable?

Outside of the few standalone cues, like Duel of the Fates or Battle of the Heroes, I was completely underwhelmed by the whole trilogy. I was expecting the music to be on par with the original, since it's the same composer and the benchmark everyone uses for fine orchestral film music. Is it good film music? Sure, but just because it tried to be more than serviceable and did exactly what it was suppose to do, leitmotif here, march there.

Basically, when I think of Star Wars music, I don't think of the prequel scores, I think of the original Trilogy score. That's what I mean when I say, forgettable.

Fair enough.

Effects will always age, especially more so those that existed more than 4-5 years ago. But they were awesome for the time.

Yeah, Episode 1 still had miniatures and those will always look good. I was talking about the CGI stuff. Making images look realisitc is so much easier now with advances in unbiased raytracing algorithms and faster processors, compared to the "old" days.

It took a while to get back to this!

To use the composition department in Oslo as an example: this is an institution that does not even teach traditional counterpoint, and to a certain extent, harmony. The focus is entirely shifted towards the creative, the norm-challenging, the provocative, the innovative. There is pressure on thinking like nobody else, writing like nobody else, sounding like nobody else. We are talking about a very fluid, very personal, very democratic view on composition. Other places, you'll find different environments and great diversity. That is something to celebrate, of course.

In Oslo, you are expected to find an identity that is uniquely your own, and this kind of idealism is one of the factors leading to the bashing of for example John Williams; who happily benefits from the musical heritage and established styles of past composers, such as Wagner or Tchaikovsky. In some environments his perspective on writing music is frowned upon, simply because there exists a dogma that values stylistic originality at the expense of even as deeply felt a musicianship and craftmanship Williams has.

The heroes and idols for this kind of education are composers like Stravinsky, Messiaen, Hindemith, Lachenmann, and others. These are composers who polarized themselves from the romantic traditions and dogma. They reacted by evolving entirely new concepts, opening up the musical language to allow new explorations. They also left behind formulated theories on their compositional system. The way they thought about music. Stravinsky exploded the possibilities of form and structure. A radicalist by nature, he demonstrated virtually unlimited new possibilites in composition, that were highly stylized, highly personal, and that expressed a tremendous wealth of emotions that continue to inspire. And Hindemith occupied himself with the task of explaining tonality from a higher perspective than the common tonal system. He described a logic in his theoretical writings that emancipated the function of individual tones from the context of classical western harmony. The natural overtone series became the foundation of a more "naturalistic" view of tonality. Also, Messiaen created entirely original scales that would serve as the foundation of his compositions. His theoretical approach is much used in modern composition education. It is seen as a pathway to individual expression, opening the mind. Of course, I haven't even mentioned Schoenberg, Alban Berg, twelve-tone system, or serialism, which are also very important.

The point is, there is no conventional "training" to speak of. The point is being individual, self-searching, and to a certain degree, radicalism is vital. The other side of it is that radicalism can not exist without the conservative. However, in the environment in Oslo they don't really care about that other side. They are persistant, and content, in having the focus they have. Which I think is good. A school that tries to say everything, can really say nothing. You have to specialize. And other schools could, and should, have their own perspective.

You asked about autodidacts having problems with creating when not inspired, compared to trained musicians. The answer is a clear "no", if you ask me! There should be no theoretical difference here. Experience is a better way to explain potential differences between composers. If you have experience, it's easier to produce when inspiration is lacking. The more experience, the more tools, the more insight, the more knowledge of how to progress and get a good result. Of course sometimes, music is composed with a sense of dogma, slavishly resorting to pre-fixed patterns. But that would be experience kicking in, not training or academic education.

About the nature of an education in composition: if it hadn't evolved around practical composition learning by doing and critical evaluation, it wouldn't really be a composer's education at all. It would be musical theory and analysis course - which of course is an available subject, especially for aspiring teachers. But a composer's education consists of a lot of trial and error, writing for instruments, having it performed, exploring new styles, new contexts, new ideas. It is highly heuristic and practise-based.

It's late at night, so I hope to have made a little sense with my rambling....