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Posted: |
Oct 30, 2014 - 6:56 AM
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By: |
Tall Guy
(Member)
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I revisited several of his film and game scores while on a long drive last week, and in the middle of one of the Medal of Honor scores I realised that the main quality I appreciate in his music is the sheer fun.
Especially in his earlier scores (but also in later ones such as Star Trek) he seems to be revelling in getting the orchestra to do some glorious things for the heck of it - don't get me wrong, they make sense musically and dramatically, but he really seems to be getting a kick from it himself. As if he's experimenting to find his own and the orchestra's limits. Not only hitting his brief out of the park to serve the film/game, but providing a layer of genuine enjoyment on top of it.
I don't know the chap, so I've had to infer his character from interviews and videos, but what I found most telling is him getting his mum to conduct the Stars and Stripes on one of the MoH discs, and also the raucous and hilarious German drinking songs.
Another favourite is The Incredibles, well known as a Bond pastiche score but with some Giacchinist touches, like the action music for Dash (echoed in Ratatouille to great effect) and occasionally dropping in the four "victory" notes from Beethoven's Fifth in dramatic moments.
A criticism often levelled is that he tends too often to adopt other composer's voices - Barry, Williams, Ifukube, whomever - but he's really very good at it and I enjoy all of these without it detracting either from the originals or from my estimate of his talents. He's written more than enough original stuff for this to be discounted as a serious objection.
This has turned into something of a gush, which wasn't my intention, but I believe that the art of film scoring is safe in his hands (and those of several others) and those who don't care for the current trend towards sound design rather than traditional scores - me, I can like both - should thank their lucky stars for him.
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I agree with everything you said and he's and incredibly nice guy to boot.
Also he may adapt others styles somewhat but he's always writing in his own. I really do not understand the people who say that MoH sounds like Williams. They must be listening on only the most superficial level because Williams sounds very different.
Yavar
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I agree with everything you said and he's and incredibly nice guy to boot.
Also he may adapt others styles somewhat but he's always writing in his own. I really do not understand the people who say that MoH sounds like Williams. They must be listening on only the most superficial level because Williams sounds very different.
Yavar
You don't think the first Medal Of Honor score sounds like Williams??
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I agree with everything you said and he's and incredibly nice guy to boot.
Also he may adapt others styles somewhat but he's always writing in his own. I really do not understand the people who say that MoH sounds like Williams. They must be listening on only the most superficial level because Williams sounds very different.
Yavar
You don't think the first Medal Of Honor score sounds like Williams??
It's in the same vein tone-wise as some of Williams's Indiana Jones work but stylistically it is pure Giacchino. Compare with say Williams's Scherzo for Motorcylcle and Orchestra, which is I'm guessing one of the Williams pieces Giacchino is most imitating according to other people. Williams's theme is far more long-lined and complex, and the development of it totally different. I would liken Giacchino's development more to Herrmann (though his tone is totally different) if anyone: he introduces short melodic fragments and then repeats them with constant changes in orchestration. Listen to Taking Out the Railgun, an early highlight. Does that really sound anything like Williams to you? I can only explain people's early determination to say Giacchino sounded like Williams as an unfamiliarity with Giacchino's style, unwillingness to listen carefully/closely, or perhaps a desperation to discover "the next Williams" when Giacchino is most decidedly his own man stylistically. Even in The Incredibles (certainly his most temp-tracked score?) his music stylistically does not sound like Barry...would Barry at any stage in his career have written that Dash action cue? Does anyone think that Roar, one of Giacchino's best pieces, sounds like something Ifukube would write? Sure, there are nods, a little homage going on, but Giacchino's fingerprints are all over it. He's got one of the strongest styles in the business and it shines through on practically every project.
Yavar
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I really do not understand the people who say that MoH sounds like Williams. They must be listening on only the most superficial level because Williams sounds very different.
We already have Thor for this kind of specious, false intellectualizing. Please don't follow suit or we'll all need a Prilosec prescription.
I know that for some reason I really bug you sometimes but please explain to me why I'm being specious or false by observing that two different composers' styles are, well...different?
Yavar
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"Rail Gun" is one of the most Williams-sounding cues on there, man! It sounds just like his Last Crusade style! There's a good bit of Jaws in the score as well.
Do you even know who John Williams is, Yavar??
It's gonna be...OK, man. You're among friends.
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"Rail Gun" is one of the most Williams-sounding cues on there, man! It sounds just like his Last Crusade style! There's a good bit of Jaws in the score as well.
Do you even know who John Williams is, Yavar??
It's gonna be...OK, man. You're among friends.
There was some history behind my tone: I'm not sure LeHah would consider me a friend because I irk him all the time (I think he's great and find I often agree with his taste), but I appreciate the sentiment from you!
I know my Williams very well (all eras)...almost as much as I know my Goldsmith. To me Medal of Honor does not sound like a Williams score at all. It doesn't have his *voice*; it has Giacchino's (I've listened to many of the latter's works as well).
If Williams had scored the game, even in the 80s, I feel he would have made entirely different choices. Different orchestration and development, perhaps some longer lined themes -- much as I love Giacchino, has he ever written a theme like Witches of Eastwick (the flowy one) or Seven Years in Tibet? In my experience his themes are shorter, almost motifs, which he just varies very interestingly. I mean, it's not quite like Herrmann but more towards that end of the scale.
Maybe it would help me understand you if you could point me towards a Williams cue that Taking Out the Railgun particularly resembles for you?
Yavar
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Posted: |
Oct 30, 2014 - 4:34 PM
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By: |
MusicMad
(Member)
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I'll check the bank balance and think about acquiring one or more of his scores.
Mitch
Do you have any problem with used CDs? If not pick up this absolute masterpiece of composition:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B0002XUTX8/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used
If you're feeling splurgy it's worth getting LaLaLand's superb box set:
http://www.amazon.com/Medal-Honor-Soundtrack-Michael-Giacchino/dp/B004Y9WWX6/
If you have an aversion to game scores for some reason I heartily recommend John Carter...but it's better in complete form, in the vastly underrated film.
Yavar
Hi Yavar,
Very many thanks for the recommendations. No, I'm okay with used - I buy lots - but I do for some unknown (probably psychological) reason, hesitate at buying Game scores. No doubt that if Mr. Barry had written for the medium then I would have spent my money ... maybe, even, Mr. Bernstein. But since it's a medium I struggle to accept (it has ruined films, IMHO) I have problems with evening considering such purchases ... yes, I'm nuts!
So, maybe one or both of the Star Trek scores ... or John Carter (I can ride my wife's derision of the novels ... not a hope of watching the film).
I think I may add one or more of his scores to my (upcoming) birthday list.
Mitch
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It's almost completely in Williams' style. I mean, just for one example, listen to "The Radar Train," which is a complete hybrid of Jaws, Black Sunday, and Return Of The Jedi (especially Jedi, now that I'm listening to it). I don't know how much clearer it can be for you. It's pastiche, but it's well done (and has a great theme!). In fact, this first Medal Of Honor is still probably my favorite thing Giacchino has ever done.
I think you're having a brain freeze. Something can be done in the "style" of Williams without it having to sound like a Joel McNeely's Iron Will score. Seems pretty obvious that was what they were going for with this, especially coming as it did in the wake of Saving Private Ryan. The only reason it doesn't sound MORE like Williams is because Giacchino wasn't/isn't nearly as complete a composer as Williams is on even his worst day.
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Maybe we have differences in terminology. I certainly wouldn't dispute that Medal of Honor shows a certain Williams 'spirit' (specifically the first...I think as the scores progress there is less and less until for Giacchino's last MoH score there is hardly any).
But that is different for me than 'style' which to me is a composer's personal fingerprints. It's interesting that you bring up McNeely because I feel that unlike Giacchino he has on more than one occasion submerged his own personal style in favor of imitating the style (not just emulating the spirit) of another composer...he can actually capture their *fingerprints* to a high degree. There's the example you cited for Williams of course, but I'm thinking even more of his additional action music for Air Force One...man does he sound like Goldsmith there, more than Giacchino has ever sounded like Williams at least in my opinion. The interesting thing is that McNeely's cues don't sound like Goldsmith's cues for that particular score, because I think McNeely was emulating Goldsmith's more busy pre-90s action music whereas by that time Goldsmith himself had started writing much simpler, more streamlined stuff. But if I hadn't known McNeely helped out on the score I would have thought something like 'Firing on Air Force One' was Goldsmith returning to his older style, it sounds that much like him.
As for the sense of fun in Giacchino's writing, I think I know what is being spoken about. I might call it exuberance. It might be a serious piece (think of the opening of his score to Up, which probably won him the Oscar. Certainly a serious piece for a very moving bit of film, but his pure love and enthusiasm for composing film music really comes through...as it always does with him really).
Yavar
P.S. When Debney's CutThroat Island came out so many people said it sounded like David Arnold (who was really hot at that time) wrote it. I was similarly mystified because it didn't hear his actual stylistic fingerprints at all in the work...but maybe they were similarly referring to what I'd term "in the spirit of" rather than in his actual style.
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