I’d like to propose a game. I’ve taken a random adjective from the thesaurus: Difficult
Please take a moment to come up with a score you think it describes perfectly. It would be ideal if you include a line or two (or a dozen!) describing the logic behind your choice.
Allow me to go first (house rules; my game ) :
Alien 3 – Elliot Goldenthal
This was a very quick decision for me. The score (which I’ve grown tremendously fond of over the years) is not exactly easy on the ears, nor is it what I would have expected to hear at that point in the franchise. As a result, it was initially difficult for me to like, and even more difficult to separate from the film (which is bad news, since I couldn't stand it).
As I said, in time I began to appreciate the score on its own terms. It’s still difficult—and damned if that isn't EXACTLY why it works. It’s harsh, it’s cold, and yet not without moments of exhilarating beauty…kind of like the film, now that I think about it. I really miss Goldenthal’s singular voice in the film music world. But I’m glad we have scores like this to remind us that life isn't all roses and resurrection.
Okay, if I understand the rules, we must come up with a score that fits the adjective “difficult.” Now if the adjective was “simplistic,” I might be a better player as I’ve certainly heard some very simplistic scores in the last few years.
I think this is a very GOOD TOPIC, and I hope more members chime in. I’m going to add to this thread many scores by Dimitri Tiomkin. Hope those scores are not “too” old for this game. Some of our members love him and some hate him. I think his melodies are extensive, well-developed and rather stunning. What I find difficult about his music are his layers and layers and layers of orchestrations. Wish I had a musical vocabulary to describe these layers. I find that some orchestras tend to make his music sound mushy or slurred because his orchestrations are so…well… layered and dense, which some listeners find off-putting. I like listening to his scores on a superficial level for his themes; at others times I like to intensely listen to his levels or stratums in his rather dissonant pieces as well as his thematic music. He uses a lot of counterpoint music and a ton if instruments that for me blend together if well played. To others his music sounds too “busy.” I’m thinking of scores like Giant, The High and the Mighty and many of his other scores as exemplars of intense levels of orchestrations.
If my example isn’t what you are looking for, you’ll have to sue me. P.S. Welcome to our board.
Okay, if I understand the rules, we must come up with a score that fits the adjective “difficult.”
This is it exactly. There are umpteen reasons why someone might consider a work (or body of work) as difficult, and I think different takes might be fascinating. Your own example is very well-said. And has now spurred me to go and listen to some Tiomkin.
I've been mulling this for a couple of days, so that's a good sign! And I think these are both good examples of what you're proposing. I think Joan has hit the Tiomkin nail on the head.
I kind of wanted to lean away from obviously "difficult" scores - scores that are difficult for many to listen to apart from the film, like say, Andromeda Strain by Gil Melle. Great electronic music score, but utterly devoid of the usual pleasures of music as most people think of them. There are plenty of scores like that, but because I enjoy that kind of thing from time to time, I don't necessarily put these in that category and will let others do so if they choose.
Then I thought, what about scores that are "difficult" because they seem so removed from a current person's expectation for good music? Like some fans here find Golden Age music - difficult not because it's avant-garde, but because it feels old-fashioned, too removed from current experience. But there's no one good score I could nominate for that, and this is more of a philosophical position than a viable alternative, so nothing there.
But one did occur to me: BANK SHOT, John Morris. For a caper comedy starring George C. Scott that in my opinion just doesn't work at all. The idea seemed to be to mix a low-key 70's style, almost naturalistic "wackiness" with a circus-music-by-way-of-Igor-Stravinsky score by Morris. He writes brilliant, highly varied and effective and amusing music, but I can't get through the album (wonderfully released by Kritzerland) though I keep trying - come back to it for a twenty-minute hit every so often. (Can't finish the film either, and I don't want to.) It's just too on-the-nose, too relentlessly fake-cheerful, fake-jolly, fake-sarcastic. It's like the mirror image of the despair of the 70's so clear in Michael Small's thriller scores.
Sometimes what's difficult is just trying to mix a variety of elements that may not go together.
(And for heaven's sake don't let the movie keep you from reading the wonderful Donald Westlake novel it's based on, or any other of the Dortmunder novels, like The Hot Rock. They work great!)
) :
P.S. Welcome to our board.
