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Why is orchestration not taught better/more ?


Eric_JWFAN

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True, another group is the film-score-fan-turned-film-composer.

I think John Ottman is one of those.

An almost encyclopedic knowledge of film music, which prefents him to really bring anything new, or fresh into the mix.

Actually, I think Ottman may have a better knowledge of music than most of the newbie composers out there now. I'll need to check. I know he edits alot of films he scores, like the last Superman movie.

Elfman, Newton - Howard are two that I know are former rockers.

Wow...Stefan and I agree on something. This is refreshing :(

Holst....a one hit wonder? Perhaps, but if you go to the record store the Planets section will be bigger than

Beethoven. Im not sure how we can call a composer great based on only one work....and if we take

away Mars and Saturn then what? Perhaps you know more Holst than I...is it good?

Its also funny that Holst not only wrote one of the most popular pieces of orchestra, but also for wind band. If that

makes him great I don't know.

Prokofiev was a genius....can you imagine a piano class with He, Rachminoff and Scriabin?? WOW. You only have to

listen to the first piano concerto to know this guy was genius. Too bad he died on the same day as Stalin...nobody

knew he was dead for 3 days because the paper didn't print it......such is the life of a Russian composer huh?

DHP

\@()

As someone who comes from the concert band world, Holst is far from a one hit wonder!! Holts' 1st and 2nd Suite's for Military Band are a standard of wind ensemble literature.

And I'm sure Schumann would have been a much better orchestrator if he wasn't so ignorate that Brahm's was shtupping his wife. :( That and the fact he went nuts.

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Elfman, Newton - Howard are two that I know are former rockers.

Which is interesting, as I find them the two most talented and creative film composers today after JW.

Ray Barnsbury

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Holst....a one hit wonder?

How do you know he has only listened to Planets? Holst wrote lots more orchestral music than just that, and some damn fine choral music as well :(

"We praise the o god! we acknowledge thee to be thy looord!" Some Psalms that send the shivers up the spine. And I ain't religious.

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David Arnold has a pop/rock background too, doesn't he?

I have directed and edited, though.

Keep it up. We need some directors (and editors) that have the sense and appreciation for proper scoring, all too rare these days.

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There's this bit in the Stargate liner notes:

The Luton-born son of a boxer turned club singer, Arnold had taken some fleeting music lessons on clarinet as a child, then gravitated towards guitar and keyboards - and a fervent love of nascent UK punk rock - as he grew into a teen. The musician who would eventually become a mainstream movie music fixture claims he once unsuccesfully auditioned for no less than The Clash.

"The punk thing empowered and enabled a lot of people," Arnold said of his original musical ambitions. "You could get 10 songs rehearsed, play them in the school hall the next day, and you got gobbed on and thought you were part of it."

Arnold recalls the closest he would ever get to his "Wembly moment:" "I did use that phrase once. I was playing a pub up there and David Bowie was playing the arena, so I told someone I was supporting Bowie. Which in a sense I was - it's just that it was in the pub across the road!"

He would eventually move on to scoring short films by friends attending the National Film School, usually gratis, while working odd jobs to support himself. It wasn't until writing the music for school chum Danny Cannon's 1993 feature The Young Americans that Arnold could actually call himself a professional film composer. Fortuitously, "Play Dead," the soundtrack song he had collaborated on with Icelandic pop singer Bjork, began to receive positive notices in trend-setting British music publications like Melody Maker and New Music Express.

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Indeed he has. And the absence of a composer-written song for Die Another Day had a negative impact on the overall music for the film.

But of course that film has many, many other problems (which should probably not be discussed here).

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Two people have mentioned Holst's other works, but none by name....I've always thought of myself as an avid

classical music lover, so please let me know what masterpieces I'm missing.

Thanks

DHP

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I can assure you that I have heard and played many times the two suites for band. I do believe I even mentioned

that in my post. St Paul's Suite?? You can put that next to the Planets??

DHP

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"The Planets" was the first orchestral work I became intimately acquainted with and listened to repeatedly for enjoyment. It's still a lot of fun. The tonalities in "Saturn" are very, very interesting and almost surrealistic. "Jupiter" is jubilant fun. I won't tell you the family stories about "Uranus," but suffice it to say that bassoons hiccuping in triple meter sound very funny. "Mercury" is fun in a flighty sort of way; "Venus" bores me a little, as does the initially-promising "Neptune." "Mars" is the one everyone talks about. For me personally, I find it to be very good, but no better than that on the whole. Some parts are truly outstanding, though. I'd suggest every film score fan to listen to all of "The Planets," if only to notice how little Williams actually stole for the Star Wars scores.

Holst's other works generally don't appeal to me much at first, but they usually grow on me. He has a peculiar sound, though nowhere near as acquired-taste-ish as Stravinsky.

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I love the women's choir part in Neptune. It's really interesting, and sounded difficult. My university choir/orchestra performed that, with the voices in a back room, with the door propped open. I'm not sure if the score called for them to be off-stage or whatever, but it had a cool effect.

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Yes-the score calls for the choir to perform from an offstage room in which the doors are gradually shut.

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Wow, this thread has taken off! I've been meaning to jump in here. Might as well do it all in one go. In regular undergrad studies, there could be more advanced classes I agree, we also get one class and the composition majors explore it further on their own in private tutoring.

Orchestration is best learned by yourself through years of diligent study. Teachers can direct you what to study, but you must study often and an in what you are most interested and least interested. 1 or 2 classes in university will do very little beyond telling you the basics.

Yes, definitely. There are many great books out there, that describe combinations of instruments and choices in spacing chords along with examples to show you what sound is the result. Rimsky-Korsakov wrote a detailed book that I've been enjoying, The Principles of Orchestration. His dos and don'ts are a bit dated and he uses his own (at times obscure) work for examples, but now it's available online for FREE at Garritan's website with updated comments and interactive MIDI to play the examples.

And study, study scores, with recordings (and often multiple of the same work), in rehearsals, or what I enjoy is working with a score at the piano so I can isolate sections and play and hear the chords for myself, at my own pace. This really helps to dig into it. Sometimes listening and following the music, it goes too fast to process. John Adams' Harmonielehre is a good example, the detail in that score is incredible but it's hard to hear a lot of it listening. It's more felt than heard, and he achieves this often by only slight variations in the harmony or combinations.

On complexity: Often the most affecting music is the most simple. This same discussion took place recently at a classical board arguing over Mahler being better than Elgar because he's more complex. He does have more lines going on at once, but what poignant themes Elgar had. Both marvelous orchestrators and so different. While Mahler screams and rages and shakes his fist at the world, Elgar sits under a tree and contemplates it.

Everything is flat, streamlined and impersonal, it seems, and everything sounds like it was written on a 2 octave synth, just putting down some minimal midi mock-up... And the orchestrations of such music tend to sound like midi mock-ups for orchestra.

The way technology has now become intermeshed with music is both a blessing and a curse. While it makes composing more accessible (especially on a large scale), the emphasis on samples and synths also fuels more and more "samey" sounding scores. Rather it should be more of just a timesaver for notation. Solid orchestration techinique, even on a small scale, needs to be basic for any composer. It's equal to a painter learning what proportions of two colors to mix together to get the desired shade.

He started as music director on Saturday Night Live, yes. I think he even had a small hand in the forming of the Blues Brothers.

And Shore is a sax player! :mellow: There's a lot of crossover with jazz and film composing. Mark Isham is a highly acclaimed jazz trumpeter, Dave Grusin even more so on piano, Joel McNeely is also a sax player and studied jazz arranging. Jazz writing can be a positive influence orchestration wise, gaining richness from the lush complex harmonies involved. And of course there was also Johnny Williams the jazz pianist…

I had the privelege during my master's of studying with some of them; Richard Danielpour

Wow, what a fantastic composer. I'm currently in love with his Urban Dances. I would highly suggest any lover of film music to check out this CD.

Holst wrote lots more orchestral music than just that, and some damn fine choral music as well

"We praise the o god! we acknowledge thee to be thy looord!" Some Psalms that send the shivers up the spine. And I ain't religious.

Yeah, Holst wrote MANY other great things besides The Big One. You have to first realize that his other work is not more of the same. There's wide variation in styles among his works. The Hymn of Jesus is considered by some to be his masterpiece, a gorgeous orchestral/choral affair that should be performed way more than it is. The Cloud Messenger is another of those affairs I like, beautiful, kind of minmalist. Egdon Heath is a gem, stark and modern and brooding, and his fun ballet music (The Lure, Perfect Fool, etc), all fine stuff. But The Planets have unfortunately eclipsed his other work in the wider public. And he resented this greatly. Check out Richard Greene's Cambridge handbook on The Planets, it goes into detail about this and also gets into the music theory and orchestration. The Planets is often not terribly complicated harmonically, but the orchestration is so outstanding.

Regarding Boris, as I said above, the focus is rapidly shifting back to Mussorgsky's original version(s) these days. Korsakov's orchestrations are generally considered glossy and untrue to the original intentions in this case.

I like Mussorgsky's originals, and I'm glad they are being performed and recorded these days. Check out the new SACD LA Phil Rite of Spring from Disney Hall, which contains a really stunning recording of his original Bald Mountain. It's a wild, organic, technically wow performance that works out the kinks and shows it to be frankly a compelling composition.

About, 95% of Night on Bald Mountain is pure RK. The only thing that survived was the dance theme. But, after hearing it, I understood why the Mussorgsky arrangement never flew.

In fact, there are several dance sections that were cut by RK. The original Bald Mountain is much more romantic and gypsy-flavored. Actually it makes me think of Kodaly. It is in all reality VERY far from Mussorgsky, far enough to barely share the same name. It's just that our ears have become so accustomed to RK's version, where everything is show to the max and falls neatly into place. I always have considered the ending section with the flute solo a snooze, while the original is breathtakingly intense right to the finish. Now that I've heard the original I find it disappointing to listen to the RK version. I much prefer the original with all its jumpcuts and wanton sensuality.

-Greta

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