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Posted: |
Apr 24, 2017 - 4:14 AM
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By: |
johnbijl
(Member)
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Things are clearing up for film music as serious music.
Yesterday evening I attended Jeff Beal’s House of Cards-concert in Utrecht (The Netherlands). The venue was almost sold out, as was it the night before in Amsterdam. That’s two sold out nights in a row in a country with 17 million inhabitants, for which I thought film music went no further that The time of my life from Dirty Dancing.
As for the concert itself: it was amazing. I adore Beal’s score for the show. He balances the dark with humanity so easily. The way he generates drama in something what otherwise be a less poignant dark comedy is surely a major contribution to the show -- and part of its succes.
But with most of the score being electronic, I was cautious of how it would translate to symphony.
Beal transformed the music into ten suites, centralising themes of the show or the music. Dialogue and pictures were integrated into the music. Carefully selected, they were actually part of the performance and the composition. A death bed scene was shown, for example, and left ‘un-scored’, the orchestra quiet, picking up when the drama was more.. manageable.
At some points, Beal dropped the baton, left the orchestra playing the score sheets and performed trumpet, mostly improvising.
As a whole, the performance felt liked a stand alone worked not derived, but evolved from the scores. Unlike earlier symphonies and concertos based ons film scores, in less denial of it’s film-roots. It think a concert like this, is an expansion of a film score even Thor can get behind 
In interview yesterday afternoon, Beal stated that composing for film is like being in a multi-media band. Actors, writers, DoP’s are all members in a collaborate effort, he said. In this concert-with-dialogue approach he continued that idea *and* delivered a well-rounded show.
I thoroughly enjoyed the show as is — and the music. House of Cards may sound distant at times, but deep in it’s core lies a clever and nuanced approach to the evil machineries, human drama and dark fun of House of Cards. The symphony had now trouble showing that.
In a more personal note, the only thing I’ve been doing longer than politics is collecting film music. It was exceptional to see these cross. And that the composer had warm words for politics and democracy afterwords was, well, comforting as well 
Foto's from my twitter-timeline.
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