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Aye David, I was just being lazy cos I couldn't remember the Symphony number while I was typing, so just said the Alien one 
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Aye David, I was just being lazy cos I couldn't remember the Symphony number while I was typing, so just said the Alien one
Sorry Kev my last comment wasn't in response to your post, it was another forum member.
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Sorry Kev my last comment wasn't in response to your post, it was another forum member.
Indeed, it was me.
It's not a question of superiority, nor is it a question of originality. The whole history of Western music (and all music, really) includes people inspired by and responding to influences, sharing idioms, even recomposing music. In this regard, working from Classical models, what comes to mind in the last hundred years: Stravinsky's reworking of Tchaikovsky in The Fairy's Kiss, Prokofiev's Classical Symphony, L. Bernstein's Copland-inspired or infused works, Bartok's and Rozsa's and Copland's (and many others') folk-music influence, and on and on.
What I hear in LOVE is more than that kind of influence - I hear the structure, harmonic language, instrumentation, tempo, etc. of Hanson's work used as a blueprint for the new piece. This is as we know endemic to film and tv music as it is not endemic to any other kind of music I'm familiar with, usually because that's what the filmmakers asked for - "make it like this other piece of music." I wouldn't be at all surprised if that was the case here, but I don't know either way.
This is a kind of appropriation not inspiration, and while I am used to it in movie music, I find it the least praiseworthy element. And I'm not questioning Pope's abilities, or skill, or the issue of originality - just that a piece I know well is being used wholesale to create another piece. In writing, that's plagiarism, but in film music, it's standard practice.
It seems to me the point of this discussion board is to share different perspectives on the same subject. I don't want or expect others to agree with my perspective, but I'm not sure why it feels problematic to you for me to share it. We might learn something from each other or we may just disagree, but I'd hate to think that what drives my interest in this board is only a desire to find allies to my way of thinking.
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Sorry Kev my last comment wasn't in response to your post, it was another forum member.
Indeed, it was me.
It seems to me the point of this discussion board is to share different perspectives on the same subject. I don't want or expect others to agree with my perspective, but I'm not sure why it feels problematic to you for me to share it. We might learn something from each other or we may just disagree, but I'd hate to think that what drives my interest in this board is only a desire to find allies to my way of thinking.
Sharing different perspectives is fine but the manner in which you couched your post struck me as coming from a place of a superior artistic aesthetic. I don't know your background or whether you also compose music or simply appreciate it but it's quite a humbling thing when you are put into a position to have to write music on demand that caters to the constraints of the filmmakers, producers and focus groups, plus imbue it with something wholly original. It's inevitably an uphill battle unless you travel back 30 years ago when the culture was different.
On the topic of classical borrowings, am I to understand that you don't like or admire Williams' Star Wars or Jaws because they draw upon Holst, Stravinsky and Korngold? Or Williams' Love Theme from Superman because it uses Strauss? Or any one of Goldsmith's scores that has some wondrous element (Debussy & Ravel) or Don Davis' Matrix trilogy (Adams, Strauss)? Or Chris Young's Murder in the First (VW's 5 Variants on Dives and Lazerus) and I assume you dislike E.T. because it is heavily influenced by the works of Hanson as well. And I won't even touch Horner's work....
I've listened to Pope's cue a few times through and save for a transitional section from the A and B sections in his cue which evoke the beginning of Hanson's Romantic Symphony, I don't find there to be much else that governs this cue. And for me, I would much rather hear someone utilizing these rich resources than the "original" music of today which is bereft of any true musicality- which isn't necessarily the fault of the composers working in Hollywood. One has but to listen to Shore's Piano Concerto or John Powell's searing choral concert works to know there is plenty of talent out there, but it's constrained by current stylistic dictates by filmmakers and producers.
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I appreciate your response but wish you wouldn't read into a very specific comment a very general trend. There's no need to assume I find all influence in film music objectionable because I feel like the similarities in this one example is more problematic in terms of what I'm calling appropriation (to be honest there is no good line between influence and appropriation in music as there is in writing, it is of course subjective).
I think the real issue for me is that when I hear something that is less about influence and more about the specific architecture of a specific piece of music (and you may well be right, there may be less of it in this case than I'm stating), my hackles tend to rise. Because I know the Hanson estate will get nothing, certainly no money, not even a credit, from a major money-making venture, and that's just no good for artists and their families. [I was probably never more pissed off about this than when I realized that my favorite music from A Little Romance wasn't by Delerue but by Vivaldi, and yet nowhere on the album did it even mention the actual composer!]
But I actually find influence in film music both natural - because the music is often intended to evoke any number of things, including something that came before - and personally very helpful over the decades in learning more about music. And there are cases where I prefer the re-working - I like Alex North's opening of 2001 better than Strauss's original Also Sprach Zarathustra. And, confession time, I think John Williams upped Hanson's game with his finale in E.T. I'm not going to say who is the better composer, and it may just be that I like Williams melodies better, but there it is.
It's the like the great Walt Whitman poem: "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I am vast, I contain multitudes!" Also, I don't have nearly as much trouble with the current trends in film music, so for me it's all the same stew.
(As to background, which is not to me that relevant because the point is we were each just talking about what we are hearing in this piece, I've been a musician since the age of five [violin, viola, piano, recorder], an amateur composer [but that don't mean anything at all], and I oversee a public radio network that includes a statewide Classical music service. Bored enough now? I sure am!  )
{PPS - And I've also commissioned music so actually I know what it feels like from the other side of the table! And I have nothing but respect for the artists. This is not an attack on Pope at all, but a reflection on the way things are done.}
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Oh, how I pity someone coming into this thread just to read nice little comments about a cute cartoon score!
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heard the cue. The main theme is quite lovely... but the Hanson blatant interpolation ruins the track for me. It's SO OBVIOUS the pattern.
Pope was asked to use it or was Zimmer's idea?
I would guess it was temped to that piece and the filmmakers really wanted that section to be in there.
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