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Posted: |
Dec 10, 2014 - 3:06 PM
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By: |
walstromtew
(Member)
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The correspondence course with Bill Russo (Stan Kenton arranger) while JB was in Cairo was a huge influence. Coupled with his conservatory/classical fundamentals (sacred music/chorale/organ) Barry also studied the controversial Schillinger Music by the Maths methodology.
Russo and Schillinger are not arrows in every composer/arranger/conductor's quiver.
_________
Russo advocated stacking the voices in the brass in certain configurations which allowed a great deal
of dynamic to be delivered. The low lows and the highest highs of the horns/brass could be supplemented by
string and woodwind choirs with such intensity the listener could feel the music like a blow to the solar plexus.
Schillinger allowed JB the alternative methodology of extracting rhythms and building chords based on certain pulse principals divorced from the usual harmonic banalities. His score to Day of the Locust gives ample testimony to the strangeness of these practically twelve-tone-row-sounding ruminations.
King Kong, White Buffalo are two additional scores where Schillinger's ghost is active and present.
Barry, it could be said with some certainty, had three toolboxes because of his choice of mentors.
When he combined these sources, the result was like no other.
________
The fecund period of the 60's clearly demonstrates the swiftness of his conception, the transcendent genius of his arranging skills, and the unrivaled mastery of spontaneous novelty in his orchestrations. From about the King Rat period when JB began working on American projects, a worm began gnawing at the root of all this fecundity. The reliance on pinch-hitting orchestrators crept in with an ever broadening frequency. Slowly at first, and later with a rallentando of innocuous desuetude, there came to exist the mushy template or one-size-fits-all approach which permeates what I'll term the MOVIOLA syndrome. Certainly the tempo slowed and the Horns+strings were quite lush and lovely. . . but didn't we all notice a kind of hammock effect on the resulting homogenized sound?
______
For projects such as Stallone's The Specialist, JB purposely and purposefully eschewed the classic BOND brass. Dances with Wolves had plenty of horns and brass--but--noticeably non-Bondian in execution and conception.
We can be very grateful for JB's wondrous genius which shimmers like a Martian sunrise in our subconscious as we thrill to his early scores.
Can there be anything more perfectly wrought than THE KNACK-and HOW TO GET IT?
Jazz arranging by JB is the cat's whiskers!
His final foray into AMERICANS and Dancing About Architecture proves beyond controversy his acumen stands alone in a category without peer.
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Fascinating detailed analysis of Barry's influences and style.
Speaking of his influence on other great composers, I have to say that I think both Jerry Goldsmith (Medicine Man) and Basil Poledouris (Farewell to the King) paid brilliant homage to Barry's sensibility while still retaining their own distinctive styles.
Yavar
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Barry got some really interesting-sounding effects from his brass. I remember seeing his "Black Hole" MT sketch (assuming this is what Al Woodbury worked from) over at Disney in early 1987. He had his five trombones spread over an octave and a major ninth (employing big band brass voicings in a symphonic context): G on the bottom bass line (w/ tuba 8vb) to A three ledger lines above, the first trombone playing above the unison horns/viole. which all together created a deep, ship belll-like sound. When you hear the final result it's hard to tell just what the sound actually is; but is it ever effective.
Then there's the "Bond" theme quotations in the "Thunderball" MT with that ingenious combination of two open trumpets and two trumpets in felt mutes an octave below, the effect created is that of trumpets doubled with high French horns. Just another example of John Barry's scoring prowess (although those are actual French horns at the very end, holding on to that high F for dear life).
Barry took a correspondence course with Bill Russo, one of Stan Kenton's composer/arrangers.
The Kenton sound utilized 5 trumpets, 5 trombones, one being a bass trombone, or 4 trombones and a tuba. I think that is where Barry learned a lot about brass writing.
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Yavar:
When I first heard parts of CHERRY 2000 I was ready to guess it was JB.
I'm racking my brain for an example of Goldsmith I would say sounded anything
like John Barry.
Can you suggest a specific track?
Definitely The Trees from Medicine Man; that's probably Jerry's most overt influence from him.
Cherry 2000 is interesting. I hear a lot more Morricone influence than Barry in it, but I guess some of the softer stuff also gives off a bit of the Barry vibe.
Yavar
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Interesting that you should bring up JB's marvelous brass strategies, because my impression is that they changed from the Bond-era JB to the Romantic JB era of the 70's and 80's; the brass losing its primacy over the years as the string-led themes began to become the musical signatures of JB's scores.
I think the great thing about JB's brass is that, earlier, he used muted trumpets in moments of shock and surprise that became a Bond signature. Later, the brass did more heraldry; and I think this soaring kind of brass led him to his romantic era.
Even though lots of fans would put Somewhere in Time, Out of Africa, or Dances With Wolves at the top of the heap, give me the strident brass of the most dangerous moments of Goldfinger for the real heart of JB.
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