Clarity Mail Bag

Following are some interesting letters we received in response to Dan Hobgood's essay on clarity in film scoring (see part one and part two).

Sad news: Hammer composer James Bernard has passed away. See the thread on our message board. We'll try to have more soon.

For those of you who follow the discussion at the FSM Messageboard, you might have noticed my heated debate with Mr. Hobgood in a thread called "Separate Leitmotif Thread!" (http//www.filmscoremonthly.com/board/Forum1/HTML/000394.html)

The issue at hand was the pros and cons of the leitmotif approach in film scores, and whether the story should always be considered the most important aspect of a film. I'm sorry if the following repeats some of the arguments used in that thread, but I feel that Hobgood's "Clarity" essay resurrected some of the same issues.

Allow me to explain.

First of all, I think that Mr. Hobgood is letting his Goldsmith fandom partially cloud his rationality. To heighten Goldsmith's socalled "unity approach" to deic and infallible proportions to which no other approach can compare or even succeed, might be considered a tad condescending (although that may not have been his intention).

However, my main problem with Hobgood's writings is the FOUNDATION upon which he bases his theories. He claims that a film composer must first and foremost strive to complement and answer to the film's NARRATIVE. What does he do by claiming this?

Well, firstly he limits his perception of the film medium to a single, albeit influential, film direction The Hollywood film. Throughout history, there have been several film directions that have more or less "eschewed" the story in favour of other priorities. The Soviet Montage films propagated political firepower through symbolic cross-cuts etc. German Expressionism emphasized the philosophical/political impact through lighting and set design. The French New Wave turned the narrative into a "point" in and of itself (through allusions and verfremdungseffekts). The Italian Neo-realism aimed at portraying a naturalistic "tranche-de-vie" rather than an engaging story-line. In all of these directions (and more), the various film scores had various "assignments" that went beyond the narrative and even beyond a discernable "unity" as such.

The only film direction that is truly centered around the story, is the "invisible", aristotelian Hollywood film.

But even if Hobgood is limiting himself to this direction, he has overlooked the medium's potential as a communicator/trigger of emotions, memory/identification, imagination etc. EVEN WITHIN A HOLLYWOOD CONTEXT. 'Film' is not only a storyteller, Dan.

Film is, among other things, a visual artform - in many ways a moving semi-painting (tableau). For one person, satisfaction can thus be gathered from the visual effects or the way shots are cross-cut, the way meanings are communicated through a montage. For another person, the portrayal of a certain character becomes the most important thing. The way the character acts and behaves correlates very much to himself. For him, subjective identification is more important than the story itself. For a third person, a SINGLE SCENE in a movie becomes the "essence" of the entire experience (e.g. the "ET FLying Scene") that is separated from the rest of the story. For a fourth person, the ATMOSPHERE is the most important thing - whether it is a deserted space station or the pastoral english countryside. The list goes on.

The point is that a film experience may not mean the same thing for all people. As such, the composer shouldn't necessary always to strive to nail the story first, but - in communication with the director and himself - try to find the best possible solution for the film's point-of-departure and, should I say, "agenda".

I'm not saying that the story is UNimportant. Far from it (film is a "gesamtkunstwerk" consisting of a visual, aural and LITERARY aspect). I'm just saying that promoting or answering to the story is not always the most important priority of a composer.

In short: Film music should supplement the FILM first (defined as the above-mentioned eclectic phenomenon), the STORY second. Goldsmith's "unity" approach is consequently not the only way to go (not even the best one in many cases)...

Dan Hobgood's most recent journey into his series of filmscore analysis essays, "Clarity in Composition," once more demonstrates the remarkable assurance with which he explores the subject. So many filmscore buffs merely react to certain cues, or even mere volume level, without giving any thought to the competence, the innate talent of a given composer. If some cue is momentarily, episodically impressive, it is immediately and forever "great stuff," its composer elevated to the rank of the Immortals. Hobgood berates this uncritical approach in several important points as he expands his thesis upon Goldsmith's criticism of some composers' non-thematic, episodic cue arranging.

Hobgood mentions an acquaintance who regards film music as inherently second-rate, regressive 19th century epigonic exercise. But any careful attention paid to the better composers in the film medium would reveal a school of composition derived from the Wagner/Liszt school of music drama. Herrmann's score to "Vertigo" is more important than that film's script, a sonic counterpoint to the images conceived by Hitchcock. So many films succeed because of contributions like this, and the composers who succeed most often are those with a sense of thematic unity, clarity if you will, in their approach. Goldsmith is the foremost exponent of that skill, a talent to which even John Williams tips his hat.

Some filmscore enthusiasts profess to remain bewildered by the preponderance of critical accolades showered, deservedly, upon Jerry Goldsmith. If they would take but a few moments to listen to the compositional elements, the thematic wholeness rendered by this extraordinary genius in his film scores, all would be clear. Yet there are those who will look for any excuse to claim Goldsmith is less than his devotees proclaim him to be. Fannish advocacy of some lesser talent, often for the sake of purposeful contrariness, is akin to juvenile hero worship. Admiration for a talent such as Goldsmith's is, well, a geometric proof of artistic inevitability!

Originally I was not going to bother to comment on this piece, but after looking at it again I felt moved to say this.

Regarding the statements describing John Barry's music as lacking unity, and then going on to say that David Arnold's (enjoyable) Bond scores are more effective (than Barry's), is quite possibly the biggest load of (insert your own expletive) rubbish I have ever read!

Barry crafts melodic music, he has always been so effective because he knows just what melodic line to play to a given scene. If you want a great example of musical unity while maintaining melodic diversity, then listen to Ryko's The Living Daylights. It is only with this album (not the original WB album) that it becomes apparent just how unified (and supremely well crafted) this score is. Another example would be Out Of Africa, a fantastically unified score that consists of varied thematic material (three major themes and others that are less prominent).

I completely disagree about Dances With Wolves too. Yes the score is again full of musical diversity, but the orchestrations and the structure of the score bind this diversity into a cohesive whole. Listen to the sequence at the river, where Dances With Wolves accompanies Stands With A Fist to fetch water. He asks her why she is not married, and Barry scores this with a variation of the Love Theme that is melodically "off-kilter", it is not fully developed yet. Even though we have not heard the final version at this point in the film, this cue perfectly conveys the awkwardness of the scene, and Dances With Wolves realisation that he has been embarrassingly indelicate. Later, when Barry brings in the fully developed theme, it establishes the bond that has developed between the characters, and their love for one another. Surely this is an example of unity, as is the Looks Like A Suicide cue, where John Dunbar rides into the hail of confederate bullets at the beginning of the film. Barry scores this with a wordless choir. The point of this is only realised later during the Buffalo Hunt, when Barry again brings in the choir. These are the two most significant events (and they are diametrically opposed, as the first deals with rejection, and the second deals with recognition and acceptance) in the movie for Dunbar's character.

To my ears it is often Goldsmith, Horner, Zimmer, Goldenthal, et al who sometimes lack unity in their scores, because they are not generally as melodically driven as Barry is. I'm not saying that this is wrong, it is just a matter of an individual composer's style, tonal or atonal, melodic or non-melodic, and how that style fits a given movie, (Goldsmith's Under Fire, or The Mummy are terrific examples of unified, but melodically diverse scores). If David Arnold's Bond scores work at all, it is because he (like Conti, and Martin before him), realised that melody is an intrinsic part of the style of the Bond pictures, and so is the integration of the Bond theme, and/or the title song into the rest of the score (the reason why Eric Serra's dismal GoldenEye, and Michael Kamen's Licence To Kill lacked unity, and effectiveness). Who established that style with, and I quote "The James Bond Theme, which, musically, represents the series as a whole"? If that isn't an example of musical unity I don't know what is. If you want further examples of Barry's unified music, listen to The Specialist, The Knack, Diamonds Are Forever, The Ipcress File, The Black Hole, Monte Walsh, or just about any Barry score. It just seems to me that after having been a film music enthusiast for 30 years or more, melody seems to be a pretty good way of being musically unified.

Some bright spark will be saying that Mancini couldn't write songs next!

MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com