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Krakozhia National Anthem

Part two of my posts on the Best Score nominees for this year's Oscars, this one on Desplat's The Imitation Game. http://www.filmmusicnotes.com/oscar-nominees-2015-best-original-score-part-2-of-6-alexandre-desplats-the-imitation-game/ A subtly effective score.

Stonehearst Asylum (Debney) - John Debney is the Matthew McConaughey of the film score world. I don't know when it happened, but with this The Stoning of Soraya M, and A Thousand Words (all of which were awful film), at some point John Debney went from bland filler material to genre master. Stonehearst Asylum is the best of his career, and I can't wait to see what's ahead based on this one.

Myth? Yeth?

Elizabeth by David Hirschfelder Wolfman by Danny Elfman Snow Falling On Cedars by James Newton Howard It's been a good day.

Outstanding psychological drama. Sean Connery should definitely be nominated for an Oscar, if not win it!

I find his reviews very difficult to read. He's excessively flowery and paragraphs and sentences feel over-cluttered. The methodology is inherently misguided and remains the most conspicuous sign of increasingly inflated ego this individual continues to display on a daily basis. Not to mention the catastrophically mismatched style for its, largely humble and insignificant, subject matter. No wonder people can't stand him. Karol

Fateless- Ennio Morricone

He probably means Prokofiev with the basses and tenors chanting, but I hear you re: the RVW. When I first discovered THE FINAL CONFLICT (about 4 or 5 years ago) my mind went straight the magnificent opening of A Sea Symphony. Also, that declamatory figure with the horns and muted trombones is pure Mahler. Probably not. Listen carefully: I don't fully agree with the article's preferences (and I'd never call Star Wars a non-great or non-favourite theme), but I still think there's more to many of Goldsmith's themes than you made it sound like. You musn't tell me, i wrote laudatios for most of them. I just think it's not doing Goldsmith a great service to sell him as something he ain't and certainly never ever aspired to. He wrote mostly brilliantly catchy stuff but as some other posters said, if you look at the often perfunctory bridges you can see that he never strived for fully developed THEMES in the capital sense and when he had to write them - those 80's with Williams as mighty shadow hanging over him -it never feels very organic to JG's writing. Bottom line: of course JG wrote great catchy tunes, riffs and motifs but to claim he lavished time on honing great and developed main themes that live into eternity - or indeed follows some mysterious principle - i don't hear it.

Off-kilter, savage rhythms, staggering motives in shrill violins/trumpets focusing on three or four chromatic pitches, flutes and xylophones paired up frequently....

Love Revueltas. I'm convinced he's one of Alex North and by proxy Jerry Goldsmith's biggest (yet strangely ignored) influences. No other composer (maybe except Varèse) depicts the desert better. Mirages, scorpions, parched mouth, La Calavera Catrina, delerium, death.

Where is the Shosti? I hear more Vaughan Williams modality than Shosti. Much Star Trek TMP in this one but that's a magnificent score and this feels like a sequel to that.

First encountered this piece in my Music of Latin America class back in my days at Uni. Always fun to listen to with the way that Revueltas creates that constant slithering feeling with the bass clarinet and pitched drums.

Agreed. Likewise, I don't care much for the SUPERGIRL, THE RIVER WILD (both Goldsmith on autopilot) or the SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES themes, either. The only truly 'great' theme among these is the one for the Enterprise. Where's CHINATOWN? PATTON? THE FINAL CONFLICT? A PATCH OF BLUE? ISLANDS IN THE STREAM? BASIC INSTINCT? ALIEN? The Love Theme from CAPRICORN ONE? Are they inferior or do they simply not fit this bizarre theory that a memorable, lyrical theme requires each downbeat to contain a new note. Why not pay attention to the harmony? One of the characteristic features of Goldsmith's militaristic fanfare themes is the second chord being a flattened subtonic (VIIb) over a tonic pedal--both ST:TMP and SUPERGIRL share this (as do many Hugo Friedhofer themes, who no doubt influenced Jerry--the Lydian supertonic or #II over a tonic pedal is more the domain of John Williams and James Horner), along with a compound duple/quadruple metre. Never neglect the power of harmony or rhythm or even orchestration when it comes to creating memorable themes. A skilled composer will use these as equal partners along with a melody, to realise his vision in sound. And why is this perfectly fine Aeolian Cadence given an F? Homage to Alexander Nevsky or not... it's a theme. An 8 bar theme in Cm (4 bars consisting of an antecedent and a consequent phrase--a call and response--transposed almost identically down a tone in Bbm for the remaining 4 bars) , followed by a modulating 4 bar bridge, in turn followed by a restatement of theme up a whole tone in Dm, concluding with a 4 bar coda climaxing on Fm.

Urgh. Not a Thatcherite, eh?

I also really like the Soviet anthem, komrades. Beautiful tune.

Well, I have to confess that my own reaction to the themes given would be so contrary as to seem completely inverse: The two finest themes are the ones listed as inferior, and subsequently, I call a gigantic BOGUS on this supposed theory of "flow": A melody's natural flow and memorability is simply not determined by the number of different scale degrees per downbeat! In other words, this ends up merely a matter of individual taste. The best evidence I could give to counter the theory, is that the two "inferior" -supposedly less flowing,less catchy- themes (Star Wars & Superman) happen to be two of the most immediately recognizable themes in our musical culture (that doesn't mean you have to like them, but it reduces the theory to a personal preference).

I was lucky enough to see James Bernard in the audience at the first film music concert I ever attended. The Philharmonia Orchestra played his music from Taste the Blood of Dracula (which has a beautiful, very pastoral love theme) and he was acknowledged afterwards. A guilty pleasure, if we are talking Hammer Dracula music, is Mike Vickers's Dracula A.D. 1972.