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Elmer Bernstein vs Hans Zimmer


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Elmer Bernstein vs Hans Zimmer  

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  1. 1. Whose music do you tend to enjoy more?

    • Elmer Bernstein's
      22
    • Hans Zimmer's
      8


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The Magnificent Seven as a whole isn't as great as it's main theme IMO.

Zimmer hasn't written anything that ever made me long for a cigarette...

Zimmer's popular because he's current and more accessible. Bernstein is late, and most of his greatest scores were written a generation ago, which puts them out of the scope and interest level of many burgeoning young film score fans.

Something like Pirates 3 or Gladiator may put a theme into your head longer than The Ten Commandments or Heavy Metal, but I dare you to stop whistling the main theme from The Great Escape once you start...

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Does Zimmer have a formal musical training?

Can Zimmer compose a score entirely on his own?

Formal training? No, but he has definitely composed better scores than people who do.

Compose on his own? Yes, he does it all the time.

Zimmer hasn't written anything that ever made me long for a cigarette...

I see that as a good thing.

Something like Pirates 3 or Gladiator may put a theme into your head longer than The Ten Commandments or Heavy Metal, but I dare you to stop whistling the main theme from The Great Escape once you start...

I never said Elmer Bernstein was bad. I love The Great Escape.

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I find it very sad how people can put down a composer just because he has a background on "pop music" which can have the same emotional impact and be as well crafted as any other kind of music. Let me know when Williams makes an album like Sgt. Pepper or Pet Sounds.

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Well of course, people seem to forget there are worse composers than Zimmer. The really shit composers that try to copy him.

Steve Jablonsky?

He's one of them, yes. I do enjoy the hell out of Transformers though, and some of his lesser known works are decent. I already went through all of this a few posts back!

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I find it very sad how people can put down a composer just because he has a background on "pop music" which can have the same emotional impact and be as well crafted as any other kind of music. Let me know when Williams makes an album like Sgt. Pepper or Pet Sounds.

As a matter of fact, people put down composers who can't write much more than pop music but constantly write challenging narrative music for i. e. epic films which other, trained people before them have written with much more style, taste and a infinitely better grip on musical forms of expression.

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Also, he's not very good.

The only scores by Hans Zimmer that are OK are Lion King, Gladiator, and possibly Backdraft. That's it.

Ah, so you've heard all of his scores?

Would I still be alive, if I had? :thumbup:

No, but I've heard many. And I don't intend to hear any more.

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Has Zimmer's theme for "The Critic" ever been released?? I love that theme, used to love the show too.

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Simmer down. I didn't keep count... I just don't like Hans Zimmer's music very much, OK?

Nothing personal. :thumbup:

I'm just trying to get a sense of how much of the man's music people here have heard. That way I know where they are coming from when they make judgements.

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Has Zimmer's theme for "The Critic" ever been released?? I love that theme, used to love the show too.

This week we review Spartacus and the Bandit. :thumbup:

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I'm just trying to get a sense of how much of the man's music people here have heard. That way I know where they are coming from when they make judgements.

Rather get a sense how much other composers they have heard. The more they have heard, the less scores Zimmer. It's a rather dependable way of prognostication.

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John Williams was a jazz pianist turned film composer.

No. John Williams was a jazz pianist who at the same time undertook composition studies with, among others, Mario Castelnuovo Tedesco, who, by the way, nurtured a whole generation of great composers like Goldsmith or Fielding, who, by the way, have many things in common, such as the layout of the violins. I wonder if it has to do with having the same teacher.

Williams also spent many years arranging and orchestrating before becoming a film composer.

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I find it very sad how people can put down a composer just because he has a background on "pop music" which can have the same emotional impact and be as well crafted as any other kind of music. Let me know when Williams makes an album like Sgt. Pepper or Pet Sounds.

Of course, you are right, but the Beatles sought out modern music, attended Stockhausen concerts and really composed some great music. I have analyzed "Yesterday" for some composition classes I have given. This type of writing is no accident. The Beatles are almost in a different world when it comes to song writing, let's face it.

Beatles orchestration skills were superior to Hans Zimmer as well.

But I was just generalizing before about Zimmer being a "pop musician". Generally speaking, pop musicians know a few chords on their guitar or piano and that is the extent of their learning.

On the other hand, a jazz musician - and JW was not only that in his career before he started film, he wrote and arranged for concert band and was a film pianist and more ... like I was saying, a jazz pianist/musician operates on a whole other level of musicianship than your typical pop musician. The discipline and musical knowledge required to play jazz does not even compare to pop music.

Zimmer's melodies tend to plod along (which some people like, admittedly) and his orchestrations sound like a guy playing his synth with one finger and then copy and pasting the tracks to his different samples.

I am curious, how skilled of a musician is Zimmer on his instrument?

But, let's face it, the man has had tremendous success. Even though his success baffles me, obviously his music has connected with many people.

Just not me. ;)

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But, let's face it, the man has had tremendous success. Even though his success baffles me, obviously his music has connected with many people.

Just not me. ;)

At least you acknowledge his success and appeal, which is a damn sight more than some around here would ever do.

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But, let's face it, the man has had tremendous success. Even though his success baffles me, obviously his music has connected with many people.

Just not me. :lol:

At least you acknowledge his success and appeal, which is a damn sight more than some around here would ever do.

Well, I am no arbiter of taste. I love Stravinsky, Bartok, Prokofiev - but many people just "don't get it".

How can someone be unmoved by "The Rite of Spring"? I don't know, but there you have it.

But I remember as an undergrad in music, a singer said of Stravinsky "No wonder his name is Igor, it's a name just as ugly as his music." :)

I do however feel that there is much less quality in modern film music than there used to be when Timokin, Salter, Bernstein and others of the Golden Age of cinema were working.

Now THAT was music.

I have been listening to Benjamin Frankel, and even this somewhat unknown composer had a tremendous grasp of the orchestra, basically rivaling Bartok (for my money.)

And JW spent his early years as a film composer doing TV, writing 20 minutes of music a week, by hand, on paper, without the aid of an orchestrator.

Can any of the new bunch do that? Most of them can't and it shows in their music.

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