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Posted: |
Sep 27, 2020 - 5:18 PM
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By: |
OnyaBirri
(Member)
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Not sure if you're on the right track here. Can't speak for everyone else, but I think that's rubbish. I got plenty of albums in which actual human voices either sing lyrics, or speak. Some of them are great. But I don't need "dialogue" of any film on record any more than I would need an idiotic voice-over over a Beethoven symphony (unless it's P.D.Q. Bach... but he's no idiot).
No need to talk about Ludwig Van. Film scores are not "art." They are simply product. They are works made for hire by song-and-dance men trying to put dinner on the table.
I know there must be some people out there who love the dialogue clips on Morricone's HATEFUL 8 or Carpenter's ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, but personally, I do not even know who these people are (except for the most casual of listeners who go "hey, I know that clip, it's from the movie such-and-such"). But hey, to each its own.
Those are not examples of artful integrations of dialogue and music. The involve dialogue being randomly sandwiched in between tracks.
I am talking about the artful practice of including dialogue or recitations over the music, to create a well-conceived, adventurous concept album.
I will use for an example my beloved "Dark Shadows" soundtrack, but because that predates Spielberg, I guess not many regulars here know it.
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I will use for an example my beloved "Dark Shadows" soundtrack, but because that predates Spielberg, I guess not many regulars here know it.
Go back even farther to the 1955 RCA LP on The Night of the Hunter.
Instead of a soundtrack of music, this album was designed as a story-telling narrative intoned by the film's director - Charles Laughton. Snippets of Walter Schumann's score played underneath or between the soliloquies.
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I also find the long Richard Burton soliloquies from Equus to be a little tiresome, which I imagine is sacrilege to those who love it.
I love R.R. Bennett's all-string Equus music, but I agree that the spoken words overstay their welcome.
Most likely the UA LP was designed as such because the music on its own was brief plus the Shafer play had accrued its reputation.
Same for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which was rather a Hollywood event due to it being based on an 'adult' language play in the days prior to the MPAA rating system. Taylor & Burton were both an 'item', too, so a lot of their exchanges sparsed the Alex North cues.
The 1958 Fox LP on Malcolm Arnold's The Inn of the Sixth Happiness had Ingrid Bergman, Robert Donat or Curt Jurgens dialogue between each of its music selections.
So far nobody mentioned the sound effects & Anthony Perkins' voice on Phaedra ... and what about Anthony Quinn & Alan Bates on another Theodorakis soundtrack - Zorba the Greek? 
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No need to talk about Ludwig Van. Film scores are not "art." They are simply product. They are works made for hire by song-and-dance men trying to put dinner on the table.
Music per se is either art or it isn't, makes no difference whether it's a film score or an opera or a symphony. Haydn wrote dinner music to put dinner on the table, why that should be art but when Bernard Herrmann writes VERTIGO to put dinner on the table that's not art? Makes no sense at all.
But you are right, there are those soundtracks that are merely sold as a product, in fact I was referring to those as negative examples.
I mentioned BLADE RUNNER as an example of dialogue well used on a soundtrack album, so I'm aware it can be done successfully, but those cases are far and in between.
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I agree with you that I prefer an all-instrumental program in theory, but I don't want to discount instances in which dialog or recitations are included to produce an artful concept album.
Neither do I. Artful concept albums with included dialog do exist, no doubt.
The aforementioned "Dark Shadows" is the best example.
That may well be. I did not comment on that, even though you mentioned it several times, for the simple reason that I am not familiar with it. I only ever saw the Tim Burton movie and know next to nothing about the original TV show or its music.
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Zooba's pick of Beneath the Planet of the Apes is another cool exception, an album with dialogue that's tolerable (even fun) for me.
But honestly, only because it follows the music-only program on the great FSM and LLL CDs.
If I had bought the expensive LP I saw in a used record store in the early 80's I would have been muy disappointed with the dialogue. Just like the expensive Sleuth LP I bought. I was so grateful the expensive LP of Lion in Winter was dialogue free.
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Posted: |
Jan 15, 2022 - 1:02 PM
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By: |
resetplz
(Member)
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In a rare case like BLADE RUNNER, I don't really mind the "dialogue", as Vangelis does not used them in souvenir fashion, but integrates them into his musical vision for the score. On the OST album, snippets of dialogues from the movie are used in soliloquy-fashion on some cues, interwoven into the soundscape, so the spoken words become part of the music. In fact, when the Danish National Symphony Orchestra performed "BLADE RUNNER" in concert, they did so WITH the "dialogue" done live as well, as that is now also part of the "score". So I can accept that.
This hits the nail on the head. And THANK YOU for referencing the live performance; I had never seen this.
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