[Fmpro] FMPRO Latest Rant: "Where are the Distinctive Voicesinscoring?"

[Ted Peterson]

I never said the original Mussorgsky piece wasn't great music. I just  
used it as an example for study. By the way, Mussorgsky also  
orchestrated much of the Pictures and these "sketches" have been  
found and analyzed. He also wrote and orchestrated "Boris Goudenov"  
so it shows he was a pretty capable orchestrator in his own right.

Stravinsky wrote "Sacre" in a small room with an upright piano. I  
have seen the originals through Robert Craft and because of  
Stravinsky's piano technique (He couldn't cross over and never  
studied scales so his technique was more like moving his hands in  
concert from octave to octave.), he wrote much as two piano the  
orchestrated from that. But much was just orchestrated while he  
composed and he used the piano to check registers and such. It is  
important to remember that he had already written "Firebird" and  
"Petrouchka" so his technique was expanding quite rapidly. The  
"Firebird" sound so much like Debussy that I have fooled a lot of  
people with a needle drop test (when records still were the main  
musical format) or a random track quiz.

Williams' music is not innovative and "classical" sources abound in  
his writing. That doesn't make it bad or make Williams a bad  
composer, just a hack. Take a listen to some Basil Poledouris' music.  
Every bit as innovative as Williams' but without the classical  
underpinnings. Do I think Williams is an innovative composer? No.  
It's that simple. The innovative composers working today are not  
writing sound cues. However, film composers are and must be fantastic  
craftsmen.

Yes, Williams and others, are very capable craftsmen but I would bet  
if you asked them, they would be the first to downplay their  
contribution to the innovative side of music. Nobody with any  
knowledge of music would think that anything written by Williams now  
would be the equal to what Beethoven wrote some 200 years earlier.  
What Beethoven did was cutting edge in his day. The same cannot be  
said for anything Williams has done. To me, it's like commercial  
jingles. Cute and appropriate but hardly experimental in an sense of  
the word. In addition, it is doubtful that Williams or any other film  
composer other than Glass will have any chance at a historical  
"school." But Glass came to film after he was established and writing  
in the minimalist style for some time. I don't recall Williams at a  
concert composer of any import at any time.

I don't think a simple piece of music is bad and I may have  
miswritten. What I mean is that an insignificant piece can be  
orchestrated to sound much better than the original material and give  
the illusion of being better than it really is musically. Whereas a  
very sophisticated piece of music can be orchestrated quite poorly  
and loose comprehension. I was commissioned to write a piece for the  
supporters of the LA Phil. I was given free hand to write whatever I  
wanted. So I wrote four quite difficult brass pieces. These were  
supposed to be played at the Hollywood Bowl by brass players standing  
on the tops of towers. Usually, they played Garibaldi or another  
composer of brass works. At the last minute, I'm told that the pieces  
will be played at a dinner and there would be no rehearsal. I  
initially said can the works, they aren't right for the evening but  
was pressed to have them performed. I picked the least offensive and  
easiest to comprehend of the works and had the brass from  the LA  
Phil play them with one partial readthrough. It was a mess. I had  
created works that were not appropriate for a dinner in the first  
place and had written them for at least two weeks of rehearsal which  
I was promised.  Fleishman corralled me after the dinner and asked me  
what I was thinking about writing pieces like that.  I told him what  
I was contracted to do and he was very sympathetic. If I had known  
the pieces were to be for a dinner, I would have written completely  
differently and turned out some pleasant music very tonally based.  
Also, I would never write brass pieces for an evening dinner event.  
So I went home and reorchestrated the pieces into chamber works and  
they have worked quite well as that. The point is that wrong  
orchestration can doom a good piece and completely save mediocre  
music. John Adams' music is very simple yet masterly orchestrated.  
I'm surprised he hasn't delved into film yet. But according to him,  
he has enough commissions that he will be dead before he can fulfill  
them all.

Ted Peterson

On Jun 1, 2008, at 1:53 PM, Han Otten - Soundpalette wrote:

>
> Ted,
>
>
> I am a bit confused about your Mussorgsky example,
> Ravel and Rimsky Korsakov are two of the most capable orchestrators
> of the last centuries, but the original Mussorgsky piano version
> is still a brilliant piece of music. So what does that say about  
> the crucial
> role of the orchestrator?
>
>