On Music
GOODMAN, HAL
On Music MOVE TUNES BY HAL GOODMAN Motion picture scoores are a curious subspecies of music. Their task is to be subsidiary, perhaps even unnoticed, yet to substantially enhance the impact of...
...I had especially high hopes for the score of Walt Disney Productions' Tron (CBS-37782...
...At one point while I was listening to the record, my sink backed up...
...Most of Morricone's sparse material also has a familiar ring...
...Surely a movie about a computer was the appropriate milieu for exhibiting the synthesizer's potential to a mass audience, and Carlos was the right composer...
...Their task is to be subsidiary, perhaps even unnoticed, yet to substantially enhance the impact of what is happening on the screen-An unquestionable problem in diminishing returns...
...In sum, The Thing is an extraordinarily pleasant surprise...
...We've Got Company" has strong string lines, albeit ruined by a cliche employment of the harp...
...Kramerthat play Vivaldi in the background...
...Able to produce sounds never previously heard, rhythmic and harmonic effects beyond the capability of traditional instruments, it has gained a firm foothold only in rock and jazz, imitating brass and drums or lending a new dimension to the same old melodies and chords...
...In Tron she was handed a proper vehicle, but inexplicably held back, and the net result is an undistinguished effort...
...When the gurgle of clogged pipes adds agreeable counterpoint to a piece of music, something is wrong...
...If the music is overly restrained, a film could lose some of its power...
...If not, well, it won't be so bad as long as we still have the likes of John Williams...
...With The Thing he attains new heights...
...Finally, "Tower Music-let Us Pray" and "A New Tron and the MCP," actually utilize the synthesizer creatively...
...The music never goes anywhere-doesn't even leave its original key-yet that's eternity...
...And high time, I thought...
...A 16-page press release heralding the album proclaimed:" By using the synthesizer as a virtual member of the orchestra, Carlos has achieved the finest example of total integration between orchestral and electronic music...
...Avoiding electronics, Williams achieves conventionally many sound qualities that could be considered prime targets for a synthesizer...
...and the main theme is conspicuously reminiscent of the Beatles' "The Night Before...
...I'm just tired of hearing people say, "Yeah, I know all about synthesizers...
...The numerous serious composers who have been making inventive use of the synthesizer in recent years, such as Morton Subotnick and Karlheinz Stockhausen, have discovered no movie producers beating down their doors...
...The evidence of these three soundtracks does not exactly support an avant-gardist position...
...The majestic segments inspire remarkably little awe, despite the UCLA chorus drawing out its "ahhhhhhhhh"s in the best heavenly choir tradition...
...The best scores contribute subtly...
...All the same, there is one flaw in the E. T. score...
...Worm-hole" progresses from a loud beginning to a softly ominous middle and a spooky electronic end...
...Carlos' mastery of the synthesizer and her musical talent promise work that will advance the state of the art...
...The letdown was greatly eased by Ennio Morricone's music for John Carpenter's remake of The Thing...
...The whole score keeps to this spirit of minimalism...
...the few sections that muster some excitement die without reaching a climax...
...Since the Switched-On days-possibly in part because Carlos' unadorned transcriptions of the master sufficed to make the records quite popular-the synthesizer has largely gone to waste...
...Some of her 18 titles do display nice touches...
...With a few exceptions, the synthesizer tracks in Tron offer futuristic-sounding passages that could have been performed by the orchestra...
...Isn't it neat how they imitate the trumpets lor violins, or whatever...
...It's a shame to find even this minor blemish...
...Morricone's impressive past film credits include The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and La Cage A ux Folles...
...I was particularly looking forward to "Bestiality" and "Sterilization...
...Maybe in the Return of E. T. the alien will find himself stranded in the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, or Rocky 8 will show Sylvester Stallone training to the microtonal music of Harry Partch...
...It's difficult enough for a composer to dare an innovative work in the concert hall, before a public he can presume to be fairly knowledgeable...
...The low string motif of "Wait" much resembles the famous shark theme from Jaws...
...Nonetheless, the music is never boring...
...Still, there is one type of movie that would seem peculiarly suited to instrumental experimentation-science fiction...
...The hit, though, turned out to be "Eternity," a hypnotic combination of low beats, high punctuation and dramatic organ chords...
...That's why you can't think of the last time you heard a 12-tone composition over a car chase...
...It establishes beyond doubt that Williams' only competition at the moment comes from movies like Kramer vs...
...the one loudly claiming to be a pathfinder was the failure...
...Phone Home" and "Adventure on Earth...
...The ubiquitous John Williams has written his best music to date for 1982's most profitable film, E. T. (MCA-6109...
...Then I realized the noise's origin...
...This, plus his consistent ability to come up with memorable themes, is the key to his well-deserved status...
...That tuneful little theme that has become so famous (I heard it played by the organist at a hockey game the other night) lacks the substance to fill all the functions Williams requires of it...
...Af terward, everyone would rush out of the cinema to buy the soundtrack, and pick up Subotnick's latest while they were at it...
...Humanity (Part 2)" is no more than chords over a low rhythmic figure in standard 4/4 time...
...It works...
...Melodies are predictable...
...MCA-6111...
...Ah," I said, "what an interesting sound...
...I have a theory-And hope to test it someday-that you could show Superman with the soundtrack to Star Wars, or Raiders of the Lost Ark with the music from The Empire Strikes Back, and no one would know the difference...
...The E.T...
...It is not that he gives us the sorts of radical departures I longed for in Tron...
...The sound track albums of three recent sci-fi releases, however, show that film composers remain reluctant to wander far from the old-fashioned symphony orchestra, regardless of the subject matter...
...The bars crop up in "E.T.'s Halloween," then in "Flying...
...Like a stray cat-or alien?they keep coming back...
...Solitude" and "Despair" brim with the slow, haunting string lines that have expressed the anguish of lonely, misunderstood monsters and their human victims since movies began...
...Similarly, although those rasping screeches in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho were at least as frightening as the sight of Anthony Perkins in drag wielding a kitchen knife above his head, what most people recall is the visual image...
...Maybe Wendy Carlos will let herself go next time...
...Quite apart from her squandering of the synthesizer, Carlos' music is simply not very interesting...
...The composer is Wendy Carlos, who probably did more than anyone else to introduce the public to the wonders of the electronic synthesizer through her Switched-On-Bach albums in the late 1960s and early '70s...
...The overuse is more obvious listening to the album than sitting in the theater, of course, but one of this score's great attributes is that it stands so well on its own...
...Williams' earlier works, though good enough to establish him as today's preeminent composer of movie music, can reasonably be accused of inter-changeability...
...A movie theater, where music is at best a secondary consideration, definitely seems the wrong place for groundbreaking...
...The rhythms in "Ring Game and Escape," an unconventional march, are striking...
...Here, after all, the strangest sounds and concepts could fit in...
...In E. T. he goes a trifle too far...
...Williams' talent for orchestration enables him to write less music and get away with presenting it in different arrangements...
...Morricone does venture one more unorthodox bit, the brief "Contamination," consisting of frantic, atonal plucking by the strings .Other noteworthy cuts are "Bestiality," which offers a driving, growling bass line that is taken up by the rest of the orchestra, and "Sterilization," where an organ line overlays low rhythmic bursts...
...I will argue that movies and moviegoers stand to gain a great deal from bold modern composers...
...In successfully scoring an alien-being fantasy without "artificial" means, Williams demonstrates once more his remarkable skill in orchestration...
...they would be out of place accompanying a camp horror classic...
...In fact, they make the rest of the Tron music all the more disappointing, because they are proof that the entire score could have been a pathbreaker...
...Two songs by the rock group Journey are included in the soundtrack, perhaps to make Carlos sound better by comparison...
...No matter...
...score, nearest in mood to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, is unique...
...A theme played on a synthesizer is different f rom t he same t heme scored for violins, and sometimes it sounds better...
...Hecoaxes mar-velously eerie noises from the trumpets and high strings, while wisely limiting the piccolo and horns, instruments relied upon far too often to aurally depict the extraterrestrial...
...Alas, no...
...Few filmgoers realize, for instance, that much of the tension in High Noon derived from the music being always slightly out of sync with Gary Cooper's footsteps as he strode through the dusty streets...
...Melodramatic piece titles-such as "Humanity (Part 1)" "Shape," "Contamination," "Solitude," "Wait," "Humanity (Part 2)", and "Despair"-set the tone...
...This is not to say that the instrument should have been left out altogether...
...But the score is restrained, moody and fun...
...Flip therec-ord over and there they are in "E.T...
...Almost inevitably, therefore, movie music has lagged behind the times...
...If it is too forceful-or too catchy-the audience could leave the theater remembering the tunes instead of the dialogue or plot...
Vol. 65 • November 1982 • No. 21
