Trained musicianship and film music today

Where did I say *mundane*, I'm sorry?

I said that he was more about sonority than, say, pure thematic writing. His sonorities are far from mundane! I know for a fact that Herrmann was very angry by the limited budget Hitchcock gave him on that score and then worked around it brilliantly, but his original reaction to getting only a string section was... far from enthusiastic. His enthusiasm for the score raised when he realized (while or after writing the score) that strings fit the black and white movie perfectly.

I have never said that Herrmann's Psycho is a score that is successful by accident, but it IS a case of working around the budget.

What does a composer's training consist of? Everything. While I never partook in formal training I know that, at least in Poland, it's called "composition and music theory", and I know it is so for a reason. I am not saying that formally trained musicians, especially in today's age (you just can't get rid of a whole century of music history, you just can't) are working around with everything and taking the experience of schools such as aleatorism, sonorism and so on.

I know that orchestral timbre is very important and there are reasons why Berlioz or Rimsky-Korsakov wrote their huge handbooks (Rimsky is as far as I've heard of regarding orchestration handbooks, sadly), so please don't imply that I see formal training as something downright limiting for a composer. What I am saying is something else and I guess I haven't made my point clear enough.

If you look at the sadly missing in today's film music Don Davis, you will see that there are plethora of influences he takes inspiration from. Matrix gave him the opportunity to write what he wanted to write for years, but while he has a heavily classical (even postmodern at that) background, you will see that his inspirations go as far as to even jazz and his film music interest was something that happened later. Davis is perfectly capable of programming really modern electronics and he is perfectly aware of orchestral color and how to combine the stuff.

As much as I see Inception as a great modern score, I also see The Matrix trilogy as the great modern score trilogy. Because it's a combination of the new with the old on so many levels. And, as I said, if I was making Inception, he'd be the name that would cross my mind immediately, though maybe he'd say no, because he wouldn't want to redo The Matrix again.

The last thing I'd want to say is that orchestral composers are limited when it comes to sound or sonorities, in no way. At least not after the 1950s in concert music history. What I am saying is that many traditionally trained composers in today's film music are limited (mostly by producers) to do the "traditional thing". I would also argue that while he was one of the more electronic composers in the 1980s, James Horner's electronic ideas really came to life only with Avatar and led to a much better symbiosis between the electronic and the acoustic than most of his previous career taken together. What I am also saying is that the autodidact and the trained composer can have totally different outlook at the ensemble *balance*.

And what I am trying to say all the time is that I find both approaches equally valid. I am still thinking how to tackle the musician-producer approach, as you rightfully called it.

But in no way I am dissing one of the most perfect thriller scores ever written that is Psycho and one of the greatest in the history of this genre that was Bernard Herrmann.

It was the wording of the phrase "generally defined sonorities" that I paraphrased to the meaning of "mundane". I'll back you up on the claim that composers are forced into stylistic modes by producers and commercial demand. The problem is not only a Hollywood phenomenon. You see it in internatiinal cinema as well, that the cultural monopoly Hollywood has is poisoning the minds of film makers everywhere. Education is vital in that respect. If we can advocate the neccesity of learning more about film music, and having film makers become more aware and musically literate, taking knowledge of the art more seriously, it would open the minds of many and become a neccessary step in revitalizing the art.

A synthesizer and a theremin or a Trautonium are something different, while they are all electronic, aren't they? We'd also have to add the addition of tape in the 1950s as something very important to development of music, though that's something I don't fully, I must admit, understand.

Right. Then that's true. What Herrmann and Rozsa did with its inclusion to film music was also a revolution, though somehow today rarely spoken of?

I would also argue that what let the untrained composer into the business so much, was introduced by one of the most technically brilliant composers in the history of the genre. It's what I call the MIDI revolution. That's where the idea of a synth mock-up started. That unheralded revolutionist would be Jerry Goldsmith.

My major points are:

1. Formally untrained composers think differently than classically uneducated and that can lead to interesting combinations and crossovers between genres, because they think differently, however that doesn't mean (and I never stated that, just concentrated on the autodidact composers) that classically trained composers can't bring in interesting experiments with, to me, the perfect example being the Matrix trilogy where a master of orchestration brings electronics and acoustic sonorities in a clever and innovative way.

2. Inexperienced film composers are a great addition to the genre, always, because they are always new voices for a genre that sometimes can (and does), as we say in Polish, "eat its own tail" (I hope this proverb is self-explanatory).

3. On the other hand, inexperienced composers can be sometimes easier manipulated by producers or directors to do more of the same. Daft Punk's Tron Legacy comes to mix, when they were actually forced by the studio to work within RCP's inner workings to save their presence on the project (I don't think they actually minded that, however).

4. There is a place in film music for everyone, but domineering trends are always, no matter what they are (yes, even if the general temp-track would have been, say, The Matrix today, rather than Inception, I wouldn't be happy either to get clones of that brilliant work in basically every mainstream blockbuster), a detriment to the development of film music as a genre.

5. I implore everyone, directors, producers, reviewers and listeners, to think and assess film music on a project-specific basis. What I mean by project-specific is that on the creative side, we must realize why Bourne Ultimatum, Inception, The Dark Knight or, I don't know, Glory sounds the way it does and how it aids that particular movie and why it was written this way.

6. On the reviewers' and listeners' side we must judge the music by how it is supposed to aid the specific projects so while our pre-conceptions, as any hermeneutist would say, do influence we see a particular score in a particular genre, we should try and assess the new work as a new work and not complain about a superhero score not sounding like Danny Elfman or John Williams, but think how did it happen and what was the idea behind making something somewhat differently. Without judgement. Each project from each perspective, either the former or this one, should be seen as a sort of tabula rasa, I believe.

6 points that are all separate discussions in themselves, IMO. But good points, and I agree with most of them, except maybe nr. 3, which seems to me more like a theoretical, constructed problem.

I'm also not that worried about "trends". Trends come and go and will always be part of our cultural development.

Mark, I would be very interested in hearing your opinion about something I sometimes feel about the, what I call, perfect technicians in film music. While they are amazing composers, serving both the movie and the orchestral tradition very well, I have a feeling that sometimes when they are uninspired, which can happen (how many awful movies has Jerry Goldsmith scored, for example?) a lot in the genre, they can simply "run to" their education in the way that allows them to keep a piece going just by the sheer power of their musicianship and knowledge of symphonic development.

An uneducated composer in that case is in a much worse situation, because if he deals with something God-awful and doesn't have the early enthusiasm of a young composer, will really suffer, because he doesn't have the technical proficiency to keep a cue going and struggles with finding a single note. I think this is where a score like Pearl Harbor (as much as I like the album) suffers.

Would you agree with that assessment? I am not saying, yet again, that John Williams or James Horner struggles less while working, but I am merely saying that the educated composer can pull off something really good much easier, just because he has the experience and theory to keep a piece going by power of their education.

Also, I'd like you to say more about the formal education in arts, this is something I am struggling with myself, not in music. Does formal education work in a heuristic way as opposed as only having the academic knowledge of theory or even philosophy of the particular art? How does it encourage creativity in terms of finding not necessarily new grounds in a particular artistic field, but a voice of one's own?

I don't want to attack formal education in any way, mind you. And I don't want to build a false dichotomy, in fact I am looking more for a dialectics between the autodidact and the educated .

Pawel, are you talking about composers going "autopilot" on some scores, surfing on their own knowledge and experience rather than being inspired to high heaven?

I always thought the trouble with Pearl Harbor was that Hans spent so much time trying to come up with the main theme that it didn't leave enough time to do the rest of the score without it sounding rushed. Indeed a lot of the score feels a bit "demo-ish" to me. I'm not surprised Hans hated the movie...he wouldn't be the only one.

Is it true that a lot of the action music is actually by Steve Jablonsky though? Because I've heard that.

80% of Goldsmith's career is a bit harsh, I think. The whole autopilot syndrome didn't really start setting in with him until the 90s, especially the second half with stuff like Executive Decision and Chain Reaction and The Sum of All Fears and such. And I actually prefer listening to those than to some of his early more difficult and arguably more inspired stuff.

One thing it's important to keep in mind is that a composer can't really go "autopilot" until he/she has established beyond a doubt their own personal style. It's hard to really think of, say, an autopilot Clint Mansell score (to take a non-classically-inclined example) because to my ears, Mansell doesn't have a readily identifiable style. So it's easier to pinpoint an "autopilot" Horner/Goldsmith/Williams/Silvestri score because you only need to hear a few seconds of any given music by them to know who it is you're listening to.

I guess you could talk about some of Danny Elfman's recent things like Oz the Great and Powerful as being autopilot, but I don't think it's any longer fair to lump Elfman in among the "not classically trained" composers, as he has clearly done his research in that field since then (Hans, not as much).

There have been some great 'autopilot' scores over the years, by great composers. Williams' THE PATRIOT comes to mind.

I don't mean to belittle Williams' talents at all, but it's hard to think of any composer with as much sheer dumb luck when it comes to picking or being handed projects that count, i.e. the ones that made his career, that give him public exposure beyond any other film composer. I mean, the whole one-two punch of Spielberg and Lucas aside, think about it...the one slapstick Christmas comedy type film he decides to score? Home Freaking Alone. The one superhero score he's ever done? Superman, which is almost certainly the most well-known and well-exposed entry in the genre for Joe Public. And he always had a keen sense of when to abandon ship on a sinking franchise...Superman, Jaws, Home Alone, Jurassic Park...admittedly the budget may have had something to do with all of those, but still. I'm not sure whether it's luck or just a really keen sense of selectiveness on Williams' part (or just attaching himself to the right people), but as brilliant as he is, he wouldn't be anywhere near as well known if it wasn't for his prescient project choices.

I mean, just look at how often Goldsmith had to pick up Williams' sloppy seconds, so to speak. Williams does Superman, Goldsmith gets Supergirl. Williams scores Raiders of the Lost Ark, Goldsmith is left with King Solomon's Mines (and later, The Mummy). Hell, you could even go so far as to say Williams got Star Wars and Goldsmith got Star Trek...and yeah, I know it's very different from SW and extremely well-known in its own right (probably Goldsmith's biggest claim to fame among the casual viewer...actually I bet the most well-known Goldsmith music is the Universal logo theme, which is a little sad), but even so, it doesn't really challenge Star Wars in the public consciousness. Switch around all those projects and you'd be looking at a very different film music scene.

*Ahem*.

But what's the last really bad, forgettable film JW was attached to? I mean, a movie like Goldsmith's U.S. Marshals or Deep Rising, the kind that really doesn't make a splash whatsoever (so stuff like Crystal Skull and the prequels doesn't count, as obviously those were still big, memorable films for all their faults). Going back through his filmography, really the first thing that strikes me as "forgettable" is Stepmom, and that's a decade and a half ago!

No composer with a career as long as Williams' can say that they've worked exclusively on good films, but the ratio of good-to-bad with the maestro still strikes me as uncannily in favor of the former. I'm kind of mostly referring to post-Star Wars Williams here, i.e. the famous stuff. His earlier career is full of weirdness.

Just my two cents. The Star Wars prequels were very forgettable. John Williams is a very selective composer, never one who attaches himself to that many movie, compared to James Horner or Jerry Goldsmith.