music4film

My top 10: Legends of the Fall Braveheart The Land Before Time Titanic The Mask of Zorro Balto The Rocketeer Glory Apollo 13 The Spitfire Grill

Yes that's unfortunate, but perhaps I can start a trend!

Has anybody else tackled any James Horner analysis, on these boards or elsewhere?

Well, you get the idea. In any case, my feeling is that the melody and bass create harmonic functions that become increasingly blurred by the ever-growing inner-voice cluster. Specifically, I think it's possible to hear the following functions in bars 1-5, especially since the melody and bass outline these chords so nicely: A minor: i - III6 - VI After that, it starts to get rather murky, bar 6 perhaps suggesting minor v, but after that getting even more difficult to tease out any functions (perhaps viio6 - I in C major suggest themselves). By the end of the buildup, I would say it sounds entirely like a cluster with no suggestion of function. So one could say the passage moves from clear functional harmony to non-functional harmony. Just a thought. Thanks for your input, I definitely see how one could hear the proposed progression if you focus strictly on the two contrapuntal lines and disregard the inner voices as a type of harmonic wallpaper that simply colors the overarching tonal progression. Certainly if you remove all the sustained voices in the middle of the texture, you are left with a simple harmonic skeleton that suggests your diatonic progression (although I believe you meant III6/4 instead of III6). And you're right that this could be be considered pandiatonicism, although the passage is constructed in such a particular way and in such an isolated manner (surrounded by what are clearly diatonic materials) that I avoided the use of such a term. Certainly we could consider this very particular additive process as a pandiatonic technique since it sticks to the 7 diatonic tones rather than the 12 chromatic tones, such as in the Scriabin. Great insights, it's always refreshing to hear alternative viewpoints of the same theoretical concept! Also, I loved how you succinctly termed this technique as "clustural accretion." I'm going to add that bit of terminology to my repertoire.

Thanks for the kind words! I hadn't heard "Music of the Spheres" before, but I'm listening to it right now and I'm very impressed. The opening was fantastic and certainly reminded me of some of Ligeti's micropolyphonic works - especially Lontano. For anybody who isn't familiar with Lonano, it's a dreamy piece revolving around slowly evolving tone clusters: Great story about Ligeti getting introduced to Langgaard as well! Of course, Ligeti was being quite modest when he referred to himself as an "epigone;" he actually did what any great composer would do by expanding on and refining the earlier techniques. Lontano is a much more sophisticated and complex piece of music than "Music of the Spheres -" take one look at the score and you'll see what I mean! Anyway, I peeked at the score for "Music of the Spheres" and you can easily see the connection to the Horner example... Langgaard develops a 2 octave Eb major aggregate right on the first page, similar to how Horner builds up his 2-octave A minor aggregate. However, before the Horner-bashers slither out of their caves in full force, lets just say that this is not much different than two different composers using a C major triad. Both composers used their scalar aggregate harmony extremely well in their respective cases. Also, before Langgaard's work came Scriabin's great but unfinished "Mysterium," which starts right off the bat with a 12-tone aggregate, putting Horner and Lanngaard's 7-note aggregates to shame in terms of pure "crunch!" Scriabin sadly passed away in 1915 (from a shaving cut, of all things!), but left sketches for the prelude to the Mysterium - "Preparation for the Final Mystery" - which was completed in three parts by Alexander Nemtin beginning in the 1970s...it took nearly 30 years of his life to complete. If you haven't checked it out already, I highly recommend it. Here's the first section of Part I - Universe.

Hey all, I started this thread on Film Score Monthly, and I thought some here might be interested: http://filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=101232&forumID=1&archive=0 PLEASE - no negative comments! If you are not interested in the topic or Mr. Horner's music, please kindly exit the thread now. However if you are indeed interested, feel free to add to the discussion either here or in the original thread. I welcome your comments. We are all lovers of music, and I invite a POSITIVE discussion about score study if you are interested in the more technical matters of film scoring.