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Let me ask you something: If you were Danny Elfman, and you really cared to disprove this rumor for the sake of internet fans, how exactly would you go about doing that? Would you compose a piece of music live in front of us? I love this section. Ordinarily, I wouldn't care much about rumors like this, especially about Elfman, because we've been down that road before, but even though I wasn't the original poster, the fact that our own Morricone is the one throwing around these cryptic comments is why I'm so curious. commacommacomma
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Posted: |
Sep 9, 2013 - 9:38 AM
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By: |
facehugger
(Member)
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Let me ask you something: If you were Danny Elfman, and you really cared to disprove this rumor for the sake of internet fans, how exactly would you go about doing that? .... Of course, John Williams was a jazz pianist, Howard Shore was bandleader for "Saturday Night Live," John Barry was an arranger and trumpet player, and yet somehow they all became film composers, too. There's no magic to it. Everybody was something before he was a film composer. But being a rocker who moves to orchestral writing is apparently just too suspicious. Gee I wonder why there is no rumor of "Howard Shore can't compose his own music!" Maybe because Howard Shore explicitly puts "Composed, orchestrated and conducted by Howard Shore" on the CDs of his music. So why doesn't Elfman do the same? Maybe when he composes a concert symphony, when he does not have the usual "time pressure of film scores" excuse, he could compose entirely on his own, and prove that he could compose on his own? --Oh wait... The sad fact is, even when Elfman composed Serenada Schizophrana, he had to rely on Steve Bartek etc. for his orchestration. And you can't blame people for being curious. It's not like their curiosity is baseless. Hell, they made a freakin' movie called Anonymous about whether Shakespeare actually wrote his stuff.
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I think his absence from this thread - his meaning Henry as I believe Morricone is also known - speaks volumes!
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I think his absence from this thread - his meaning Henry as I believe Morricone is also known - speaks volumes! I must be hard of hearing. What does it say? Like most conspiracy theories, this one is boring. Just because the stated truth seems much more likely.
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something thats partly true 15 years ago may not be true now of course. Even if somebody else did do orchestration or much of it, this wouldnt be the first or last "composer" who did only half the job. Nice when you can do the lot but i guess the final product, and the initial theme, are the vital parts. For instance, as have said before, in the early years Italian Nico Fidenco would hum his themes for maestro giacomo del orso (Eddas husband) for him to write up the partitures and do the orchestration. I think his brother Gianni was also involved, and more recent CD releases finally correct this.
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Posted: |
Sep 9, 2013 - 2:14 PM
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By: |
SchiffyM
(Member)
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And you can't blame people for being curious. It's not like their curiosity is baseless. If we spent our lives demanding people disprove anything that could theoretically be true, we would have no time for anything else. If there's an assertion to be made here, it should be made and backed up. So yes, I do blame people for being curious for no reason. If I told you to prove that you don't deep fry poodles and eat them, would you be so quick to defend my random curiosity? The sad fact is, even when Elfman composed Serenada Schizophrana, he had to rely on Steve Bartek etc. for his orchestration. "Rhapsody in Blue" was orchestrated by Ferde Grofé and conducted by Paul Whiteman. Does this make George Gershwin a sham? Of course, at the time, many insisted he was. They claimed that the piece could not have been composed by Gershwin, composer of popular songs, and was in fact Grofé's work (and besides, it wasn't any good anyway). But I don't think you'd find many people today (a few, yes) who'd contend that Gershwin wasn't a composer, and a genius of American music. In 1924, putting a song writer in the concert hall was sneered at, just as a rocker writing for an orchestra is sneered at in some film music circles today. Hell, they made a freakin' movie called Anonymous about whether Shakespeare actually wrote his stuff. And what of it? The same director made a film about the world ending in 2012. Does that constitute a reasonable curiosity that it might? And ultimately, so what? If "Hamlet" were written by a man named Gordon Shumway, would it no longer be a work of genius? If it turned out that "Batman" was actually composed by my kid's gym coach, should I no longer like listening to it?
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A dear friend of mine was the supervising orchestrator on Elfman's "Rabbit and Rogue" score, and also worked closely with him on the Serenada recording, and he and I have spent quite a lot of time talking about Elfman and his work methods - and, as many here have already said, Elfman really is the architect of his sound. His sketches and pieces are pretty detailed in their instrumentation indications and so forth, and much of the work Bartek, Simone, et al, do is smooth out any rough spots (if something is accidentally written out of an instruments range, etc.), suggest adjustments if any need to be made, and (at times, depending on the time crunch for a piece) work with the detailed mock-ups and things like that - but mainly they work to put the music into the full score for the copyists and conductor. To put the old rumor to rest (though I think it already has been) that Elfman can't read music or whatnot - having seen bits of music written in his own hand, I can assure you that that's categorically untrue. Mostly though, I just wanted to comment on SchiffyM's post, and say that I would happily watch an entire series of films starring ALF as William Shakespeare. Perhaps we could even start having the 38 plays (I include "Queen Alexandra and Murray" here) performed in the original Melmacian.
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And what of it? The same director made a film about the world ending in 2012. Does that constitute a reasonable curiosity that it might? He did kinda walk right into that one.
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The same director made a film about the world ending in 2012. JESUS H. CHRIST!! The world's going to end in 2012?!
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The modern greats have orchestrators, including the likes of John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, and James Horner. Shore has orchestrators on the next two installments of "The Hobbit." I don't think it's fair to single this out as a fault of Elfman's. "Orchestrator" can mean VERY different things.
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And ultimately, so what? If "Hamlet" were written by a man named Gordon Shumway, would it no longer be a work of genius? If it turned out that "Batman" was actually composed by my kid's gym coach, should I no longer like listening to it? The fact that it turned out that the "Man with the Golden Helmet" wasn't actually painted by Rembrandt meant a GREAT deal concerning the painting's monetary value.
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