Intrada Soundtrack Forum

James Horner has recently said that about film music today :

"A lot of directors don't want melodic writing anymore, which is fine, but a lot of the scores that are being made now tend to, in a sense, very much sound the same. A big wall of sound. Very impressive sounding.”

Then it reminded me Bruce Broughton's same position about modern film music, as he often told his bitterness about the lack of melody and classicaly trained composers in today's film music.
Sadly, Bruce Broughton is not in the feature films business anymore. And sadder still, very few composers write film music in the old classical style anymore.

I tried to do a list of these few classical film composers (from the last golden age of the 80's or from later but that still carry the legacy of that fantastic age) :

John Williams : I know he's not very present today but he's still announced as the future composer of Star Wars 7 and recently wrote the fantastic scores for Tintin and Lincoln.

composers from the 80's :

James Horner : of course the impressionist of film music has proven that a great lush and refined orchestral score still can have a success today (Avatar, Spider-man). He has always painted his scores with colorful melodies and sounds.

Alan Silvestri : Though from the world of pop music and a drummer and guitarist, he has become one of the greatest symphonists of the last 3 decades and is still able to compose a big heroic fanfare in the old Williams style (Captain America).

Danny Elfman : Also from the pop music, his very distinctive eerie signature has always made him a castaway throughout the 80's and 90's, compared to the other film composers. But, having been a strong actor of that symphonic golden age in the 80's, he clearly got from those training years that old fashioned symphonic style that we all miss today. Everyone can see he's still one of the greatest Hollywood symphonists, with scores like Oz and Epic.

The legacy : (coming soon)
Michael Giacchino
Andrew Lockington
etc

This is a neat topic though it can walk a slippery slope, too. When one considers the symphonists from the eighties that carry on the legacy of "real" composing - with musical architecture, thematic structure and so forth - one should also keep such wonderful writers as Laurence Rosenthal and John Scott in mind, to name just a couple. They are ready, willing and able to write circles around many of the current crop of composers were they invited to the table more often. For the record, I actually do put John Williams and James Horner at the top of my list of well-trained composers capable of the most rewarding symphonic music in film today.

One of my favorite yardsticks - although perhaps no longer so relevant a yardstick - was always observing whether a given composer appeared comfortable with a blank sheet of full score paper (allowing lines for orchestrating all of the instruments) and a pencil. For example, I once asked Bruce Broughton for an autograph way back in the late eighties, then watched him write out by hand the first few bars of "Riding As One" from Silverado on 24-stave scoring paper, penciling in every instrumental detail right down to the tuba part, and handing it back to me about ten minutes later! I tried it with John Scott when we were working on Shogun Mayeda and - yep - ditto with the main title... all during our first lunch break. Anyway, I just figured if these folks can sit down and sort things out on paper without a keyboard or orchestration manual, they earned my respect. Yeah, there are other yardsticks today, but that one was surely a nice one at the time.

The slippery slope part, of course, is that talented writers like James Newton Howard are also fully capable of writing out their music and know their way around the orchestra, even though they may engage others to orchestrate and conduct their work. So they deserve inclusion in my humble opinion.

With little question, however: John Williams tops the list.

It will be nice if others chime in with some thoughts about the traditions you bring up, the writers that bridge the gaps between the eighties and now and whatever. I love learning other points of view about this stuff.
--Doug

Of those that we still have with us and potentially active (and not previously mentioned), I think Goldenthal, Shore, Fenton, Doyle and Shire are all perfectly ready, willing and able to write symphonically demanding and rewarding scores with old school thematic interest and development to them. Whether the market is there, or even the courage to buck the marketing trends, and hire these treasured artists, is more doubtful. Even more disappointing to me is the prospect of a new generation coming up without the benefit of apprenticeship to those masters we still have left. The old studio system had its faults but the generations of mentorship and fostering of new talent, with respect to continuing and expanding the old traditions, really gave us many decades of terrific film music. I don't hear the same continuity today.

_________________
Randy Wilson
Dallas, TX

Classically trained and composing/orchestrating broad ranges of styles by hand for several decades?



I guess the Roman maestro definitely is on the list of the last titans of film music left.

I'm now 67 and have been collecting soundtracks for 50 years although I've never been able to read music. Back in 1963 my first albums were (in order) Ben-Hur (Rozsa), Lawrence of Arabia (jarre), 55 Days at Peking. (Tiomkin), and The Great Escape (Bernstein).

These four composers were the foundations of my hobby (my wife would say 'obsession'). Later I would add all the other great golden/silver age composers Steiner, Korngold, Alfred Newman, Bernard Herrmann, Alex North, John Barry and Jerry Goldsmith. These were guys who, as Douglass has pointed out , could be handed a sheet of manuscript paper and produce a memorable theme without recourse to a synthesiser.

I recall back in 1965 I was blown away with Jerry Goldsmith's score to The Blue Max and was determined to get the album, but there was a problem, it wasn't being issued in the UK! I had to find a supplier in the US prepared to ship this to me. Not easy in the days before Internet and credit cards. It took nearly six months to get my copy.

But that was then. I'm not much interested in music from today's movies but I will continue to collect the special editions that Intrada, LaLa Land and Kritzerland produce from that era.

Keep going Doug!,

There is one composer who is classically trained, currently scoring major films, conducts, orchestrates, often plays certain flute instruments in his recordings, and composes melodic scores one after another: Alexandre Desplat

I consider Desplat the 70/80s equivalent of Williams/Goldsmith.

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