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Author	Topic: Best use of outside music in film

Ted Oscar® Winner	Here are my favorite history of use of outside music in the movies and a brief reasoning of why I chose my favorite examples. Feel free to add your favorites: (2001) Thus Spake Zarathustra: Who can forget the opening theme from the finest science fiction movie ever? (Apocolypse Now/The Blues Brothers) Flight of the Valkyries: They tie because they both use it quite well; Apocolypse now for the surreal helicopter attack on the Vietnamese harbor and The Blues Brothers for its climactic and hilarious car chase involving those pesky Nazi's. (Platoon) Adagio for Strings: Music used in one of the most powerful moments in war movie history...I won't tell what because that would be evil of me. (Excalibur) O Fortuna: O fortuna...something hmm-na...ya-da-hum-dada-da da...Just awesome stuff. (A Clockwork Orange) 9th symphony: I will never hear that song the same way again after that super-disturbing ludovico torture scene... (Brazil) Brazil: I just put that on there because like the movie (amazing), the song just doesn't fit anywhere and doesn't quite make much sense when put in the movie, but it's so strange that you never forget it. Believe me, I've tried... NP: An Epitaph to War.mp3 (Glory) James Horner ***/*** [This message has been edited by Ted (edited 18 December 1999).]
posted 12-18-1999 09:45 PM PT (US)

James Oscar® Winner	Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King" as used in Fritz Lang's M. Unforgettable. Now every time I hear this piece I think of child murder... James NP - whistling ITHOTMK
posted 12-20-1999 07:49 PM PT (US)

Floyd Pepper Oscar® Winner	Yes, 2001 is my choice also, but not the zarathustra-theme. Really great, I think, was the use of Gyorgi Ligeti's music, which you can alwys hear when the black monolith appears, it's just woooow... Floyd.
posted 01-15-2000 02:42 PM PT (US)

Aaron Hose Oscar® Winner	One word: Goodfellas. - A. NP: Williams' "Unfinished Journey" (MP3)(**/***)
posted 01-15-2000 04:25 PM PT (US)

Scott Oscar® Winner	Yes Floyd, Ligeti's music was also used very well in "The Shining". Scott
posted 01-15-2000 05:28 PM PT (US)

PeterD Oscar® Winner	Dimitri Tiomkin's increasingly tortured (intentionally) variations on "The Merry Widow Waltz" in Hitchcock's "Shadow of a Doubt," as Teresa Wright gradually comes to realize that Joseph Cotton is indeed the "Merry Widow Killer" . . . Hurd Hatfield playing Chopin's 24th Prelude to a very young Angela Lansbury in "The Picture of Dorian Gray."
posted 01-16-2000 08:34 AM PT (US)

Matt Oscar® Winner	Matrix, The Crow, Apocalypse Now(Ride of the Valkyries, hehe) 2001 is hardly the finest sci-fi film ever. That goes to Blade Runner, followed by Aliens. Then 2001, but on technical credit alone. I have problems with the use of outside music in 2001. It isnt the pieces Kubrik selected..I think they were chosen very well. It's just that he shouldnt have used the WHOLE FRIKKIN PIECE for one scene. I could cut the run-time down by 2 hours just by shortening the docking sequence. Also Patriot games, the music used during the scene where the strike force goes in and wipes out the camp, and we see it from the satalite images....I can never remember the name of the piece, but it was also in 2001 and the end credits of Aliens. Enya added some fantastic music to L.A. Story...dont know if the songs were written for the movie or not tho.
posted 01-16-2000 03:37 PM PT (US)

H Rocco Oscar® Winner	EXCALIBUR's use of "O Fortuna" was mentioned above, but the film's main signature is "Siegfried's Funeral March" from Wagner's "Ring" saga. I finally caught up to the Trevor Jones score that was mostly thrown out, and I have to say, the director (John Boorman) made the right decision in this case. The Wagner stuff is infinitely more impressive. (And I LIKE Trevor Jones' music, at least some of it, but this time he wasn't on the ball.) THE HUDSUCKER PROXY was temped with music by Aram Khatchaturian, and by the time Carter Burwell came aboard, the Coen Bros. thought that that music might be more appropriate for what they had in mind. Burwell, who's scored EVERY ONE of their pictures, simply agreed to adapt it to the shape of the movie. And the Khatchaturian stuff -- mainly heard as variations of the love theme, and over the crazed birth-of-the-hula-hoop sequence -- is utterly perfect for the tone of the picture. As good as Burwell is, I doubt he could have done much better there than imitate it. And he must have agreed, which is why he went along with just adapting it directly. (He also composed some original stuff, heard both in the movie and on the Varese CD.)
posted 01-16-2000 05:13 PM PT (US)

Swashbuckler Oscar® Winner	Matt, I hope not to shock you, or to bring this issue up again, but the piece of music you're referring to, Aram Khachaturian's "Adagio" from his "Gayaneh" ballet suite was - er - "appropriated" by Horner for those scores. He's done this several times without once crediting Khachaturian. Rocco, I actually thought Boorman's use of "Parsifal" was fascinating. Some people might get on my case about this, but I also liked Boorman's use of the classics in "Zardoz." Ted, the song "Brazil" is an escapist fantasy. That's what the idea behind using it as the theme for the Walter Mitty-esque Sam Lowry.
posted 01-17-2000 02:29 PM PT (US)

H Rocco Oscar® Winner	Swashbuckler, "Parsifal," of course. At least I think "of course." Do you mean "Tristan und Isolde"? Boorman cleverly used a subtler arrangement of "Siegfried's Funeral March" during the brief scene of a downed German pilot in HOPE AND GLORY. The pilot was played by his son Charley (also the star of THE EMERALD FOREST, and he played the gold-armored little young Mordred in EXCALIBUR). In Werner Herzog's NOSFERATU (1979), he used "Siegfried's Rhine Journey" to colossal effect during the beautiful, eerie sequences of Jonathan Harker crossing the mountains to reach Castle Dracula.
posted 01-17-2000 08:47 PM PT (US)

Marian Schedenig Oscar® Winner	"Cantata for Rain Clouds" (or whatever it is called, forgot the name of the composer), in the climax sequence of Hitchcock's "The Man Who Knew Too Much". And not only because we can see Herrmann conducting.
posted 02-24-2000 05:15 AM PT (US)

PeterD Oscar® Winner	Yes, that was the "Storm Clouds Cantata," by Arthur Benjamin -- great piece of music (finally available on CD!!), and a great Hitchcock sequence. Benjamin was commissioned to write it for Hitchcock's original 1934 version of the movie (oops, does that mean it's not "outside" music?); according to Steven Smith's Herrmann biography, Herrmann was given the option of writing a new piece of music for Hitchcock's 1956 remake, but feeling, understandably, that no one could top Benjamin's work, chose instead to re-orchestrate it, expanding it somewhat in the process.
posted 02-24-2000 04:10 PM PT (US)

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