I have a pretty good memory for these things, and I'm sure about Glass praising Herrmann. If I can find the interview, I'll post it. I guarantee I didn't read it in any 500-page Glass bio because I've never read any books about him. I do love his music, though, and seeing his ensemble performing Koyaanisqatsi live to picture at the Scottish Rite Cathedral in St. Louis is one of my most memorable concerts.
I don't know if this Boulez quote on Herrmann is true or not, but I find it very strange because the musical aesthetics of Anton Webern and Bernard Herrmann are completely different. Given the love that Boulez had for the work of Webern, one could at the limit in this context consider that "second-rate Webern" is a form of compliment.
Bump. It would be interesting if someone could find Glass for example mentioning Herrmann, but I haven't come across any interview with Glass mentioning Herrmann.
I have a pretty good memory for these things, and I'm sure about Glass praising Herrmann. If I can find the interview, I'll post it. I guarantee I didn't read it in any 500-page Glass bio because I've never read any books about him. I do love his music, though, and seeing his ensemble performing Koyaanisqatsi live to picture at the Scottish Rite Cathedral in St. Louis is one of my most memorable concerts.
Someone posted an extensive quote also attributed to Glass about Goldsmith. I know he got a kick out of working with Hollywood people. He did an onstage thing with Elfman in 2019 and he talked about how warm the composers were to each other in Hollywood as opposed to in concert music. Elfman laughed at that suggestion. But I didn’t get the idea that Glass was deep into film music though he seemed to know some Williams (like Star Wars). The only other thing I’ll say is I remember another anecdote of when he was working with Scorsese on Kundun, Scorsese mentioned Taxi Driver. Glass didn’t know anything about it. Scorsese was surprised and said “you never saw Taxi Driver?!” Glass, who was still driving a NYC cab in those days said “I was a taxi driver! You think I was going to take a night off to see a movie called Taxi Driver?” But that’s as close as I can think of a link to Herrmann.
Glass also said that Ennio Morricone was the greatest film composer of our time when he passed away, so it seems like he must have at least known some Morricone too.
Not a concert composer, but the avant-pop artist Björk apparently named Bernard Herrmann's The Ghost and Mrs. Muir her favorite soundtrack of all time.
Björk: "My favorite soundtrack is a Mankiewicz film The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, done by Bernard Herrmann."
Helmut Lachenmann said that Ennio Morricone (who he has said was even his favorite composer) was a successor to Herrmann, which probably means that he thinks highly of Herrmann too: "For me, he's a successor to Dimitri Tiomkin, Nino Rota, and Bernard Herrmann. He managed to discover new things in places where I thought everything had already been done to death—and for a long time already."
"Morricone didn't invent a new musical language. He's also not a Structuralist or anything. But within the bounds of the old categories—melody, harmony, and rhythm—he found a way to charge them with an energy that I haven't come across in any other music."
