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They're both masters in their different idioms (and yes, Vangelis most definitely understands development and progressions). Beyond that, I've always found it pointless to compare the specifics from one type of music to the other. It's far more interesting to look at the idiosyncracies of a single one while having an open mind towards all kinds of music.
Can you give an example where Vangelis has used more than the most basic chordal progressions? Can you cite a score where a theme he wrote has lots of development variation, as opposed to mere repetition? If Max Steiner had written 'Over the Mountains' from 'Alexander' he'd have ... well, no actually he wouldn't ever have written it down, because he'd realise he was rehashing 'Amazing Grace' subliminally.
Vangeli's best pieces, like the sax stuff on 'Blade Runner' are harmonised intuitively. We can all do that, and it's fine, and the great composers did it often too, but because they'd assimilated the techniques so they could do it in their sleep, so saving TIME. In fact, when you really get right doon 't'it (as Rab. C. Nesbitt would say), the man in the street can compose, BUT IT WOULD TAKE HIM YEARS to arrive at what the trained composer would do in a week. We hire professionals because they save TIME, that's as true for a plumber as for a composer.
That is your opinion. That does not make it true. I have a very different opinion.
Of course Thor, that is why we know you're so progressive and enlightened, a bastion against a sea of narrow-mindedness and mediocrity. Could we expect you to say otherwise?
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That is your opinion. That does not make it true. I have a very different opinion. Yours is exactly the type of prejudice and narrow-mindedness I was talking about earlier, and which I find more than a little annoying.
No Thor. Ask those who know me.
My musical tastes include, 20th Century orchestral music, chamber, mediaeval and Renaissance music, progressive jazz, Baroque, well-conceived rock-music (we're talking Sting, Roxy Music, Pink Floyd, Amy Winehouse, The Who, the Stones, Bob Dylan ...), Chinese, Arabic, Spanish, Flamenco, Hungarian, Miles Davis, Quincy Jones, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Holst, Vaughan-Williams, symphonic film-scoring like Rozsa's and Moross's and Herrmann's and Golsmith's and Korngold's, Ivor Cutler .... hell, I've even been asked to storyboard rock videos.
You NEED to believe I and others are Luddites, for your thesis to work. The image, you see.
Yes, I'm deliberately pushing your buttons in a provocative way on this, because I feel that this is more about stances than music. That composers often rely more on textures than on melody is self-evident. It needs no defending. But what does that prove?
I think people here forget that this community is only a communiry because it COLLECTS and listens to film-music as a stand-alone experience, and when anyone here defends a style of film-music, it's because it works as music PER SE. You can record a cow breaking wind with a microphone, put it through various reshapings and place it as film music behind a scene of a tarantula crawling up a lady's arm, and it will work perfectly. That isn't a good stand-alone experience as music, which is what this place is all about really.
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I don't need anything (least of which a psychoanalysis from you). You're doing a pretty good job of upholding that description yourself.
That's interesting. You added a little there, from last time I looked.
Since you're listening to that album, you'll know what 'Albedo 0.39' really means Thor? I don't mean the obvious, about the light reflected from the earth etc.. Albedo is also an alchemical term, 'Albedo', it means 'the whitening' ...
THAT's the real art of Vangelis, the CONCEPT.
Now, funny enough, since you mentioned it, the alchemical concept of the 'albedo' turns up quite a lot in dream analysis. It can, under certain circumstances, represent a 'resurrection' a 'transformation, a 'coming out of the dark night of the soul' ... part of the transformative process. Very useful in dream analysis.
So Vangelis ends his album on that hopeful note. He means 'the journey of transformation is now complete'.
And that's why people like Olivier used snow-scenes in their 'out of the darkness' colour schemes in Henry V. Used a lot in films, like 'Cold Mountain' when it all resolves.
But why am I telling you all this? You already know that of course. I'd hate to think I understood Vangelis' albums better than you, and I'm sure I don't.
Mind you, it has nothing to do with which of the two composers was more skilled. Developing an album, and developing themes are different.
ACTUALLY, what this is REALLY about, is where Film-music is GOING. There is no great eventual good Hegelian synthesis that necessarily must be arrived at. Investments can go down as well as up. Things can degenerate and decay as well as evolve. And mainstream filmmusic, many of us think, is doing just that. And composers out there are unemployed. Good ones.
For myself, I think that rock-progression music, even when scaled up has a tendency to create either 'elegaic' music, or 'cock out on the table' macho bad-boy styles. That's the only two moods evoked by SOME composers. And I think there are many, many other more subtle moods that can be evoked. Narrow bands of musical appreciation might some day create narrow people who listen to it daily. I want MORE breadth, not less. How many young people even ever want to hear an orchestra today? Yet the young serious musicians are graduating every year, and can't get assignments.
Ask me what I'm smoking, go on.
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He, he....no, I thank you for the extra info about 'albedo'. Always useful at parties.
For a fella that resists 'psychoanalysis' as you call it, you've a helluva fascination with dreams.
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Posted: |
May 14, 2013 - 7:40 PM
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By: |
dan the man
(Member)
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TO YONY THE MOONY- I don't think it has change, it still and always will only take a few right notes to cause the right emotions from the viewers. But in the past and forever more as long as music is important to us, there will be people who will study everything about it and those who will just go with the flow. Both are admirable traits, peace, enjoy and if you like study, study , study. Like filmmaking, in which I did first hand , some people I know, like to know how I did it, others couldn't give a c---.to each one's own.
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A criterion for quality of musical substance is...
...whether I like it or not..
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A criterion for musical substance in terms of the FUTURE is more complex.
If there's to be NO complicated music in mainstream scoring, then that's a serious matter. It's not about, 'only complex music can be good'. It's about direction.
A poster above said that a 100-plus orchestra in movies today would seem out of place. Firstly, there are PLENTY of big scores still being written and the likes of Williams still uses those orchestras: it depends on the movie genre.
And secondly, what does 'out of place' mean except in terms of fashion and expectation? If we were as truly 'postmodern' as we all pretend to be, then we'd expect a different style, and a different 'fashion' for each individual film assignment. That's why they give out art direction Oscars. That so many scores sound the same is a testament to the fact that people in Hollywood play follow-the-leader and play safe. There should actually be NO 'fashions' in scoring if we were all open-minded, and certainly no predominance of what's predominating now.
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