The Reverse Wagner

[Shapley]

*sigh* The Midwest. We don't try to explain it, nobody's interested. *yawn*

Hey! You've got to admit that Illinois politics is good for it's comedic value, if nothing else!

[barfle]

*sigh* The Midwest. We don't try to explain it, nobody's interested. *yawn*

Hey! You've got to admit that Illinois politics is good for it's comedic value, if nothing else!

And that's different then California how?

[jamiebk]

*sigh* The Midwest. We don't try to explain it, nobody's interested. *yawn*

Hey! You've got to admit that Illinois politics is good for it's comedic value, if nothing else!

And that's different then California how?

Can't disagree with you on that!

[Shapley]

Did you hear Gov. Jindal's joke regarding the former condition of the State of Louisiana: "Half the State was under water, the other half was under indictment."

[piqaboo]

Me, I likes Rocky Horror. So there.

Music? There's music in the movies?

[BigJon@Work]

How much of the music included in today's films is there to sell music? I'd say lots of it.

I like Rocky Horror. Let's do the Time Warp agaaaaaaaaaaaaain!

[shostakovich]

thanks for the topic.

it caused me to stumble across this site, which has a thumbnails of a lot of the names you've mentioned.

http://www.mfiles.co.uk/film-music.htm

eg
http://www.mfiles.co.uk/composers/Franz-Waxman.htm
http://www.mfiles.co.uk/composers/Dimitri-Tiomkin.htm

Very illuminating for a layman like me.

You folks enrich my life. Thank you.

a.

The last site reminded me of the film that put the first coffin nail in the "classical" soundtrack. It was High Noon. The score itself was not bad, but it was largely constructed on the tune of "Do Not Forsake Me". That memorable song demonstrated the box office potential of a "hit song" as opposed to a real score. This direction had been suggested by the "Tara Theme" and "Laura". Steiner and Raksin created them in the spirit of Wagner's concept of the leitmotif, but words were added after the movies came out, creating popular songs in their own right. Some years (5?) after High Noon, Malcolm Arnold used Kenneth Alford's Colonel Bogey March in The Bridge on the River Kwai. The movie was great, the march was fitting, and the sound track was otherwise undistinguished. Yet the "score" won an oscar for Arnold. Later still, Miklos Rozsa created a masterful score for El Cid. The winner that year was Breakfast at Tiffany's because of (the execrable IMO) Moon River. Rozsa was rightly pissed, complaining that the idiots who awarded Mancini had no concept of the distinction between a song and a score. The flood gates were open.
Shos

[Shapley]

Ennio Morricone has written apparently hundreds of film scores, some good, some bad, some downright ugly. He will be remembered for about a dozen or so of them. Some of them include theme songs. some do not. I mentioned just recently in the 'comments on b.com selections' thread one of the songs "The Story of a Soldier" from The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly. That song was used to good effect, with the prisoners forced to sing it while Tucco was beaten up. One of the prisoners comments to Blondie that the beating will go on as long as the song lasts. The music of the song was also used in a couple of other pieces of film music, though it was not the 'theme' of the film music throughout.

I have a collection of film music by Ennio Morricone entitled "Spaghetti Westerns". It includes a number of those theme songs, most of them Italian versions of the Western ballad, and most of those are actually bad Italian versions of the Western ballad. There are a couple of gems in there, but nothing that will be regarded as Mr. Morricone's legacy. On the other hand, I think it is entirely possible that some capable composer could create a "Man With No Name Symphony" using themes from those bettter known Spaghetti Western scores, to good effect.

Enough about Mr. Morricone, for now. Titanic, on the other hand, basically took one song and stretched it out as theme music throughout the whole of the picture, if my ear served me well. The song itself was not sung until the end credits, I believe. I found it tedious.

I believe GCR, however, is concerned with the use of existing pop music in the films, as opposed to songs that were written for a film, that later become pop tunes, as did the Titanic theme song. For instance, Black Sabbath may have written a sad and slow tune about death and sadness (they used to write lots of those, I'm not sure if they still do), and some movie producer uses that song in a movie about divorce. The sad music may fit the mood, but the words do not. I don't know if the producer cared, if he hoped no one would notice, or if simply didn't even know what the song was about to begin with.

V/R
Shapley

[shostakovich]

I remember Blackboard Jungle used Rock Around the Clock to chilling (to me) effect. Shos