Minimalism and Beyond

A couple of weeks ago I attended the Second International Conference on Minimalist Music, brilliantly coordinated by David McIntire and Kyle Gann (both of whom are linked to their blogs on the sidebar). Luckily it was here in Kansas City so I didn't have to travel. Five days of (largely) fascinating paper sessions and brilliant concerts of beautiful music (much of it from composers whose music I'd never heard). For me the real highlights were hearing Sarah Cahill perform a concert of works I'd never heard (except for John Adams' China Gates) and hearing Charlemagne Palestine perform his organ work Schlingen-Blängen which, sadly, lasted less than two hours. I could easily have listened for another two hours. It was that amazing.

One of the paper sessions proved particularly relevant as the presenter gave a paper on minimalism in The Truman Show. It was actually a great thing for me because it helped me to think about how I wanted to approach film music research. I downloaded the author's dissertation and am slowly working my way through it and - in particular - the bibliography. Yes. I am a serious nerd.

Overall it was really great to be in an environment of collegiality and scholarship with a common interest and was another kick in the pants to get my ass back in school.

Otherwise, not much is new. The munchkin is now four months old; smiley and bubbly (most of the time) and fantastic. We haven't been to the movies since Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (which I found to be far better than its predecessor, Nicholas Hooper's score included). Recently, though, we did watch Bill Maher's Religulous and I have to say I was actually pretty impressed with the restraint he showed. As anyone who has watched his show can attest to, he has a general animus toward religion. However, for the documentary, he seemed genuinely interested in why people feel the way they do about religion and managed to do it with a little less mockery.

That's it. It's not exciting, but that's what it is.

Loop

I have no idea why but recently I've had Alan Silvestri's theme from Eraser stuck in my head. It probably has something to do with the fact that his G.I. Joe score comes out next week. Anyway, who wants a little overblown Silvestri?

Jerry Goldsmith Remembrance Day

Today marks the fifth anniversary of the man who is arguably the greatest composer of music for films.

Since Goldsmith's passing there have been loads of his scores that have finally seen a commercial release. Only yesterday I received in the mail The Boys From Brazil, Lonely are the Brave (Jerry's first important film score for the development of his career) and In Harm's Way.

So I have a pile of Jerry Goldsmith CDs sitting on my desk consisting of the following:

Lonely are the Brave
Rio Conchos
In Harm's Way
The Omen
The Boys From Brazil
Lionheart
Total Recall
Basic Instinct
Rudy
The Ghost and the Darkness
The 13th Warrior

How will you spend your Jerry Goldsmith Remembrance Day?

Jablonsky Variations

To me there's something slightly "off" about Steve Jablonsky's score for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. For awhile I couldn't put my finger on it but I think I've figured it out. More on that later though.

Jablonsky's score functions well in the film which is its primary - and arguably its only - job. It punctuates the film in all the ways we've come to expect from years of Zimmer training and, like the film, occasionally takes itself a little too seriously. That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it.

The old themes that reappear are clearly developed rather than merely cut-and-pasted onto the film. Nowhere is this more evident than in the theme for Optimus Prime. Not only is it much more elegiac (appropriately) this time around it is also elaborated upon and altered slightly to represent the history of the Primes. Lisbeth Scott once again is called upon to deliver her "vaguely ethnic wailing" for a Remote Control score. However it occasionally treads dangerously close to lines of questionable taste. I do miss the theme for the All Spark from the first film. I thought that it had transferred to Bumblebee during the downtown battle at the end of the first film but I guess not.*

As far as new themes are concerned I find the theme for The Fallen to be, well, a bit simplistic. I realise it doesn't have to be overly complex; all he has to do is be the really bad guy (though to be honest I never felt like the danger was that great with this character). I guess my issue with it is that it sounds like music leftover from Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl.

At first I wasn't wild about the album but it has since grown on me. There don't seem to be any real standout cues the way "Arrival to Earth" and "Scorponok" are on the first album/film. I don't think I'll ever find it the rollicking good time the first is, but it's still a lot of fun (which, I suppose, is unfair because the first album/film is an embarrassment of musical riches for film music lovers). It's a little uneven but there are several really nice moments on the album (I've recently come to particularly enjoy "Einstein's Wrong" and "Tomb of the Primes"). I do wish the album had been sequenced better. Most of the action cues seem to be situated on the back end of the disc and it doesn't make for quality ebb-and-flow. I think a simple matter of reordering could have made the disc better.

As far as the "off" element of the score, I think the problem is actually Hans Zimmer himself. In both the CD insert and the end of the credits in the film there's a big "thank you" to Hans. Although he is uncredited, Hans Zimmer apparently produced a large chunk of the score for the film, which is not difficult to surmise simply by listening to it. I think I know why. The score for the first Transformers is fantastic. The problem is it was for a Michael Bay film; it constantly lost out to over-the-top, amped-up sound effects. I think that Steve Jablonsky asked Zimmer to produce the score so that he wouldn't "overcompose". To be fair I think it's a perfectly legitimate concern. If you're scoring a Michael Bay film, half of your music probably won't be heard over the thunderous sound design so you may as well reign it in a bit. Perhaps Jablonsky didn't know exactly how to do that so he asked Hans for help**. I also think that Zimmer was able to bring some "darker" aspects to Jablonsky's score. These things being said, I miss all those tiny little details from the first score.

Overall I enjoyed the score and think it functioned well in the film. I just miss the abundance of thematic writing that characterizes the first score.

*In retrospect it seems plausible that this might have been Jablonsky's original intention. This would make sense since Bumblebee is the only one of the Autobots or the Decepticons that has direct contact with the All Spark (until Sam uses it to kill Megatron). Perhaps I'm giving the composer too much credit for possibly putting that much thought into it. I might be wrong but it seems that from listening to "Bumblebee" on the album (which is denoted as "different version in film") that it was more-or-less intended for use during the downtown battle when Mikaela drives the attached-to-a-tow-truck Bumblee through the streets so he can help his fellow Autobots. However, after consulting the film and listening also to the album that shall not be named this intention was never carried through. Perhaps, if this was the intent, its intelligence was lost on the director.

**Please note: I'm not denying the craftsmanship of Steve Jablonsky here, just saying that perhaps he didn't know how to write less and keep it functional and good. Hans, as we all know, has become a master of drawing on the smallest amount of material.

Abandonment

No. Actually I haven't abandoned the blog. There's a post coming.

I swear.

Meanwhile, if you have an entire day of nothing planned to do, might I suggest this or this if you're having a Paranoid Android moment. Combine with a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster or two and you've got the makings of an entertaining day at the end of which you might feel the desire to end it all.

That is all.

Science Experiments

That's what children are, right? I mean, you can look up anything you could possibly want to know in a book or online but the fact of the matter is that every baby is different.

I don't want to talk about that right now. What I want to talk about is the dirty little secret that nobody wants you to know about babies. They way your relationship changes after the birth of your child(ren).

That's right. I'm talking about poop.

When you're at the hospital they tell you what you should expect as far as what a "good poop" is. For example: my wife is breastfeeding so the poop should be a little watery, light green in color and slightly seedy (I have yet to figure out where the seeds come from). I've found myself changing my daughter's diaper and saying - out loud with no other adult present - "Hey, that's a really great poopy!" And the kid just looks up at me like Eddie Izzard's cat thinking, "Interesting words."

Anyway I've reached the point where I feel like I should have a lab coat, a pair of goggles and a clipboard when changing a diaper. "So, let's just start with what we have. What did this do to you? Tell me. And remember, this is for posterity so be honest. How do you feel? " Or perhaps turning to an assistant (might I suggest Liz Vassey from C.S.I. if your wife isn't available) and saying, "Get this back to the lab for analysis right away. We need to know exactly what we're dealing with here."

Actually it's been more like, "Ooh, congratulations, sweetie. That's got good consistency and perfect coloring throughout. Let's take a picture of it and mark it on the graph."

From the Archive: The Lord of the Rings Symphony

This post was originally intended for publication shortly after my wife and I attended the St. Louis Symphony's performance of Howard Shore's Lord of the Rings Symphony in September of last year. I figured that since the Kansas City Symphony will be presenting it in May, I'd take the liberty of finally posting this.

Last Friday (September 19), die Frau and I had the opportunity to attend the St. Louis Symphony's performance of Howard Shore's Lord of the Rings Symphony.

For those interested in making your own playlist on your iPod, the track titles correspond pretty much exactly to the original commercial releases, not the complete recordings.

The Fellowship of the Ring:

Movement One

The Prophecy-Concerning Hobbits-The Shadow of the Past-A Short Cut to Mushrooms-The Old Forest-A Knife in the Dark

Movement Two

Many Meetings-The Rings Goes South-A Journey in the Dark-The Bridge of Khazad-dûm-Lothlórien-Gandalf's Lament-Farewell to Lórien-The Great River-The Breaking of the Fellowship

The Two Towers:

Movement Three

Foundations of Stone-The Taming of Sméagol-The Riders of Rohan-The Black Gate is Closed-Evenstar-The White Rider-Treebeard-The Forbidden Pool

Movement Four

The Hornburg-Forth Eorlingas-Isengard Unleashed-Gollum's Song

The Return of the King:

Movement Five

Hope and Memory-The White Tree-The Steward of Gondor-Cirith Ungol-Andúril

Movement Six

The End of All Things-The Return of the King-The Grey Havens-Into the West

The one thing that caught me a little off guard was how some of the passages were edited. For example, The Two Towers' "Foundations of Stone" ("Glamdring" on the Complete Recordings) ends abruptly and segues immediately to "The Taming of Sméagol" before the chorus enters with its goodness. For the life of me I can't figure out why Shore cut it this way, but he did so that's how it is. Personally I think it would've played much better had he allowed the passage to conclude in its film form.

There were minor quibbles about the performance. From my own experience with this sort of thing I think the percussion parts are largely notated at least one dynamic too loud throughout. When the percussion section were playing full-out they were overpowering the entire orchestra and that's never a good idea (unless that's the idea).

The young lady who performed the vocal solos had a very nice tone though she didn't seem to be giving full breath support and pitch occasionally (a little too frequently actually) sagged. That being said, one has to remember that Shore's music for these films, while very lyrical, isn't always vocally friendly (you trying singing some of those lines without taking a breath!). She also did a nice job modifying her voice for each solo. Just as each of Tolkien's races has its own language and manner of speech, Shore effectively mirrors him giving each race its own music. So, too, does each of the vocal solos have to be conveyed in the spirit of each race's music and I feel like the soloists did a good job of doing that.

In the film/album version of "Gandalf's Lament" there's a part where there's a solo vocal performed by Elizabeth Fraser (former frontgal for Cocteau Twins). There's also a violin solo played senza vibrato along with it. The problem is that the violinist was always a half-count behind to vocalist (who was in time). While this created a disturbing sense of instability and added greatly to the affect of the passage, I don't think that's what Howard Shore had in mind (though it does give me a few ideas).

What impressed me most was how good the chorus sounded. Singing in an invented language is difficult enough; singing well in an invented language is beyond difficult.

I must confess that I was actually pretty impressed with the way the orchestra played. "But, Herr, you're always going on about how the SLSO always plays well." This is true, but one has to remember that professional orchestral musicians play a lot of film music on pops concerts, they don't always respect film music. They played like they respected the music; and even if they didn't like it, the important thing is that they sold it like they did.

Hearing Gotham

As I mentioned earlier, I've become more interested in putting my interest/knowledge/love of film music to use (beyond composing). So I've begun some preliminary work on a project or two that 1) gives me something to do and 2) forces me to listen more attentively to my favorite music.

I've decided that these projects are going to deal with Jerry Goldsmith because 1) he's my favorite, 2) he's one of the best ever and 3) astonishingly, there seems to be very little in the way of actual research out there regarding his music (most film music researchers tend to focus on "old" film music). Meantime I've been trying to figure out how to approach this whole concept of 'Writing About Music'. Further complicating the issue is that writing about film music is its own entirely different animal. Film music has its own sets of traditions, expectations and gestures that can be reinforced, broken or rewritten at any time. Oh yes: there's also that whole "It's connected to the film" thing which one has to have some kind of understanding of how it works in theory. I guess I'll be brushing up on that, too.

One of the things I've been reading in order to gain a greater understanding of writing about film music is Danny Elfman's Batman: A Film Score Guide, pictured above. (I also have a host of film music books that I'll be diving back into once I get them back from a friend of mine). There are other volumes in this series but I figured starting with a score I know well (and dearly love) was best. Ms. Halfyard's reading of the film provides a healthy (and useful) analysis of both film and score and how they interact. The analysis is largely specialised and the discussion is long on both musical examples and terminology. Ms. Halfyard's discussion of the score, its context, the film and certain aspects of the comic mythology of Batman over his many incarnations (and especially the view of the '60s television show as an aberration) is quite interesting. She brings to light interesting facets of the score's composition that I'm quite certain Danny Elfman had no real idea he was doing (that being said, there's quite a lot of unity in the score). She also discusses the controversy surrounding Elfman's composition technique and through the cunning use of logic quite brilliantly puts it to rest. (Some, though, will never be convinced even if they sat in his studio and watched him compose an entire film's score).

One thing reading this text has done is cause me to reexamine my Batman scores in all of their incarnations. When I was a kid I thought that Danny Elfman's Batman scores were far superior to those of Elliot Goldenthal. When I found out that Hans Zimmer was going to be involved in Batman Begins I was horrified. Sure, James Newton Howard was there, too, but we all knew which musical personality was really going to dominate. Over the years, though, I've learned to appreciate them all as their own completely separate takes on the Batman mythology. There is much stylistic diversity in all of these, but, interestingly, each of the films got a score appropriate to it. Through a friend I also recently acquired the La-La-Land release of the two-disc set of music from Batman: The Animated Series. It's good stuff that carries on the same tone that Elfman set. I haven't listened to all of it but will soon.

Michael over at The Temp Track suggested I write a paper comparing and contrasting the Elfman and Goldenthal approaches to Gotham City and the Dark Knight. While it's an excellent idea, I have other plans. Quantum phase shift anyone?

The Temp Track

Just thought you all should know that I've added my friend Michael to the blogroll.

Michael is studying musicology at the University of Colorado. He keeps an interesting blog regarding music for film, t.v., and games as an extension of his area of emphasis.

He Would've Been 80 Today

Jerry Goldsmith, that is.

Nearly 5 years after his death it's still sometimes difficult to accept that there won't ever be another new Jerry Goldsmith score. I used to get so excited at the prospect of a new score by him. The day he died I got a call from the Pikey. I hadn't turned on the news yet and I had no idea. I kind of went around in a stupor for the rest of the day.

In the last ten years of his life (1994-2004) his music became increasingly focused, pared down, linear and, in many cases, more muscular (I often wonder if Goldsmith was an admirer of Miles Davis because of these aspects). The last ten years gave us notable scores (if not films) as The Shadow, Rudy, First Knight (a favorite of Goldsmith's, as I understand it), The Ghost and the Darkness, Air Force One (like most of W.P.'s films it's trash, but it's fun), L.A. Confidential, The Edge, Mulan, The Mummy (supposedly Jerry hated this movie, which doesn't explain why the score rocks so hard other than the fact that he was a consummate professional), The 13th Warrior, Hollow Man, The Sum of all Fears and Star Trek: First Contact, Insurrection and Nemesis. And that's leaving out at least a dozen films not worth mentioning.

I've been thinking a lot about his music for a long time now. In my opinion he was the innovator at the leading edge of film music for 30 or so years. He was the first to use electronics extensively as more than a novelty or "weird" sound. They were a part of his orchestra if the film required it. He was also one of the first in film to use the studio as a musical instrument.

More than anything there are two things I miss. The first is a sense of musical "space" that Jerry had. He could create more music out of fewer materials than pretty much any other composer. And unlike many other composers, he knew the value of silence. He didn't just spray music on a sequence like fire retardant foam. Some of my favorite suspense sequences are those where, for example, you get a dense string chord (or short series of chords) followed by a silence. To me this has a much eerier effect than pouring on some sort of run-of-the-mill electronic effect.

The second is his sense of rhythm. Nobody else could build entire cues out of mixed/asymmetric meters the way he did and keep it fresh and interesting. And he did it in such a way where he didn't necessarily feel the need to hit every single agogic accent within the rhythmic cell (ex: 7/8 bar wherein the composer strikes every instrument in the orchestra at the same time with a hammer on eighths 1, 3, 5 and 7).

Since I've spent all of my life as a composer straddling the twin worlds of film and concert music I've had to contend with those who patently dismiss film music as "derivative dreck" (unless, of course, it was composed by a composer who writes the majority of their music for the concert hall. Somehow, then, their music is "better"). Increasingly this view is dying but only because those who hold it are, too. (I enjoy pointing out to those folks that the vast majority of contemporary concert music could also be classified as "derivative dreck").

I learned a lot about composing from listening to his music. Probably more, in fact, than listening to just about any other composer save a handful.

I guess what has surprised me in the time since his passing is that no one has stepped forward to fill the void left behind. Maybe there is no void. Maybe Jerry Goldsmith was a singular entity.

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."

Puhutko Suomea?

'Twas a good day for Finnish music.

Einojuhani Rautavaara - Cantus Arcticus, Symphony no. 5, Anadyomene (Adoration of Aphrodite), On the Last Frontier
Kaija Saariaho - Cinq reflets, Nymphea Reflection, Oltra Mar
Magnus Lindberg - Clarinet Concerto
Joonas Kokkonen - Symphony no. 4, Requiem

And because you simply can't have a Finnish music day without Sibelius...

Kullervo, Op. 7.

Stockhausen est mort

Karlheinz Stockhausen died last week. It's interesting that I didn't find out about it until Sunday. Anyway, there's a good obit from the LA Times here. You can also check out Alex Ross' blog entry here.

Stockhausen the man came with a lot of personal baggage. But if one can separate the man (and the cult of the man) Stockhausen from the composer one can recognise that he was an incredible force of creation. Admittedly I don't know as much of his music as perhaps I should. And I'm not sure I would begin to think about appropriating (for fear of misunderstanding) many of his ideas about music for quite some time. If ever.

I've been planning for awhile now to know more of his music. I suppose there's no time like the present. I also need to return to the music I have heard and listen to it again for the first time.

Good Things Come in Threes

Elaborating on one of the Bard's recent posts (and because I've been listening to The Return of the King a lot lately) today's Film Score Friday will be drawn from third installments. This doesn't necessarily mean trilogies, just third installments.

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith - John Williams

Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi - John Williams

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade - John Williams

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End - Hans Zimmer

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - John Williams

The Omen: The Final Conflict - Jerry Goldsmith

The Matrix: Revolutions - Don Davis

X-Men: The Last Stand - John Powell

Batman Forever - Elliot Goldenthal

Jurassic Park III - Don Davis (that's right, I went there)

The Rundown

The birthday was great.

Wonderful dinner with great friends at McCormick & Schmick's

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (The Complete Recordings)

Alex Ross's terrific new book The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century

The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature (Stephen Pinker)

And cake. Delicious, succulent, homemade red velvet cake. Mmmmmm...

One Score to Rule Them All...

The Precious is mine!!!

My wife is awesome.

Laramie Sketches

The theatre department of William Jewell College is presenting The Laramie Project this weekend. It's a powerful, moving testament of how Laramie, Wyoming (which could be any town, really) deals with the aftermath of a young gay man being kidnapped, brutally beaten and left for dead in its community.

A few months back I approached the director about writing some music for the production. He allowed me to do so with the understanding that there was a possibility that it wouldn't be used. I understood this. It was a test.

I knew immediately that I wanted to write a piano-based atmospheric score with subtle electronics underneath. It was the hardest thing I've ever done. Normally my music is busy with lots of notes. I kicked all that out. I wrote simply and without sentimentality...I hope.

It didn't really hit me until we were in Colorado last month. We were driving through Loveland on our way to Longmont to visit Michael Harris. I gazed at the stunning beauty of this land, nature's music realised in landscape. Instantly I understood the irony. The juxtaposition of the brutality of the crime in a place as beautiful as this is tragedy that seemingly only human beings can create. I knew my job then. I needed to provide commentary without sentiment. Something that, like this beautiful place both real and imagined, would just be.

I hope I've done that.

Festival, Part II: Music Appreciation

Four concerts in a single day. If you've never done this it can be a bit overwhelming (or underwhelming, depending on the circumstances). After while one begins to experience sensory overload, but that doesn't stop me from pushing on.

The first two concerts were chamber music. The first concert was mostly interesting. There was a really great piece for percussion scored for three small drums and three pieces of metal. Very cool. There was a flute solo by my teacher that went mostly well. There was a great piano solo that was very bluesy and I expected it to break into the third movement of the Gershwin piano concerto at any minute. After the concert I thanked the composer for writing something that had a pulse (take that as you will).

Then came the Wind Quintet.

Very rarely do I feel that I don't give a piece of music the full benefit of the doubt or can't appreciate something for what it is. I even feel that I can separate appreciation of great craft from my own aesthetic and not dislike a work just because it's not my aesthetic. I also think I'm a good enough composer/musician that I can hear "through" a weak performance and get the composer's intention. But this piece was atrocious. It wasn't Serial, or serial or whatever, just dense and intellectually over-rigorous to the point of non-interest.

Concert 2 was also chamber music. There was a terrific set of piano miniatures by a composer who is a member of the education department at Truman State. One of the things I have always admired about Robert's music is that, while his music is enormously difficult, it always has a sense of being whimsical, humorous and slightly mischievous. This is especially true when the piece is entitled Vogons on the Beach after Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide. There was a terrific piece for trombone and percussion that really had to be seen to be believed, especially when some of the "percussion" are squeaky toys that are glued to a wooden board and controled by the player's feet. Awesome..and hilarious. This was the concert on which Carol played Angels and Demons. We've covered that already. The concert ended with a saxophone quartet which largely left me with a feeling of...um...okay.

Concert 3 was the already discussed performance of May Music and a series of choral works. The first two choral works were really interesting. A little too brief for the possibilities they contained but really great. The rest, unfortunately, didn't quite hold up. The remaining three pieces on the concert were nice but ultimately sounded like sketches that Eric Whitacre had been smart enough to throw away.

The last concert of the evening was of the Saint Ambrose University Community Orchestra. As these things go (community orchestras) they were actually decent. They were still better than my undergraduate orchestra. Then again there are some middle school orchestras out there that are better than my college orchestra. Anyway there were two pieces on the program. The first was a piece that was a result of the Continental Harmony Project in 2000. Continental Harmony began as a massive commissioning project that created commissions for composers in all 50 states to ring in the new millenium. It's ongoing and you can read more about it here if you want. I was lucky enough to be involved in the performance of the Missouri commission that year. Anyway, this particular piece was kind of a celebration of rural Iowa. Well you can imagine what that was like. Well maybe not. It was kind of like reheated Copland and Ives whirled together and then uninterestingly orchestrated.

The second piece on the program was a saxophone concerto. It was a really nice piece. Very cinematic. This particular composer has written a lot of film/theatre/dance music for larger ensembles and it certainly shows. Interestingly the orchestra sounded completely different on this piece than they did on the symphony. I'm positive that this is because the composer of the concerto knows how to orchestrate to make players sound not just good, but maybe even better than they are. The only distracting element of the piece was that the first movement sounded an awful lot like much of James Horner's Sneakers score which is also scored for alto saxophone soloist and orchestra. Other than that I liked the piece quite a lot.

So that's it. We didn't stay for the Sunday concerts because Davenport is a six-hour drive and we didn't really feel like getting home late in the evening. It was a good weekend though. It's always good to see this motley gang of composers who appreciate each other's work.

Festival, Part I

So. Last weekend die Frau and I were in Davenport, Iowa for the 20th anniversary new music festival of the Iowa Composers Forum. As I mentioned before I had two pieces performed, one of which was a premiere. There's a link to my myspace page on this posting where you can listen to the retooled premiere of May Music (which is still its best performance).

The performance of May Music was good enough but left much to be desired. They got the big picture but some of the really important nuances got completely lost. Here's a hint: when your piece involves a lot of microcanons it's not good to play together. It finally occurs to me that while the piece is written for winds it is actually an orchestral piece that happens to be written for winds. Nonetheless I was appreciative of their efforts.

But the performance of Angels and Demons, an unaccompanied violin solo, went smashingly. Carol played the snot out of it and, I think, really impressed the other composers in the room. Then again, most of them had only gotten 'pretty good' performances. What can I say? It's good to know people. I also happen to know that she surprised several of the professional performers in the room. That's awesome

That's it for now. More about the rest of the festival later, including the possibility creating diversionary tactics like gnawing off one's arm or starting a fire in order to escape the serial composers!

On the Road Again...

Die Frau and I are headed up to Davenport for the weekend.

The 20th anniversary festival of the Iowa Composers Forum will be taking place on the campus of Saint Ambrose University. A good friend of mine will be giving the world premiere of an unaccompanied work for violin called Angels and Demons. Additionally the university wind ensemble will be performing May Music, a sometime noisy, somewhat postminimalist piece I wrote in a flurry several years back. Of all the music I've written so far, it's definitely one of my favourites. You can read about the works in a previous post here.

Keep your fingers crossed for good performances!

What's that smell?

We're off to northern Colorado for the weekend. Die Frau is going to check out the doctoral program at UNC-Greeley. I don't own a laptop so I probably won't be blogging any of it until we get back.

At least I get a break from work.

Gateway

Die Frau and I went to St. Louis this past weekend to hear the symphony perform. Here's the program:

Berlioz - King Lear Overture
Berlioz - Le mort de Cléopâtre
Bernd Alois Zimmermann - Musique pour les soupers du Roi Ubu
Ravel - La Valse

Berlioz is Berlioz. But the real reason we went was to hear Susan Graham perform Le mort de Cléopâtre. As always she was terrific. The only distracting thing was that she was performing with music. I'm not opposed to this but I think it does take away from the atmosphere surrounding the piece. There were also many parts of the piece where I can certainly understand why Berlioz' teachers at Conservatoire were a little confused.

I had never heard the Zimmermann before and I think I can honestly say I don't think I've ever heard anything like it before. Zimmermann wrote the piece when he was hired to teach at the Berlin Academy. It's scored for large wind orchestra, jazz combo, percussion and 2 guitars (one doubling electric and the other doubling mandolin) and draws on tons of disparate influences. It's chock full of quotations from dozens of other pieces woven into Zimmermann's own framework. It was a pretty nifty piece though not something I would listen to on a regular basis.

The evening ended with Ravel's La Valse which is just a wonderful, bizarre piece of music.

Between the Zimmermann and the Ravel there was a large span of time to reset the stage for to bring the strings back on stage. What blew my mind was that, rather than go back to his dressing room, David Robertson came out and started chatting up the audience. He asked who liked it....applause. He asked who didn't like it. One older gal raised her hand and he immediately went over to her. He wanted to know why she didn't like it and not so he could tell her why she was wrong but, rather, because he genuinely seemed to want to know.

The performance itself was absolutely impeccable. There was clearly a lot of artistic give-and-take between David Robertson and his orchestra. None of it seemed forced or heavy-handed. All-in-all it was a good day. While I don't think we'll be driving over and back in the same day again it was definitely worth the trip.

Day Trippers

Die Frau and I are headed to St. Louis for the day. We're going to hear Susan Graham perform some Berlioz with the St. Louis Symphony. That should be nice. Back tomorrow. Very, very a.m. tomorrow.

Happy Equinox

I love autumn. Now it's here.

It's great living in a part of the country where you have no idea what kind of weather will be bestowed upon you for the Autumnal Equinox. It could be 68° (1997), 77° (1998), 87° (2000), 78° (2004) or 90° as is forecasted today.

I love the Midwest.

First Contact

My film music odyssey began in January 1994. It started with a John Williams obsession but within a few years it was Jerry Goldsmith's music that caught my fancy more than any other. I don't remember the first Goldsmith score I bought but it was a beginning of a long and fruitful relationship.

Today's Film Score Friday is an all Goldsmith affair.

Rio Conchos (1964) - Jerry Goldsmith had the good sense to reclaim the Western from Copland imitators in this terrific little score.

Planet of the Apes (1968, Oscar nominee) - Mmmmm...12-tone + Stravinsky + Bartok. Yummy.

Patton (1970, Oscar nominee) - This might be one of the most intellectual scores ever written.

The Wind and the Lion (1975, Oscar nominee) - Jerry goes swashbuckling.

The Omen (1976, Oscar Winner) - Jerry dances with the devil in the pale moonlight. This movie is nearly unwatchable without his score.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979, Oscar nominee) - The subtitle of ST:TMP should have been: Jerry Goldsmith Saves Our Crappy Boring Film.

Legend (1985) - Damn you, Sid Sheinberg for taking Jerry's score off the American release of the film.

Total Recall (1990) - A great score, one Jerry was really proud of. He swore off action movies after this because there was almost no critical response to his score.

First Knight (1995) - According to an interview done in the mid-90s, one of Jerry's personal favourites among his scores. Kind of strange since the movie stinks. Good music from top to bottom though.

Star Trek: First Contact (1996) - The Pikey's list made me realise I hadn't listened to this in a while so I pulled it out. I almost forgot how good it is.

Air Force One (1997) - Lean. Muscular. Hyperpatriotic. I'm glad Jerry only swore off action films for the time he did.

The 13th Warrior (1999) - I have nothing to add to the gagillion times I've written about this before. It's just awesome and great composition to boot!

This gives me an idea for another post...

10/10

So I got to thinking last week during Film Score Friday. I know each of us has delivered our all-time favourite scores, our all-time favourite cues, etc. but what about narrowing it down? What about making it harder?

We haven't talked film music in a while so here are my nominees for 10 best/most interesting cues of the last 10 years in no particular order.

• "Toccata and Dreamscapes" - Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (Elliot Goldenthal, 2001). Combine Penderecki, Ligeti, late-Romanticism and a former blues pianist and mix vigorously.


• "Main Title" - Signs (James Newton Howard, 2002). Three pitches. Three rhythmic durations. Build your entire score on that. Go!


• "Lighting of the Beacons" - The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Howard Shore, 2003). Few music/cinema moments are as satisfying as this. Ever.


• "Glamdring" - The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Howard Shore, 2002). It seems unfair to use two examples from LOTR, but I don't really care because it's my list. What captures it for me is the part where Gandalf falls until the end of the cue. Genius. Especially the long shot of Gandalf and the Balrog falling together into the lake. Cinematic beauty.


• "Trinity Infinity" - The Matrix (Don Davis, 1999). I know. I could've picked "Mona Lisa Overdrive" or "Neodämmerung" or even "Ontological Shock". But "Trinity Infinity" set the tone beautifully for all three scores and their films. It was one of those beautiful rare occasions of something unheard of in film that is used not as a gimmick but as an honest-to-dog structural tool.


• "Dead Already" - American Beauty (Thomas Newman, 1999). This is too different and quirky not to include. While it's a great score it has inspired a host of imitators which, I guess, is the sign of success.


• "The Battle" - Gladiator (Hans Zimmer, 2000). This is where Pirates of the Caribbean really began. This might be the first Zimmer blood-and-thunder cue in which you don't get bored or wonder where the hell he's going with it. Nope. It actually sustains interest from beginning to end.


• "Buckbeak's Flight" - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (John Williams, 2004). Don't ask me. I don't know why. I just love this cue. I fell in love with it the very first time I heard it. I guess it has something to do with the way it almost too perfectly captures both the wonder, excitement, melancholy and sadness of Harry's existence.


• "The Fire Dragon" - The 13th Warrior (Jerry Goldsmith, 1999). A cue built from a single idea that gradually increases in intensity, is completely relentless, and never loses interest. Awesome.
  
• "Journey to the Line" - The Thin Red Line (Hans Zimmer, 1999). This is the single greatest piece of music Hans Zimmer has ever written. Comparisons to Barber's Adagio aside it just seems so audaciously simple. And as we have learned in recent months, audacious and simple aren't necessarily bad things.

Now it's your turn. Go!

Windfall, Part I

I got the call last week that two works of mine are going to be performed at a new music festival the first weekend of November. The festival is the 20th anniversary of the Iowa Composers Forum, to which I have belonged for about a year-and-a-half now. So the first weekend of November we'll be heading to the tropical paradise of Davenport, Iowa.

So what are they performing? I'm glad you asked.

The first is Angels and Demons for violin alone. This will be its first performance. I hope it's as interesting as I think it is. It originally began life as a work for violin and chamber ensemble. Ultimately I was forced to revise the concept heavily and I took about 5 bars from the original piece and used that as the starting point for the solo. The piece is probably best described as a tripartite (slow-fast-slow in this case) fantasia. It is inspired quite a lot by Polish postmodernists like Henryk Gorecki and, to a lesser extent, Krzyzstof Penderecki. The whole piece stems from a single four-note chord that, so I've been told, is really difficult to play. Other than that I prefer to riff on a quote by Sir Harrison Birtwistle: "I went to the piano and found a chord that I liked. Then I learned to make more of it". Aren't crotchety British composers are great?

The second piece is a wind ensemble piece that I wrote in graduate school. I was writing a paper comparing and contrasting the postminimalist techniques Don Davis used in his score for The Matrix with the early orchestral works of John Adams - Grand Pianola Music, Harmonium, Harmonielehre (I'll save you the suspense, there are a lot of similarities, but Davis uses it to imbue the music with subtextual meaning). So I did a lot of listening and studying of Adams' works and transcribing bits of The Matrix that seemed most representative of the score as a whole.

It was during this time that the president of the Phi Mu Alpha chapter at my alma mater called and asked if I would like to contribute a piece to a concert they were putting together. Sure, why not? That was March 31st. 13 days later, after much hemming and hawing about how little time they'd given me, May Music was born and I conducted the premiere on May 3, 2003. Later I revised the piece to its present form (making the woodwind parts more noodly mostly). It's not a minimalist piece. It utilises minimalist techniques. That's it. Because it also has elements of rock, jazz, film music and anything else I could think of whirled together like some sort of postmodern cocktail. To this day I still think it's one of the best things I've written. At any rate I'm pretty excited and moderately nervous because this will be its fourth performance but the first in which I haven't a) been conducting or b) had an office down the hall where the conductor could ask questions about the piece.

Film Score Friday: Box Office Blowout!

Today's listening list comes from the top 10 U.S. grossing films ever:

1. Titanic (1997 - $600,779,824)

2. Star Wars (1977 - $460,935,665)

3. Shrek 2 (2004 - $436,471,036)

4. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982 - $434,949,459)

5. Star Wars - Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999 - $431,065,444)

6. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006 - $423,032,628)

7. Spider-Man (2002 - $403,706,375)

8. Star Wars - Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith (2005 - $380,262,555)

9. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003 - $377,019,252)

10. Spider-Man 2 (2004 - $373,377,893)

Somehow I don't think it's a coincidence that all of these films (whatever their merits) have great scores.

Update!

I'm still around. This blog is not abandoned. I just haven't had anything to say for awhile.

I'm sure something will occur to me soon.

New Ear Candy

Esa-Pekka Salonen: Saxophone Concerto, Mimo II, et al.

I have long admired the music of Mr. Salonen and am quite delighted that he's retiring from conducting to compose more. By the by, for those that don't know, Salonen is NOT a conductor/composer, he's a composer/conductor. HUGE difference.

Rautavaara: Orchestral Songs

This is the 15th Einojuhani Rautavaara recording in my collection. His music is unbelievable. It’s neo-tonal with that cool Nordic approach to Romanticism descended from Sibelius and Nielsen. You'll find neither sappy American neo-Romanticism nor icy central European music here. This disc is full of songs originally written for voice and piano that were subsequently orchestrated (except for three excerpts from his opera Aleksis Kivi, about the Finnish writer and poet).

Lou Harrison: Concerto for Pipa and Strings

The Symphony is performing Harrison's concerto next season. It's terrific. It exudes beautiful melody throughout and just simply dances.

John Luther Adams: The Far Country

“The Other” John Adams composes some of the most beautiful soundscapes around. This is music rich in color and texture and evocative of Adams’ native Alaska.

Philip Glass: 600 Lines, How Now

Early Glass works that have never been released commercially. The Italian contemporary music group Alter Ego performs Glass' 600 Lines, which is 40 minutes of some of the tightest unison ensemble playing you'll ever hear and How Now is 20 minutes of pure bliss.

Paul Dresher: Cage Machine, Dark Blue Circumstance

Paul Dresher is a New York composer that just came into my musical field of vision relatively recently. What I’ve heard so far is terrific. It’s music that has its roots firmly planted in the musical language of rock and postminimalism. Cage Machine is his concerto for violin and electro-acoustic band. It’s an interesting mix in which the first movement calls to mind the musical machinations of Stravinsky while the second seems to evoke the more organic developments of the great works of Sibelius (the mechanic and the gardener, respectively). Dark Blue Circumstance is a great disc of works that highlights the Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio. The ensemble is respectively comprised of violin-piano-percussion and several of the works include additional players. Awesome!

And finally the pièce de résistance:

Ligeti: Clear or Cloudy (Complete Deutsche Grammophon Recordings)

This collection of masterpieces was put together by DG (for the ridiculously low price of $31.99) last November and comprises – as the title would suggest – everything of Ligeti's recorded on their label. No small amount of stuff. When we’re far enough away from it that the history of music in the 20th century can be written with some sort of accuracy I can’t help but think that György Ligeti will be seen as one of the most gifted and influential of post-WWII music inventors. In the meantime we get amazing recordings of even more amazing works.

It looks as though I have my ears full for a while.

On Vacation

Hey!

We're on vacation in the Windy City. I'll be returning for regular posts this weekend. I've got good stories including a hyperactive kid who works in a meth lab and Leonardo da Vinci's relevance to Chicago.

We're off to the CSI Experience at the Museum of Science and Industry and then lunch in Chinatown.

I hope everyone is having a good time!

Why is the Meat Counter Bulletproof?

Go see Hot Fuzz.

Now.

This is, without doubt, one of the funniest movies I have ever seen. To call it a spoof doesn't do the movie justice. It's equal parts comedy and all-out, over-the-top action movie.

3 words: Rooftop fight scene.

That's it. That's all you get.

Why are you still sitting there?

Film Score Friday: Miklós Rózsa Edition

Wednesday April 18 was the 100th anniversary of Miklós Rózsa's birth. He died 10 years ago just a few months after his 90th birthday.

Rózsa was one of the first composers to come to Hollywood that didn't try to emulate the sound of Korngold or Steiner (and central European late Romanticism). He was also one of the few composers of Hollywood's Golden Age to maintain a parallel career as a composer of concert music as well as film music with lots of great stuff including a violin concerto for Jascha Heifetz, a cello concerto for Gregory Piatagorsky and a large-scale symphony that smacks of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra (written about 20 years after Rózsa's Symphony). His autobiography A Double Life is both an entertaining read and a scathing critique of Hollywood during its Golden Age (his story about how he met Stravinsky is particularly entertaining).

Rózsa is interesting also in that had three distinct phases to his film scoring career. The first deals largely with exoticism like The Jungle Book and The Thief of Baghdad. The second phase deals largely with psychological dramas like Hitchcock's Spellbound, Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend. The third phase deals largely with historical epics. This began when he signed with MGM and was given one of the best contracts a composer had received since Korngold worked for Jack Warner. It was in this part of his career that he got to dive in to musicological research that he loved so much (his Ph.D. was in musicology from the Leipzig Conservatory). This period includes films like Quo Vadis, Ben Hur, King of Kings (Rózsa is the only composer to ever be required in the course of his assignments to score the crucifixion 3 times!), Knights of the Round Table, El Cid, Beau Brummell and Sodom and Gomorrah.

Today's playlist is to be drawn mostly from the historical epic category...mostly.

Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ

El Cid

Knights of the Round Table (good score, baaaad film)

Julius Caesar

Ivanhoe

The Epic Film Music of Miklós Rózsa

Spellbound: The Classic Film Scores of Miklós Rózsa

King of Kings

Time After Time (Nicholas Meyer's first version of Star Trek IV)

Yeah. I'm a big Rózsa fan.

Don't Let It Sneak Up On You!

It's spring and it's getting warmer. The ground is beginning to thaw. The smell of rain, freshly grown grass and fresh herbs is in the air.

You know what else it means, right?

BASEBALL SEASON!!!

My Cardinals will be kicking off the season against the New York Metropolitans on ESPN Sunday night. Don't think for a moment I'll be doing anything else that night!

It's just a pity that there's no professional baseball team here in Kansas City.

Rejected!

A while back the composers organisation to which I belong announced a collaboration with a regional orchestra in Iowa and held a call for scores.

Naturally I submitted the only orchestral concert work I'd finished to that point, my master's thesis composition, a ten-minute work entitled Dream Meditations (several of you are already familiar with this work; dammit! I need to get a myspace music page going). Dream Meditations has its weaknesses but I think it also has its strong moments. It's definitely programmatic and has a dark cinematic bent to it (would you really expect much else from me?). I also think it happens to be nicely constructed in a lot of ways and musically doesn't really betray any direct influences (though they're certainly there. I'd be a liar not to admit that).

So the submission deadline was a while ago and I've finally heard back. As you've probably guessed...rejected!

Am I surprised? Not really. I more-or-less expected that this would happen. Why? I don't know. Myriad reasons, I suppose. The piece is too conservative (though I don't think so). The piece isn't conservative enough. It's too short. It's just not good enough. These are all reasons I can handle.

What would really piss me off, though, is if my piece was rejected based on my age or my scant 1-year tenure within the organisation.

Those that were selected are largely older than me.

Through some cunning detective work I was able to find excerpts of recordings of a couple of the works. One has been professionally recorded. On that alone I think it should be disallowed. Good on that composer for getting his work recorded recorded. I think, though, that because of the relative small size of our group, that there should have been a stipulation in the rules that you just couldn't do that. It automatically unlevels the playing field. My second issue with the piece is that it sounds like warmed-over Shostakovich and Copland mixed together. There's nothing wrong with those composers but why continue to reinvent the wheel?

The other piece (out of 7) that I was able to find was a work for soprano and orchestra. It was like Ives without the brilliance or the ballsiness (thanks to the Bard for the description) therefore was more annoying than anything. Both the soprano soloist on the recording and the text setting were just plain bad and the orchestration was really uneven.

So if these two pieces are indicative of the remaining 5 pieces from which to select the concert program I'm going to be quite disappointed. It's one thing not to be selected because of superior work, but it's another thing altogether if other things are coming into play.

Aural Potpourri

Nothing to report. Except an early-life artistic crisis. I'm working it out. Details to follow.

Meantime here's today's listening list:

Erik Bergman - Concertino da camera; Triumf att finnas till; Lament and Incantation; Silence and Eruptions - Almaviva Ensemble, Ulf Söderblum, cond.

Esa-Pekka Salonen - Piano concerto - Yefim Bronfman, NY Philharmonic, composer cond.

Evan Ziporyn - Frog's Eye - Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Gil Rose, cond; This Is Not A Clarinet - Evan Ziporyn, clarinet(s)

Steve Martland - Horses of Instruction - The Steve Martland Band

Messiaen - Turangalila Symphony - Orchestre de l'Opéra Bastille, Myun-Wung Chung, cond.

Ligeti - Violin, cello and piano concertos - Ensemble Intercontemporain, Pierre Boulez, cond.

Goin' International

So I found out that recently that a short I scored in May of 2005, The Importance of Blind Dating (which I've discussed before), was screened for a Valentine's Day Film Night at London's Carnsforth Station.

Does this mean I get to say my music has been heard internationally?

Or is that in poor taste? I mean, it's not like it's a big-budget international film or anything.

78 Years Ago Today

Jerry Goldsmith was born in L.A.

There's an article in Newsweek about Ennio Morricone (since he's being given this year's lifetime achievement award at the Oscars) which refers to him as maybe the greatest film composer ever. For my money, after Herrmann, it was Jerry. He may not have created instantly recognisable scores for certain iconic Spaghetti Westerns, but he did score a lot of iconic films, many of which have withstood the test of time pretty well (Charlton Heston's bellowing aside!).

Memorandum

I have come to a conclusion.

Like it or not, love it or hate it, the single most influential piece of popular music written in the past 5 years is (drumroll please!)

Pirates of the Caribbean.

Now I know you're thinking, "Herr, that can't possibly be true, can it?"

Yes, Bambi, it's true.

I've done a painstaking amount of passive research on the subject. Watch any broadcast sporting event, sports show, reality tv or anything else that requires energetic music and you'll discover it's being ripped off; most of the time not so lovingly.

For the record I like the Pirates of the Caribbean films and their music.

Yo-Yo Ma(nia) Film Score Friday

Yo-Yo Ma is in town this weekend for what is probably the biggest series of concerts we've ever done.

To that end I offer the following hodge-podge for Film Score Friday:

Hero - Tan Dun
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - Tan Dun
Memoirs of a Geisha - John Williams
Yo-Yo Ma Play Ennio Morricone
Fire, Water, Paper: A Vietnam Oratorio - Elliot Goldenthal
Concerto for Cello - John Williams
Silk Road Journeys - Silk Road Ensemble
The Protecting Veil - John Tavener (who is an honorary member of the category as he wrote some original music for Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men)

Contemplation Music for Sad Days

Choir Concerto - Alfred Schnittke
Coptic Light - Morton Feldman
You Are (Variations) - Steve Reich
Requiem - Herbert Howells

By the way...

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, Festivus, Chanukkah, New Year, Kwanzaa...whatever.

I would also like to contribute the following:

We made it. It was tough and not a little grueling but it's over. It's like the elephant in the room and nobody seems prepared to discuss it. You know what I'm talking about.

The Mozart Anniversary Year

Congratulations, everybody. I think we managed to go the entire year in the call center listening to virtually none of Wolfgang's works. I understand that the concert season isn't over yet so there's still some to endure, but the technicality is the thing and the year is officially done.

And since the demise of our "Mozart Anniversary Year Countdown" clock you will (hopefully) notice that it has been replaced with a new clock that is simultaneously depressing and hopeful.

Happy New Year!

Wintry Mix

It's the last day of work before our little holiday break.

Christmas Cocktails - Various Columbia Artists
Christmas Carols and Hymns - Robert Shaw Chamber Singers
When My Heart Finds Christmas - Harry Connick, Jr.
Une Cantate de Noel - Arthur Honegger
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Good. Music.

To get through a quiet day at the office:

Steve Reich: Drumming, Tehillim
Harrison Birtwistle: Earth Dances
Sibelius: Symphony no. 6
Wayne Siegel: Devil's Golf Course
Bartok: Concerto for Orchestra
Joonas Kokkonen: Requiem
Rautavaara: Book of Visions

Happy Thanksgiving

And happy birthday!

In Memorium

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 an organ player who rarely missed mass. Most of all he was a family man who cared deeply for his wife, children and elderly mother. He had decided, though, that it was time to return to school and study composition. So he drove to Kirksville, Missouri from Quincy, Illinois every Friday for his lessons and the composers master class. He was quiet, thoughtful, kind and always thoroughly engaged. I didn't really get to know Jerry as well as I would have liked. But the person I was able to get to know was an extraordinarily good human being.

On this date three years ago Jerry was gunned down in his driveway by his business partner over a business disagreement. Later that school year we programmed on one of our composers concerts the only piece he completed as a student; a breezy set for flute and piano written about his three cats. It was an extremely emotional day as his family was there, too. And one I'll never forget.

Once again, you're remembered Jerry.

I Can't Handel It Anymore

It's Saturday afternoon and I'm at work.

Selling Messiah tickets.

The Community of Christ Church (formerly RLDS) sponsored an annual performance of the Messiah that dates back 90 years. After the performance 2 years ago the church announced they were letting it go after the 2005 performance. Well in swoops our E.D. (read about him here and/or here) and "saves the day" by taking over the performance. Great. Now we get to sell 2 performances of the Messiah. As if o1 isn't bad enough.

I first heard Messiah complete when I was a junior in high school.
I heard it again 2 years ago. The only reason I went was because Jaques was performing the alto solo (not too shabby; actually he was pretty awesome!).

That makes it 10 years between performances. I guess that's okay.

I think perhaps we should use Messiah as a yardstick of good taste. If you ask a person if they like Messiah you can probably deduce that they have little in the way of good taste.

Perhaps we should use Sir Thomas Beecham's orchestration next year!

It's Sir William Herschel's Birthday...

...He discovered Uranus (1738).

A Sad Film Score Friday

Basil Poledouris died two days ago of cancer. This week's Film Score Friday will honor his memory with the following:

Big Wednesday
Conan the Barbarian
Flesh and Blood
Robocop
The Hunt for Red October
Lonesome Dove
Quigley Down Under
Starship Troopers
Les Miserables

Reich at 70

On October 25th the Warrior Bard and I made the trek (in the rain) to St. Louis for the symphony which, in conjunction with Synergy Vocals, gave a concert celebrating Steve Reich's 70th birthday.

The concert was, for the most part, great. I'm not going to nitpick too much simply because I don't get to hear this kind of programming closer to home that often. It never struck me until the downbeat of the concert just how difficult Reich's music is to actually perform. I take it for granted because the recordings are all pristine and flawless yet still magical. Anyway, you could tell David Robertson and the performers were without a doubt committed to the performance even if it wasn't perfect.

The Program:

Proverb
City Life
New York Counterpoint
You Are (Variations)

I could go on and on about how great most of this music is, but that would be redundant.

It was a great show.

Thank God That's Over

Die Frau and I sing in the Saint Joseph Community Chorus.

"But Herr Vogler, you and die Frau live in KC. Why do you drive an hour every week for this chorus? Surely there must be one closer," you ask. True. We first started dating as members of this chorus so we have kind of a sentimental connection to it. Additionally it's directed by the choir director from our undergraduate college for whom we both have a great deal of respect.

A week ago Sunday (10/29) we had a concert. It was one of those pull out all the stops concerts where we had an organ (the concert was in a church with a really nice organ; actually it was the church at which I was paid to sing for 4 of my 6 undergraduate years) and an orchestra. Luckily there were no dancers.

Now a little background. Early this summer an anonymous donor gave a large sum of money to the chorus to present this concert. So somewhere along the line someone heard a new cantata by Mark Hayes and said, "HEY! I'VE GOT A GREAT IDEA! LET'S PERFORM THIS!". But wait, there's more. They also decided that we should do more-or-less an entire concert dedicated to his...uh...music. And "HEY! WE CAN HAVE HIM COME UP HERE AND PLAY PIANO, TOO!!! THAT'LL BE GREAT!!!"

For those of you that don't know who Mark Hayes is, consider yourselves lucky. His music is supposed to be liturgical but is in reality awful schlock that tries to be spiritually deep where really it's just trite and pedantic (and annoying to those of us that feel it's merely superficial and pandering). We performed several of his anthems and a new cantata, a Te Deum (or tedium if you prefer). Basically it was enough to make my head feel like a tomato in a microwave. To make matters worse, all I heard during the Te Deum was warmed-over John Rutter and even a snippet of "Think of Me" from Phantom of the Opera. There's nothing spiritual about it. It is merely self-serving and says, "Listen to how pretty I am". There's no glorification of the Creator of the Universe anywhere in this music, just glorification in the creator of the music. All things being equal I'd rather have performed some Rutter.

Anyway, I feel very strongly about the programming and there just doesn't seem to be enough new or interesting music being presented. For example, we also performed Randall Thompson's Frostiana set for chorus with piano, orchestra or band this past weekend. It's a nice series of Robert Frost settings (a couple of them are completely uninteresting, but others are good), but I've performed with this group six out of the last eight years and this was the third time(!) we'd performed it (though only the first time with orchestra).

Anyway, for more than just artistic reasons die Frau and I feel as though our time with this group has run its course. We just don't have the time or the resources (not only are we expending fuel, we have to pay dues, too!) to devote to it anymore. In a way it's sad, but we all have to move on sometime and this seems to be the time. So after Carmina Burana in the spring that'll be it.

That's A Winner!

Yay! The Cardinals are World Series Champs!!!

Cards Win! Cards Win!

Being the devout baseball man that I am (a man has to get his religion somewhere) I just thought that I'd throw that out there.

I believe I requested a Cardinals/Tigers World Series?

Excellent.

Instant Steve Reich Collection, Just Add Water (and a Negligible Amount of Cash)

It pains me to admit it but I have very little of Steve Reich's music in my CD collection...until now.

Die Frau and I were in one of the local Barnes and Noble stores this past weekend when this lovely box of wonderful music attracted my attention. This 5-disc set immediately got my attention because it's basically a "best of" collection (though you could probably include anything by the man in such a thing) and was astoundingly priced at $35.

This retrospective is absolutely fantastic and even includes the recent works You Are (Variations), premiered by Grant Gershon and the Los Angeles Master Chorale a few years back, which costs $20 all by itself. If that's not enough, you get basically all the seminal works of this most influential American musician. Music for 18 Musicians, Tehillim, Proverb, Different Trains, Eight Lines, Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ, and Drumming (and then some) are all included. The only drawback for me is a lack of extensive liner notes. But even that isn't a major concern because you can find all that online at the Boosey and Hawkes website.

Anyway, it's a great set. If you like Reich's music and don't have much or are just plain interested check it out. It's awesome.

Composers in Community

This past weekend die Frau and I made the long, long (looooooong) trek to Orange City, Iowa. For those of you that don't know where this is, it's a half hour east of South Dakota and a half hour south of Minnesota. For those of you that do know where this is...why?!?! Why did we go to such a place, you ask? I'll tell you.

I had a piece programmed on a new music festival that was a joint effort of the Iowa Composers Forum and the Christian Fellowship of Art Music Composers and hosted by Northwestern College in Orange City. It was my first festival selection which made it all the more exciting. Well that's not entirely true. I've been programmed on 4 conferences/festivals, but they were all at Truman State so I think those kind of tipped the scales in my favour in those instances.

Anyway, the piece was my Two Movements for Flute which is an unaccompanied solo which also has the distinction of being my first 12-tone work. It's also a quite difficult work, full of complex rhythmic ideas and wide intervallic leaps. And if that's not enough there are little surface features that really function as background features that unify the piece on a long-range scale. Ugh, can you tell I had been studying Schenker at the time I wrote this piece, too? The soloist, whom I met the morning of the performance, performed the piece very well. She managed to bring out some of the aforementioned "long-range" elements of the piece rather than focus primarily on its gestural nature. I was pleased. Everyone seemed very complimentary especially with the knowledge that this was indeed my first 12-tone work.

The whole conference was pretty amazing. 1 day, 4 concerts (long concerts), 2 paper sessions and seemingly endless variety. It was incredible to hear all this music by so many composers and so much of it was different from everything else that was heard. In addition everyone seemed genuinely supportive of each other's work. Many and constant congratulations abounded throughout the day in the halls, during concerts and during meals. Another nice aspect of the conference was getting to see Dr. Gooch again. It was, afterall, his suggestion that I join the Forum. His Monodies for cello and piano were performed right before my piece.

One of the most difficult aspects of being a composer in a situation such as this is trying to find the balance between enjoying what you're listening to and listening on a more analytical level. I found myself trying to find this at many points throughout each of the concerts and would say that, in my own opinion at least, was fairly successful. If you do nothing but listen analytically you might miss the point. If you do nothing but listen for enjoyment (though there's nothing wrong with this from time to time) you might also miss a larger point. Balance is key, Daniel-san.

Overall the experience was really great. One I look forward to again soon.

Gonna Fly Now

Maynard Ferguson died Thursday night at the age of 78.

For those that don't know Ferguson was one of the greatest jazz trumpet players who ever lived. He could play ridiculous high notes. He quit school at 15 to start his own big band and played with a lot of other big bands in the '50s. He gave the Stan Kenton Orchestra its signature sound (screaming high, screaming loud).

He scored a big hit in the 1970s with his cover of Bill Conti's "Gonna Fly Now" from Rocky and almost instantly made the big band a viable art form again only this time fusing rock, jazz, bop and anything else that caught his fancy (like Indian classical music).

I got to see him in concert once.

It was the end of my freshman year and he and his band, Big Bop Nouveau, came to play at a church in Kansas City. 2 others and I made the trek from Saint Joseph to south Kansas City for the concert. One of the guys, Kevin, was also a bop trumpet player (an extraordinarily talented one with an ego to match) who had heard Maynard play so many times that the road manager recognised him and he eventually earned a tour jacket...which you couldn't actually buy. We got to the church and I realised I was about $15 short. Kevin paid for my ticket for which I will be eternally grateful.

Move over, Gabriel, you're playing second trumpet now.