You get a lot of dissention among Glass fans about his music now. Many of them think he's run out of ideas or, even worse, that he stopped caring, "sold out," and now just writes music to please the masses. Frankly the latter position sounds ludicrous to me, since he's not nearly as popular a figure now as he was in the 70's and 80's. As to the former notion, yes, he does repeat himself a lot, perhaps even more so than Horner. But since his work is based on repetition in the first place, it generally doesn't bother me; additionally, he's also certainly the most prolific composer in the concert hall today, so things are going to tend to run together. In the past four years alone he's written (at least): one symphony, five concerti, three operas, a couple of chamber pieces, and five film scores. And that's in addition to his busy life as a performer with his ensemble.

But anyway, on to his film scores. Now, you do have to consider that half of Secret Window was actually written by Geoff Zanelli, and neither of them ever heard any of what the other composer was doing. But even so, Glass's music in Secret Window is rather surprising. One cue in the film, in which Johnny Depp is pushing his truck off the cliff, I thought for sure must have been written by Zanelli. But later on I watched the animatics on the DVD, which contain only score on the soundtrack, and now that I could here the piece more clearly I discovered it was indeed Glass.

I think what has happened here is that, through experience, Glass has just become a better "film composer". He was always used to having music in the foreground, or at least on equal terms with the visuals (i.e., the Qatsi trilogy), but he seems to finally be getting used to making his music subservient to a film. I doubt he'd be interested in working that way on every picture he does, but it's an interesting new side to his musical personality.

Kirk

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Originally posted by James:
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But anyway, on to his film scores. Now, you do have to consider that half of Secret Window was actually written by Geoff Zanelli, and neither of them ever heard any of what the other composer was doing. But even so, Glass's music in Secret Window is rather surprising. One cue in the film, in which Johnny Depp is pushing his truck off the cliff, I thought for sure must have been written by Zanelli. But later on I watched the animatics on the DVD, which contain only score on the soundtrack, and now that I could here the piece more clearly I discovered it was indeed Glass.

Kirk

[Message edited by James on 09-27-2004][/B]

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You may want to watch the scene in the film again and then the animatic. The film version appears to be Zanelli and the animatic is what Glass did. They're totally different pieces. I noticed it right away and was really surprised.

Thanks for the heads-up.

The Forgotten suffered from too much music in my opinion. Oh well....