A Question About the Decline of the Quality of Film Music

[noldar12]

Question: Does the decline of quality in movie scores relate, at least in part, to changes in how a movie keeps the audience's attention?

In another thread, William made the following comment:

HOWEVER - I must add, that is Hollywood today, under the influence of the Barbarian Horde of the Zimmerians.  In the past, exemplified by the studio era of the 1940s, one could hear full string orchestral scoring on a regular basis by, most significantly, Austrian expatriot composers.  The good Hollywood music then was mainly Austrian.  In fact, one could easily go so far as to say, Hollywood music was invented by Austrians.  This influence persists to the present day (in the few good scores) with John Williams being a near-disciple of the greatest film composer of the B.H. Era (Before Herrmann) --  Korngold.

Comment (disclaimer: I am not a film expert): in older films, the musical score often had to set the emotional mood, aid in the creating of tense scenes, etc.  More was demaned of the musical score, as compared to the situation today.  Today, we are in a much more visual culture, as opposed to auditory, and a film often is considered "good" if the CGI effects are able to "wow" (obviously, there are exceptions).  I do wonder how much the contemporary "postmodern" emphasis on "visual culture" plays into the situation.  One clear example would be the rise of the music video.  One simply cannot just listen to a piece of music.  Since one's attention is drawn first into the "visual", one pays less attention to the "audible".  That "audible" simply doesn't matter very much, so if corners need to be cut, that is the place to cut them.  The music is just not that important.

Comments?

[William]

That's a very good point, if you think about how music in current films is used -- like icing on a cake.  It has to sound generally right, like the typical pounding taikos along with block chords, but exactly what it does in melody, counterpoint, orchestration - none of that matters.  Just the overall coating of sound to enhance the main thing, which is visual.

In the older films, the drama was more important.  And so a musical "drama" could be created that was heard along with the actors' drama.  This resulted in scores so elaborate they were Wagnerian, like Korngold's.   

Though not to be too negative, one can hear some of that today with highly dramatic films.  But you are right in general that the emphasis on purely visual impressions is making film music more simplistic.  It is odd how it doesn not have to be that way - for example with Hitchcock, who was very visual.  But those scores by Herrmann were the best.  So I don't know why the emphasis on visual has to equate with simplistic music .  The bottom line maybe. 

[noldar12]

I strongly suspect, and this is a very general comment, that the change is due to the cultural change, that has been going on especially in the last 40 years or so.  The culture at the time of Hitchcock and/or when Herrmann and Korngold were writing was a less visually oriented culture than today.  Even in something as visual as a film, by definition, is, 50-75 years ago other aspects, such as the audible experience, were more important, as the "Visual" was not as all-important as it is today within many segments of popular culture.

[Raymonde]

@noldar12 said:

Today, we are in a much more visual culture, as opposed to auditory, and a film often is considered "good" if the CGI effects are able to "wow" (obviously, there are exceptions). 

To elaborate on that point a bit in way of agreement and amplification of the fact that visual imaging is taking over our culture, our way of bringing information about the culture  into our lives and minds and our way of communication with each other; yes we are now in fact a culture of people who may only be able to truely process information intake if it is loaded onto a visual platform. The days of reading printed material as a way of taking in information when we are looking at massive (in terms of millions or hundreds of millions of viewers seeing the same message in a very short period of time) cultural message delivery,  are gone. Since films, at the end of the day are information that is processed for pleasure, we can look back at the history of the movie and see this. We can't experience  those films from before August  13, 1967 -the release date for Warren Beatty's film version of the Bonnie and Clyde saga-the way the folks in the original theater setting did because the cultural milieu was operating in  a completely different environment. One could start with the education that folks received at home the last 11 decades.

1. Pre video\visual dominance-although paintings and photography did compete with each other (from 1837 to 1888 when the first 'moving picture' was made) and visual images presented by artists have always enjoyed great popularity. That pre photography imaging however took place often times because producers in many venues (the church for example) realized most of the audience to whom a particular message was delivered were illiterate. With the invention of photography and then movies, a cultural sea change was started and the swell in the volume of visual images came into such prominence that we are now in a surround sound visually oriented and industrially produced culture milieu.

2. Early viewers of the films to about 1945 were raised and educated in an era where visual images had not yet saturated the world and many people only went to movies very occasionally or never-there was in fact a social stigma attached to cinema all throughout this time frame that remains today with concerns about the nature of  content that is offensive to prurient interests. Outside of that concern though, the film industry was in its boom years from 1906 to the early 1950's albeit with a considerable drop in ticket sales during the Great Depression. The industry  was only beginning to recover after WW II when the effect of commercial broadcast of live theater (although some of which was very cheaply produced) vis a vis the home TV caused movie ticket sales to plummet. However, outside of the commercial movie houses, film and TV, along with billboard production, newspaper and magazine printing; all of these present to mass audiences a messaging system that is increasingly relying on elaborate graphic images,  almost at times to the complete exclusion of any real substantive use of written text which is often reduced to mere stenographic, barebones recordings of factual information that is often merely chronical in nature; the real editorial content is in the photography and its tasteful (sometimes) and artistic presentation.  Look and Life and Natural Geographic are the classic icons of the era that demonstrate this fact superbly.

3. The film industry saw a huge influx of new audience members in the mid 1960's to late 1970's , most of whom had grown up in an environment that was increasingly steeped in visual and video cultural forms. Producers like Warren Beatty, whose experience was deeply embedded in the serious film maker's art-being influenced by the likes of Rebel Without A Cause and Psycho -started a new era of film making that took film making to a new height. This era actually has its roots in the films of Fellini, Bergman, Hitchcock and Kurosawa. It was actually Kurosawa's Rashhomon, released in 1950, that ushered in the modern film making era of film as a new art form; producers now had a very high standard to meet as Kurosawa was eventually to become recognized as the towering genius of the century against which all other film maker's efforts were to be judged. This then is the point; visual imaging is of all importance, script and music must serve their parts as handmaidens to the visual and the music in some of Kurosawa' movies is just that; serving as a support for the overall story but never taking over the leading role; that paramount message delivering role was given to the actors and the cinemaphotographer. The camera had to follow the actors in unique and dramatic ways to emphasize, outline, herald, prefigure and cast across the visual field in all kinds of new ways . Of course we need the spoken dialogue as well and it had better be of the best possible quality for these directors but still, the  visual medium, as Marshal McLuhan was to say, is the massage.

[Errikos]

I remember years ago I was taking long evening walks (a few Klms.) around my old neighborhood and beyond, before I moved back to Greece. Around 7-8 o'clock, the notorious blue light emanated from every damn house I ever passed... I was getting Orwellian images of pathetic (literally and metaphorically) people/families being glued, mesmerized by whatever crap they were watching on TV at the time. A whole city of millions bathed in communal silence, save for the liminal and subliminal sounds (and images) bombarding them from the plasmas. This, as a comment to our contemporary visual "culture".

As far as whether film-music's meteoric decline in quality (I read recently a - true - claim that game music now is "as emotive and inspired" as film-music) has anything to do with the general decline of civilization; of course it does. However, it is not because worse films are made today than 30 years ago. All in all this may be true, but there have been many great films in all genres during the last ten years that are 100 times better than many a film from that time. I don't wish to debate this further, but merely to suggest that the same cannot be said of soundtracks. Only a handful of soundtracks from the past ten years can be favourably compared to those from 20-30 years ago, and those have come exclusively from composers who were also active back then.

Similarly, Star Wars and The Omen were hardly Shakespeare... E.T.? Please!... But what music!... Don't blame today's films so much in this respect. Blame the composters and the directors who hire them. They are the ones responsible. It has little to do with "culture" or how filmography is in decline; the composters would never have been able to plague us with their pestilential film-cues, had it not been for the prosthetic technology that is available to them today. I posted a reference to a great site about orchestration, not one acknowledgment... Of course; wrong forum for something like that since everyone's such an expert on such rudiments... Had it been a Bidule tutorial, tips on Limiting, or hard drive speed-tests, heeey...... Meanwhile we're inundated with semi-trailer truckloads of SH*T music tracks, very well mixed...

[Raymonde]

@Another User said:

Blame the composters and the directors who hire them. They are the ones responsible.

 I'm not so sure; of course I can't prove anything but I suspect audiences really don't want to hear original thorough composed music that would rank up there with the likes of even Mahler let alone something that might be more 'modern' or atonal in the tradition of Bartok or Shostakovitch. Producers usually do semi secret previews to a carefully selected group (maybe 200 or 500) of viewers in two or three cities. Based on what comes out of focus groups and surveys of the audience done after those previews, proucers decide to edit, cut, or change almost anything and everything. I really think preview audiences today regularly reject music that is along the lines of an Elmer Bernstein or a Henry Mancini.

So it seems like its both the producers catering to the taco crunchers and soda sippers that is driving what we see and hear. Most folks don't have the background to know what the art of composting music involves; since they don't do it, most anything sounds good and what might really be good-as in the way of a Bartok or Stravinksy, would be rated as terrible sounding -if any music could be heard above the crunching and the slurping.

[William]

Interesting post reverne.  I have to add that Bergman would probably be the consensual candidate for the greatest of all film directors, but he of course comes from a deeply traditional background steeped in the written word and theater, especially Strindberg.  So you have an example of this greatest of "visual" artists nevertheless coming from a culture formed by the written works of great playwrights, writers and philosophers.  

Rather different from  the "visual" artists depicting CGI giant robots fighting each other or Tom Cruise flipping through the air on an IMF job.

I also agree with the point Errikos is making, that there is a fundamental difference in the decline of film music as opposed to a decline in cinema, if any.   Cinema has in general probably improved overall, though the commercial aspect has become more totalitarian in its effect.  For example, in the 1940s-50s era you could find great B-movies be made "under the radar" by Val Lewton, or film noir directors, right in the middle of the studio system.  Whereas now, within the equivalent system of mainstream Hollywood, the MFAs from Harvard business school have totally taken over and root out any artistry not in the service of money-making.  There is no "under the radar" there any more.  Demographics and the scientific application of business modeling of every conceivable sort have utterly possessed Hollywood.

Though at the same time, the growth of independent filmmaking has allowed a contradictory movement of personal artistry that simply was not possible in the old studios era. 

So there are good things and bad in motion pictures, but film music?   As Errikos points out, it is a different thing going on there.  A deterioration that is almost being ENFORCED by technology in concert with the bottom line.    This seems far more uniformly negative in its effect.

[Raymonde]

@William said:

"visual" artists nevertheless coming from a culture formed by the written works of great playwrights, writers and philosophers.  

Good point and I see that as very important. I think we can all agree, those of us who are whooping crazy passionate about classical music (the period that ran roughly from the time of  Palestrina to Tschaikovsky-or thereabouts) that our first moment of falling in love with the stuff was because of the 'mood' it set, the images evoked and of course the passions and feeling of joy, or sorrow or hatred or fear that were heightened by the experience of music. I still remember the sheer terror of hearing long wandering passages of Shostakovitch's 10th for the first time and being almost afraid to listen to it a second time because of the extreme and utter lonliness that the music evoked. I doubt many movie goers have that feeling evoked in them, instead the  music is rejected out of hand as bad or irrelevant and so move on. But put an exciting  movie to it (as the producer of Gone With the Wind did for Sibelius -his 6th I believe? -) and suddenly all is wonderful, bright and beautiful, stirring and evokes great wonder in the viewer.

In fact, I just found an article that makes this very point, that the early symphonic development led to a narrative style that was to be heavily imitated in the world of movie production.

The Boy on the Train, orBad Symphonies and Good Movies; The Revealing Error of the “Symphonic Score”

Looks like an interesting read so I'll be back. But I like the point that the visual arts are fed by the arts of story telling and literature.

Ah! to million$ available and actors to match and a 100 piece orchestra!

O! for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention;

A kingdom for a stage, princes to act and monarchs to behold the swelling scene.

Then should the war-like Harry, like himself, assume the port of Mars; and at his heels,

Leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire crouch for employment.

Henry V - Derek Jacobi - Prologue

[noldar12]

Regarding language and philosophy, depending on how far one wants to adopt the work of the French Deconstructionists, even language, and especially philosophy, now have serious trouble.  Words cannot have any real meaning, and philosophy, going clear back to Plato, was based on a false metanarrative.

Admittedly, IMO, deconstruction proves invalid: perhaps the best example is when Derrida insisted that everything was to be deconstructed except deconstruction.  Since deconstruction looks for internal inconsistency, and Derrida's statement was internally inconsistent...

It is also interesting that deconstruction is in essence destructive: it desires to tear things apart, but does not seek to build anything in place of what it tears apart.

Unfortunately, in terms of general culture (or should I spell that "kulchuur" <smile>), deconstruction has, in many places, become very inbedded, to the point that some - if you dare dispute it - will simply say that any conversation is impossible, or, you are just playing "power games", since power = knowledge.  Historically, those who had knowledge had power, now according to deconstruction, those who are in power determine what is considered knowledge, and since those in power detemine it, and are by definition, oppressive, that knowledge is to be rejected.

One of the further problems: by the time a philosophy becomes prominent in pop culture it has often already been replaced by something else in terms of philosophy proper.

The point is simply this: other areas are declining as well.

IMO, one of the answers is to not buy into the nonsense, and to seek to gently expose the weaknesses of the concepts.  Just because popular culture demands something or other, does not mean one has to go along.

[William]

I read a truly great book called "Madness and Modernism" by Louis Sass, a psychiatrist.  He draws parallels that are startlingly close between modern culture - especially including art, literature and philosophy - and schizophrenia.  Everything that is distinctly "modern" has so many similarities to schizophrenia it is as the "moderns" are imitating the disease.  One of the main things he talks about is Deconstructionism.  

But I have to say that many of these modern works in various fields are my favorites.  So what does that imply?   [:O]

[noldar12]

William, given how you describe Sass, those who are the most vocal, insist that they are absolutely totally opposed to modernism, and would describe themselves, and the use of deconstruction in particular, as post-modern (I was trying to avoid using that term).  It is interesting actually... every positive descriptive word that can be found is used when describing post-modernism, while every derogatory, and terrible descriptive word is used when describing modernism. 

It applies to music too.  The music of Beethoven in particular has been described in negative modernist, sexist terms (don't care to post the actual description).

While the emphasis is generally on continuing "the ongoing conversation", little conversation seems to be allowed if you dare try to disagree.

As to what that says about your interests... [:)]

A couple authors have briefly talked of a future philosophical change to post-post-modernism, but that hasn't caught on yet (I can just picture post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-modern structural-this-structure-is-condemned-ism[:D])

[noldar12]

One other thought, I suspect one of the reasons for the ever increasing use of charged rhetoric instead of actual real discussion, is that, since words are meaningless (only have relative value in the context used), and actual correspondence between a word used and a real "thing" does not exist (to borrow a phrase from Amadeus - to keep something in this post on topic <smile> - its all scribbling and bibbling - nothing more).

IMO, it is very sad, but at least some of the deconstructionists are on record as saying that if it will help prove your point, manufacturing false data, outright lying, or stretching the meaning of words is ok (since there is no real truth, doing so doesn't really matter).  Rorty and Cupitt come to mind (there is no reason for you to have heard of Cupitt, as his writings fall within a different field-theological deconstruction).  It is therefore no surprise when certain - shall we say, incidents - have cropped up over the last few years where people have been caught doing that sort of thing.  Whereas at one time doing so would have been considered "wrong" now there is a philosophical justification for it (even though IMO, it is stll wrong).

[Errikos]

Interesting article rverne, thanks. I don't have enough time or space here to expound my views to a satisfactory degree, so I have to be presumptuous of some common concensual ground most of the time, and leave some thoughts unexplored. However, I don't ever - I hope - resort to empty rhetoric as noldar12 suggests some people do here (and they do), I believe I always put some thoughts behind every notion, even if they are fire-glazed most of the time...

So, keeping this in mind, on with some rhetoric:

a) Adorno is not to be taken seriously as he was a militant Marxist, hence not at all objective. He would appreciate Mozart's G minor symphony only through a political prism - no purism there. Additionally, Schoenberg is not just miles below Stravinsky alone in the musical pyramid, but below Bartok, Mahler, Rachmaninov, Sibelius, Prokofiev, Scriabin, the list continues for some time... For I judge nobody in terms of influence as most others do (Mozart and Brahms created no 'schools'); but solely on the basis of their musical worth. Of course this is subjective, but I challenge everybody here to have a look at their CD collections (the ones they paid for exclusively) and make their own list of preferences...

b) I always hated the marquee 'Modernism'. It sounds vital and alive, but artistically it means nothing at all, other than indicating currency and favour. All those twirps 100 years ago handcuffed themselves in their blinkered arrogance and 'avant-garde' syndromes, by calling their art 'modern' (I guess there was nothing else positive to call it). As decades passed as a matter of course and techniques and methodologies changed, they needed to call their newer artistic accomplishments something else. They were the 'modern' ones then (in mode, in vogue), but predecessors had already used the term 'modern' for ideas and art that had germinated 30-40 years before them. So, still blinkered, they named their era 'post-modern', leaving the obvious problem for the next generation to deal with...

I've always sneered at that term since my student days, for it represented nothing (like Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Classicism, Romanticism, Symbolism - and even Neo Classicism and Neo Romanticism to a lesser degree - do). Any nomenclature with the prefix 'Post-' or 'Anti-' is a joke to begin with. It has some meaning initially before a novel philosophical or artistic trend has taken final shape, as it separates it from what preceded it, but down the timeline it has to be defined on its own terms; not those of the previous school of thought or expression, under any circumstances. Is Neo-Post-Modernism in its infancy?...

c) Peter Franklin in rverne's article uses the term 'symphonic' appropriately, whereas I have used it in this forum conventionally. Using proper terms and frameworks then, it is impossible and unnecessary to compare proper symphonic music to film-music, and their respective composers. As much as we admire Herrmann, Kornglod, Steiner (to use names from the article), but also Waxman, Tiomkin, Rozsa, and Williams, one would know very little about music not to understand how these masters can be Olympians / Mt. Rushmore figures in film-music, and next to absolutely invisible in symphonic music and its history, both at the same time.

They all wrote for orchestra, but the two art-forms could scarcely be more different in artistic scope and quality (just ask Herrmann, Korngold, and Williams). Rushmore with them on one side; the Himalayas with Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Chopin, Brahms, Tchaikovsky (I obviously disagree with Franklin on this one), Debussy, Ravel, Stravisnky, Bartok, and many-many-many-many countless others on the other. They all wrote great music! The former wrote great film-music, the latter great art-music; and that's not just an opinion, but a global consensus and understanding that even the greatest film-composers have and also have no problem with. One can disagree so long as they're aware of that fact.

There is some "justice" involved, in that say Milhaud's film-music is embarrassingly inferior to Herrmann's or William's, whereas his 2nd violin concerto defecates on William's own. They're just two different areas of artistic endeavour, with minor similarities.

d) Aren't feminist musicologists the saddest and most hilarious bunch? I've also had to read articles and journals of the like... Well, Beethoven just should have known better back in 1803, and not just scribble what crap came naturally to him then. Obviously not a sensitive, caring guy... [:P]

I believe I have provoked enough people for one post so I'll just leave it there.

P.S.: Deconstructionism is the punchline of the worst philosophical joke, and there's no way I am going to write a diatribe to defend that! 

[William]

I agree with all that provocation from Errikos the Spear-Thrower except for the general put-down of film music. 

The reasons are that first of all, it is impossible to judge film music in the same way as Beethoven, Mozart, and other great classical composers because it has only been around for about 60-80 years, depending on which film music you call the first really characteristic work for the medium.  So you cannot say much about its lasting value because not enough time has elapsed.

Secondly, there are some great works in film music that sound truly great as concert music.  Herrmann of course, but also others.  But that is not the real essence of the creation of film music.  It is essential that it be PART of the film/music duality.  So a proud concert composer like Stravinsky looked down upon it, and why?  Because he never took the time to understand what it needs.  He dismissed it from the standpoint of established musical forms.   Very unimaginative of such an otherwise imaginative artist.  And any concert composer could write some music that might be great as music, but utterly wretched as film music.  What that indicates is NOT that it is an inferior medium artistically.  It is different technically.  It is not only unfair, but aesthetically incorrect to compare a symphony or other concert form to film music, judge the film music to be inferior on those terms, and then decide "Yes, film music is inferior."  If for example, Beethoven wrote a ballet score with brilliant thematic development and use of form - it would mean nothing.  And therefore he would have created bad ballet music (assuming he did that which he didn't of course) but a beautiful symphonic composition.  Or on the other hand, to say that an opera is very weak because it doesn't have the dramatic realism of Eugene O'Neill.  That would be absurd, because the purpose of the drama in opera is essentially different.

You cannot simply lump together all forms of musical expression, compare them with the same aesthetics, ignoring what they have to be to acomplish their original goal, and then declare them inferior or superior. 

[didger]

The dicsussion of philosophy and evolution of a more visual culture is all very interesting, but there's a much more practical and less philosophical explanation for the change in style and standards in film music, along the lines of what rverne10 said about preview audiences. People in the golden age of film scoring still listened to and were educated in classical (the big definition of classical, from baroque through romantic) music. Audiences and filmmakers today do not have a deep connection with classical music and therefore do not have high standards in orchestral music. It doesn't make for a very deep discussion, but I think it's as simple as that.

Film music has pretty much always been popular music to an extent. Early Hollywood brought in European operetta composers because they had experience working with narratives, and this was the closest existing form of popular entertainment to the new medium of talkies. Film music as we all know over the years incorporated all kinds of popular music, and we've all heard it said that John Williams' success really brought back a new era of orchestral film music when synths and popular music were taking over. 

Audiences of the golden era of film music and even the 1980s were more literate in classical music than audiences of today. Music appreciation and music classes were core curriculum, not totally abandoned as they are today. The "classical" music of Korngold, the more experimental work of Herrmann - it's all foreign to mainstream audiences and filmmakers today. The hot young filmmakers of today were raised on 80s pop and had little or no music education. Why would there be intelligent orchestral music in their films? Why would that have any connection with today's young audiences?

It sucks, but that's the truth and I don't think there's much to be done about it except continue to be grumpy old men, enjoy what we want to, and try to shre the good stuff with those we can influence in our real lives.

[noldar12]

Errikos, when I wrote my post, I actually was not thinking about this forum, but the world in general, and in any case, your thoughts generally give me cause for further reflection, and I've never considered you one to provoke me (there are others, as you say).

As for deconstruction, contra Derrida/Foucault/Rorty/Fish/Cupitt, etc., etc., etc., it deserves to be deconstructed (i.e. turned on its own head), and IMO, the sum of its worth is in the land of negative numbers.  Rather than strictly tearing down, building something positive would be helpful.

As for modernism, perhaps I should have clarified, as I was thinking more in terms of the "Enlightenment Project" as a whole, not just "modern art".  As for its worth, there are good reasons to reject many of its theories: the inviolate scientific method to measure all things (and if it can't measure a "thing" the thing in question can't be known), and the hubris of self-focus of an isolated intellect, for starters.

To ask a more positive question: How does one go about encouraging the recovery of what has been largely lost?  How does one encourage others to actually take the time and effort to learn and/or master a particular craft?

[BrianH.]

Hi guys. Fascinating thread so far. I'm glad to see Noldar's recent suggestion of approaching this huge topic with some more positive questions. My own take is also rather positive and can maybe form a response to some of Noldar's questions:

The last 150 years of our history have grown increasingly thick with radical, deeply complex cultural developments. Very few of these developments seem to be viewed unanimously as progress. Perhaps even fewer can be said to be viewed unanimously as decline. The vast majority fall somewhere in the middle, for each thoughtful individual to examine and place on their own unique spectrum. Nowhere in the realm of thought is this more evident than in the Arts. Nowhere in the Arts is this more evident than in Music. One man's Wagner is another man's Debussy. One man's Sex Pistols is another man's Sex Pistols, and is simultaneously a third man's Sex Pistols (and each interpretation remains totally unique). Perhaps it is a particular challenge of our time to figure out how to break away from this one-dimentional narrative of progress vs decline.

The pace at which new information and ways of interpreting the information are racing through our culture is simply staggering. It is impossible to hold a frame of reference long enough, in that torrent of mind-shattering concepts, to pass any normative judgements. The mistake many brilliant people make is learning just enough to set themselves at odds with the rest of this great human experiment only to step out of the stream once they believe they know enough. In doing this they not only freeze their perspective (severely limiting their potential for future growth) but they then define their perspective as the ultimate norm, even though it is at odds with so much that is going on all around them. I don't mean to sound condescending but I know because I've totally been "that guy".

This thread is an example that illustrates what I'm talking about. Why make the presumption that the art of motion pictures is in decline? I don't even know how to begin approaching that question. First of all, what, in 2012, is a MOTION PICTURE? Certainly film has expanded beyond Hollywood. The rise of digital photography is allowing all sorts of self-designated "independent filmmakers" to participate in the art form (many with no commercial motives whatsoever). The internet has then also given these independent artists unrestricted access to a distribution platform that Hollywood could not have imagined even as little as 10 years ago. Does cinematic television count? Many shows in the new TV Renaissance (Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Deadwood...) make the 2 hour movie masterpiece seem like a short story. And what about those increasingly cinematic video games or other totally new forms of dramatic (or perhaps "experiential") art? Are these not all similar forms of art where the visual, the dramatic, the aural and other temporal forms of art sync up and contribute to create astonishing aesthetic experiences?

How can you... or perhaps why would anyone ignore all these interesting, as yet unexplored developments and insist that we've lost something? Call it a radical transformation, a mutation even, but decline? Isn't it at the very least too soon to call it that? Don't you want to see how all this radical change plays out? One could argue that in our culture literally everything is happening all the time: the old, the new, the good, the bad, progress as well as decline. In this great pool people will see whatever they want based on whomever they are. Optimists can see 1000 things to be optimistic about, and pessimists likewise. In this way, thought we try hard, we can not see our culture. We only see ourselves reflected back in one form or another.

To give one final example I'll suggest something squarely in the realm of music. I see a lot of derision directed at film score composers of the last few decades. To avoid using anyones' normative framework, we can say that they are perhaps NOT using the orchestra in a way that is consistent with some of their predecessors. That alone is not grounds for derision in my book. I'll go one big step further by saying that many of todays most successful hollywood film composers are doing very interesting and very creative work. They are just not concentrating on the fraction of sonic creativity which classically-minded musicians call 'composition'. There is after all, so much more to today's music (a digitally sculpted performance) than what our antiquated notation systems may or may not capture in a transcription.

You all recall the crisis over tonality which played out over the course of the 20th century. Some composers set out to explore atonality. But remember that other composers like Debussy (later Cage, Reich, Pendereki, Eno and many more) seemed to escape compositional redundancy by going after Timbre more and more directly. Many of today's composers are making music that may not seem as interesting on on the page as say, Wagner or even Bach. But no music (particularly today's music) was ever meant to exist on the page. Composers today are equipped to control and are in search of illusive TIMBRES. Electronic (now digital) audio has been helping composers create and refine all sorts of sounds that have simply never been heard before. This is a sonic development of monolithic proportions that will take a long time to play out. Musicians and the public have increasingly embraced what has become, over the past 50 years or so, an AGE OF TIMBRE. Composers from Hann Zimmer to Skrillex currently hold the rapt attention of an engaged public who are simply dazzled by the visceral power of a good bass-drop (as am I). The only ones not having fun are those who are condemning certain aspects of these new musical developments while perhaps not letting themselves hear what is historically and musically unique about what is currently happening. To those people, I'd urge you to always try to listen for what is THERE. It is certainly more fun than listening for what is NOT THERE.

[William]

I've repeatedly mentioned here many things you noted, but which you missed.  Part of the problem of writing things on the internet.   I agree on TV often being superior to cinema, with its freedom of length of treatment.  I often thought that the feature film is basically equivalent to the short story.  The mini-series is  potentially superior, though in practice very rarely.

hans Zimmer is not dazzling to me though.  I've sat through his mind-numbing scores, which are literally oppressive in  their stupidity.  I was almost cringing during most of Inception due to the hideous ugly oppression of that god-damned noise he did for that film.   You think that mere timbre is an idea?  It is trivial in itself.  Only when combined with musical concepts, such as those of Debussy, Ravel or as a modern example, Bernard Herrmann who was a master of timbral experimentation, does it become a musical element.

Listen to some J.S. Bach, who didn't even score all the time for specific instruments, let alone timbres, and is immortal.  Just a few notes on scraggly pieces of paper, and they last for CENTURIES.   ONE COMPOSITION OF BACH  OBLITERATES ALL OF ZIMMER IN ONE FELL SWOOP. 

But also any of the old-fashioned composers like Herrmann, Williams, Korngold, Tiomkin, Waxman,  Goldsmith, all the ones you lump all together - pathetically -  with the chimp-like, musically moronic pokers-at-keyboards who are now the flash-in-the-pan rage in Hollywood and winning the Oscars and getting the big gigs and your only standard of excellence. 

[noldar12]

Your reference to Penderecki is an interesting one.  At the time, when I was steeping myself in Cage, Penderecki, Boulez, Xenakis, Berio, et al, Penderecki struck me as one composer among the moderns who actually seemed to know what he was doing from a musical standpoint.  It was all the more interesting to me that he eventually repudiated the avant garde and began writing in a neo-Romantic style instead.

Personally, I do think Cage, Xenakis, Berio, et al, have and represent a range (though narrow) of world views (Cage's didn't hold: he decided that music by chance as a concept wouldn't transfer very well to picking mushrooms by chance as he would soon be dead).  That range of world views, along with the post-modern deconstruction-nothing can be known range of world views are views that I personally, do not, and will not, subscribe to.  One plus to at least some streams of post-modernism is an awareness that "new" is not always "better" (the key words are "not always" as "not always" does not equate to "never").  The "modern" view generally insisted that "new" was always "better", with a near total disregard for the past, and for the wisdom of the past - a view that has caused much damage IMO.

[BrianH.]

William:
I definitely resonated in agreement upon reading your earlier posts on this topic. Though I did not acknowledge your posts directly, I didn't mean to come off as though I was ignoring them. On the points where we agree, I imagined a thoughtful reader would see my comments as echos adding support to (not plaster over) what you had said earlier. Anyway, I'm sorry for not acknowledging you directly.

Of William's earlier points, the one I most agree with is that a film's score is generally a piece of a whole work of art. As such, 'good' scores that manage to enhance the film experience may also remain emotionally potent as concert music, or they may not function apart from the film. A flip-side to that notion is that it may be difficult to assess the quality of a score when the movie it was made for doesn't quite work. For me, this was the case with Christopher Nolan's Inception. I went in to that movie really wanting to like it. But I just didn't feel engaged. Now, was Zimmer's score helping or hurting that experience? Could Zimmer's startling noises have sounded more appealing if the rest of movie was somehow different? I don't know. I like to imagine that if we were to ask Nolan and Zimmer for their thoughts on this they might tell us that they don't know what went wrong as far as my experience. They might tell us that they are simply trying to make their parts the best way they know how and in the end sometimes they come together and make a magical experience and other times they fall short. To me failure, even total public failure, is just part of creative work (particularly in collaborative efforts such as all films are). I personally don't fault anybody (let alone relegate them to 'chimp' status) for trying something that doesn't quite work.
To quote the great philosopher Joeseph Ramone: "What can you do-o-o?"

As for Bach, right now I am studying the Brandenburg Concerti measure-by-astonishing-measure. The more I study Bach's compositions the more deeply I understand and respect Bach's immortality as master of unparalleled symmetry and consonance amid complexity. But I also understand that (like every artist) Bach's music is influenced greatly by the time in which he lived. In Bach's time musical instruments were just coming into their standard forms. There was no ability to record performances, let alone manipulate a performance's timbral properties after the fact. Notes-on-paper was the only way one's music could be immortalized and under such circumstances the type of polyphonic ingenuity defined by Bach was perhaps a composer's primary means of establishing a personal style. While we can still be amazed by Bach's music today, and even incorporate elements of the Baroque into what we do as composers in 2012, I'm merely recognizing that the keen arrangement of notes-on-paper is no longer the only means to musical immortality. We now have music that exists as a recorded (and digitally-sculpted) performance. I don't see any reason to deride composers who embrace these new developments in sound and are skillfully carving their import to music.

My question to you is this: What do you gain by imagining the work of one composer 'OBLITERATING' the works of another composer? I see a lot of good reasons for appreciating both for whatever each has to offer. Is there somehow not enough room in the mind for both? In my mind there is.

Noldar:
I don't think you have to subscribe to any bizarre world views or even consider anything philosophical in order to find some useful nuggets within my response to your question. You asked why more recent film scores don't seem as good as older ones. My answer is that maybe we can find some criteria by which these newer film scores ARE succeeding. I also suggested that this criteria may lie outside traditional composition (perhaps in the realm of digital audio and its gift of unprecedented timbral manipulations). Agreed, that turns the tables on your original question a bit. But in the age of Google we rely on community NOT to provide direct answers to questions, but to provide the kind of help a search engine never could: help that allows us to reformulate our questions in ways that allow us all to reach a deeper understanding together.

In a subsequent post you offered the idea that people care more about CGI and just don't care about the music in films as much, leading film producers to cut corners at the expense of film music. I don't think this could be true. If that were, what explains the competitive nature of the business? If people truly don't care who does the music or what it sounds like, why pay guys like Zimmer top dollar? Why does every theater in the world (and many a home theater) continue investing billions of dollars each year in more dynamic, more precise, 360-degree sound reproduction systems?

I think a more reasonable explanation is that people are fascinated by advancements in the aural experience in exactly the same way as they are fascinated by advancements in the visual experience. As all these possibilities keep expanding, composes are going to continue to try new and different techniques. But we are so privileged that we DON'T even have to choose whether we want to experience giant robots from space backed up by super subwoofers that can reproduce 4Hz - OR - a moody drama (from any time or place in history) that may employ anything from a small chamber ensemble on up - OR - any of the great older films scored by Korngold, Herrmann, Williams or any of the other great composers. We can enjoy one Friday night, another Saturday night and yet another Sunday afternoon. I just don't see how we've LOST anything. If there is anything regrettable about our situation it is that there is already so much great art in existence that, even if we only stuck to the absolute masterworks, the time it would take to experience them all exceeds our lifetime and every year the list just gets longer.

What I find fascinating is the person who manages to look at all this (truly an embarrassment of artistic riches) and insists that (perhaps because they aren't ALL masterworks) that it's all going wrong. Again I just have to reiterate and stress this: We have access to so much more great art than we have time on this Earth to appreciate. Millions of artists across the globe are devoting each day, some their entire lives, trying so hard to add new works to that great heap. What more do you... What more could anyone possibly want?