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Posted: |
May 25, 2018 - 7:10 PM
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By: |
Rozsaphile
(Member)
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"Bombastic" is among the most widely abused words in this forum. Don't people realize that it is a PEJORATIVE term? I've just encountered a sympathetic review of the Tadlow BEN-HUR wherein the writer unwittingly applies the word to musical passages that he actually seems to admire. Many others here do the same thing again and again. John Williams surely gets enough of that libel from his enemies. He shouldn't have to hear it from his friends!
Best take note of the Merriam-Webster definition:
marked by or given to speech or writing that is given exaggerated importance by artificial or empty means : marked by or given to bombast : pompous, overblown
Or take this one from what I take to be Google's own dictionary:
high-sounding but with little meaning; inflated.
"bombastic rhetoric"
synonyms: pompous, blustering, turgid, verbose, orotund, high-flown, high-sounding, overwrought, pretentious, ostentatious, grandiloquent; informalhighfalutin, puffed up; rarefustian
"his bombastic speeches could send thousands into the streets"
There's plenty of empty bombast in today's comic book movie scores, but please, don't waste the word on the good stuff!
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Insist more about eliminating "cheesy" and "cringe", and you've got a deal!
PS: While we're at it, g'head and throw "solidify" under the same bus. I'll cover you.
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Posted: |
May 26, 2018 - 5:10 AM
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By: |
Thor
(Member)
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Yup, it's definitely a negative word, and it's a type of sound I don't often enjoy anymore.
That being said, I often use the word 'pompous' ('pompøs' in Norwegian) in a positive sense, even if that -- too -- has negative connotations. I think more so in English than in Norwegian, though, where it has a slightly different meaning. For example, I can say that Pet Shop Boys' "It's a Sin" is "deliciously pompous". As in "larger-than-life", "aweinspiring", "majestic" etc.
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Insist more about eliminating "cheesy" and "cringe", and you've got a deal!
PS: While we're at it, g'head and throw "solidify" under the same bus. I'll cover you.
I was told by an influential mainstream FSMer (Yavar Moradi? SchiffyM? Thor? Don't recall) that this topic came up briefly at the Alan Meyerson Score Mixing Seminar (in France).
Tell you what: if you greedy middle-aged teenagers banish "dated" from this ever-growing list, then we just might have a "Camp David Accords"-style agreement in the making!
Now yer speakin' my lingeaux!
PS: Wait, we have "influencers" here?
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I think bombastic is exactly the right word. The key purpose of orchestral scores from all periods is to intensify emotions, to underline, add exclamation points, etc. for a general audience. Overblown, sentimental, mawkish - these terms may be usually pejorative, but they are accurate descriptions of much film music, which is always shooting for a visceral, immediate reaction.
Thing is, I stopped worrying long ago about this inherent quality of film music, and if I say bombastic, it's with glee. But I recognize it for what it is. So should have Rozsa.
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Posted: |
May 27, 2018 - 12:41 PM
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By: |
Rozsaphile
(Member)
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Here's the history of the word. Bombast was originally a kind of stuffing.
1570s, "cotton padding," corrupted from earlier bombace "raw cotton" (1550s), from Old French bombace "cotton, cotton wadding," from Late Latin bombacem, accusative of bombax "cotton, 'linteorum aut aliae quaevis quisquiliae,' " a corruption and transferred use of Latin bombyx "silk," from Greek bombyx "silk, silkworm" (which also came to mean "cotton" in Medieval Greek), from some oriental word, perhaps related to Iranian pambak (modern panba) or Armenian bambok, perhaps ultimately from a PIE root meaning "to twist, wind."
Also from the same source are Swedish bomull, Danish bomuld "cotton," and, via Turkish forms, Modern Greek mpampaki, Rumanian bumbac, Serbo-Croatian pamuk. German baumwolle "cotton" probably is from the Latin word but altered by folk-etymology to look like "tree wool." Polish bawelna, Lithuanian bovelna are partial translations from German.
From stuffing and padding for clothes or upholstery, meaning extended to "pompous, empty speech" (1580s).
Bombast was originally applied to a stuff of soft, loose texture, once used to swell the garment. Fustian was also a kind of cloth of stiff expansive character. These terms are applied to a high, swelling style of writing, full of extravagant sentiments and expressions. Bathos is a word which has the same application, meaning generally the mock heroic--that "depth" into which one falls who overleaps the sublime; the step which one makes in order to pass from the sublime to the ridiculous. [James de Mille, "Elements of Rhetoric," 1878]
https://www.etymonline.com/word/bombast
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