FILM SCORE FRIDAY 10/11/02

Just another reminder, our new CDs are THE GREEN BERETS, Miklos Rozsa's score to the infamous John Wayne Vietnam War epic, and SCARAMOUCHE, Victor Young's music for the classic MGM swashbuckler.

Intrada has announced the seventh in their limited edition, Special Collection series -- a two-disc set of MUSSOLINI: THE UNTOLD STORY, featuring Laurence Rosenthal's music for the 1985 epic TV mini-series. Mussolini, directed by TV vet William Graham and written by Sterling Silliphant, featured a remarkable cast led by George C. Scott as Il Duce, and featuring Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Raul Julia, Gabriel Byrne, Lee Grant, David Suchet, a young Robert Downey Jr., and character actor George Coulouris, whose career spanned everything from Citizen Kane ("I think it would be fun to run a newspaper. I think it would be fun to run a newspaper!") to Murder on the Orient Express. A composer promo, Music For Television, featured 18 minutes of music from the mini-series; this new CD set featured nearly two hours of Rosenthal's symphonic score.

A brand new film music label, La-La Land Records, is releasing two new CDs in limited editions. ZULU DAWN is a rerelease of Elmer Bernstein's exciting adventure score for the Zulu prequel, and promises improved sound over the earlier Cerberus release. Only 1500 copies will be available. UNCORKED, scored by Jeff Danna, is a comedy starring Minnie Driver and the late Nigel Hawthorne. A shorter version of this score was previously released as a composer promo under the title Higher Love; 3000 copies of this expanded edition are available. For more information, go to the label's website at www.lalalandrecords.com

Film composer Will Richter will be performing his music live at the Knitting Factory in Hollywood, on October 23rd at ten p.m. In the composer's words:

My Opus project is kind of a fun experiment turning things around on some of the directors I've worked for -- instead of composing music to images, I give a guide track to the director and he has to shoot/edit in response to it. Then at the show (where I see his work for the first time) the images are screened and I along with a small ensemble respond to them. I use the computer like a DJ might, with several prepared tracks at different tempos in different styles (including of course the guide I gave the director to begin with), but the music is closer to Philip Glass or Michael Nyman minimalism than dance. The result is in the same school as something like Koyaanisqatsi or Fantasia.

On October 25-26, 2002, the Zeta Sigma chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia will hold the first ever Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Film Music Symposium. The symposium will be held at Texas Tech University and feature Hollywood film composer Graeme Revell. Events during the symposium include two master classes featuring student electronic and film music, a Q&A session with the artist, and a special film screening of The Siege with live composer commentary by Mr. Revell. The student film composer master class will be held on Friday night at 8:00 P.M. at Hemmle Recital Hall. The student electronic music master class will be on Saturday morning at 10:00 A.M. in the Studio for Experimental and Electronic Music (M252). The question and answer session with Mr. Revell will be held on Saturday at 2:00 P.M. at the School of Music in room M01. The film screening of The Siege with live composer commentary by Mr. Revell will be on Saturday night at 7:00 P.M. in Hemmle Recital Hall. All events are located in the Texas Tech University School of Music and free to the public with the exception of the final film screening which is $5 for the general public and free for students with a valid college ID. This educational non-profit event is also being sponsored by Film Score Monthly.

Down to the Sea in Ships/12 O'Clock High - Alfred Newman - Screen Archives
The Green Berets - Miklos Rozsa - Film Score Monthly
Naqoyqatsi - Philip Glass - Sony
Scaramouche - Victor Young - Film Score Monthly
Secretary - Angelo Badalamenti - Lions Gate
Tuck Everlasting - William Ross - Disney
Welcome to Collinwood - Mark Mothersbaugh - Sanctuary

October 15
Abandon - Clint Mansell - Silverline
Swept Away - Michel Colombier - Varese Sarabande
October 22
Below - Graeme Revell - Varese Sarabande
Film Music of Ralph Vaughan Williams - Ralph Vaughan Williams - Chandos
Frida - Elliot Goldenthal - UMG
October 29
Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever - Don Davis - Varese Sarabande
Ghost Ship - John Frizzell - Varese Sarabande
The Man From Elysian Fields - Anthony Marinelli - Varese Sarabande
White Oleander - Thomas Newman - Varese Sarabande
November 5
Far From Heaven - Elmer Bernstein - Varese Sarabande
November 12
Die Another Day - David Arnold - Maverick
The Emperors' Club - James Newton Howard - Varese Sarabande
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - John Williams, William Ross - Atlantic
XXX - Randy Edelman - Varese Sarabande
November 19
Sunset Boulevard - Franz Waxman - Varese Sarabande
Date Unknown
The Busy Body/The Spirit is Willing - Vic Mizzy - Percepto
Children of the Century - Luis Bacalov - Decca
The Hours - Philip Glass - Nonesuch
Mussolini: The Untold Story - Laurence Rosenthal - Intrada Special Collection Series
Promise at Dawn - Georges Delerue - Disques CineMusique
Star Trek: Nemesis - Jerry Goldsmith - Varese Sarabande
The Swarm - Jerry Goldsmith - Prometheus CD Club
Uncorked - Jeff Danna - LaLaLand
Zulu Dawn - Elmer Bernstein - LaLaLand

Ash Wednesday - David Shire - Soundtrack due on Koch
Below - Graeme Revell - Score Album due on Oct. 22 from Varese
Bowling For Columbine - Jeff Gibbs
Brown Sugar - Robert Hurst - Song Album on UMG
Knockaround Guys - Clint Mansell
Punch-Drunk Love - Jon Brion - Soundtrack due on Nov. 5
The Rules of Attraction - Tomandandy - Soundtrack on Lions Gate, songs & 4 score cues
Swept Away - Michel Colombier - Score Album due on Oct. 15 from Varese
The Transporter - Stanley Clarke - Song Album on Elektra
Tuck Everlasting - William Ross - Score Album on Disney
White Oleander - Thomas Newman - Score Album due on Oct. 29 from Varese

RED DRAGON - Danny Elfman

"Of the film's outstanding craft contributions, none boosts the proceedings more crucially than Danny Elfman's score, which uses strings to more suspenseful effect than anyone since the heyday of Bernard Herrmann and otherwise employs unusual instrumentation to add flavor to an outstandingly conceived traditional soundtrack."

Todd McCarthy, Variety

"Be sure to listen for the way Danny Elfman's score swells like a flooding fjord during the electrifying b***-j** scene."

Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com

"We find ourselves in the midst of a serial-killer scrapbook any goth would covet, flipped to the sound of one of Danny Elfman's most enthusiastic scores in years."

Gregory Weinkauf, New Times

"'Dragon' has the benefit of a fine cast and an excellent scare score by Danny Elfman."

Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune

WELCOME TO COLLINWOOD - Mark Mothersbaugh

"Fellow Buckeye and Devo-founder Mark Mothersbaugh plays as much a role in this heist as any of the actors by laying down a score of delightful intricacy and mixed-up ethnicity. It's hard to believe that this is the guy behind "Whip It" when the mandolins and bouzoukis keep kicking in. At first the effect is jarring -- with every scene comes a radically different chunk of "world music," as if someone put the Real World catalogue on shuffle -- but soon enough the effect feels like the scatteredness of America's uncertain and ever-shifting cities. Motherbaugh's work is terrific (is there a soundtrack CD?) and it perfectly compliments the Russos' affinity for funky street life."

Gregory Weinkauf, New Times

Much as I revere Pauline Kael, most of her remarks on individual scores were derogatory in the extreme (and apparently she really didn't care much for Max Steiner). Here are some of the more poisonous drippings from her pen:

THE ABDICATION

[Director Anthony] Harvey takes pictorial cinematography to be drama, and leaves it to Nino Rota's pseudo-liturgical score to provide the emotional turbulence. There's considerable turbulence but only a few themes -- they return as punctually as they did for Max Steiner.

(from Reeling, published by Warner Books)

The movie has got this heartfelt hurting glop going for it, plus an Elmer Bernstein score emoting like mad, swooping in with beery passion for the deep scenes and making sure you never miss the pity of it all.

(from When the Lights Go Down, published by Henry Holt & Co.)

The movie is muffled, bombed out, and a gooey score by Quincy Jones calls attention to the emotional void -- Jones seems to have been waiting all his life to metamorphose into Max Steiner.

(from Hooked, published by E.P. Dutton)

One person connected with it who certainly didn't behave romantically was the composer, Henry Mancini. When a movie costs over eleven million dollars, a composer who skimps must value his creativity very highly indeed; the music is so repetitive that it recalls those poor few themes that Max Steiner used to bring back over and over again. By the second hour of The Molly Maguires, Mancini's themes are an assault.

(from Deeper Into Movies, published by Warner Books)

It is a handsome looking film, but it's paced as unvaryingly as a funeral march, and scored (by John Barry) to sustain the illusion of an epic for the movie company, if not for the audience. The music is about all you hear in the movie.

(from Deeper Into Movies, published by Warner Books)

The music -- the first score for an American picture by Mikis Theodorakis -- is incongruous and is used disastrously; the tunes may be Italian, but the instrumentation sounds Greek, and why this metallic-sounding folksy music is rattling on while Serpico is testifying before the Knapp Commission I can't imagine -- unless it's insultingly assumed that no one is interested in what he's saying.

(from Reeling, published by Warner Books)

The Third Man Theme
Words by Walter Lord
Based on Music Composed and Arranged by Anton Karas

When a zither starts to play
You'll remember yesterday
In its haunting strain
Vienna lives again
Free and bright and gay

In your mind
A sudden gleam
Of a half forgotten dream
Seems to glimmer when
You hear The Third Man Theme

Once again there comes to mind
Someone that you left behind
Love that somehow didn't last
In that happy city of the past

Does she still
Recall the dream
That rapture so supreme
When first she heard
The haunting third man theme?

Originally published by Chappell & Co.

From: Steve Halfyard <Steve.Halfyard@uce.ac.uk>

A bit late off the mark, but I have two quick (!) comments about what Dan Hobgood said about Wagner, opera and leitmotif in his October 2nd article. Firstly, he is quite inaccurate in his description of Wagner's approach to opera. The whole point of Wagner's 'reforms' was that a) the orchestra and conductor were no longer visible, being underneath the stage at Bayreuth and so completely hidden from the audience; b) the singers might be aware of the orchestra, but the characters aren't, in the same way that a film actor is aware of the camera but the character he/ she plays is not; c) the singers tend not to mimic the orchestral music they way they do in other 19th century operas because d) Wagner saw the words as giving us what the characters were saying (obviously) and the music giving us a variety of other kinds of information, such as what the characters were thinking (point of view music), the psychological aspects of the drama, and all the underlying and unseen implications of scenes (does that sound strangely reminiscent of what Copland once said about film music's function?). Leitmotif is not about doubling what can already be seen on stage: it's about making present the things that aren't physically there but being remembered, felt, talked about or otherwise brought into the scene.

Secondly, is it just me, or does the objection to leitmotif slightly contradict any earlier article that said "unrelated musical statements or independent score cues should not appear intermittently during the course of an entire work" (use of leitmotif would make musical relationship pretty clear, I think); "an audience does need to bear some of the responsibility during the communicative process and should make a good-faith attempt to understand how a composer works for its benefit" (that really does sound like an unequivocal contradiction of the idea that leitmotif requires the audience to think about the music too much) and "score should be conceived with a strong sense of unity", the best way for this being, in his opinion, through the use of melody (hmm - funnily enough I think that was what Wagner was after with the whole leitmotif idea!).

I always feel terribly guilty about having a go at Dan, because he is essentially doing a grand job!

I hope you will excuse the length of what follows, but I feel it is time someone answered the assertions on film scoring made by Dan Hobgood in the series of articles you have been publishing. For my part, I have never encountered a view of film music that so actively promotes conformity, banality, and lack of creativity in this art. If this is what admirers of film music use to defend its merits to doubters then we may as well give up now.

Two related sentences in Hobgood's article "Clarity in Composition" sum up nearly all the questions and problems that result from his approach.

"In order for a composer to communicate to an audience, he must speak in a musical language that an audience can understand. That is why it is fundamentally erroneous for one to criticize a film score for its uninspired musical value."

Let us assume (and hope) that Mr. Hobgood is not suggesting that the only musical language a film audience can understand is one of uninspired musical value. If that were so, we might also assume the only film an audience today can understand is one of uninspired material. But what does it mean to refer to "musical language" as something an audience can "understand?" The implication here seems to be that an audience should be able to make sense of film music by somehow consciously following it in the film. Not so. It doesn't matter if a viewer/listener can actually read music--the true language--or if they can recall a melody from the score at film's conclusion. The core value by which the score should be judged is how well it works within the film as something uniquely suited and created for that film's specific needs. That is why a linear theme and variations score of the kind Mr. Hobgood prefers can work beautifully in a film like "Hoosiers" while Mandel's 12 tone score for "Point Blank" works equally in that context.

The key, though, to Hobgood's preferred musical language which his representative audience can understand lies not in context, logic, or appropriateness, but rather in what is easiest to comprehend. He seems to feel that only a linear tonal/melodic score is simple enough for must viewers to assist them in following the narrative through line of a movie. However, to extend his own metaphor, that demand is equivalent to expecting an essay to not only develop an overall theme in logical progression, but also that it be written in simple, monosyllabic words. That may not be right for every subject or movie, depending on the issue, the mood, or some other aspect. And anyone who has listened to movie music for a number of years will discover more than a few exceptions to Mr. Hobgood's purported formula.

Likewise it is both condescending and narrow-minded to assume that a main-stream movie audience can only receive the necessary guidance in interpreting a film narrative with the aid of tonal/melodic music and that only then will they become aware of the music's purpose. If the music is a subliminal aid then you cannot be certain only one musical style works. And if it is a conscious understanding we're after, I have yet to hear a disgruntled movie goer say "Gee, I would have understood the story better if only the music had been more understandable." In fact, all of us have seen memorable movies with forgettable music as well as mediocre movies with memorable music.

The one place I would agree with Hobgood is his frustration with those who judge film music strictly by the standards of classical or art music. The key qualities of the latter are that it is self-referential, i.e. it's purpose or meaning is self-contained, and the individuality of the composer's artistic personality as displayed in a unique form and content. How could film music ever hope to meet that first standard when it is created expressly to supplement the visual effect of another art form? Yet when an exceptional artist, a Copland or Prokovieff, writes music for the movies, their work, with some adjustment, can stand on its own without direct reference to the images for which it was written. I would venture to suggest that those composers from the 1930's through the 1950's with the strongest artistic personalities--adding Korngold, Hermann, and Rosza to the list--are those whose music is most likely to stand on its own when judged strictly for it's musical value. Of course the time in which they worked allowed them to superimpose their musical styles on nearly every film for which they were hired. Today's composers are expected be more chameleon-like as they move from job to job, making them less definable and hence more suspect in classical circles.

But Hobgood's either/or choice of judging film music--musical quality vs. dramatic significance--merely begs the question. How can one evaluate any form of music without some standard of musical quality apart from its use in another medium? If one can only judge film music accurately by its dramatic significance within a film, then what are any of us doing choosing which CD soundtracks to purchase and hear--particularly if its from a movie we've never seen? If one wanted to conjure up a mental image of the movie through the music, it's just as easy today to play a video or DVD as a CD. I, for one, will listen to movie music after having heard it in a film because I enjoy its particular musical quality and qualities. And, again, I suspect I am not alone. For myself, I haven't solved the question of whether music can work well dramatically in a film if the music itself lacks intrinsic quality, i.e. individuality and character. But Hobgood's linear theme and variations approach to scoring doesn't guarantee good film music even if it follows all the rules of dramatic significance within the film.

I hope this is all coherent and that I haven't wasted your time.

From James Smith III:

I'm trying to start a petition on getting Quark and Wizards and Warriors out on DVD. I know, I know. They're both long shots. But since Don Quixote has always been a role model for me, I thought I would give it a try.

My petitions for the respective shows are at these locations--

Quark: http://www.PetitionOnline.com/Ficus/petition.html

Wizards and Warriors: http://www.PetitionOnline.com/Eric/petition.html