Homage

Did anyone else notice that the opening shot of The Dark Knight is the same as the aerial tracking shot that opens Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho?

What...shall we talk about?

I miss talking about music on my blog. Naturally I realise that the only person stopping me from doing so is...well...me.

So I'm going to talk about music a little more. It really is that simple. My goal is to use this as a laboratory for writing about music in order to get a little better at it. Why? Because one day I'm going back to school and I'm going to have to do it anyway; so I may as well get a head start. To that end I'm going to try and right the ship, as it were. Along the way I'll hopefully take a little closer look at anything that strikes my interest without limitation to date of composition, style or genre.

But don't worry; we'll continue talking about movies and politics and all that other stuff, too. We wouldn't want things to get boring, now would we?

From the Archive: Turangalîla

This post was originally meant for publication last February after the Elusive 4th Tenor and I attended the St. Louis Symphony performance of Messiaen's Turangalîla Symphony.

I've been trying to think of the best way to write about the experience of hearing Messiaen's Turangalîla Symphony live for the first (and dear God please don't let it be the last) time.

For me, Turangalîla is one of those desert island pieces along with The Rite of Spring, La Mer, the 3rd Symphony of Sibelius and a handful of others. It's endlessly fascinating and, for the attentive listener it reveals something new with each hearing. Strains of birdsong, Hindu and Greek rhythms, imaginary echoes of a long-forgotten gamelan, Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and, to my ear, a certain Gershwinesque kind of song-and-dance joie de vivre; this wrapped up in Messiaen's truly original way of thinking musically and a brilliant sense of orchestration all inform Turangalîla's sense of rhythm and drive.

The genius of the way the St. Louis Symphony presented Turangalîla was to make it accessible. It was designed as a lecture-performance. The first half of the program the conductor, David Robertson, talked about Messiaen and the piece and conducted the orchestra in excerpts of each movement. The second half was the performance itself.

And what a performance.

The orchestra navigated the piece terrifically. I never felt a sense of "Oh god, I hope we get through this next passage!". It was also nice to hear the ondes martenot in such a way that it neither played over nor under the orchestra. Elusive 4th Tenor and I also discussed that it sounded as though David Robertson is attempting to cultivate an "English" sound to the orchestra. Truly a memorable performance.

This Just In...

"And now, Mr. Salonen, we will discuss the location of your hidden rebel base..."

Orientations

Moo.

Challenge

Alright, so Clone Wars came out last weekend. I haven't seen it, but I have heard the score and really all I can say is, "Eh?".

Anyway, the thought occurred to me that many of the readers of this blog are film music lovers/part-time film composers/etc. So I thought about a challenge.

Compose a 2'30-3'30 cue to accompany a Star Wars scene.

1. You may invent the scenario for the scene, or you may use a scene from the films or the expanded universe as a basis. However, concepts utilising the expanded universe must be kept to the timeline beginning with The Phantom Menace and ending with Return of the Jedi.

2. You may use any of John Williams' themes at any time for points of reference but they cannot be the actual basis for the cue.

3. The point of the exercise is to write a Star Wars cue. To that end, you're supposed to sound like John Williams.

Whaddya think? As far as I can tell it's loose enough that it can work for anyone. I don't have a deadline in mind but I do think that you shouldn't spend any great amount of time on it, either.

So who's in?

Drive Time

Just thought I'd list what's circulating through my iPod regularly these days on the trip to and from work. The only rule for this list is that each track has to be less than ten minutes. Arbitrary, I know, but it works for the drive.

(Format: Track Title - Album - Composer/Band)

"New Adventures" - Doctor Who - The New Series (Murray Gold)
"Original Blend" - Blurred (Billband/Bill Ryan)
"Cock/Ver 10" - Acoustica: Alarm Will Sound plays Aphex Twin (Richard D. James)
"Lollapalooza" - Century Rolls (John Adams)
"Molossus" - Batman Begins (Hans Zimmer/James Newton Howard)
"Helix" - LAPhil/Salonen (Esa-Pekka Salonen)
"Tangiers" - The Bourne Ultimatum (John Powell)
"Pencil Stick" - Stick Music (Clogs)
"Who's Down Now?" - Lullaby for Sue (Clogs)
"imreadywhenyouare" - Light Is Calling (Michael Gordon)
"Gloria" - König Der Letzten Tage (Wojciech Kilar)
"Balin's Tomb/Khazad-Dûm" - The Fellowship of the Ring: Complete Recordings (Howard Shore)
"Intervention" - Neon Bible (The Arcade Fire)
"Last Train Home" - The Road to You (Live) (Pat Metheny)
"Duel of the Fates" - Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (John Williams)
"Pompeii" - Unearthed (E.S. Posthumus)
"G-Spot Tornado" - The Yellow Shark: Ensemble Modern plays Frank Zappa (Frank Zappa)

Yeah. It's a total hodge-podge.

Hans and James Do It Again

I picked up the score for The Dark Knight last night.

Oh...my...god.

More later but if you liked the first one, go get it.

You'll Need Chest-Waders For This One

I was picking up my research into graduate programs recently when I came across the this:

I guess what bothers me most is how the document seems to talk out both sides of its mouth. It's littered with ambiguity, pretentiousness, absolutism and broad, sweeping statements without context.

Creative work...is directed to an audience; but its proper role is to define an audience, not to respond to one.

I thought we had gotten past this. I thought the creator/audience dynamic was, to a certain extent, a give-and-take situation. Even Pierre Boulez recently admitted that, in retrospect, perhaps they (the Darmstadt crowd) should have taken their audience into greater account.

I understand what is being got at in many cases here; it just seems that the wrong path is being trod in order to get there. Additionally the thesaurus seems to have been open for the duration.

It's okay to take seriously what you do; just don't be so damned serious about what you do.

We're composers. We move blocks of sounds, no, the representations of sounds, around on a piece of staff paper, a notation program or a digital music creation program. We do this in a manner that is pleasing to ourselves and, if we're lucky, others as well.

Feel free to argue, disagree, enhance, etc. I leave you to it.

Film Score Friday: 4th of July Edition

It seems that every year about this time Hollywood sees fit to try to destroy our little planet. Be it by disaster or alien invasion one can almost always count on popcorn munching, soda guzzling good times when the end of the world is nigh.

Today we celebrate the fun that the Destruction of the World can be.

Today's playlist will be chosen from the following:

Mars Attacks! - Danny Elfman
Signs - James Newton Howard
Transformers - Steve Jablonsky
Starship Troopers - Basil Poledouris
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within - Elliot Goldenthal
War of the Worlds - John Williams
Stargate - David Arnold
Independence Day - David Arnold
Men In Black - Danny Elfman

Big Damn John Williams Day

It's a big day for John Williams, so let's get to it.

Today's listening list will be chosen from the following:

Raiders of the Lost Ark
Indiana Jones and Last Crusade
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones

Herr Vogler out.

First Listen: Indiana Jones

Thanks to my friend 'Red' I acquired a copy of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull a day early. I've listened to it a couple times now and have a few observations. Obviously I haven't seen the film so these are related solely to the album.

Alright. So. New themes:

There's a twistedly chromatic theme for Cate Blanchett's 'Irina' that is both sinister and evocative of her Russian character. It took me two listens to realise just how much it's peppered throughout the score.

There's a theme for the Crystal Skulls themselves. Actually it's more like an obsessive motive that's a study in building tension through the use of orchestral color. But from what I can glean about the story that makes sense. It's kind of a simple little piece, actually, that's probably very effective in the film.

There's some new music for the adventures of Shia LeBeouf's character. It's mostly energetic music that displays some of the orchestral muscle (and playfulness) for which Williams is so well-known with some of the Indiana Jones theme interpolated. For my own tastes though I wish that he had developed the music that appears in 'Keeping up with the Joneses' on The Last Crusade album instead of the Prokofiev-esque music he wrote. That would have made for terrific continuity on multiple psychological and storytelling levels. I do like how Williams kind of reassigned elements of the 'Indy Theme' to fit this character. There's a similar shape to the line, but it's not quite the same.

There are certainly nice touches in the score. Williams includes the complete 'Raiders March' (with the love theme, though I don't remember hearing it anywhere else on the album). He evokes the feeling of some older action cues in a few places. Most notably there's a cue called 'The Jungle Chase' that is a kissin' cousin to 'The Desert Chase' in Raiders. He also pushes the 'Indy Theme' a lot more throughout the score than he did in Last Crusade. This is interesting because in Spielberg's note in the liner of that album he wrote that he and John felt that they didn't need to "lean on that button" so much because they thought the films had "grown up" to the point that that wasn't needed as much.

Conspicuously absent from this album is a standout action cue. In all of the other films (and subsequent albums) there is a standout action set piece/cue. Raiders has 'The Desert Chase'; Temple of Doom has 'The Mine Car Chase'; The Last Crusade has the 'Scherzo for Motorcycle and Orchestra'. All are terrific. There's nothing like that here. The closest anything here comes is 'The Jungle Chase' (track 10).

The one thing that's always bothered me about the scores for the entire series is that, beyond the main Indiana Jones theme, there's little in the way of continuity. This is certainly understandable in that each is its own self-contained story. There is little need to reference the other films. That being said, if Williams is going to borrow from himself, then he should at least reference the other Indiana Jones films. There's a lot of cutting-and-pasting-and-reworking from Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban ('The Snowball Fight') and Revenge of the Sith (General Grievous) into the action sequences.

For all my issues there is a great variety to the album with a lot of action music and a lot of mysterious music, as one would expect. The problem is, we've heard it all before. Now, as someone who has made the study of film music important this isn't exactly a revelation. Composers repeat themselves all the time (please note that I didn't condescendingly write "film composers").

John Williams is the best alive at what he does (writing music for film). That being said I can't help but wonder if he's done. I feel like this score was a little phoned-in (not quite like Attack of the Clones, but close). Perhaps I'm being a little harsh but there's a higher expectation of John Williams writing music for one of these films. Maybe that's not fair but that's the way it is. It's well-crafted but there doesn't seem to be a direction; it seems to be lacking a dramatic arc, but that may only be the album.

Iron Man

Awesome

The Thick Black Storm

I love a good thunderstorm.

I especially like driving in them. I am neither careless nor overly cautious (each is dangerous).

I left the gym last night to one of those spring thunderstorms that is both cold and humid; a glorious torrent of a downpour with thick, dark billowing clouds that seemed to stretch to the edge of the world, brilliant flashes of lightning and the cracks and rumbles of thunder both near and far.

But what to listen to on the way home?

After a few moments I cued up my iPod to Hans Zimmer's The Thin Red Line and rolled out of the parking garage. Everything fell into place from there. The music seemed to embody with precision and perfection the atmosphere of it all. Naturally that's just me trying to make sense of my universe by creating meaning where there might be none. We're all human; that's what we do.

I cruised home making it through the first half of the album (the better half of a very good album); thirty minutes of aural/climatic symbiosis. It actually made for a terrifically relaxing drive bringing me to a near Zenlike state with my automobile.

At least from my vantage point.

History Lesson

Obviously I'm a few days late on this, but baseball season did start up in earnest Monday. Most of the baseball pundits and many a Cubs fan seem to think the Redbirds are going to finish in the basement this year. To those people I say, "Alright, I guess". But as an ardent lover of my Cardinals I feel it my duty to present the following:

Things That Have Happened Since the Cubs Last Won the World Series (1908):

World War I

Communism rose

Gustav Mahler died

The first red scare

The Cardinals had 3 triple crown winners (Rogers Hornsby twice)

The first solo flight across the ocean

Movies got sound

World War II

Nuclear weapons

A Missourian was elected president

The second red scare

Hippies

A president resigned

Professional football and basketball became relevant to American sporting culture

The Kansas City Royals won the World Series (1985)(!)

Communism fell

14 new MLB teams have been created...

7 of them have won a World Series

The Athletics and Braves have both moved...twice.

And finally...

The Cardinals have appeared in the World Series 17 times, winning 10

Film Orchestration

Who needs to go to Los Angeles or New York for a film orchestration workshop?

Go here. Click "Samples" and Mr. B. has been kind enough to load some downloadable (complete!) full scores of cues along with the corresponding audio mp3s.

He may not be your favorite, but he is a pro; and he was a student of the Master (seemingly the only one Goldsmith ever acknowledged).

How cool is that?

Film Score Friday: Jerry Goldsmith Edition

Last Sunday was Jerry Goldsmith's birthday. He would've been 79.

Jerry Goldsmith wrote more great scores in any genre than maybe any other composer. So today's list looks a little like this:

Alien (monster movie)
Basic Instinct (suspense thriller)
L.A. Confidential (crime drama; really film noir)
Legend (fantasy)
Mulan (animation)
The Omen (horror)
Rio Conchos (western)
The Shadow (crime fighter)
Star Trek: First Contact (space opera)
Total Recall (action)
The Wind and the Lion (period film)
The 13th Warrior (sword and sorcery)

Even the Alter Ego doesn't usurp Film Score Friday.

Johnny's 76!

Today is John Williams' 76th birthday (it's Mrs. Pikey's birthday, too, so Happy Birthday, Mrs. Pikey!).

It's an all-Johnny Film Score Friday here in the office.

Listening will be chosen from:

Star Wars (I-VI)
Jurassic Park
The Lost World: Jurassic Park
Saving Private Ryan
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Memoirs of a Geisha
Munich
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Another Road Trip

St. Louis beckons again; this time for the U.S. premiere of John Adams' symphony based on his opera Doctor Atomic.

Road Trip

This afternoon The Elusive 4th Tenor and I are road tripping across the state to St. Louis. The St. Louis Symphony is performing Messiaen's colossal and amazing Turangalila Symphony. Neither rain nor sleet nor snow nor those damned 40 mph gusts of wind are gonna stop us.

None of my recent experiences with the SLSO have been disappointments so I'm pretty excited about this, especially since the chances are slim I'm ever going to hear this amazing work in my hometown.

Now that's...

funny.

...

I found your pants.

They were inside a pair of dress socks being worn by a Wookiee playing a harmonica.

Sand

pussy.

Film Score Friday: Alien Invasion Edition

The Day the Earth Stood Still (Bernard Herrmann, 1951)
Starship Troopers (Basil Poledouris, 1997)
Stargate (David Arnold, 1994)
E.T.: The Extraterrestrial (1982)
Alien (Jerry Goldsmith, 1979; The Complete Score, with thanks to the Pikey)
Aliens (James Horner, 1986)
Independence Day (David Arnold, 1996)
Signs (James Newton Howard, 2002)
Mars Attacks! (Danny Elfman, 1996)

"Service guarantees citizenship."