Because It's Colder There...

It's 12 degrees in Helsinki as I write this post. So it's a Finnish music kind of day. Today's listening included the following:

Esa-Pekka Salonen: LA Variations, Five Images After Sappho, Giro, Mania, Gambit

Einojuhani Rautavaara: Symphony no. 7, Annunciations, Cantus Arcticus (Concerto for Birds and Orchestra), Piano Concerto no. 1, Symphony no. 3

Aulis Sallinen: Shadows (Prelude for Orchestra), Cello Concerto, Symphony no. 4

All are dramatic and colourful works. Get thee to a record store (most likely online)!

That is all.

Survey...

I got this off of Kyle Gann's blog. A little fun for a lazy day.

Four jobs you've had in your life: Grocery store kitchen clerk; video store clerk; retail salesman; marketing and sales for an arts organisation (Crap! Where's the music?)
Four movies you could watch over and over: North by Northwest, Chinatown, Star Wars (IV-VI), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Braveheart (Okay, that's 5-7. Whatever.).
Four places you've lived: Kansas City (which is in Missouri), St. Joseph (MO), Kirksville (MO), small midwestern town
Four TV shows you love to watch: The Family Guy, House, Grey's Anatomy, The West Wing
Four places you've been on vacation: Chicago (x2), Los Angeles (x3), Greeley, CO, New York.
Four websites you visit daily: filmscoremonthly.com, Kyle Gann, soundtrack.net, Mt. St. Helens (though they haven't updated the camera in awhile).
Four of your favorite foods: my wife's lasagna, black and bleu bacon cheeseburgers, caramel apple croissant french toast, Guinness (not only is a food, it's its own food group!)
Four places you'd rather be: The Newman Scoring Stage, Helsinki, Tuscany, New Zealand

4 days until Christmas and Chanukah

Just a Few Observations...

Rational, intelligent people do not get offended when someone tells them "Merry Christmas".

Rational, intelligent people do not get offended when someone says "Happy Holidays".

When you say that you want to be greeted with a big sign that says "Merry Christmas!" at Wal-Mart or Target, subtextually it means that you're okay with the commericalization/secularization of one of Christendom's two most sacred holidays.

When Christians get themselves in a kerfluffle over the "Holiday tree" versus the "Christmas tree" remember this: the Christmas tree was a pagan symbol first!!! Like so many things, the Church incorporated it at an attempt to encourage seemless conversion of Pagan peoples. But most people don't know the history of their religion that well so I guess it doesn't matter.

"Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!"

Celebrating the American Composer...

How appropriate for my 100th post.

So I thought that today would be a good day to listen to some good American music.

So, without any further ado, well I guess technically that is ado, and so was that, aw forget it. Here's the playlist:

Aaron Jay Kernis: Colored Field, Musica Celestis, Air for Cello and Orchestra.

Michael Torke: An American Abroad, Jasper, Rapture

Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians (that should drive the office a little batty, all that repetition).

John Adams: Road Movies, China Gates, Phrygian Gates, American Berzerk, Hallelujah Junction

George Crumb: Black Angels

Waking A Sleeping Giant...

Today's playlist will include scores for two of the greatest (the greatest?) war films of all time.

Patton and (in honor of today) Tora! Tora! Tora!

What Kind of Day Is It?

It's a Star Wars marathon kind of day.

That's right. We're listening to the entire original trilogy at work today.

What are you doing today??? BWHAHAHAHA!!!

10...

...major works I would have difficulty living without (unless I absolutely had to and not in any particular order):

1) Star Wars ("It still only counts as one!"; if you twist my arm: Empire)
2) The Lord of the Rings (still one work; Just one? The Return of the King)
3) Symphony no. 7 "Angel of Light" - Einojuhani Rautavaara
4) The Rite of Spring - Stravinsky
5) Symphony no. 2 "The Mysterious Mountain" - Alan Hovhaness
6) Symphony no. 7 "Seven Gates of Jerusalem" - Penderecki
7) Music for 18 Musicians - Steve Reich
8) Grand Pianola Music - John Adams
9) The Omen - Jerry Goldsmith
10) Appalachian Spring (probably the original version for 13 instruments)- Aaron Copland

Certainly not definitive but I think you'll find that it fairly accurately reflects my musical interests.

Whirlwind Adventure

Scratched Off The "To-Do Before You Die List"...

Die Frau and I just got back from Chicago this morning.

Wait for it...

Wait for it...

We saw John Williams conduct the Chicago Symphony Orchestra last night!

This was the program:

The Cowboys Overture
Excerpts from Close Encounters of the Third Kind
War of the Worlds: "Escape from the city" and "Epilogue"
Star Trek: The Motion Picture (Goldsmith)
Laura (David Raksin)
The Magnificent Seven Suite (Elmer Bernstein)
"Conquest" from Captain from Castile (Alfred Newman)

intermission

"Tribute to the Film Composer" arr. Williams
March from 1941
"Out to Sea/Shark Cage Fugue" from Jaws

Harry Potter Suite:
"Hedwig's Theme"
"Aunt Marge's Waltz"
"Harry's Wondrous World"

Star Wars Suite:
"The Imperial March"
"Anakin's Theme"
"Throne Room and End Title"

Encores (3):
"Luke and Leia"
The Mission Theme (for NBC Nightly News)
"Raiders March" from Raiders of the Lost Ark

Overall the performance was dynamite! The characteristic sound that has been cultivated in Chicago for the last 50 years is well-suited to play this particular music (read: gutsy and brassy). One of the real treats of the performance was the "Tribute to the Film Composer". I'm not sure if this is the same suite that he conducted at the Oscars though. It was entertaining because you would literally get snippets of pieces and by the time you figured it out (or your wife says, "It's Exodus you idiot") you're on to another theme. These are what I remember (I know there were more): Warner Bros. Logo Fanfare (Max Steiner), Casablanca ("As Time Goes By", though Steiner wrote the score), 20th Century Fox Fanfare (Alfred Newman), Star Wars (Williams), Patton (Goldsmith), Titanic (Horner), Psycho (Herrmann), Exodus (Ernest Gold), The Magnificent Seven (Elmer Bernstein), E.T. (Williams), Jaws (Williams), The Sea Hawk (Korngold), Dr. Zhivago (Maurice Jarre), Bridge on the River Kwai ("Colonel Bogey March - Kenneth J Alford, though the film's score was written by Malcolm Arnold), Gone with the Wind (Steiner), The Natural (Randy Newman), Out of Africa (John Barry), The Pink Panther (Henry Mancini). Conspicuously missing, I thought, were any works by Miklos Rozsa. It would have been nice to have a snippet of the "Parade of the Charioteers" from Ben-Hur.

One of the interesting things was tempo. Ordinarily, at least on his recordings of suites, themes, etc. Johnny is known for taking tempos a little on the slower side (just listen to "O fortuna" from Carmina Burana on the 1996 Olympics album or the Second movement of Hovhaness' Mysterious Mountain Symphony). But at this performance he took things at a bit more of a briskly. This was particularly true of the suite from The Magnificent Seven which he took at tempo di tear-ass. Faster, I think, than Bernstein's original score recording.

One of the really fun things for me was to "see" Johnny's orchestration at work for real. This was especially true in Close Encounters where there's a lot of modernist orchestral technique at play. To see/hear that in action was tremendous!

One of the most disappointing aspects of the performance was the celeste playing on "Hedwig's Theme". It was not as smooth as what we're accustomed to hearing on the recordings but the orchestra's performance of the theme was great. Also Dale Clevenger, who has been the principle horn with the CSO since the 1840s, nearly missed an entrance altogether in The Cowboys Overture and his solo sound on other peices was really stuffy. Come to think of it, I didn't like his sound back in 2000 when I saw Penderecki conduct his Seven Gates of Jerusalem symphony (which is an incredible piece) with the CSO. I guess the other disappointment was that Superman was conspicuously absent as well. That would have been nice to hear.

By the end of the performance it was clear that the brass players were becoming tired because there were wrong notes (but only to those of who are nerdy enough to know). There were a lot of clams in the Raiders March but it was the third encore(!) so I guess I'll cut the brass section a little slack.

For those that have never seen Mr. Williams conduct it's, um, interesting. It's kind of distracting at times to watch but it does, nevertheless, get the job done. Actually there were several gestures I was quite fond of and will probably attempt to incorporate into my own conducting vocabulary. I also liked the fact that he didn't cue every little entrance but gave attention to where he thought it was needed regardless of what was going on elsewhere in the orchestra.

It was also good to see the Pikey there and we compared a few notes about the individual performances. (Thanks for dessert at Bennigan's, too!)

Overall the performance was terrific and the one of the great experiences of a what really is a charmed life (I am, in fact, a really lucky guy). Ultimately it will be a great story for die Frau and I to tell our grandchildren. "That's right kids. We flew to Chicago and camped out in the airport overnight just so we could see John Williams (one of your granddad's heroes) conduct the Chicago Symphony Orchestra!" How's that for devotion? My wife is one of the most awesome people I know to do this with/for me.

Happy Birthday!

Other famous people born on this date include (besides me of course!):

Krzyzstof Penderecki (composer)
Johan de Meij (composer)
Oded Fehr (actor)
Charles Schumer (Senator - D - NY)
Manuel de Falla (composer)
Boris Karloff (actor)
Harpo Marx (brilliant)
Johnny Mandel (composer)

and of course...

My good friend Jedd Schneider (who is half the man he used to be!)

Jerry Fischer In Memoriam

Jerry Fischer was a friend of mine in grad school. He had just begun composition studies in my second year at Truman State. Jerry was a non-trad. He had made his living in software sales of a system that he had devised that took him all over the world. He was a family man who cared for his wife, children and elderly mother deeply. He was an organ player who rarely missed mass. He had decided, though, that it was time to return to school and study composition. So he drove in to Kirksville from Quincy, Illinois every Friday for his lessons and the composers master class. He was quiet, thoughtful, kind and always thoroughly engaged.

On this date two years ago Jerry was gunned down in his driveway by his business partner over a business disagreement. Later that year we performed his set for flute and piano based on his three cats on one of our composers concerts. It was an extremely emotional day as his family was there, too.

You're remembered Jerry.

The Goblet of Fire...

Well it's not John Williams (no one is) but Pat Doyle's score for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is pretty awesome. The score is energetic, exciting, dramatic (nearly to a fault...nearly) and brilliantly scored (kudos to his orchestrators). The most unbelieveable cue is "Voldemort" clocking in at just over 9 1/2 minutes and is an orchestral tour-de-force which covers, I assume, the entirety of Harry's confrontation with Voldemort during the competition. He only uses preexisting themes of John Williams' twice (at least on the album) and mercifully the three pop songs are at the end of the album and only consume 11 minutes of the CD's 76-minute running time. There's this quintessential British-ness about the score (which you would expect since JW was about the only non-British cast/crew member in the first three; the exceptions being the directors).

The Pikey and I have had conversations where the following has been the focal point: John Williams on a bad day is better than every other film composer on a good (or even great) day. That being said this is a terrific effort from Patrick Doyle (whose music I've admired all the way back to Henry V). Kudos to Mr. Doyle, this is a great score!

SNOW!!!

The first snow of the year has come and gone. Gigantic flakes. It was awesome. I don't really care for winter, but there's always something magical about the first snow of the year. Plus my office is in the corner on the top floor of the building. It was fun to watch.

Playlist 11/11/2005

Die Frau is out this evening. She's doing the school musical thing (no I'm not a terrible husband, I'm going Saturday night). Of course she's been doing this for about a month now so it's been a little rough not having her around in the evening.

So I thought I'd create myself a little playlist for the evening and sit down with a New Belgium Brewery Trippel (thanks to McIntire for introducing this one to me) and just do some listening.

So on the playlist

Kelly-Marie Murphy: Give Me Phoneix Wings to Fly for piano trio, 12'55
Henryk Gorecki: Totus Tuus for mixed chorus, 8'55
Peteris Vasks: Lauda for orchestra, 17'38
Henri Dutilleux: Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, 27'00
Esa-Pekka Salonen: Wing on Wing for orchestra and 2 coloratura sopranos, 25'45
Alfred Schnittke: Concerto Grosso no 1 for 2 violins, harpsichord, prepared piano and strings, 28'00
Einojuhani Rautavaara: Symphony no. 7, 35'00

That should do quite nicely.

Come home soon, dear wife, I miss you!!!

The 200 Year Shadow

I found this article in the LA Times today. I thought it was interesting given some of the things that we've been discussing here lately. I also find it interesting that they actually include the thoughts of living composers. How refreshing.

Film Composers In The Opera House

I don't know if there are any opera fans here but these might be of interest.

Don Davis, whose scores for The Matrix films are brilliant and unparalleled, is composing an opera. It was just given its concert premiere by the Los Angeles Master Chorale in oratorio form last night. I haven't been able to find any reviews of the performance yet but you can read about the opera here.

Elliot Goldenthal has composed an opera based on the Beowulf legend called Grendel. It will be receiving its premiere next spring by the Los Angeles Opera. Check it out here.

And finally, our beloved Howard Shore has decided to turn his attention to opera as well. He will be working on an adaptation of his score for David Cronenberg's The Fly. I haven't been able to find any other information except that the Los Angeles Opera is slated to premiere the work in their 2007-08 season. I'm sure more information will be available eventually at Howard Shore's website.

For a guy like me who is always looking for concert works ("classical music" - gaaaawd I hate that term) by film composers this is very exciting.

The Legend of James Horner...

I have a confession. I have a weakness for swashbuckler films. Especially those that are old-fashioned in their scope and storytelling.

My wife and I went and saw The Legend of Zorro Sunday afternoon. First of all, I absolutely love the first movie. It's a fine example of old-fashioned swashbuckling. It had just enough camp to make it fun but still had a certain gravitas that made it entertaining beyond the humor.

That being said the sequel is quite fun, too. Ultimately the plot was a little thin, but on the whole the movie was an entertaining yarn very much in the vein of the original.

I have another confession to make. When it's at its best I really like James Horner's music. There I said it. I know I've crapped on a lot of his music but let's face it: he's the second richest composer in Hollywood (like #1, who also doesn't actually live in Hollywood). I haven't been this impressed, though, with one of Horner's scores since...well the last Zorro film (Troy was above average for having been composed in 2 weeks). I was pleasantly surprised that he somehow chose not to lean quite so heavily on the "Hornerisms". We all know them. Naturally the "Russian" motif appeared. That was more-or-less to be expected. There were a couple times he leaned on the love theme a little too much, mostly in places where I didn't think it was dramatically appropriate, but who am I? After The Perfect Storm I made a rule: I'll never buy a James Horner score without seeing the film to which it's attached first. That being said, I'll be purchasing the soundtrack album for The Legend of Zorro.

So I was hoping that maybe we could use this particular setting to speak intelligently about some of Horner's music. Let's face it; there some of his scores that we all like. So let's talk about it. Kind of like a 12-step program.

Let the Debate Begin

Reed brought up an interesting point on one of the Pikey's postings that I have taken the liberty of expanding. All thoughts are welcome, this list is by no means comprehensive. Remember, these are what I consider essentials because they're high water marks in film history or a watershed for the folks that wrote them and not just because they're fun to listen to (That's the You own it, you love it, but you would never admit to it List. That being said Waterworld, Krull and First Knight are a few of my absolute favorites in that category).

In no particular order I submit film scores that every wannabe (like us) film composer should own or be familiar with:

Star Wars IV-VI - Duh. Like I'm going to start anywhere but here (Star Wars films are like Tchaikovsky symphonies; there are three of them and they are numbered 4, 5 and 6).
The Lord of the Rings (obviously Howard Shore's and not the well-crafted but crappy animated score by Leonard Rosenman)
Jaws
Superman
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Schindler's List
Planet of the Apes
The Omen
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
The Battle of Britain (both the Ron Goodwin and William Walton scores, conveniently packaged on one disc available from Varese Sarabande)
E.T.
Braveheart
A Streetcar Named Desire
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
Vertigo
North by Northwest
Psycho
Batman
The Sea Hawk
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
The Magnificent Seven
To Kill A Mockingbird
Ben-Hur
Spellbound (Rozsa, 1945)
The Thin Red Line (is this Hans Zimmer's greatest score? it's incredible)
Alexander Nevsky (probably one of my top 5 greatest ever)
Patton (probably one of the greatest exercises in film scoring economy; 30 minutes of music for a 3-hour film. and not all of it was used in the final version).
Romeo and Juliet (Nino Rota)
El Cid
The Red Violin
Altered States (we may as well include it)
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
The Mission
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
Prince Valiant (Franz Waxman, 1954; the first film in cinemascope!)
Star Trek II
King of Kings
Signs
The Jungle Book (Rozsa, 1942)
2001: A Space Odyssey (Alex North's unused score)
The Matrix (an incredible use of post-minimalist concert hall technique blended into a one-of-a-kind score. I have a "bootleg" copy of the score that I recorded from the dvd, if anyone is interested)
Henry V (1989: singlehandedly revived Shakespeare and established the careers of both Ken Branagh and Patrick Doyle, whose Hamlet score is actually a much more refined composition)

Meeting John Corigliano

So the Pikey and I went up to Billy Jewell Bible School Friday afternoon. John Corigliano (who is an amazing composer for those that don't know) was giving a talk and then this evening the Chamber Orchestra Kremlin performed his Red Violin Suite on their tour stop here in town. He seemed like a very nice guy (a bit of a, um, diva) and I got to ask him a couple questions. I didn't necessarily agree with some of the things he had to say but it was very interesting to get to meet one of the preeminent composers of our time and listen to his thoughts.

As Mike and I were discussing afterward it was nice to hear a professional composer (read: someone who actually makes a living) validate some of my own aesthetic viewpoints about being a composer. Mosty it came down to being told that it was okay to want to keep trying your hand compositionally at different things and not worry about getting bogged down in dogma. VALIDATION!!!

The performance was a different story. While they may have captured the spirit of the work I don't necessarily think they performed it well. They employed an interesting gimmick in the playing of the suite. Rather than have just one violinist playing the solo, each in the section took turns playing different parts. It was an interesting idea that ultimately failed, I think, because there was no single point of view being employed (which is how it is in an orchestra of virtuosi, I guess) so there was no cohesion. But it was exciting because as you would suspect Mr. Corigliano was there and he also gave a brief Q&A during intermission in which he was asked essentially the same questions as earlier in the afternoon session.

Along with the Corigliano they performed a Mozart Divertimento and the Mendelssohn Octet (which is a terrific piece of music). Ultimately I wasn't that impressed with the group on the whole. Technically they were quite sloppy when it came to playing together and there were also some serious intonation issues at times. I thought that the overall sound was confused with a distinctive lack of clarity, just everyone playing their part like it was the most important one.

At the end of the day it was still very cool to get to meet another composer. I always love meeting other composers at all levels and listening to their thoughts and ideas even if I don't necessarily agree with their points of view. In this case it was nice to receive reinforcement of something that I had always felt anyway. A single meeting with one person can change or validate your ideas about anything. But there will always be someone who believes exactly the opposite. Therefore it's important to come to your own conclusion through a carefully weighed balance of reason and emotion. As a student of composition, though, it will always be the person who worked with me on a daily basis for two years that will come out as the greatest compositional influence. Not stylistically because what most call style is little more than technique. The real influence of this great teacher of mine came from the aesthetic point of view with which I feel he imbued me.

Just write the best music you can.

Finished!

I just put the kabosh on my most recent piece, a violin solo for a friend of mine. Now I just have to get it on the computer and out to her. I also have to convince her that it isn't as difficult as it looks.

Damn it feels good to finish a piece.

Now I have a choral piece to write. NEXT!!!

The Hand of Fate, Part I

I'm lucky. In a single instant I knew what I would do with the rest of my life.

The Time: the mid-1980s
The Place: somewhere in the midwest

The Setup:

As long as I can remember music has been an important part of my life. I spent a lot of time in the hospital when I was very young. I was read to and listened to the radio often. Later on I would discover that I was a HUGE fan of the music from Superman (and the movie, too). This was really my first exposure to orchestral music. I remember going to an educational concert given by the Kansas City Symphony when I was in grade school. They played the theme from Superman then, too. I was blown away! I thought to myself that this must be something really special for these guys to take the time to learn how to play it (yes, I realize I was only 8 or so at the time; things do change a little over time. To this day the music for Superman still holds a special place with me). I had an old VHS copy of the movie that my grandfather (ever the techno-geek, right up until his death 11 years ago) taped off television and edited the commericals out (this was in the mid-80s mind you; a big-time deal!). I wore out the first 6 minutes of that tape listening to (and watching) the main title sequence over and over and over (one of the best title sequences EVER). I was also able to watch Ben-Hur from beginning to end by the time I was 8 years old. Probably in no small part due to Miklos Rozsa's amazing score, though I didn't know it at the time (and the chariot race, I suppose; one of the greatest action scenes ever filmed and no music - a brilliant and artistically correct choice).

I always loved singing in elementary school. Like so many others I joined the school band in the 6th grade. I got my first trumpet from the pastor of my church at the time (the trumpet is, of course, a manly instrument, as opposed to the oboe! - KIDDING!). Most of my teachers were uninspiring throughout the course of my public school music education. I don't even remember the name of my first band director. My junior high band directors were enthusiastic but ultimately I was in band for the social aspect of belonging to something (I think most of us know how that feels). Then came high school. My first high school band director only taught to the best of his students and the rest of us fell by the wayside (further, he was not a very good director, as I would come to discover later. He was a horrid conductor and a mediocre rehearsal technician). My second HS director was more enthusiastic and expected a lot more of us as we were a smaller school (by this time my family had moved to the next town, very small) that had a reputation for excellence. He had a great impact on me as a musician. But not as great the impact as the choir director at this small-town school. He was the reason I became a musician and became so open- and high-minded about what music can be. Not in an arrogant sense, mind you, but about the expressive capabilities of any kind of good music. By this time I was already becoming steeped in the possibilities of film music but also knew that there was more to be had...

The Moment:

The Time: Finals week. January, 1994 (10th grade).
The Place: Mrs. Farrabee's Western Civilization class.

We had already taken our final and Mrs. F. said that she didn't care what we did so long as we didn't play cards (apparantly, somebody lost money years before). Anyway, my friend Patrick Pyzska slips me a CD of John Williams and the Boston Pops Orchestra playing film themes of Maestro Williams. It was upon hearing the first notes of the Olympic Fanfare and Theme, and ultimately the rest of the disc, that I knew that music of drama was going to be my professional life.

So when Pat loaned me that CD (eventually my first CD purchase) it changed my life completely. I made a tape of it (didn't have a CD player at this time - poor, you know) and just about wore out the tape due to incessant listening. Eventually I began picking out the themes on the piano (I had some lessons late in elementary school but the whole experience kind of turned me off to the piano, but that's another posting. On the whole I was - and still am - pretty awful at playing the piano).

It wasn't too long before I got my first job which means that I had a lot of disposal income (comparatively speaking). I started going to movies and purchasing film scores at an unbelieveable rate. By the time I graduated high school my CD collection had ballooned from 0 to about 150. I had also made it a point to see as many movies as I could in the theatre and started catching up on old movies in order to make a more conscious attempt at understanding how music works in film.

At first I thought I might enjoy being a studio player and began gearing myself in that direction. How awesome would it be to just get to play this stuff? Then I discovered how ridiculously competitive the studio musician world was and just how wretched a trumpet player I really was (it wasn't until my second year of college that I discovered it was actually equipment - no crap). Then I began to conduct (learning by paying attention to the drum major in marching band, ugh, and then conducting to the recordings). I thought it would be fun to be a studio conductor. I mean, forget playing, how great would it be to get to conduct this stuff to a 75-piece orchestra!?!

Then came the writing. At first I was playing the themes by ear and then I started improvising my own "embellishments" and then my own extensions where I would no longer use the original theme but my own embellishments. Naturally everything I wrote was horrific, but it was a start...

Carmen

My wife and I went to the KC Lyric Opera production of Bizet's Carmen Wednesday night. What a great opera. I was thoroughly impressed by the tenor who played Don Jose. Carmen was pretty good, too (and just about as lusty as the character should be without becoming pornographic). I'd never heard the show before so it was a lot of fun. THE MUSIC! Holy cow the music for the opera is incredible. I had forgotten just how much music from that show has made its way into popular culture.

The staging left something to be desired, though, in many respects because the director was hired at the last minute. I have some friends in the chorus that said that rehearsals were attrocious because she spent so much time blocking then reblocking. They said that rehearsals got so bad at one point that the principals basically started blocking their roles themselves and opening questioning the director's capabilities. Ouch!!! The problem, though, is that the director should have known what she was doing because she's directed Carmen before in (Florence!) so it wasn't like she didn't know the show.

Anyway, the show came together and was great. As a bonus the house was nearly packed which is unheard of for the KC Lyric Opera on a Wednesday night. It's rare that 3 hours flies by so quickly.

Language

Item # 13 on today's list of self-improvement. Don't ask what the first 12 are.

I've come to a decision. I swear too much (one of the pitfalls of working in retail). I think that my command of the English language is too good (rare though not unheard of among my generation) to use excessively these words. To this end I am going to attempt to limit the usage of certain 4-letter words in my vocabulary.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Life's Not Fair

Sometimes life can be terribly cruel.

I posted a few weeks ago about my wife's aunt's funeral. If you'll remember she died of lung cancer at 39 having never smoked.

I recently received more bad news. This time about a good friend of mine from college. Her brother had been battling cancer for some time now. Well, 4 years actually. Two weeks ago he lost. He was in his early 20s, I think. After college my friend and I sort of lost track of each other. She was a great friend, though. A thoughtful person, wonderful thespian and even directed yours truly in his stage debut. I'm incredibly saddened for her by the loss of her brother because I know that the two of them were very close.

All I can feel is a great sadness for my family and my friend. It's just painful because I know how much suffering this causes my family and my friend. I know, though, that if God does indeed have a plan, none of us is meant to understand what it is.

Professor Robocop

My wife and I just finished watching the special on the History Channel about Roman engineering. It was really fascinating (yes, we're nerds for all things Greek and Roman). Anyway, like we've come to expect, they have their certain panel of experts that they continually go to throughout in order to give their information "scholarly accuracy". Who should happen to grace the screen as one of their "experts"? None other than Robocop himself, Mr. Peter Weller. I was shocked. At first I thought to myself, "Self (because that's what I call myself) this has to be nothing other than a happy coincidence. That cannot possibly be...Holy Crap!!! It is him!!!" That's right the star of such acclaimed films as Robocop 2 and The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai is a Roman scholar!!! Apparently he's affiliated with Syracuse University somehow, but I couldn't find any references to him as an instructor.

I suppose there's hope afterall for those of us that want to live in both entertainment and academia.

The Things I Miss

So as any of you that know my wife left her job at a local music store to become a staff accompanist for a local school district. Now that she has this job I can no longer just somewhat randomly call her up at the store and let her know that I'm bored or that I've scored us Cardinals tickets (of the St. Louis variety) or that I've gotten comps to one of the local shows. I miss talking to her for practically no reason at all in the middle of the day. Just calling her to tell her I love her. I guess that's not no reason.

The Brothers Grimm

Die Frau and I went and saw Terry Gilliam's The Brothers Grimm this weekend. It was a lot of fun but there were times where I couldn't figure out if Terry Gilliam wanted to make a great movie and tell a great story or try to create camp and cater to ever-shrinking legion of fans who have come to expect weird touches in his films. Now I like weird just as much as the next guy. And there's no mistake that most of his films are brilliant. But in this case it actually detracted from the story. It seemed like every time I started to get wrapped up in the story (which was convoluted but not unmanageable) Gilliam would pull a Monty Pythonesque stunt which would yank the viewer right out of the story (like Kubrick, only funny) and remind them that this is only a movie. Jonathan Pryce is golden, though, in his over-the-top portrayal of a French general but Peter Stormare (of Fargo, Armageddon and Chocolat notoriety) begins to grate on one's nerves afterwhile despite the fact that he's a terrific actor (one of the pitfalls of his character).

One undeniably terrific aspect of the film was the cinematography. This was one of the most beautifully shot films I've ever seen.

As a composer of film and concert hall I have to say that the score was incredibly distracting. The composer, Dario Marinelli, who I've never heard of changed one note of Jerry Goldsmith's score to Paul Verhoeven's Hollow Man. Distracting and offputting. Overall I thought that the movie was generally entertaining despite its shortcomings but certainly not overly memorable.

The Half-Blood Prince

I know I'm a bit behind the times, but I just finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I must say that I was quite surprised, impressed, saddened, upset, mad, satisfied and, more than anything, anxious already about the final book of the series. I understand that a lot of people felt dissatisfied with this particular book but this is the "darkest before dawn" book of the series and I don't think people were prepared for that. More than any other book of the series, this is the Two Towers or Empire Strikes Back of Harry Potter. It ended the way it did because it had to.

My wife and I, who are big fans of the series both in print and on celluloid, have been speculating quite a bit about the outcome of the series particularly what surprises and twists might lay ahead for we eager readers.

So does anyone else have any thoughts about what's in store for the final installment of the Harry Potter series? I'm curious to see what the rest of you think so I'll reserve my own thoughts until later.

The Pallbearer

My wife's aunt died this past weekend. She was diagnosed with lung cancer in February and succumbed Friday afternoon. She is survived by her husband and 2 children. She never smoked.

She was 39. I'll say that again. She was 39.

We buried her today and Randy (her husband - my wife's uncle) asked me, along with several of his other nephews, to be pallbearers. It was odd but not uncomfortably so. The more I sat there during mass (I'm not Catholic but my wife's family is) the more I began to wonder why this happens. I choked back tears for this person whom I'd hardly gotten the chance to know, sad about the injustice of it all. The priest said that God called her home. What? Why? How can taking a woman in the prime of her life away from her husband and children be "part of God's cosmic plan"? This is something we are told to rationalise why it's okay that they died so young. The truth is they don't know either. I also hate it when people use that phrase "part of God's cosmic plan". These people are selling something. You should run away from them.

The truth of the matter is bad things happen to good people. There's no rhyme or reason to it. They just do. But it is, yet again, a reminder that we should live our lives to their absolute fullest savouring every possible moment and those people in our lives that help give them meaning.

Billing

My wife and I were having a funny conversation today. She was telling me about her day (and the guy she works for, who's fun too - insert sarcastic voice here). Friday is her last official day at work. She was telling me, though, that they've been having a very difficult filling her position (which, as the title alludes to, is the billing position). Anyway, since the beginning of the year 5 people (including my wife) have had this job.

So I've come to the following conclusion: her position is akin to the Defense Against the Dark Arts position at Hogwarts. Nobody seems to be able to keep the position. And yes, Jaques, I do believe that makes the owner Voldemort. Harry Potter is awesome!!!

Looking A Gift Horse In The Mouth

Yesterday at work we had an interesting occurrence. Our phone lines worked for about 20 minutes out of the whole day. That's right. 20 minutes. (Freaking Southwestern Bell.) So I spent the better part of the day trying to figure out which was worse, being here and getting paid to literally sit on my ass and do nothing all day or being here with nothing to do when, frankly, I could have been doing other (more pressing) things at home. Now I realise that I'm seriously looking a gift horse in the mouth but it was kind of annoying (mostly because I don't handle boredom well). The least they could have done is say, "Go home, we're still going to pay you". That seems reasonable to me. Riiiiiiiight.

Extensions...

So, courtesy of Reed and Michael there's been somewhat of an ongoing discussion on one of my recent postings about film music, modern music and academics (and the snobbery that's attached to the latter 2). I thought I would bring the discussion to the main forum, so-to-speak, and continue to elaborate here.

I think part of the problem academics have with film music is that most of them - smart as they are - don't understand/can't comprehend that it's not meant to be a stand-alone art form. It has to be approached on its own terms rather than as a piece of concert music. If it's eventually capable of functioning as concert music then all the better. (I would love to hear a 50-60 minute work for chorus and orchestra based on The Matrix.) Film music is supposed to be subservient to the picture and heighten the drama (something we're actually starting to get away from - like in the late '60s - because some people think that drum loops are music).

But let's look at some of the "academic" arguments against film music. They say film music has no form. Not so. The film itself is actually the form. Creative composers have often been able to work within this medium to utilise traditional formal structures (albeit on a smaller scale). Michael Kamen wrote in so-called "classical forms" every opportunity he got writing sonatas, theme and variations (which is what film music essentially is), baroque dance forms, etc. and he was brilliant. They say it's restrictive. Perhaps it is, to an extent. In some regards, however, film music has been way ahead of the curve (nowhere has this been more evident than in the use of technology in music). My favorite fallacy: all film composers are hacks who don't have any understanding of "real music". Okay, try these on for size. John Williams studied at Juilliard. Jerry Goldsmith studied at USC and LA City College. Basil Poledouris has degrees in music composition and film(!). James Horner studied with Malcolm Arnold at the Royal College of Music in London. Marco Beltrami studied composition at Yale. Don Davis and Bruce Broughton both studied composition at UCLA. Elliot Goldenthal studied with Aaron Copland and John Corigliano at the Manhatten School of Music. David Raksin and Alfred Newman studied with Arnold Schoenberg. Bernard Herrmann studied for a time at Juilliard. Miklos Rozsa received a doctorate in musicology from the Leipzig Conservatory. Among the heavy hitters in contemporary film music Danny Elfman remains one of the few who has received little or no classical training. And his music is incredible (if anyone even mentions the word "ghostwriter" I'm gonna scream). I think that's enough. Finally, my favorite argument. They say it's bad music. While I'm certainly not going to disagree that there is a lot of bad film music it has to be taken in perspective. There's a lot of bad music in any genre. There's a lot of bad classical music. Has anyone heard Beethoven's Battle Symphony lately? I didn't think so. You know why? Because it's not very good. Jerry Goldsmith once said something on a DVD commentary about the amount of music one has to write for a film. He said that if he wrote 10 good minutes of music per film then he was, more often than not, happy with the result. With as little time as most composers are given to write music for film, it's unrealistic to expect that every note should be an artistic achievement.

The influence of film music has been very much what I would consider a double-edged sword. In many cases, it has actually done much to further the general public's acceptance (mostly on a subconscious level) of modern music. This leads me to one of my theories of modern music that I've had for a long time which is a concurrence with something Michael wrote. When the general public is exposed to "modern" music in conjuction with another artistic medium (more often than not a visual stimulus) they are far more likely to accept what they hear than if they were hearing it for the first time as a piece of "pure" music (God how I hate that term). Think of how many seminal pieces of 20th century music began life as ballet rather than concert music; Stravinsky's The Firebird, The Rite of Spring, Debussy's Jeux and Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe were all ballets first. Even Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra (awesome) was originally intended to be staged as a ballet as well as a concert piece. And Stravinsky may not have scored any films but his style was a major influence on film scoring during the golden and early-silver ages of Hollywood. At the same time I think that (aside from what influence pop music has had on the current generation of composers) film music has had more to do (either intentionally or unintentionally) with the "return to tonality" in concert music than any other musical genre.

The influence of Philip Glass has more to do, I think, with the medium of film itself rather than his music. In a sense it hearkens back more to Stravinsky and riffing on an ostinato than it does Philip Glass (In a manner of speaking Glass is just taking Stravinsky's ostinato technique to an extreme). This particular technique suits film pretty well because directors and editors, more often than not, are recutting a film up until the last possible minute (even as or after the music is recorded) and from a technical standpoint it's easier to write an ostinato figure with a slow harmonic rhythm so that you can trim a measure (or 10) here or half of a measure there and lose as little as possible of the original intention of the music.

Any more thoughts? Or have we exhausted this one?

In Memoriam Jerry Goldsmith

I can't believe I missed it. Jerry Goldsmith died a year ago yesterday. He was one of the greatest and most diverse composers to ever write for the silver screen with a particular knack for little character films and science fiction (although I wouldn't slight most of his vast action output, either). He was nominated for the highest achievement one can receive in film 17 times and won once for 1976's The Omen. He enjoyed long collaborations with the likes of Paul Verhoeven (Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Hollow Man), Franklin J. Schaffner (Planet of the Apes, Patton, The Boys From Brazil), Joe Dante (Gremlins, Innerspace, Small Soldiers) and Michael Crichton (Coma, The Great Train Robbery, The Thirteenth Warrior).

He began his career not as a composer but as a clerk/typist at CBS in the 1950s after taking classes in film scoring as USC with Miklos Rozsa. Soon he was scoring live radio programs and episodic television. He soon worked his way into regular episodic television scoring lots of now-forgotten CBS shows and several episodes of The Twilight Zone (the original is still the best). By the early '60s he was scoring between 4 and 9 (!) films a year creating works for such critical fare as A Patch of Blue, Planet of the Apes, and The Sand Pebbles. The '70s brought such films as Chinatown, Logan's Run, and the Oscar winning score for The Omen. The '80s brought more work and, in a post-Star Wars Hollywood, a huge sylistic shift that brought with it films like Ridley Scott's Legend (well, the European print of the film has Jerry's score. It was dumped once the film came stateside 2 years after is was made and replaced with a - gulp! - Tangerine Dream score. Ugh. Thank you, Sid Sheinberg) Poltergeist and Total Recall (yes, it was released in 1990, but it was made the year before! Incidentally one of Goldsmiths' personal favorite scores). The '90s brought such fare as Basic Instinct, Rudy, L.A. Confidential, The Edge, Air Force One, Mulan, The Mummy (which Goldsmith hated), and The Thirteenth Warrior. The twilight of his career brought scoring assignments that seemed more like favors for friends than anything. Hollow Man, Looney Tunes: Back In Action, The Sum of All Fears, Timeline (which was withdrawn because the film was a mess and heavily reedited. By this point Jerry was battling cancer and Brian Tyler stepped in to write a serviceable, though ultimately forgettable, score) and the underrated Star Trek: Nemesis. I would also be remiss not to mention that his theme for Star Trek: The Motion Picture graced the beginning of every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation winning an Emmy for best theme and would go on to write the noble theme (and win another Emmy) for Star Trek: Voyager.

A friend of mine who played for Goldsmith a couple times once told me that Jerry had figured that he had written so much music for television and film that every minute of every day, somewhere in the world something with his music attached was being shown. That's impressive.

Despite his vast film and television output, he wrote only a handful of concert works. His "classical" works include the cantata Christus Apollo for orchestra, chorus and mezzo-soprano soloist based on a text by Ray Bradbury (with whom Goldsmith had been friends since his days at CBS), Music for Orchestra, commissioned by Leonard Slatkin and the Saint Louis Symphony in the early 1970s, and Fireworks, an abashedly neo-romantic work which Goldsmith wrote as a celebration of his hometown for his first concert series with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1999.

I still remember when my friend Mike called me to tell me that he had read that Jerry had died. It was like a very close friend had died. I was in a funk for a little while and knowing that I would never hear a new Jerry Goldsmith score again was a difficult pill to swallow. Even though I never met the man (regrettably) I always felt like I had known him a little bit through his music. One of those few composers in Hollywood that had his own sound (there are now even fewer) and, if you listened closely enough, you could in many cases hear his personality come through his music. You could always tell when he loved his subject and you could always tell when he was kind of poking fun at it (a la The Mummy).

For all those that derided film music as nothing more than a red-headed stepchild to "classical" music he said, "If our music survives, which I have no doubt it will, then it will be because it is good." I think this goes for any kind of music.

Jerry, for those of us that never met you but grew up on, learned from and knew you through your music, we still miss you.

Godspeed, Mr. Scott

James Doohan died today at his home in Washington. He was 85. CNN's story is nice.

Home Field Advantage...

I watched the Major League Baseball All-Star Game last night. Ugh.

I'm not going to go on and on about how much of a dope Bud Selig (the commissioner of major league baseball) is. That ground has been trod...frequently. I think, though, that playing the All-Star Game for home field advantage in the World Series is one of the worst ideas in the history of bad ideas. It used to be that the American League and the National League alternated home field advantage on a yearly basis. Even this wasn't the best solution. Home field advantage is one of those things that should be based on the teams' records over the course of the entire season and not one lousy game that doesn't even effect the outcome of the regular season.

"He's probably a National League fan". Is that what you're thinking? You would be right. I may live in Kansas City, but the St. Louis Cardinals are my team. They have been since they were the "Deadbirds" several years back. But if I were a Royals fan (ha!) I'd still say that using the All-Star Game to determine home field advantage is nothing more than a publicity stunt. And a stupid one at that.

The All-Star Game used to be about putting on a show for the fans and having a good time as a ballplayer without any real performance expectations. It was an exhibition. Now that the game "counts" it's no longer any fun to watch. It's like watching any other game.

Life As A Music Inventor

So I've been working on this piece for months for a friend for violin solo and chamber orchestra. Months. I've more-or-less aborted the piece about a half-dozen times. It's been painstaking because it seems like my compositional materials were thwarting my intentions at every turn.

NEWSFLASH! Contrary to mass belief, a piece of music rarely springs to life instantaneously (well not concert music anyway) - jazz excluded.

So after about 4 months of gestation the piece is finally - and quickly - starting to take shape in my mind. It's so exciting! It turns out that much of the material I previously wrote will actually make it into the piece afterall. I was just trying to find the right "glue" to hold the whole thing together. For the first time since I finished my last film score my brain is a whir of musical activity! I love that initial moment of creative realisation. It's awesome (in the archaic, take-your-breath-away, sense of the word)!

I just wish I weren't at work right now so that I could actually work on it. I find it so difficult to concentrate at work even when I'm not doing anything work-related (such as posting on my blog).

War of the Worlds

So I dragged my wife to see Spielberg's War of the Worlds Monday night (sorry B & T! We'll be more than happy to catch it again with you guys at the drive-in!). Holy crap! I know there are a lot of people out there poopooing Spielberg's vision, but I thought that the film, even with its minor flaws, was bloody awesome! I thought that the tension that was built up was incredible. The problem is, most moviegoers aren't perceptive enough to pay attention to all the different aspects of a film (especially one like this). Film is more than visual effects and dialogue. There is music (my personal favorite), sound effects/design (which, despite what some people think, is not the same as music), special effects, editing, costuming and makeup. When all of these things come together at their best they can create the ultimate moviegoing experience (which is about illusion, not reality; although I have mentioned to my wife that perhaps I should have my own theme music. She rolled her eyes.).

But I digress.

I thought that one of the most brilliant elements of the entire film was, in fact, the sound design. It was absolutely amazing. Clever, too. Despite what I said about sound design and music not necessarily being the same thing I have to admit that the alien invaders moved quite musically. The tripods moved to a nice little waltz rhythm in 3/4 time (3 legs, triple time, brilliant!). Also, the ominous clarion call sounded by the tripods to communicate to each other was actually performed by a tuba player in Los Angeles named Jim Self. It's just like his visitors in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Is Spielberg trying to tell us that he believes that music actually is a "universal language"? I would be interested to hear Mr. Spielberg's thoughts.

I don't normally gravitate toward scary movies, though I've already scored my fair share as a composer. I hate blood and guts and gore for the sake of gore (sometimes you do what pays the bills). I love movies like War of the Worlds and Signs because they use subtlety and atmospherics (both aural and visual) in order to ratchet up the tension. People may not like these particular examples, but I think they should be case studies in effectively creating tension and a God's-honest real scare. The people who don't like them are generally the same people I wiped the floor with in my undergraduate film theory class (in which I was the only musician!). In my opinion the greatest scary movies are the ones in which you hardly see "the bad guy" (Jaws, Aliens) and when you finally do it's not until one of the most pivotal points in the movie. I guess that's another reason why Aliens is also one of my favorite movies (Vietnam allegory aside). James Cameron did such a terrific job building tension throughout the first half of the film.

I guess what it really boils down to is that I will take a poor Steven Spielberg film (and M. Night Shyamalan and James Cameron) over most others on a good day.

That said, I'm going to get back to writing my theme music.