HELLBOUND
HELLRAISER
FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC
HARD RAIN
MURDER IN THE FIRST
CINEMA SEPTET (double CD from Intrada)
BAT-21

and once again, Marian, since you like Rosenman, which suggests in turn that you enjoy abstract music, Intrada also sells (or used to sell) really cheap CDs of Young's music -- used to be 99 cents, but last time I looked, it was upped to $3.99 -- THE VAGRANT, HIDER IN THE HOUSE, JUDICIAL CONSENT, and NORMA JEAN & MARILYN (that last one has some really lovely melodies in it).

My basic attitude towards Christopher Young's music is: if you see it, buy it.

Every CD I've mentioned above are official ones, but Young's produced some promos as well, most of which I don't have (oh yes, URBAN LEGEND is huge and terrific.)

quote:

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Originally posted by Howard L:

"The criticism is on the basis of how well the music stands on its own as a CD listening experience from end to end. True, this criticism does not take into account how well or how not well the music functioned in the film it was specifically designed for, nor does it necessarily acknowledge the limitations imposed upon the composer as it relates to the medium of film itself. The criticism is, therefore, an ad hoc exercise aimed most specifically at and for the benefit of the members of the soundtrcak listening audience who listen to the music devoid of the film-viewing experience."

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First, sorry that I keep banging this point over your head whenever the theme pops up. I just can't help it.

Second, thanks for putting into words what my limited vocabulary has been aiming at for quite some time. The above does indeed represent what I mean and feel concerning the art of film music. A few additions, though:

Yes, the limitations you talk of evaporate in any "Thorian" film music criticism. The magnificent thing about this music genre is namely that it has two lives - one in film and one on CD. That we call this latter incarnation FILM MUSIC is an abomination, really. It should be called "Visual music" or something more generic like that.

You talk about criticism. There are two ways of "critizing" film music. The obvious one is in relation to the movie (any proper "analysis" MUST take the film into account). The other is of the music itself. The latter should be evaluated, or better: appreciated, through the criterions of INTELLECT, MEMORY (not of the film), EMOTIONS and IMAGINATION. In other words, it has nothing to do with the movie itself. The former is aimed at the movie buff, that latter at people like me.

As you might gather from all these posts, MY viewpoint is perhaps more diffcult to defend and elaborate upon, basically because I oppose the appreciation of film music as a movie artifact, and that I have nothing physical (i.e. the film) to attach them to. Thus, my points are forced to be abstract (like the 4 criterions above), claiming the genre's appeal to my emotions etc. I'm sorry, then, if my points come off as "thin" or far-fetched.

That's an interesting point which does justice to the idea of taking a score for a film to another level, a different level and judging it on the basis of that level and that level only.

"As you might gather from all these posts, MY viewpoint is perhaps more diffcult to defend and elaborate upon, basically because I oppose the appreciation of film music as a movie artifact...Thus, my points are forced to be abstract claiming the genre's appeal to my emotions etc. I'm sorry, then, if my points come off as 'thin or far-fetched'".

They most certainly do not, although the self-opposition you refer to indeed must make defining your position most challenging to a nut like me. And yet I too tend to delve heavily into the aesthetics and get abstract and all. Weird, isn't it, how we end up sharing much yet from different perspectives. Anyway, you can imagine my frustration at opening up FSM, for instance, and seeing so much print devoted to stand-alone CDs and so little space to the music as part of the film. That's why I think what you call "movie artifact" I prefer to call "motion picture experience" and why I'd like to see more articles like the Papillon feature by that John Bartholomew Tucker guy or whatever he calls himself. It would seem to make sense in light of FSM's own poll which showed something like 80% of the respondents declaring that they see the movie first before delving into the soundtrack--again, in most cases.

re: the FSM issue

The reason you hate it is the reason I love it. Despite Mr. Kendall's alleged "FILM music"-attitude (see today's FSM daily to see what I mean), the magazine itself offers refreshing reviews where scores are analyzed in musical terms (some too technical for me to grasp, but that's just a nice challenge) and only casually referring to the film itself. I love that.

But I ALSO love things like that Guy Tucker/PAPILLON-article that you talk about. I read the latter with considerable interest, but the musical side of me was dormant while doing it. It was the movie buff that loved it.

Yes, I DO have a somewhat scizoid attitude towards film music.

[This message has been edited by Thor (edited 11 May 2000).]

1) I am interested in music
2) I am interested in movies
3) Because of 1 & 2, I am interested in movie music

And I am interested and it is important to me how well a film score works in a movie, I appreciate the art of film scoring in conjunction with the motion picture, much in the same way that I appreciate cinematography or editing.

But that's just one part of the story, because unlike cinematography or editing I can also appreciate a film score on its own. That's when its conjunction with the movie becomes less important.

Either area of discussion is "legitimate", but when I watch a movie I don't care how well the music will hold up on CD, and vice versa when I listen to a CD I don't care all that much how well the music works in the movie. Of course, it happens often (though not always) that the music fails or succeeds ob both levels. Sometimes the music does not hold up all that well on its own, or the CD release is not very satisfying.

From a film buff's point of view, one can also approach a score knowing what was behind the minds of the creators. In the case of PAPILLON, there's a fair amount of evidence. But, thinking of the great Goldsmith/Schaffner collaboration, the very fact of it begs another point:

Film music is a peculiar animal -- it's rarely merely the work of its composer, it also suffers input from director, producers, and even, sometimes, actors. Take the debacle that is the Dave Grusin score for FALLING IN LOVE: they'd temped much of it with his merry little unrelated composition "Mountain Dance," which is in direct contrast to the soberer theme Grusin finally wrote and recorded for it. Meryl Streep looked at that version and asked -- perhaps quite innocently -- "What happened to the other music?" This was interpreted as "you'd better put it back in" (and I have no idea if Streep actually meant that), and so Grusin's more appropriate theme was ditched. (Other original compositions of his did make it in, including, no doubt, versions of his original idea.)

Director Franklin Schaffner always had very specific ideas about the music for his movies. When directors know about music, Goldsmith observed, "it can be dangerous ... I know a director who plays the piano beautifully, but he doesn't understand anything about music in film." (I've no idea who this is.) Schaffner, however, had keen dramatic instincts that remain underrated to this day. The PAPILLON article echoes something I've thought for years now: if Schaffner had lived longer, he'd probably be batting in the same leagues as John Frankenheimer, whether for cable, the big screen, or both.

The Schaffner/Goldsmith collaboration is truly a collaboration: I've dropped numerous anecdotes before (some of the same ones that appear in the PAPILLON piece, I've noticed), and so in some ways, Schaffner is a sort of silent co-author of those scores. No, he couldn't have written the tunes (that I know of), but his own dramatic sense was so powerful, that it's inevitably true that each note that appears in each film bears his stamp: especially in those handful of instances when he chose to cut things. e.g. the earlier section of the escape-from-the-ship music in PLANET OF THE APES. Or to supplant things, as in the substitution of bits of an earlier cue for the last section of "Hospital" in PAPILLON. Or his suggestion that THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL be written in 4/4 time like a waltz. (Goldsmith originally thought that suggestion was deranged, as he did Schaffner's idea that PAPILLON's score should be "remniscent of Montmartre." By the same token, Goldsmith's approach to PATTON had a lot of people scratching their heads in puzzlement. Until they heard it.)

But as it was a true collaboration, Goldsmith's stamp is all over each picture just as Schaffner's implicit approval dictated each score. I've told already the story of Goldsmith's music for the slapping sequence in PATTON: Goldsmith was the one who finally said "Take it out, it won't work." While Schaffner thought there might be a way to try and save it. And Goldsmith insisted that the music for "Battleground" come in later than Schaffner wanted, for dramatic purposes. He won that one. And he also won on MACARTHUR, when director Joseph Sargent wanted to crank the music up high at one moment, but Goldsmith thought the music shouldn't overwhelm the scene. Goldsmith has refreshingly little ego when it comes to this kind of thing.

Perhaps that should be a whole other thread, "film music in a strange animal ... " I was just planning to lurk here for the moment, I've got errands, but I just had to get that out, scrambled as it may be.

My position is that film music is like program music; while it can be listened to divorced from anything else (I had loved the album for "The Wind and the Lion" for years before I saw the film, and I still haven't seen "The Blue Max," for example, and I've never seen "2001" with Alex North's score), often I find the film/music interaction illuminating.

For "The Wind and the Lion," I was surprised to find that the score I knew and loved was only for ONE ASPECT of the film. This makes me appreciate the process that went into the making of the music.

Whether someone is interested in that process or not is what this boils down to, after all. Just as some people will have no use for a commentary track on a DVD, some people don't care about where the music comes from, only that it IS, in the same sense that Mount Everest IS, and Almer Cogen ISN'T (if anyone gets the Monty Python reference, please let me know what it means).

I'm not criticizing those who have no interest in that; there are plenty of worthy subjects out there I certainly couldn't care less about. But I believe that those who are saying "just enjoy the music, man" are those who fall into the category of those disinterested in the process of that music's creation.

Regarding my original comments, it is my belief that for the most part, especially with John Williams' scores, film music tends to develop thematic material in a linear fashion. As a result, restructuring the music for album listening robs the music of some of its internal symmetry. As much as I may love the original "Star Wars" album, I find that as a MUSICAL work it suffers from being restructured.

There have been times when I HAVE endorsed a re-thinking of the music for album purposes, such as Thomas Newman's "The Player."

However, I have no problem with releases like "Jaws 2" and "The Living Daylights" that present cues out of order with information in the program notes for being able to program it chronologically. It's a good way to meet people halfway.

When tracks consist of a mishmash of cues from all over the film, it's a bit more difficult, and also betrays the unity of the cue itself.

Regarding the completeness of scores, well...

With film music, unfortunately, we are placed in the unique position of being aware of music that we can't have.

We hear a cue in a film that we like (or, in some cases, you hear a SCORE in a film that you like, such as John Williams' "Images" or Carter Burwell's "Waterland") and it is not available in album form. Well, you can argue all you want about how bad some films are, you can't deny that film music would not exist without it, and if you've seen these films and like the music, well, you're s--t out of luck.

Many times I hear the argument, "Be glad you're getting ANYTHING." Well, I am. But beyond that, as a paying customer, I'm annoyed if I shell out the exorbitant price that CDs go for these days only to find the reason you bought the album isn't on it.

While I understand that not every film can have a release of the complete score, the idea that "nobody would be interested in this cue" is ridiculous. Time and again someone posts a comment on a message board lamenting the fact that there is a cue missing from an album.

In the case of "The Phantom Menace," I just found the album to be an awful representation of the score, with many of the most dramatic cues left off. Who, in their right minds, would not include "Anakin Leave Home?"

I see that what was supposed to be a breezy reply has not only gotten a bit confrontational, but also has reached an obnoxious Daniel2-esque length. I've also been experimenting with the smileys, which explains their prevalence. So, I'll leave you with a song...

"99 bottles of beer on the wall..."
(I've been sick this week)

P.S. A serpent, Howard?