Choose 15 tracks by ONE AND ONLY ONE COMPOSER pr. post that are their own "full" compositions, in a way. Try not to make them all main or end titles or montages.
Btw, it's understandable if this is considered too much "work" to bother with, but it occurs to me that there is usually at least ONE such centerpiece track on a given soundtrack, so it's fairly easy to locate them.
Fifteen of my favourite John Williams "set pieces":
1. Isabel's Horse And Buggy (Stepmom) 2. The Shark Cage Fugue (Jaws) 3. The Catamaran Race (Jaws 2) 4. To Thornfield (Jane Eyre) 5. My Dad's Stories (Angela's Ashes) 6. Roy And Jillian On The Road (Close Encounters) 7. Training With George (The Eiger Sanction) 8. Follow Me (Always) 9. For Gillian (The Fury) 10. Jim's New Life (Empire of the Sun) 11. Overture (Fitzwilly) 12. To Scarborough (Dracula) 13. Adventures on Earth (ET) 14. Preparations (Black Sunday) 15. Romanoff's (Guide For the Married Man)
Only six come to mind right now and not all by the same composer:
Goldsmith: "Breakout" Capricorn One Friedhofer: "Don't Argue/Desperate Journey" Between Heaven and Hell Howard: "The Hand of Fate, Part One" Signs Goldsmith: "The River" Rio Conchos Goldsmith: "The Hanging" Bad Girls Young: "The Tree Stump" Shane
"When Eight Bells Toll" Cue: unreleased score; no cue name Angela Morley (a hidden gem of a score still not released today; the end is kind of faded out like it was dialed out of the film) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01GNZ04_BeQ
"Tell Them Willie Boy is Here" Cue: unreleased score; no cue name Dave Grusin (another hidden gem of a score still not released today) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNyEfCwN8ME
"Buffy the Vamprie Slayer" (series) Cue: Chosen (it was either called Chosen or Chosen One on his website back when it was available) Robert Duncan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqiiP6NJkh4
"Star Trek III: The Search For Spock Since They Got Death Threats in the Mail After Killing Him Off" Cue: Stealing the Enterprise Horner https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s5lQ-bGe6c
"Due South" (series) Cue: Victoria's Secret Jay Semko, Jack Lenz & John McCarthy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_zSQ8jcgro (starts at 0:32) (I've freeze-framed it, enlarged it -- I still can't tell if it was a gun)
I would have to say that "The Ride to Dubno" from Taras Bulba (Waxman) is perhaps the most perfectly organized and developed set piece ever written, and it works equally well in the film and in the concert hall.
These are all fine, but I'm really looking for 15 tracks of ONE composer of your choosing. Personally, I could easily throw out this amount of setpiece/hyped/much-loved tracks from my favourite composers.
Here's a Taro Iwashiro playlist I just came up with. A couple of cues might not strictly be considered setpieces since I added the additional restriction of all the cues I chose needing to play together to create a single narrative. Because of that I also ended up with only 12 tracks, but with a 64 minute runtime adding any more tracks might have been a bit of overkill anyway.
1. Starting on a Journey (Marco) 2. Fantasy Delusion (Nakumonka) 3. Dark Night of the Oath and the Storm (Suzuran) 4. Medusa (252: Seizonsha ari) 5. Waterfall (Superfish) 6. Tragic Fire (The Dog of Flanders) 7. Into the Sound of Darkness (Azumi) 8. Battle to Battle (Red Cliff) 9. Uninvited Guest (Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos) 10. Futility (Rurouni Kenshin: Requiem for the Ishin Shishi) 11. Gordian Knot ~The Long Road to God~ (The Sinking of Japan) 12. Tomorrow's Goodbye (Ashita)
I would have to say that "The Ride to Dubno" from Taras Bulba (Waxman) is perhaps the most perfectly organized and developed set piece ever written, and it works equally well in the film and in the concert hall.
I agree with you on this. It is the perfect example of a stand alone piece. It would be a great start to any concert, classical or film music.
It's an interesting challenge and would be fun to compile for Rozsa or any classically trained composer. Only infrequently does film scoring permit the composer to round things off in a musically satisfying manner. Composers must love such opportunities, and the better artists among them are usually the most adept about finding a satisfying musical form for a given scene.
One caveat. Some of the greatest dramatic composers care more for continuity than for form. Wagner, who sought to construct whole acts of "endless melody," is the prime example. Arrangers used to rip more or less satisfying excerpts from the Ring -- things like "Siegfried's Rhine Journey" and the "Ride of the Valkyries." But stern critics like Tovey would always complain about these "bleeding chunks of meat" ripped from the living musical body. Bernard Herrmann was surely one of the greatest musical dramatists in the cinema. His esthetic was not dissimilar to Wagner's. As a result his music is (to my mind) generally less satisfactory on records than in its original musicodramatic context.
Rozsa, always the formalist, would offer countless examples. I suppose one should exclude all the period marches and dances as too obvious. Still . . . The Silvermaid's embrace . . . the deportation scene in THE RED DANUBE. . . the death of Henry VIII . . . the final scene of DIANE . . . the "Burning Desert" and "Rowing of the Galley Slaves" . . . The list goes on . . .
"Betrayal" - Mission: Impossible "The Incantation" - Beetlejuice "It Wasn't My Fault" (my track title; aka "The Lie", abridged on the official CD as "The Evil Plan") - Meet the Robinsons "Main Titles" - Taking Woodstock "Making Monsters" - Frankenweenie "Nabbed" - The Nightmare Before Christmas "Revenge" - Wanted "Richie's Speech" - Mars Attacks! "The River Cruise, Pt. 2" - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory "Selina Transforms" - Batman Returns "The Traveling Montage" - The Wolfman "Up the Cathedral" - Batman "Woe the Darkman...Woe!" - Darkman
The tip of the Morricone iceberg: "The Ecstasy of Gold" & "The Trio"/ The GBU "The Vice of Killing"/ For a Few Dollars More "The Man with the Harmonica"/ Once...in the West "The Long Trek"/ Guns for San Sebastián "Abolicao"/ Burn! "Svolta Definitiva"/ Citta Violenta "Amore come Dolore"/ La Foto Probite di Una Signora Per Bene "Come Maddalena"/ Maddalena "The Battle"/ Two Mules for Sister Sara "Gli Scatenati"/ Il Gatto "Slaughter in the Village"/ Hundra "Tue-Barbe Hunts Maynard"/ The Island "The Strength of the Righteous"/ The Untouchables "Taking the Bullet"/ In the Line of Fire