Hans Zimmer's Dunkirk Score

I'm kind of baffled. You liked the 'subtlety' of his work there? Subtle like a brick? How was that score subtle?

As for everything else - I shrug. I was thinking of the aerial thread, which isn't terribly sparse or psychological, for one. Have you seen the original Goodwin/Walton film? It has that 'good guys are up to bad guys look like winning in 30 seconds' shift that feels dated, but if you're suggesting that Walton mickey-moused the original, well - watch it again and tell me that you still think that.

 

Do you have the same problem with Morricone's western scores??

 

Mike, I'd love any recommendations from you in regard to scores like this -- i.e. long form incorporating modern production or sound design, atmosphere (in the sense of being brooding or dark, etc), etc, that are more subtle than older scores. From what I remember of it (it's been a while), I thought Williams' Schindlers' List score was wonderfully evocative while avoiding the more..."obvious" tone of "classic Hollywood".

 

To be fair, Rite is also blisteringly 'sound-designy.' Which I think is kind of the point, right? And you're damned right its a tour de force of thematic development - especially the second Part. And I like humming that Adoration theme with my 'bassoon' voice, which sounds kind of like Kermit the Frog. Fun for the whole family.

I'll tell you what my real worry is: Every time I hear 'subtle' about a score that doesn't do much of anything interesting, I think that it's basically become a code word for music that doesn't say anything. Like "Yeah, needle-dropping a chugga-chugga rhythm over that dramatic scene in that Jane Austen biopic was really subtle - you'd expect something emotional." So, yeah - I think I'm a 'subtlety' trigger-warninged snowflake. Sue me.

 

As usual I'm gonna take the middle of the road in these Hans vs John debates...

I think the idea of "the audience needs to be humming something when they walk out" is on the right track. But, some things are hard to hum. For example nobody can hum the 4 famous chords from Inception.. because they're chords. That makes them no less memorable and impactful on the movie. You can't really hum the Joker's rising glissando, or the descending, stabbing bass motif in Sicario. You can't hum the loping drum rhythm in Man of Steel, or the swelling church organ chord in Interstellar. So I'm on board with this humming idea in principle, but I want to expand it to recognizable instead of hummable. If you have something in the score that the audience recognizes over and over as it returns, and that something matches up with the tone of the picture, then you're doing a good job.

This still isn't enough to reach full agreement with the Mike Verta side of the argument. Because Mike will say, I think, that it all doesn't count unless you're being symphonic and developmental. It's not really good unless the motif or idea is in a different, morphing, guise each time we hear it. I don't understand the point of this. In Junkie XL's Mad Max score, there's a beautiful Wagnerian string thing that represents the character Nux's gradual development/enlightenment. It plays at I think three points in the movie, each time the arrangement is exactly the same, and it's very effective emotionally. If Junkie were writing a symphony that would be dumb, but as a film score it works just fine.

 

@Rohann van Rensburg , if you want to hear development & "real composing" mixed together with the best & craziest that the Remote Control style of writing has to offer then I know the composer for you. Henry Jackman!

This is an action cue but if you know the score's context then there are little quotes and character themes scattered all over the place.

His score for Big Hero 6 is great too. And... once you get past the synth pulse start.... how's THIS for developing a melody and throwing it around the orchestra & beyond?

 

Isn't the big theme (not the cyclical Sonata-Allegro material, but the big lush one) literally repeated each time in the Franck Symphony in D minor? Maybe proof that you can repeat things exactly...as long as that's exactly what you need??

 

What about something like John Luther Adam's - Become Ocean?

Drop that in Dunkirk over a slow scene of soldiers drifting in the water and I'd weep like a little bitch. It sounds extremely modern to me, reminds me a bit of Johann Johannson. And the long form development is incredible to my ears. Like riding a slow wave of growing harmonies. I hope stuff like that is the future of film music.

The melodies of that piece aren't complex or all that meaningful. As a whole though, I think it's genius. The emotional purity and evolving nature is really special. I don't carry it with me melodically. I carry it with me as an experience, a vision of what music can do to my psyche and emotion. It's like a Rothko painting in a way. A deconstruction of traditional form. Still impactful, almost inexplicably. Will a piece like Become Ocean hold value to culture over time? Who the hell knows, I think it should.

And Brian you're right I am thinking subtle like devoid of emotion. Subtle like an underscore / tension bed. Does the trick for me with picture, outside of that there's nothing there but production aesthetics. Seemed like Nolan's intention for the movie, and it worked to create a badass experience of cinema for me.

 

Well, I didn't actually mean like 'devoid of emotion' so much as 'devoid of content.' Which is, I think, very different. Saving Private Ryan is one of those soundtracks that's laden with content and emotion and is also subtle, right? maybe we can agree that subtlety is making sure that the emotional content isn't too representational.

And I'm all for 'Become Ocean.' It reminds me of the quote in Feldman's "Give my regards to Eighth Street" where he talks about his own pieces and Rothko paintings - it's post-modernism in that it removes representation in art itself. But it is still emotional stuff - like Feldman's first String Quartet - that's damned moving stuff, right? Although it's definitely 'post-representational'? I'm only going on the Feldman tangent because, given that you like the JLA piece, you'd love the Feldman book, if you haven't already checked it out.

To be honest, you're probably right: that would be a better piece for the film than the Walton. By some measure. I'd still prefer the Walton over the Zimmer. I'd prefer the JLA over the Zimmer by some margin. Good call, definitely. I think what I was responding to (and where post-representational music might struggle) is Nolan's obsession with the big musical 'reveal' of the film; it's something profoundly, intensely 'representational' in all of its meanings, and the film, the score, and the presentation of that material struggles under the weight of that, don't you think?

 

Good point. It's really daunting, honestly -- learning to write decent songs (that I'm happy with) is an arduous enough task already. I agree that many aspects of music can be picked up intuitively, but I haven't been composing and studying classical pieces since I was 5 so I've long ago thrown away the pipe dream of being truly competent without training. I'm again, though, finding that while true long form may be difficult to come by in the "modern" film age (LOTR notwithstanding), the concepts certainly apply broadly, which leads me to...

this. I definitely agree -- I didn't pay really close attention to scores until I was around 11 or 12 I think, and Hans' The Last Samurai score was (I think) the first film score I bought a few years later (though I don't think it's something I often fully listened to start to finish the way I did the LOTR score). While I did grow up with a large variety of classical music, as well as Star Wars (which didn't strike me that much emotionally for whatever reason, as much as I liked it) and LOTR, I really found video game music stuck with me. While I'm not aware of any game scores that are truly long form, I do think even certain old games do much more interesting things with harmony and thematic development than a great many of today's film scores. I'm not sure the medium often leads to true long form structure, but many themes I've come across growing up were really quite memorable and many of the various pieces referenced each other and built upon one another. While many games are still coming out with newer iterations, I do find it interesting that i.e. the Legend of Zelda orchestra has had a sold-out tour for 5 years now, featuring music from games that are 30 years old.

Speaking of which, I was reading the "film school" class will cover story in general, as it applies to all mediums. Will you go over applying these concepts to games at all, i.e. interconnecting pieces that aren't structure in a linear fashion?

 

High Greg
It's funny that you said that because that's exactly what I said in my head.....Dark Knight 3.5 or what ever iteration of the same idea we're in. It is absolutely fair to say if that's the first thing you hear. I haven't seen the movie but I listened to the track and there is no way to avoid the DK comparison. It's just a branch from the same tree and that's OK if that is your brand of Scotch.

I think one of the problems is that we have come accustomed to the idea that intensity = tension. We have fallen to the idea that only way to create cinematic tension is to crank up synth patches and open up that sweep filter. We've forgotten that there are a million different ways to create tension. Horner changed the game with Aliens, Adagio for strings was very effective in Platoon, as was Ride of Valkyries for Apocalypse Now. The Normandy landing and the bridge battle in Saving Private Ryan are as intense as it gets and the actual LACK of music added to intensity.

Nolan is a great film maker and Zimmer is the best at what he does but they are both pulling from a somewhat limited pallet. To the same degree, those of us in the "melodic" camp are pulling from a limited pallet in that we wouldn't know how to effectively make that sound.

I'm not saying one is better than the other (that is a matter of taste). I am saying that both are possible. I couldn't see a Sousa type march being effective in a 2015 modern sci-fi epic but JW pulled it off in Episode VII and it was effectively "intense" in serving the drama and context of the film.

Never underestimate the genius of the artist.

Cheers.

 

@Gharun Lacy Thx for the reply.
Discussing alternative scores is really interesting. Since this picture is so subliminal in story and more like an experience instead of a narrative. I understand Nolan wasn't trying to be grandiose with his version, because he wants the reality of the events to carry the weight. But the lack of character development or even trying to make you give a shit about any of them is where the film falls short for me. A score like Adagio, or Agnus Dei, or whatever else would seem pretentious in this context cuz the movie just isn't made for that in my opinion. That also means the entire film is pretty forgettable outside of the hour and a half thrill ride of tension.

Samuel Barber would have certainly made the movie his bitch, would love to have seen something like that. His score + Nolan's visuals, and a few title cards. Like a silent film on a whole new level.

 

I think the Kool-Aid is working.

Watched a few random films the last few weeks (and listened to a few game scores) and while I'm getting awfully tired of the more generic big-budget films, I also find I'm growing quite tired of "sound design" scores like some of those mentioned previously. I'm also not one whose favourite music is usually, if ever, whistleable, but having memorable melodies and harmonic progressions are absolutely the core of all my favourite music (at least in a "full score" or "full record" sense), almost without exception. I'm finding that going back to the "sound design" composers/scores that made such an impact on me makes me realize that all of them had a strong melodic chops with interesting/progressing harmonies that are instantly recognizable. It really is the pencil of a drawing, and as much as I love colours, colours without form tend to be fairly forgettable, especially in a sea of them.

I think "like what you like" is a good principle too, and the narrow band at the top of "what is best" tends to be extremely debatable (i.e. LOTR vs Star Wars) and often a silly and artificial comparison, but both the most mentally challenging (to grasp and accept) and beneficial aspect of Mike's classes and emphasis has undoubtedly been the idea of treating film/game music like a story -- it must be cohesive on its own and relate to itself, rather than falling simply into the category of "sound design". Doing this requires memorable themes (obvious or subtle) and repetition through development. There are scores which do this obviously and operatically in a borderline "over the top" manner (i.e. Star Wars, which happens to be fitting to the films), and those that do it more subtly.

Debates about composers can go on forever. Zimmer's "Last Samurai" score did have a huge impact on me when I first saw it, and despite it not being a heavy leitmotif score, I found many aspects of the score memorable and still do to this day despite not having listened to it for considerable stretches of time. Other scores he's done I can't really remember, despite them working well in the film. I again think this is largely due to the aforementioned. Does that matter? I don't really know -- I think that comes down to preference of "what do I want to accomplish". I do see the obvious value in incorporating development and themes even in a "sound design"-y score though, and I absolutely see the value of being good at it, despite it being difficult -- I think a simple example I really enjoyed was Martin Stig Andersen's score for "Limbo", which is about as ambient, simple and sound-designy as one can get with a score. I also agree that far and away the "best" (in my opinion) and most highly regarded pieces of music throughout time tend to be both accessible and complex, recognizable, unique in colour (instrument/production and harmony), and containing simple and memorable melodies somewhere in the music. This is the case for even the most obscure metal I own.

 

You and I have similar taste Rohann. I remember watching The Last Samurai in my teens – was the first time I noticed film music manipulating my emotions. I could feel it guiding my thoughts, and I liked it. I had a similar experience playing Limbo. That game is a masterclass in game audio. In terms of music theory, sure, it's simple. But under the hood is a sophisticated design. And the implementation is remarkable. Inside was even better!

Of course, we're talking about music here, not sound design. And I imagine this is the crux of the frustration in arguments here (and on VI). When modern listeners think of media music, they tend to think of sophisticated sound design and not melody, rhythm or harmony (I'm generalizing). This is likely frustrating to composers who've invested years mastering their craft. Sound design is a different art form with it's own rules. Yet you can use it to tell a story. You can also create long-form structured horizontal development, the kind Mike emphasizes, but with sound effects.

Is it as sophisticated as long form musical development? Probably not. It's newer. And technology has lowered the price of admission for both music and sound design (a good thing). Though it keeps me up at night thinking I may be devaluing the craft by focusing too much of my energy on getting the sound design aspects of my music right and neglecting to preserve the traditions of our ancestors. I don't want an industry where the John Williams's are the rarest of exceptions.

But.

In so many of these debates, all I hear is dogma. "This is the way it's been done, so we should keep doing it that way" or some variation. This is not a good philosophy for progress. Blindly doing things you were taught because "tradition" is how to write music with no identity or perspective – which is as interesting as listening to paint dry. Reminds me of a Mark Twain quote:

College is a place where a professor’s lecture notes go straight to the students’ lecture notes, without passing through the brains of either.

Supplementing ideas of the masters with your own creates new and interesting possibilities. We should aim to be chefs, not line cooks.

And I think I understand your overall point Mike, that you're interested in writing music that people can take with them in their brains. I think everyone here wants that in some fashion. And through that lens, sound designy scores are less memorable – it's hard to hum cool sound textures. Which makes it harder to take with you when you leave the theater. But the experiences they instill in people are not "forgettable". Some composers can't create that experience to save their life, even if they can write 'memorable music'. And maybe someday, our ears will be sophisticated enough to recognize sound design patterns as fluently as we do music.

 

I've studiously avoided seeing or hearing anything from Dunkirk - but I am working in London for a couple of days and am going to see it in 70mm iMax tonight. Beats the hotel bar.....

looking forward to this - the soundtrack has been hyped massively in the media - so I expect it to be good.