Wagner .... from what I know of your musical tastes, and your preferred classical composers, you need to check out Jerome Moross. He's head and shoulders above just about all the rest in this genre.
I'm sure you know the title music, but pay special attention to 'The Welcoming' and 'The Raid' in the suite here. His ecstatic skill wherever a horse operatic is encountered is positively visceral:
-00:00 = "Main Title" -02:36 = "The Welcoming" -04:15 = "Old Thunder" -05:32 = "The Raid - Parts 1 & 2" -07:38 = "Major Terrill's Party" -09:04 = "The War Party Gathers" -11:14 = "Ambush In Blanco Canion - Part 2" -12:56 = "End Title"
After checking this, Rexor, and everybody's samples I feel even further the fool. I liked them all!
I was too quick to judge because the saloon stuff really bummed me out in HTWWW. I have since noticed just how terrific it can be (youtube kicks boo-tay!). I am currently Snoopy in my avatar, listening to them.
But my real Revelation occurred with The Alamo and just plain Tiomkin's Westerns in general. His music is, along with you folks, really changing my mind.
It's perfectly true: if there's something I don't like, I skip it. Kind of like the underscoring overload on some of the double and triple CD sets; there are always tracks I don't like and skip.
I'm on board with y'all now and YEEEE-HAWWWW!
Tadlow Alamo ordered, in fact all the Tiomkin stuff is in queue due to my current fun fascination with his over top music
This journey of discovery into soundtrack (coming directly after eleven years of studying Wagner, Beethoven's late Kammermusik, Mahler, Bartok...is one I'm just having a BALL with. And (from a VERY old Loretta Lynn commercial): "WE HALPED"!
Yes, Yavar, I too hope she listens to all the unique youtube samples we posted. I did listen to your Lawman youtube. It seems rather modernistic, but I did like parts. Have you heard Hannie Caulder? Seems like we both love The Attack from Quigley and Lonesome Dove.
Yeah Joan, I've found my taste aligns with yours pretty well for the most part, over the many years I've been reading your posts.
Maybe you'll appreciate Lawman better with the images (sound quality is inferior here tho'):
So many great highlights in the rest of the score too, including some great brass, but no other samples on YouTube that I could find.
I do like Hannie Caulder (my favorite Ken Thorne score actually), enough to actually seek out the film, which was unique and better than I expected given the emphasis on Welch's sex appeal for the marketing. Welch wasn't bad, there was actually a good amount of depth to the film, Robert Culp was an interesting different sort of western hero, and seeing Christopher Lee in a Western was unique and cool! Here's a suite for you WagnerAlmighty, if you're curious what we're talking about -- might be bit too upbeat/bouncy at the beginning for your taste though...somehow I still like it:
But WA, what you should really try next is those two great Basil Poledouris westerns, since you liked his Conan scores so much and they are among his best works. Get the complete Prometheus for Quigley Down Under. Lonesome Dove might be harder to find but the Sonic Images release is the longest so far (the Cabin Fever is only a few tracks shorter though, and will suffice if the other is too pricey).
Yes, Yavar, I too hope she listens to all the unique youtube samples we posted. I did listen to your Lawman youtube. It seems rather modernistic, but I did like parts. Have you heard Hannie Caulder? Seems like we both love The Attack from Quigley and Lonesome Dove.
Yeah Joan, I've found my taste aligns with yours pretty well for the most part, over the many years I've been reading your posts.
Maybe you'll appreciate Lawman better with the images (sound quality is inferior here tho'):
So many great highlights in the rest of the score too, including some great brass, but no other samples on YouTube that I could find.
I do like Hannie Caulder, enough to actually seek out the film, which was unique and better than I expected.
Fixed the Lawman open titles video (but sound quality was better on the audio-only one I already posted in the thread). Also added a video with a suite from the rare British western Hannie Caulder by Ken Thorne.
Fixed the Lawman open titles video (but sound quality was better on the audio-only one I already posted in the thread). Also added a video with a suite from the rare British western Hannie Caulder by Ken Thorne.
Yavar
Up next! Right now I'm marveling over the "High Noon" Ouverture!!!!!
Fixed the Lawman open titles video (but sound quality was better on the audio-only one I already posted in the thread). Also added a video with a suite from the rare British western Hannie Caulder by Ken Thorne.
Yavar I'm checking out the Lawman main theme, Yavar (your video still isn't working). Sounds like great stuff!
I'm converted lol!!! I feel the egg dripping off my face: I'm forever shamed by starting this dumb thread and then totally falling in love with the music.
Up next! Right now I'm marveling over the "High Noon" Ouverture!!!!!
I thought High Noon was one you particularly singled out as not caring for? SAE did do a wonderful release of that complete score. Personally much of it doesn't do a lot for me and I think another composer would have done better, but the climatic cue leading to, well...high noon itself...that's one of the best and most effective pieces of film music Tiomkin ever wrote.
Go to my original post to play Lawman with the main title imagery -- your quote in your own post kept the original problematic link.
John Wayne on a horse. That (plus the gun) means THE ALAMO is a western movie, which means THE ALAMO is a western score. Just listen, and it's clearly of a piece with the approach of other uncontested western Tiomkin scores, from RED RIVER to DUEL IN THE SUN. (The approach, incidentally, against which Moross was consciously reacting when he wrote THE BIG COUNTRY, THE JAYHAWKERS and his other western scores. Me, I love both approaches.)
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[Not to be confused with the Tiomkin approach in THE WESTERNER, mostly ghost-written by Alfred Newman. ]
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It's sadly still unreleased on CD, but NEVADA SMITH is top drawer Newman western music in which nary a discouraging word is sung. Also on LP but never on CD is the great Salter score for BEND OF THE RIVER; only partially released on CD is Salter's WICHITA TOWN. Thank heaven for Kritzerland's release of Salter's THE FAR HORIZONS.)
Yavar, your Lawman videos work for me. I just need to sit down and watch the whole film which plays a lot on my Encore channel. Loved the Hannie Caulder suite you posted. It really was a better western than I an anticipated. Preston, I agree that Nevada Smith is a very fine western score.
I'm with joan hue and some others here. Favorite genre and favorite film scores.
But as others have said, it is really impossible to pigeon hole Western scores as "typical". There are so many different approaches. Jerry Fileding's scores sound nothing like Elmer Bernstein's which don't sound like Ennio Morricone's which don't sound like Dimitri Tiomkin's , etc. etc. Personally, I like most all of them. The only ones that really don't work well for me are the ones that try to use a completely authentic period "folksy"sound with just guitars, fiddles, and harmonicas etc (boring) or the ones that try to use wildly inappropriate music like straight-up jazz or Heavy Metal or Rap. Of course, I guess there can be exceptions for a really experimental Western. But I haven't seen one that succeeded yet.
BTW, I LOVE "How The West Was Won" but understand what doesn't work in the full presentation. It has perhaps one of the most kick-ass Main Titles ever and many dynamite cues like "Cheyennes!", but I skip the corn-pone Debbie Reynolds and other "hoe-down" type cues too. I do think the "Overture" and "Entr'acte" choral pieces are excellent though.
I'm fine with the movies listed above (plus Unforgiven and the Tarantino stuff). I just have a terrible time with the musical idiom so integral to the style, it always sounds too hokey for me.
No offense to fans of Western scores btw.
I'm thinking that ship sailed the moment you started the thread...
It's sadly still unreleased on CD, but NEVADA SMITH is top drawer Newman western music in which nary a discouraging word is sung. Also on LP but never on CD is the great Salter score for BEND OF THE RIVER; only partially released on CD is Salter's WICHITA TOWN. Thank heaven for Kritzerland's release of Salter's THE FAR HORIZONS.)
But Newman at that point was channelling Moross very consciously:
Some of the best film music ever written has been for Westerns, I've been a huge fan of both Western movies and scores ever since childhood. But I enjoy the music of, say, Aaron Copland very much as well, a lot of which sounds like music for Westerns.
I posted that Nevada Smith youtube on the Alfred Newman topic. I do hear a bit of Moross, but I thought he was mostly channeling Bernstein, especially in his background rhythms.
I like more orchestral western scores like The Magnificent Seven, The Shootist, Silverado, etc. but I don't care so much for scores that use a lot of banjos, harmonicas, "saloon" pianos, etc.
Goldsmith's "Wild Horses" in Wild Rovers is a wonderful piece of music -- but ruined for me by the banjo and stupid out-of-tune piano!
This score is much more well-known than just its theme, however it packs in just about every-think one would expect from a score for a Western/Mexican movie, written pre Morricone, happy trumpet lines lots of percussions, fan-fareing horns & Spanish guitar motifs, Bernstein mixes them up brilliantly, I have no complaints.
The question is misplaced and sounds very provocative (since everybody actually loves western scores). So the real subject is "Anyone Else Here Not a Fan of the Western Scores I dislike?"
The question is misplaced and sounds very provocative (since everybody actually loves western scores). So the real subject is "Anyone Else Here Not a Fan of the Western Scores I dislike?"
No, you might want to go back and read. Now it's a topic concerning how dumb I was not liking Western scores. Had you not just popped in, you would have known that.
