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Posted: |
Dec 13, 2017 - 8:23 PM
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By: |
pp312
(Member)
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Are we both talking about 1961, Basil? In my country (Oz) in '61 cinemas were still big and cigars banned. In any case I'm talking more about filmmaking trends rather than cinemagoers wishes. (I'm not even sure how many cinemagoers even noticed the music, how many wanted more and how many less. I suggest they were neutral, just accepting whatever was presented to them). By '61 the trend was definitely toward more naturalistic filmmaking, which meant less music and more waves on the shore, wind in the trees etc. Had Rozsa not already written the cues ultimately junked I doubt he would have objected, but to see all that work lost must have been infuriating (though not as infuriating as for Alex North at the premiere of 2001). However, he did often comment a little bitterly about sound effects obscuring his music, so he wasn't entirely unbiased about the necessary balance between different soundscapes in film. (He also used to comment sarcastically about producers' attitudes to scores: "Anyone can write music and any music will do," an opinion I'm sure no producer ever held).
Anyway, interesting subject, though I think I've led us OT.
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A thought has just occurred to me - not a very astute one, but a thought nonetheless. Forgive me if I'm way off-track So I was thinking, "Just how respectable to you want film music to be"? And I started thinking about when I used to collect horror comics and film magazines such as Famous Monsters of Filmland, and how as a youngster I was completely gobsmacked by the wonderful, beautiful artwork of people like Frank Frazetta and the recently-departed Basil Gogos. I'm still in awe of their work, and there were many others operating on a similar level. I'm no expert so I can't give a list of names, but you get the idea. I used equate some of their cover paintings with the likes of Velázquez. I really did - I thought (think?) that it's that good.
And then I thought how strange it would be to see Basil Gogos' and Frank Frazetta's artwork hanging in a gallery beside the paintings of Velázquez, Goya and El Greco. And the "realistic" side of me told me that it would indeed be a silly venture. And yet I don't know if that reaction is purely based on a "learned snobbery", or if it's a logical and very justifiable point of view.
I hope someone can flesh out my ideas better than I've just done.
Seeing Ken Kelly or Frazetta's work alongside the dead old masters wouldn't bother me because they are all very much a representation of a style of art that was popular during a specific Zeitgeist. Many art critics would cite the biggest difference between those two and, say, Rembrandt, is that the best of Rembrandt's work has a depth and range that the majority of Kelly and Frazetta's art only showed adumbratively at best (or through the viewer's willed immersion).
It's interesting for me to consider how much the Zeitgeist concept applies here: even the sword and sorcery genre is a (give or take) 20th century genre (invented by Robert Howard of course). Thus, the paintings express a phenomenon of the last twelve or thirteen decades, a popular phenomenon. It gives the eyes and mind a glimpse not just into that land/scenario, but the era it's from. I call that art.
Now if I want to go comparing Thin Lizzy's entire oeuvre (love 'em) to Bach's Brandenburg Concerti....eeek!
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Posted: |
Dec 16, 2017 - 3:16 PM
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By: |
Howard L
(Member)
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Which brings me finally to my other favourite Composer Sir Andre Previn. In discussion with Antony Hopkins in a very enteraining tome MUSIC FACE TO FACE , he states and I quote, " Some of my colleagues in Hollywood make it a practice to concoct suites for concert use of their movie score material. I don't think this ever works. Please don't remind me of Prokofiev's NEVSKY or Walton's HENRY V because these are the exceptions proving the rule. Most film music, no matter how brilliantly effective it is in conjunction with the visual image, is too devoid of form to stand up in the concert hall"
One wonders what Sir Andre would think now - things have changed so much - and this book was 1971 after all, and considering his great Film music chum from the Fifties on, John Williams made a second career of conducting his film scores in the Concert Hall.
Besides writing music, Mr. Mayer sometimes wrote about music. In an article in 1975 for The Times, “Live Composers, Dead Audiences,” he pondered the difficulties that the visual, instant-gratification age presented for modern composers, whose works take time and repeated listenings to appreciate.
“With television, we have become dependent on the visual,” he wrote. “But in listening to music, what do we do with our eyes? In TV, everything is there, explicit. Certain shows are doubly explicit: We see a comic routine and canned laughter reminds us it’s funny. But in hearing unfamiliar music, our voyage — if we make one at all — is uncharted.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/02/obituaries/william-mayer-wide-ranging-composer-dies-at-91.html
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