I'd recommend studying some "New Music" (with capital N). Boulez, Penderecki, Nono, you name it. These shrill WW/Brass sounds are THE New Music clichée and you find them in probably every New Music score in your local library...

Dear William - pleeeaaase ...

Mathis, if you heard the things Boulez said, with incredible arrogance, about nearly every great composer of the past, you would not study him. He said Beethoven AND Mozart were worthless. He laughed at Tchaikovsky (of course - a Romantic - what a joke to a sophisticate like Boulez!) and placed himself higher than J. S. Bach. I do not appreciate arrogance of that kind. Do you? Maybe you do...

To me only a fool would say those things, especially if he is a musician. And it is foolish to study a fool, unless you are a psychologist looking for insight into how the human mind degenerates, you will learn nothing from someone like that except as a study in the lowliness of human behavior.

Thanks for judging the relevance of what I wrote. I thought this was the internet and a free Forum where one can say whatever the conversation inspires one to say. So I am to stick directly to the facts? Maybe I don't feel like it. Maybe I feel like digressing. So what?

On the subject of the post, I notice that you did not answer the question. You simply dismissed it. An excellent way to seem to be making an intelligent response without doing so. I thought the James Newton Howard score was effective for this film. It wasn't mere compendium of New Music cliches (whatever that is - when is it no longer "New" I wonder?). In fact, to me it did not sound particularly "New." It sounded like typical current filmmusic, i.e., parallel minor chords, chromatic shifts between major and minor, etc., though with some interesting subtlety. The use of a shifting tonality from a minor tonic to a major one a half-step below was an evocative sound. However I don't presume as some people do to know everything that is "going on" with it (mainly because I never studied it). But I also don't dismiss it as nothing but cliches to place myself above it.

No. I doubt if you asked Newton Howard he would be able to tell you now. It is obviously orchestral manoevres. You can hear the same type of thing in The Shining. You would basically just work through something like this yourself. It would be difficult not to be original.

Bill, Dom asked specifically for the shrill woodwind/brass effect at around 1 minute. Of course the other stuff hasn't anything to do with New Music...

Angelo,

Yeah, and so I'm responding to him. So what's your point? You have no point. Just attempting to contradict me in general, huh?

What neither you nor Mathis respond to is what I was disturbed by - Boulez trashing all of previous composers and music history in favor of....

himself.

That is my problem. That someone that arrogant and childish, would be put up as something to "study." As Mathis suggests. But since you contradict me, I must assume you approve of all that trashing he did, as Mathis does. So, you believe he - Mr. Boulez - is superior to not only Beethoven, but Mozart, Tchaikovsky AND J.S. Bach.

O.K. Whatever...

Well, first Boulez is Boulez! Second, the quote from him is not much more then a statement from a euphoric young man, not unlike what you say from time to time under influence, but Pierre was possibly sober from alcohol. Third, I'm always interested when other musicians discover new worlds of sound.



Believe is for christians and pedestrians and of course it is my hobby to contradict you plus assumption is the mother of fuckuption. The eyes dominate the ears. In music the invention and transformations of figures is most important in musical composition, as well the deconstruction of old habits. Fact is what we can see is very limited, more limited than what we can hear, not even talking about an isolated quote from a composer bloke. I'm for adventure, invention and discovery, I don't limit myself. Here some quotes from other composers I don't give the names:

“The public doesn't want new music: the main thing it demands of a composer is that he be dead.”

“I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.”

“Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody's piano playing in my living room has on the book I am reading.”

"My music doesn't need a movie"

"I'm not interested in music, I'm interested in the personality behind it"

“The aim of music is not to express feelings but to express music. It is not a vessel into which the composer distills his soul drop by drop, but a labyrinth with no beginning and no end, full of new paths to discover, where mystery remains eternal.”


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Back to Dom's statement and question:



The abusive term: modern. The expressionm is fashionable. But for me it is not applicable to music, at best it stand for a pair of nice women shoes. The chronological art music doesn't deserve this term, maybe it can be used in popoular music, or movie soundtracks. I hear all detail in the "Suicide Ghost " by James Newton Howard and could write it down anytime if I had to, but I listen to it in a clearer quality at 44.1k on a compact disc.

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No, that one is Boulez. A pretty good one.

I was looking for outrageously stupid statements by him, but found myself agreeing with some of them, damn it! I hate it when that happens.

WARNING!

I need for all of you to destroy all of your Wynton Marsalis recordings at once!

I attended a lecture/concert at my college years ago where Wynton was the guest speaker/performer. Man, what a let down. So full of himself, so sure of his condemnation of all music excepting his own preferences, etc.

The thing was, his opinions really didn't bother me. What bothered me was he was taking time away from his playing for us with all that stupid chatter. Shut up and play, mental-idiot-but-trumpet-giant!

Artists and composers should realize that what they say and think means nothing to me and people like me. I only like them for their music.

So my advice is to definitely study Boulez along with the others mentioned here. Who cares what he believed? I don't.

Wynton's Standard Time vol. 1 is great, BTW. The other stuff is a bit of a letdown.

Clark

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