Film music, I think that we both agree, must serve the film first; one should appreciate a score first and foremost for its dramatic contribution to the picture.

The composer should write scores that reflect upon contemporary styles, invention, etc.

WHERE I differ (and from my perspective, I hope others) is in the INTERPRETATION of what satisfies these views.

I remember reading DANIEL2 mentioning that film music basically enhances.

He's right on.

Here's my problem: An *expectation* of a prominent film composer is to enhance the drama. It's a pedestrian role for film music. Again, a *prominent* film composer should be able to enhance or indicate the emotion, rhythm, etc. of a scene no problem. Film music does basically enhance.

I want more than that; the really gifted artist is able to do more. *I* expect more than that.

(See capture/create thread for specifics)

After seeing GLADIATOR last night, I can't stress enough how much more film music must be bridged together between cues. While themes abound it GLADIATOR, that was as much a problem in this case as it can be a solution. The themes contained no relationships to another, and thus, there was no real direction or linking capacity to the score as the musical component of the picture. Yada-yada-yada.

(See Gladiator: great movie/horrible score thread)

But, unity, unity, unity. I concede, Mr. 2, that James Horner structures a score frighteningly well. His music is accessible in the film and the relationships within and between cues are clear and precise.

I still have issues with James Horner, but, he is very skilled in this manner.

The music itself in a composer's score.

My interpretations of contemporary or good music are clearly and distinctively different from yours, DANIEL2. I didn't need to say it, I'm sure. But we're almost night and day.

This is why I avoid criticizing film music's sound apart from effects desired in the film. My opinions of what makes good music and so forth are only as significant as anyone else's opinion.

I know that you've criticized Goldsmith's anthem to STAR TREK-THE MOTION PICTURE in comparison to Williams' theme for STAR WARS.

I would be inclined to do the reverse. (There's many more notes and players performing in STAR WARS, by the way.) In the basic melody alone, Goldsmith takes about HALF the notes Williams does to make in essence a complete statement musically (the rises of each).

ST-TMP: Bum--Bum-Bum-Bum Bum-Bum-Bum

STAR WARS: Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum--Bum Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum--Bum Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum--Bum Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum

In relation to the effect attempted to be achieved and conveyed in the film--both essentially the same (majesty, space, whatnot)--I find Goldsmith to succeed beyond Williams here musically.

Just as an example.

The fact is, I find Goldsmith's music to be much more contemporary than Williams'. EVERYONE for whom I have ever played both of these two themes mentioned has agreed with me about this, what you would call CMS.

It's just more modern in every way. Right down to the electronics.

This said, I think there's only one composer who consistently writes competent, intelligent yet accessible film scores and at the same time significant, enjoyable music...

...and that's Jerry Goldsmith.

No one comes else close (with a few exceptions). This man is a great student of and authority on film music theory and various musical history and styles.

He is the only student he had that Miklos Rosza ever praised. Heck, he even got compliments out of Mr. Herrmann, who was adversial to his own reflection!

Goldsmith's scores blossom with unity, creativity, and charm.

I mean, this whole CMS thing, I just heard a rap song (arguably the most recent addition to pop music styles) that used Goldsmith's theme from DEEP RISING in it! Literally USED. The EXACT same thing. NO MISTAKING IT. NONE. PERIOD. It was Goldsmith.

If one thinks it gets any more CMS than that, it is just plain BS.

I mean, I can't ever recall hearing a gangsta rapper use Horner or Zimmer music.

Not to mention the beautiful Sarah Brightman-sung version of "No One Like You," displaying once again the fact that that's beautifully written music that was just lacklusterly recorded and (by the NPO!!!) performed the first time around in 1995.

The fact of the matter is that if someone wants to hear more RUSSIA HOUSE, Goldsmith has to get a RUSSIA HOUSE. UNDER FIRE, give him an UNDER FIRE to score.

I'm not going to criticize or defend Goldsmith's film choices (despite the fact that I see a quasi-genius in it--after all, just how many films are there that he's scored that have been made noteworthy by him singlehandedly?). I'm just saying that it's hard to ask a chameleon to stop blending in. He's going to write the music that the movie demands.

With this whole KID thing, Goldsmith was the perfect choice. A director/producer can do no better.

We've already seen how great composers get the shaft.

Under the logic that's often used to criticize Goldsmith, Alex North and Bernard Herrmann--in addition to every other composer who's ever had a score rejected--are incapable.

Let's face the music; those three are the most brilliant their profession has ever seen. And each was told his business by directors that thought they knew better. Directors who really know much less than each of us.

Remember, Hitchcock wanted the shower scene unscored.

Think about how many times at least decent film composers have saved directors from terrible mistakes.

I was almost relieved when I found out it was that Turtle whatever guy directing THE KID and that Goldsmith had left the project. The guy's a moron. Goldsmith's got more of a brain in his (name your favorite body part here) than does Tortoise boy in his head.

I'm also sort of glad that Goldsmith's just gotten to a point where he's not going to compromise his standards for these kinds of nitwits (sp?).

In Obi-wanian spirit, he's "getting too old for this sort of thing."

You sum up the precise nature of my own futile quarrels with Mr. 2 quite well. "Night and day" -- there it is. As I keep saying, writing about music -- about any art form, really -- is completely, even frighteningly subjective, and although it's been tempting to think one could amass a LOGICAL argument against certain of Daniel's positions, I think I've found it's NOT possible. Night and day. I've written many times that I agree with him more often than not on certain positions -- that film music is principally there to serve THE FILM -- that's obvious. That it can be a thing of beauty on its own -- that's obvious too.

Goldsmith would have been perfect for THE KID, but he fell victim to a hack director, and, perhaps, his own biases. He walked off WALL STREET because he felt he could not give Oliver Stone the score he wanted. He is, I suspect, in a position where he no longer wishes to deal with directors who either don't know what they want (as he said happened on GLADIATOR, directed by an even worse hack than Turteltaub), or want something he's not prepared to give. All of art is knowing where to stop, as they say; and why should he, at this stage of his life and career, waste his time writing something he feels he could never care about?

Goldsmith has said many times that the advantage of being a film composer is that, on average, at least his work will get HEARD. James Horner had the same feeling about it, at least at the beginning: he found it so monstrously difficult to get his first concert work performed that he figured the hell with it, he might as well move into films. At least, he's said that before. I don't know what his present justification is. But obviously he loves having HIS work heard, look at those monstrously long albums he insists on producing.

I've begun, recently, to wonder if Goldsmith's choices in assignments -- often so damnably weird over the years -- did not reflect that he was picking films he could flatter dramatically, to be sure -- but ALSO because they were projects that could mirror a kind of INTERNAL development. Listen to how similar certain, arguably opposite kinds of assignments he did in the seventies and eighties, and then notice how similar the scores can be.

A mututal friend of composer Gil Melle tells me that Melle grouches, "What's the big deal about Goldsmith? He writes the same score every time!" An exaggeration, to be sure, and yet you hear the same kinds of experiments from pictures as various as CONTRACT ON CHERRY STREET to CAPRICORN ONE; PAPILLON morphs into THE WIND AND THE LION; 100 RIFLES and THE ILLUSTRATED MAN are the bastard stepchildren of PLANET OF THE APES; and so on. I think one could make the argument that Goldsmith's entire filmography to date represents some kind of massive symphony, cloaked in the guise of film music. Not that he is not the most impeccable dramatist in the field -- that's a bonus.

I am reminded (as I always am) by my other favorite composer, Akira Ifukube, who took much the same approach, I think. The other great Japanese film composer of their era, Masaru Sato, told me that he respected Ifukube most of all because "he never let the movie deform his music." Some of you would argue that therefore, he was an inferior dramatist. I believe, however, that he was simply typecast, everyone knew precisely what kind of sound they'd get from an Ifukube, Sato or Mayuzumi, and that's why they were hired. (GODZILLA director Ishiro Honda didn't even know Ifukube when he was preparing the film, but he knew from the get-go that no one else would be as perfect for the movie. He was right.)

I think the same holds for Goldsmith. And if one feels like being especially generous to Horner, one notices the KINDS of assignments he's sought out from the very beginning -- he's always loved intimate dramas like THE STONE BOY, THE DRESSER, and more recently, things like THE SPITFIRE GRILL. He's also attracted to epic fantasy, e.g. his best score in recent years, BALTO. (Okay, not "epic" fantasy, it's about sled dogs, but it's the same kind of Tchaikovskian milieu in which he's done most of his best work.)

John Williams, in turn, when not keeping up his relationships with Spielberg and Lucas, tries to spread himself out in different directions -- that's why he SOUGHT OUT assignments like HOME ALONE and STEPMOM. The excellent SEVEN YEARS IN TIBET also represents a kind of change for him (one industry fellow pointed out to me that Williams seems especially interested, these past ten years, in writing scores based around virtuoso writing for solo instruments -- Tim Morrison's trumpet, Yo Yo Ma's cello, the guitar in STEPMOM, and so on.)

I'm rambling on longer than I intended, but I do think I'm on to something here. Goldsmith and, until recently, Horner were the most prolific composers in the field; I really think their choices of assignments (since they pretty much have their pick of them) represent some reflection of their interior development as composers. Williams and Elfman as well. (Elfman is another one who pursues projects you'd never expect from him, which is why he's among the most interesting to me. On the other hand, Carter Burwell resembles Ifukube in that no matter the assignment, it will ALWAYS reflect his particular eccentric style. Leonard Rosenman is another.)

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John Williams, in turn, when not keeping up his relationships with Spielberg and Lucas, tries to spread himself out in different directions -- that's why he SOUGHT OUT assignments like HOME ALONE and STEPMOM. The excellent SEVEN YEARS IN TIBET also represents a kind of change for him (one industry fellow pointed out to me that Williams seems especially interested, these past ten years, in writing scores based around virtuoso writing for solo instruments -- Tim Morrison's trumpet, Yo Yo Ma's cello, the guitar [Christopher Parkening] in STEPMOM, and so on.)

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I've always found Williams' music to be rather virtuosic, sort of "concertos for orchestra," if you will. He always passes stuff around the orchestra.
I mean his blazing trumpet writing in ESB's "Battle of Hoth," the woodwinds in Temple of Doom's "Mine Car Chase"; the brass writing in Phantom Menace really is good, as are the heavy, swirling string parts. There's just so much going on in the orchestra!
Even music like Stanley & Iris is deceptively difficult, i.e., the solo flute and trumpet themes.

I think it's very interesting he actually sought to write scores for those solists.

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Originally posted by Bulldog:
The composer should write scores that reflect upon contemporary styles, invention, etc.

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So, you feel that every single score written should have a CMS influence? If so, I'll have to disagree. While I do believe it's fine for some movies, it would be totally unnecessary for some. I mean, can you imagine Harrison Ford fight Andrew Divoff in AIR FORCE ONE while a wailing guitar and some techno-rythm track sound off in the background? I don't think so. Big movies need big scores, and while some sound okay with CMS, most do not.

Composing Mediocre Scores?
Chasing Musical Snivel?
Composers' Messed Sensibilities?
Contemporary Mindless Statements?

Hey C & A,

I think that I didn't make myself very clear of what I meant by DANIEL's CMS. Maybe mine's different than his....

When I say CMS, I sort of want to imply that when the terrorist has a gun to the president's head in AFO, I just don't want to hear Brahms or something (or Golden Age action music!--not to short the Golden Oldies!). I think that, for instance, Goldsmith, since he is the composer at hand in this thread, has made great strides in writing contemporarily styled action music--meaning certain rhythms, orchestration, electronics.

Where I think CMS goes overboard would be with what youy describe--indeed, HOW AWFUL WOULD THAT BE!!!

Music should generate the effects and not vice-versa. Film music should sound modern as much as it can...but should not disregard tradition and accessibility--basically what has stood the test of time and that we know, musically, works.

To describe a film score as successfully CMS, is just another way of saying that the music is appropriate to the picture. A successful CMS score does NOT exclude the use of traditional forces….CMS is not about contriving the use of electric guitars and saxophones or pop rhythms just for the sake of it. Some of the most successfully CMS scores of the 90’s have had little or no pop or jazz stylings. Newton Howard’s MY BEST FRIENDS WEDDING, and Zimmer’s AS GOOD AS IT GETS, are two delightful and witty classically-orientated scores. In fact, contemporary popular music itself is embracing all existing musical denominations like never before, be it classical, jazz, Celtic, Latin etc etc etc. Film music and contemporary popular music continue to be irresistibly drawn together…the gravitational force at work being CMS….the music world, the film world, and society as whole, are now embracing all forms of music with open arms.