I don’t think I’d confuse a painting by Pollock with a painting by Wyeth nor a
poem by e e cummings with a Robert Frost poem. However, it is my
contention (and don’t be too contentious with me ) that really superb film
music composers compose “at times” vastly different pieces of music,
music that truly contrasts previous scores, because of the variable
medium called films.

Historical films-in Rome, Egypt, England, Ireland, Iceland, Japan, ect. all
call for different sounds. Other genres like fantasy, science fiction, westerns,
romance, and so forth demand diversified musical palates.
It is this ability for a composer to write such VARIED music that makes
his/her art form so completely multi-faceted, and this talent is what garners
so much respect from me. If I didn’t know D. Tiomkin, and you played
for me Friendly Persuasion and The Thing, I would say they
were NOT written by the same composer. No way.

I thought it might be a tad bit of a challenge and kind of fun to come up with
extremely opposite film score compositions by the same composer. Don’t
just list them. Jabber about them a little. Some of my examples are:

Conti: Today I’m listening to Invocation from Slow Dancing In A Big
City. If you haven’t heard it, you’re missing a gorgeous, slow, melodic
piece of music, and I can hardly believe that the same composer wrote
the rollicking, rhythmic Rocky.

Moross: Loved A Big Country and found The Jayhawkers and
Valley of Gwangi very similar, and then I heard The Cardinal which
is religious, melodic, and slow without his trademark western rhythms. Very
different compositions. ( I just know some smart aleck will find two measures
of similarity. )

Williams: I watched the original TV production of Jane Eyre and
marveled at this music that sounded so lush, romantic, and historically
appropriate. And this same composer composes Jaws, which
contains some of the scariest music ever written. After hearing Jane Eyre,
I don’t think I would have thought of Williams for Jaws, Star Wars,
Superman, etc. It just shows the dangers of typecasting.

Shore: Who would of “thunk” that the composer of the textures in
The Cell and the atmospheric sounds in Se7ven would have scored
the epic, thematic sounds of LOTR? Nuff said.

E. Bernstein: Elmer has his signature western rhythms first so eloquently
displayed in The Magnificent Seven. Contrast those sounds to the
child-like passage of innocence so beautifully scored in To Kill A
Mockingbird or to the epic religious sounds in The Ten
Commandments.

Don’t know enough about Herrmann and several others to do this.

Without further exposition here are others that amaze me. Alfred Newman’s
Wuthering Heights to How The West Was Won to his
modern sounds in Airport. Morricone’s
The Good, the Bad, the Ugly to The Mission. Goldsmith’s
Rudy to his A Patch of Blue. Got to stop. It’s fun and
addictive. ...and Elfman’s Sommersby to his Planet of the Apes
and...and...

I've heard rumors that anyone can tell when it's a Goldsmith piece.....

--Brian

(If I were Shaun or JJH, I'd call them retarded ass bastards! )

More to come.... Nice topic, Joan!

Who'd 'a thot the very same Leonard Rosenman who scored the jazzy Rebel Without A Cause would go on to score the ethereal Fantastic Voyage?

Who'd 'a thot that the Jerry Goldsmith who composed the deeply moving Islands In The Stream would also be the insanely WACKY musical voice behind The 'burbs?

Seriously,
how about anything from James Horner's early career compared to his nowadays' scores

I'd say every talented composer can do totally opposite things - my all-time favorite is Alan Silvestri because he can include the opposite things (and even much more) into a SINGLE film score, and still he is able to insert his signature style in everything he does.

The seamless melding of brutal modernism and ethereal impressionism in Poltergeist.

The wonder and lyricism of The Secret of Nimh.

The Japanese ethnic flavorings and harsh rythms of The Challenge.

The muscularity of First Blood.

The broadly diverse pallete of Twilight Zone: The Movie which ranges from the lyrical and sentimental to minimalism to the outragous and experimental.

The moody Central American (and Andean) colors of Under Fire.

We still have more composers to cover.

I’m no Herrmann expert, but a while ago I watched The Ghost
and Mrs. Muir with its attractive “time-passage” music and melodies,
and none of it sounded like some of the scores he did for Hitchcock movies.

Coming as it did AFTER his MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM, I think it's surprising that the score is so anchored in the early 50s Victor Young school. The De Mille epic was, of course, a "bible in pictures" thingy with a cinematically archaic style, but I'm still surprised at the zero level of innovation employed by the composer. There are hints of his later (and earlier!) writing in the solos for the source cues, but mostly I get the feeling of "Eh, That's Elmer Bernstein?"

Nobody mentioned Henry Mancini? I suppose his claim to fame is his romantic music, but when he wanted to whip up tension, he whipped it up alright. It's intriguing to think of the composer of BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S and THE PINK PANTHER at work on the unsubtle terrors of THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON.

Shore is a modern composer who is showing more and more versatility with each score. For a while I thought he was all textures and atmospheric sounds only, but my revisiting Big and last year's The Score and LOTR all have lead me to reevaluate his work.