So, here I am, sitting around the house, recovering after C+Cs Big Day, at a bit of a loose end, when I am reminded of a conversation I had yesterday. As I may have mentioned once or twice or possibly several thousand times, I am big into film scores (and television scores, lets not be snobby), which is kind of a weird thing to try to explain to people because (1) it is a very, very geeky/nerdy thing to be passionate about and (2), well, its not like there is a specific type of film music - a score can be orchestral, jazzy, whatever - which means there is no real commonality between different scores. I do think that scores can have a language of their own (albeit one that isnt universal) and a composer who is on the ball can tell you what is going on in the story with just the music, even in the absence of the images and dialogue. Which is my poorly expressed way of saying that an adequate score complements its associated film, a good score enhances the film but a great score transcends the film, to the point where it can stand without it (Im looking at you 1982 version of Conan the Barbarian starring Arnold Schwarzenegger - Basil Poledouriss score sooooo saved that film, turning a pretty dreadful movie into a tolerable one. Thank Crom for Basil P.! Ooo, controversial ...) Anyway, as it is cold and dark outside, and we are trapped in that annoying period betwixt Christmas and New Years Day when the media is filled with nothing but retrospectives of a year that we all just lived through and would probably rather just forget, here are some of my personal favorites from the world of film scores. As it happens, they are all from the same composer, Ennio Morricone, but dont read too much into that, his was just the first name that popped into my head when I started out on this post (which I am beginning to get a bit embarrassed about, to be honest). They are all from very different types of films (a spaghetti western, a historical drama and a nostalgic look back at childhood in an Italian village) and they are all presented in an orchestral setting, devoid of the images they were intended to accompany. But thats OK, because to me, they are examples of film scoring at its best - the images are not needed to appreciate them. The Ecstasy of Gold from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: https://youtube/watch?v=1-rHdSWZLpQ The Main Theme from The Mission: https://youtube/watch?v=oag1Dfa1e_E The Final Theme from Cinema Paradiso: https://youtube/watch?v=1FzVWlOKeLs
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 17:58:10 +0000
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