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MEYER ON MUSIC
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Re: MEYER ON MUSIC
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William D McCrum
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Dec 19 08 6:18 AM
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This isn't true. It just isn't. Where do you think classical musicians come from, year upon year?
Every year music conservatories and university faculties churn out graduates in music and composition, a million piano teachers tutor a million students, young people buy classical CDs. They are in the minority only as much as they ever were, when ragtime, jazz, big band etc. were popular. It has nothing to do with age. Young folk sign up for school orchestras, brass bands, go to ballet lessons, etc., etc.. And anyway, for every middle-aged classical devotee, there are a dozen who listen to 'aging rocker' fare, and country&Western and 'easy listening' and nostalgia ... if they listen to anything at all.
If I were a young teenager seeing these reactionary put-downs it'd probably push me further away from concert music, or at least towards avant-garde. The whole tone is, 'to hell with youth: they are idiots'. Many are disciplined musicians who know what they're talking about. This isn't going to ensure classic film-scoring survives, is it?
The fact is, and John said it concisely, that 'dramatic' film-music doesn't just rely on big dramatic crescendos (but so does progressive rock, no?), it assumes it will thrive on big climactic codas. Look at the other thread on 'Quo Vadis?' The 1952 reviewer was a trifle unfair in attacking the number of climax tutti codas in Rozsa's pieces there, because you can only score what's in front of you, and the film's set-pieces dictated these climaxes. Look at 'Ben-Hur'. There are surprisingly few big build-up end-codas for pieces in that score. There are hardly any in 'Providence'. In terms of concert or ballet, or opera, the structure is more beautiful if it evokes a rise-and-fall proportionate LANDSCAPE. So too with concerti and sonata form. Too many big endings are like a series of premature ejaculations. When a piece only 2 or 3 minutes long rises to a big end-crescendo it's a helluva waste of expressive time. You have to compose up to these. And on albums, where these little pieces are 'rounded off' you get big codas all over the place where they aren't in the actual OST. Even the BH Prelude's finish is toned down on the OST version. I've heard several people say, 'I like this Rozsa, but he's better when he's not over-the-top'. People say of the 'King of Kings' Prelude, 'It's fantastic, but the ending is predictable'. Maybe that's why Muller-Lampert and Cascarigno felt like chopping it for Hamburg? But Rozsa felt he needed to round it out thus for concert. He'd 've thought the fine transition used in the film inappropriate for the album. Nowadays the reverse would be aesthetically better.
Last Edited By:
William D McCrum
Dec 19 08 6:22 AM. Edited 1 times.
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