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In personally assessing monsieur Jarre's large output, certain facts come back to mind. Like he was from the start a bit too old already to receive at 16 any formal academic training, which at least partly explains the general, percussive by default, awkwardness of his style or - an old bone of contention among us soundtrack fans - the often plain ugliness of his grating experimental orchestrations (IS PARIS BURNING, RYAN'S DAUGHTER, TIN DRUM)...
Inaccurate and arrogant to the point of churlishness, despite the 'Heavenly' disclaimers.
What you refer to as the 'plain ugliness of his grating experimental orchestrations' relates to his deliberate dissonant juxtapositions where they dramatically belong. Are you seriously suggesting he couldn't write classical harmonies if he wanted to?
That he was overall much more interesting before Hollywood got hold of him... That despite his trademark veneer of shyness and likeability, there was, as with Leonard Rosenman, something vain about his personality that managed to come out in public appearances, liner notes or interviews throughout the years and, by extension, about his music. I recall his "I'm glad Mozart was not eligible" 1984 Oscar acceptance wink, referring to the AMADEUS sweep: though obviously intended as a joke, I couldn't help but think at the time it was somewhere rather demeaning to the other nominated composers... That in the end, he was at best an inspired, lucky tunesmith (CROSSED SWORDS, LAWRENCE, ZHIVAGO), at worst an eclectic, reliable, but mere hack (TOPAZ, GHOST and so on), certainly not on the level of a Delerue, Sarde or, closer to us, Desplat or Amar...
The Oscar joke was just that and nothing more, not at all arrogant, but praise for the Amadeus score, and a little jibe at any thoughts it might be considered 'original'.
This is what irks me about film music buffs. Their TRUE heroes are the film-music journalists they would ape, not the composers themselves, whose work they misinterpret.
I suppose if I quote one of the first lines from 'Lawrence of Arabia' ..."Nihil nisi Bonum ...", then perhaps readers will reflect the differences between genuine obituary and hack critiques.
Like it or not, Jarre was who he is, and will stand or fall by that alone. At least he was somebody. There have been quite a few criticisms of Jarre in various places recently that mask themselves in polite but snide praise. But he has escaped you, gentlemen, in more ways than one.
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Posted: |
Mar 31, 2009 - 5:22 PM
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By: |
Howard L
(Member)
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Bravo.
And from today's NY Times:
Maurice Jarre, Hollywood Composer, Dies at 84
By BRUCE WEBER
Maurice Jarre, a composer who mastered the musical idiom of the Hollywood epic and was nominated nine times for Academy Awards, winning three, died Saturday in Malibu. He was 84.
He died after a short illness, said his agent, Laura Engel, speaking on behalf of Mr. Jarre’s wife, Fong.
Mr. Jarre (pronounced Zhar) won all three of his Academy Awards for films directed by David Lean, whose exotic locales served as fodder for Mr. Jarre’s lush musical imagination. Whether evoking the deserts of Arabia for “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962), the Russian steppes for “Dr. Zhivago” (1965) or the Indian subcontinent in “A Passage to India” (1984), Mr. Jarre’s vivid scoring for percussion — he was a percussionist himself — his use of wide intervals to suggest vast landscapes and his appropriation of musical modes indigenous to the films’ settings, made the music a crucial element of the romance and spectacle of the stories.
He may be best known for the melancholy melody that was the prime leitmotif from the score of “Dr. Zhivago,” Mr. Lean’s heart-tugging love story set in Russia during World War I and the Russian Revolution, starring Omar Sharif and Julie Christie. Associated with Ms. Christie’s character, the theme, a lilting tune with a seeming sigh of longing attached to each phrase, was repeated again and again during the film with different instrumentation, most notably the balalaika. It came to be known as “Lara’s Theme” and became a standard of easy listening, a staple of elevators and dentist’s offices; when words were added by Paul Francis Webster, the song became known as “Somewhere, My Love” and was recorded by Connie Francis, Ray Conniff and many others.
For decades, Mr. Jarre was among the most sought-after composers in the movie industry. He was a creator of both subtle underscoring and grand, sweeping themes, not only writing for conventional orchestras (sometimes augmented by the more exotic instrumentation of other cultures) but also experimenting with electronic sounds later in his career. He was prolific; he contributed music to more than 150 movies of a wide variety: dramatic and comic, ponderous and light-hearted, artsy and baldly mercenary, high-minded and trashy.
The films included the World War II epic “The Longest Day” (1962) and the Neil Simon sex comedy “Plaza Suite” (1971); the exploitative tale of interracial lust on an antebellum Southern plantation, “Mandingo” (1975) and Volker Schlöndorff’s adaptation of Günter Grass’s Holocaust novel, “The Tin Drum” (1979); a modern thriller of sexual obsession, “Fatal Attraction” (1987), a biography of Dian Fossey, who lived in Africa among the apes, “Gorillas in the Mist” (1988) and the gentle drama of schoolboys and their idealistic teacher, directed by Peter Weir, “Dead Poets Society” (1989).
Mr. Jarre composed music for five movies directed by Mr. Weir, including the electronic scores for “The Year of Living Dangerously” (1982) and “Witness” (1985). When he collaborated with the director Jerry Zucker on the fantasy drama “Ghost,” (1990), he was nominated for the ninth time for an Oscar.
Maurice Alexis Jarre was born Sept. 13, 1924, in Lyon, France. He came to music relatively late, dropping out of the Sorbonne, where he was studying engineering, and enrolling in the Paris Conservatory, where his teachers included the Swiss composer Arthur Honegger, the timpanist Félix Passerone and Joseph Martenot, the inventor of an electronic keyboard, a predecessor of the synthesizer.
His early compositions were not for film but for the theater; during the 1950’s he was associated with France’s Théâtre National Populaire. He composed his first film scores for the French director Georges Franju. He made his breakthrough in Hollywood when the producer Sam Spiegel heard his score for the film “Sundays and Cybele,” which eventually won an Oscar for best foreign language film, and he hired him to work on “Lawrence of Arabia.”
Mr. Jarre married four times; he is survived by his wife, Fong, whom he married in 1984. Other survivors include two sons, Jean-Michel, a composer, and Kevin, a screenwriter; and a daughter, Stéfanie. Though Mr. Jarre had lived in the United States for decades, the president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, issued a statement after his death, calling Mr. Jarre “a great composer” who, by working in film, “broadened the public for symphonic music.”
“He showed everyone that music is just as important as images for the beauty and success of a film,” Mr. Sarkozy said.
Mr. Jarre worked with many legendary directors, including Alfred Hitchcock (“Topaz”), John Huston (“The Man Who Would Be King”) and Luchino Visconti (“The Damned”). It is an oddity, perhaps, that his most successful partner in Hollywood was one he met so early on, Mr. Lean, with whom he made four films; the only one for which he did not win an Oscar was “Ryan’s Daughter,” (1970), an unhappy love story set in Ireland during World War I about an adulterous affair that is the sexual and romantic awakening of a young woman. (Vincent Canby, the New York Times film critic, called the score “dreadfully ever-present.”) Otherwise, in Mr. Jarre, Mr. Lean found the perfect composer to enhance his sweeping storytelling.
Mr. Jarre often said that Mr. Lean had very specific ideas about the role that music should play in his films and that he understood what Mr. Lean wanted.
“Four films, three Oscars,” Mr. Jarre concluded in an interview with Variety in 1989. “That’s not so bad.”
Maurice Jarre accepting a cinema award in Berlin in 2005.
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Posted: |
Apr 3, 2009 - 1:46 PM
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By: |
SteffM
(Member)
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Inaccurate and arrogant to the point of churlishness, despite the 'Heavenly' disclaimers.
Talk about arrogance!
Actually this brand of outraged (over)reaction was expected; my apologies again if I dared to pour a few drops of acid on everyone's grief. Incredible as it may sound, I was as shocked to hear of Mr. Jarre's passing as anybody: for better AND for worse, he'd always been a part of my long soundtrack life; I once even had the opportunity to talk to the man at a press conference (so much for "escaping" him!)... But page after page of wild eulogies everywhere since last weekend as if he were Stravinsky finally got on my nerves, so in order to keep my sanity, I figured I should self-sacrifice, try to put things in perspective right away and play devil's advocate a bit. Jarre of course was a maverick, but God forbid that didn't make him a genius, unless you revel in his moments of "dissonances" mostly made of cheap, noisy, sterile repeated patterns, or in his dry, quirky melodic lines, specially compared to other film music maestros. But then I forget we soundtrack fans tend to dig geniuses by the sackful... What can I say? In my world, anyone tagging something like the ridiculously over-orchestrated IS PARIS BURNING as "masterful", as I read recently, ought to have his or her head examined. Oh, and naturally, the real churlishness IMHO lies in quickly assailing anything that doesn't belong to one's own little, black-and-white chapel of thought.
The Oscar joke was just that and nothing more, not at all arrogant, but praise for the Amadeus score, and a little jibe at any thoughts it might be considered 'original'.
I take it you approve of Jarre's win at the time. Mind you, I think Randy Newman's THE NATURAL or John Williams' THE RIVER were way more deserving, but then what do I know of those?
This is what irks me about film music buffs. Their TRUE heroes are the film-music journalists they would ape, not the composers themselves, whose work they misinterpret.
How perceptive you are, for I too happen to be a reporter by profession... Your love of anything Jarre blinds you here, but that's your right.
I suppose if I quote one of the first lines from 'Lawrence of Arabia' ..."Nihil nisi Bonum ...", then perhaps readers will reflect the differences between genuine obituary and hack critiques.
Since you're quoting my all-time favorite movie, why not do it accurately? "Well, nil nisi bonum, but does he really deserve a place... in here?"
Yes, Maurice Jarre certainly does. Only, there's no need to erect a bronze bust to his likeness in our cathedral. There's been enough statuettes already.
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Posted: |
Apr 3, 2009 - 2:31 PM
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By: |
adilson
(Member)
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Inaccurate and arrogant to the point of churlishness, despite the 'Heavenly' disclaimers.
Talk about arrogance!
Actually this brand of outraged (over)reaction was expected; my apologies again if I dared to pour a few drops of acid on everyone's grief. Incredible at it may sound, I was as shocked to hear of Mr. Jarre's passing as anybody: for better AND for worse, he'd always been a part of my long soundtrack life; I once even had the opportunity to talk to the man at a press conference (so much for "escaping" him!)... But page after page of wild eulogies everywhere since last weekend as if he were Stravinsky finally got on my nerves, so in order to keep my sanity, I figured I should self-sacrifice, try to put things in perspective right away and play devil's advocate a bit. Jarre of course was a maverick, but God forbid that didn't make him a genius, unless you revel in his moments of "dissonances" mostly made of cheap, noisy, sterile repeated patterns, or in his dry, quirky melodic lines, specially compared to other film music maestros. But then I forget we soundtrack fans tend to dig geniuses by the sackful... What can I say? In my world, anyone tagging something like the ridiculously over-orchestrated IS PARIS BURNING as "masterful", as I read recently, ought to have his or her head examined. Oh, and naturally, the real churlishness IMHO lies in quickly assailing anything that doesn't belong to one's own little, black-and-white chapel of thought.
The Oscar joke was just that and nothing more, not at all arrogant, but praise for the Amadeus score, and a little jibe at any thoughts it might be considered 'original'.
I take it you approve of Jarre's win at the time. Mind you, I think Randy Newman's THE NATURAL or John Williams' THE RIVER were way more deserving, but then what do I know of those?
This is what irks me about film music buffs. Their TRUE heroes are the film-music journalists they would ape, not the composers themselves, whose work they misinterpret.
How perceptive you are, for I too happen to be a reporter by profession... Your love of anything Jarre blinds you here, but that's your right.
I suppose if I quote one of the first lines from 'Lawrence of Arabia' ..."Nihil nisi Bonum ...", then perhaps readers will reflect the differences between genuine obituary and hack critiques.
Since you're quoting my all-time favorite movie, why not do it accurately? "Well, nil nisi bonum, but does he really deserve a place... in here?"
Yes, Maurice Jarre certainly does. Only, there's no need to erect a bronze bust to his likeness in our cathedral. There's been enough statuettes already.
You have your opinion and I think everyone should respect it, but it not means the truth and it's only your opinion and nothing more.
I'm sure that Maurice Jarre was a great composer, certainly one of the best and contrary of you I really think that IS PARIS BURNING is great score and I think too A PASSAGE TO INDIA was a very well deserved win.
I think that Maurice Jarre has received all hommage that he deserved, he has composed very important pages of film music history and no one can deny it.
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I am coming into this thread late but do want to comment on the phenomenon of the "backing into it" fan. Which goes a little like when someone says, "I'm not really a fan of Maurice Jarre...never really cared for him...of course Lawrence of Arabia is a classic...and I like the Professionals...and the The Collector is a good score...and Enemy Mine and Thunderdome...and the early stuff like Eyes Without a Face...and Shogun, I like that...and Witness and Dead Poets." Well guess what, you're a fan!
Lukas
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Actually this brand of outraged (over)reaction was expected; my apologies again if I dared to pour a few drops of acid on everyone's grief. Incredible as it may sound, I was as shocked to hear of Mr. Jarre's passing as anybody: for better AND for worse, he'd always been a part of my long soundtrack life;
I once even had the opportunity to talk to the man at a press conference (so much for "escaping" him!)...
No, try again: I said HE has escaped YOU, not that you escaped him. Though your name may have.
But page after page of wild eulogies everywhere since last weekend as if he were Stravinsky finally got on my nerves, so in order to keep my sanity, I figured I should self-sacrifice, try to put things in perspective right away and play devil's advocate a bit.
My, what a noble and honourable sacrifice that was, brimming with journalistic integrity and objectivity. To fly in the face of a tide of mediocrity and sentimental outpourings of sadness. Do you also piss on gravestones or moon at funerals? (Too much the gentleman I'm sure to respond to so crass a retort.) In the good taste handbook page 1 there's a little clause about not saying ill of the dead on the day they die. That clause supercedes the journalistic integrity game. Jarre was not Hitler.
Jarre of course was a maverick, but God forbid that didn't make him a genius, unless you revel in his moments of "dissonances" mostly made of cheap, noisy, sterile repeated patterns, or in his dry, quirky melodic lines, specially compared to other film music maestros. But then I forget we soundtrack fans tend to dig geniuses by the sackful...
How many 'geniuses' do you think there have been in film-music? Very, very, few. Irrelevant.
What can I say? In my world, anyone tagging something like the ridiculously over-orchestrated IS PARIS BURNING as "masterful", as I read recently, ought to have his or her head examined.
There you have it gentlemen ... here is he who talks about 'narrow chapels'. Jarre used a splendid deliberately over-orchestrated ensemble to describe the increasing exhilaration and impetus of the ever-increasing tide of resistance to the Nazis, by more and more of the people of a huge city, but because it doesn't fit our objective sentinel's preconception of what constitutes 'proper' orchestral size, then it's obviously ridiculous. It beggars belief.
Oh, and naturally, the real churlishness IMHO lies in quickly assailing anything that doesn't belong to one's own little, black-and-white chapel of thought.
Black and White .... you are the very summit of paradox and subtlety where we the unsophisticated who fear death, mourn lost life and refrain (cowards that we are) from attacks on artists masked as obituaries ... we are such unobjective fools.
I take it you approve of Jarre's win at the time. Mind you, I think Randy Newman's THE NATURAL or John Williams' THE RIVER were way more deserving, but then what do I know of those?
I for one don't give a tiddler's piddle who wins tedious Oscars. Nor do I begrudge when my favourites miss out. I'm not interested in comparisons. What I do know, is that Jarre's score for that movie is misinterpreted, usually by people who want mickey-mouse orientalism instead of an insider musical commentary on E.M. Forster's wit. That film, and book, aren't about India. They're about the English at a certain time in their development.
How perceptive you are, for I too happen to be a reporter by profession...
Yes, it shows. But the GREAT journalist knows when to put down the tools and be something else.
Your love of anything Jarre blinds you here, but that's your right.
Ha, ha ... the REAL 'black and white' man now strides forth! Don't ever presume to know my 'loves'. To paraphrase Bolt's 'Lawrence', "My love ... is MY concern."
Since you're quoting my all-time favorite movie, why not do it accurately? "Well, nil nisi bonum, but does he really deserve a place... in here?"
Oh God ... this is like those clergymen who quote great platitudes from the Book of Job without bothering to realise that the lines they quote come from the mouths of the 'comforters', the villains of the piece. It's clear to anyone that the cleric is a toffee-nosed establishment figure who doesn't understand Lawrence's uniqeness. So let's quote him shall we?
'Nil' and 'nihil' are interchangeable by the way. Hollywood is not holy writ.
Yes, Maurice Jarre certainly does. Only, there's no need to erect a bronze bust to his likeness in our cathedral. There's been enough statuettes already.
It would be nice to let him have his tomb effigy without streaks of manure applied on the day of his passing. Maurice will now win no more statuettes. That will please some.
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You surmise properly!
Your avatar suits you right.
It should do. I designed it. Nothing second hand here. And so does yours in the present climate I believe. What integrity in the face of such danger.
But lest we miss out on every last grain of wound-rubbable salt, let us remind ourselves that the posturing of formulaic 'negative' music journalism when inserted in obituaries is the act of a self-publicizer and no gentleman.
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