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nick bicat
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Roy Webb
A couple compilation CD’s. No complete scores.
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Fun topic. All depends on your criteria. What constitutes underrated? Maurice Jarre? My first though is that it's difficult to consider a composer of his stature with 3 Oscars underrated, but compared to the attention given to some other silver-age composers, perhaps he is.
I'm all in on Maurice Jarre, and we're fortunate that so much of his output has been released.
Curiously, I was in Paris for a week last fall and somehow snuck in visits to a couple of record stores and was expecting some surprising Jarre finds, but I didn't. One of the drawbacks to the internet, I guess.
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Posted: |
May 30, 2023 - 11:17 AM
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By: |
Broughtfan
(Member)
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I would go more with under-utilized rather than underated. Add to the list Bill Conti, who I feel is a very talented film music composer. Yes, he won the Oscar for The Right Stuff, but, in addition to this and all the Rocky films he did (Rocky Balboa was, I thought, terrific) he wrote fine scores for F/X, The Big Blue (US version), The Big Fix, F.I.S.T, Five Days From Home, Gotcha, The Karate Kid and, of course, some memorable TV themes: Dynasty, The Colbys, Falcon Crest (including a superb pilot score), Cagney and Lacey, Emerald Point, NAS. I don’t know the score for Masters of the Universe well but am looking forward to checking out his work on it (as many claim it’s one of his best).
He’s also a heck of a nice man, as I discovered when I met him after a 1986 guest conducting appearance he did with the LSO in Daytona Beach.
Another name I’ll put forth is Arthur Morton, mostly known as an orchestrator to the likes of George Dunning and Jerry Goldsmith, his scores for The Waltons were top-class, three that come to mind being The Journey (in which John Boy drives a dying woman to the beach) The Minstrel and The Air Mail Man.
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Instead of watching a STAR TREK episode for the umpteenth time, go rent or download a Polish film from 1960, for instance.
Pauses.
Thinks about it carefully....
Nah.
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Regarding Steiner's rep from the 70s to present time, I can only say what my view is,
After growing up on the great composers of the 60s during my teen years I started getting into the golden age composers when Gerhardt started his series and Elmer Bernstein started his club and Herrmann started re-recording his scores. I started to appreciate Waxman, Herrmann, North, Walton, and a couple of others. But not Steiner. Not because he was loud, because I just didn't connect with his music, even when he scored some of my favorite films--The Big Sleep, Casablanca.
Almost 50 years later my thoughts on Max haven't changed. I still cringe when I watch The Big Sleep and his music comes in.
I know the score was high on the kickstarter list, but I just don't get it.
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Stanley Myers.
He composed film scores in parts of four decades--mid-sixties into the early nineties and was in the middle of Middlemarch when he died.
He always knew how to adapt. In the 60s he captured swinging London with Kaleidescope, offered a variety of styles for Ulysses, delved into the split personalities of a serial killer in No Way to Treat a Lady, and introduced guitarist John Williams to the film world with his sensitive master scoring of a Raging Moon.
He was requested to adapt his non-film piece "Cavatina" for The Deer Hunter and achieved what few film composers ever have--a stand alone classic that has been recorded and performed by countless classical guitarists.
He worked extensively with many of the best directors and mentored several young composers--Richard Harvey and Hans Zimmer and I think there were more.
While there are several CDs of his music available there are far too many of his better scores never released on CD: A Raging Moon, No Way to Treat a Lady, Otley, and Ulysses for starters.
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Roy Webb
This will always be my #1 answer. Webb usually displayed a subtlety and restraint that was far ahead of its time in Golden Age Hollywood, even though he was one of the older Golden Age composers (only a year younger than Gottfried Huppertz, who of course started with several prominent scores during the Silent era!)
And yet, when the occasion called for it (SINBAD THE SAILOR, my favorite score of his!) he demonstrated that he could write epic orchestral thematic seafaring adventure music with the best of them! I especially cherish the 5.5 minute suite included on that Cloud Nine Records release of original Roy Webb tracks, but I want MORE darnit and a complete new recording of that wonderful score is perhaps my biggest Holy Grail, even over any unreleased Goldsmith music!
A couple compilation CD’s. No complete scores.
I know it was brief, but was Intrada's release of Fixed Bayonets not the complete score? I do know that Branded, on the LLL Paramount Westerns set, was only the small surviving fragment (5.5 minutes, again) of a longer full score.
How much original music did Webb compose for Mighty Joe Young, out of curiosity? This album has 35 minutes (re-recorded) from his score, which I believe is the most substantial release lengthwise of any of his film scores:
http://www.mmmrecordings.com/MJY/mjy.html
Yavar
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