# The Most Innovative Film Composer



## dcoscina

I'm curious who our forum members could classify as the most innovative composer in film music history. only 1 choice available. It's a tough one to be sure.


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## dcoscina

For the record, Goldsmith was a very close second. Herrmann did something that rocked film music- he broke free of the symphonic format paradigm that was omnipresent for decades. With the recorded medium, he realized he could score for unusual instrument combinations that would not work in a concert hall setting. He also employed motivic/cellular/minimalist ideas to serve the dramatic narrative effectively. A colossal, brilliant composer. He also had his own "sound" and harmonic vocabulary that is still copied today.


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## Reid Rosefelt

FYI, there’s a typo. It’s Miklos Rozsa.


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## dcoscina

TigerTheFrog said:


> FYI, there’s a typo. It’s Miklos Rozsa.


Damn, my stupid spell check messed that up. Cannot seem to go in and fix...


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## lux

what do you mean by innovative?


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## dcoscina

lux said:


> what do you mean by innovative?


That went outside convention to break new ground.


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## nolotrippen

You might also add Franz Waxman and Arthur Bliss, their Bride of Frankenstein and Things to Come are early stand outs of what film music could be.


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## GNP

You mean when they're hot, or when you're sick of them? Lol

Once you strip away all the rhetoric of "innovation", "innovation" ultimately boils down to the essentials and necessities. It's the kind of stuff where by we can get sick of them, but their nails and bolts are still holding the "new" bridge.

Time gives birth to innovation, therefore, innovation rots with time. Happens for every "up-and-comer".


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## lux

well I was asking as basically it changes everything wether for innovation you mean orchestration (how typical ensembles are used), harmony (unexplored or just less common harmonies), the ability to blend different ethnic flavours musically, using uncommon instruments, using common instruments in an uncommon way, blending pop culture with classical background, blending electronics...

On a very personal standpoint I find hard to define innovative a composer without knowing my starting point. Most choices are very innovative on some aspects and very typical on others.


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## jononotbono

Hans Zimmer is the most innovative for me.


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## ThomasNL

Hans Zimmer, and lately ya boy Ludwig Göransson obviously!


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## Aenae

Either Toru Takemitsu or Alex North - nobody else comes close in my assessment. Bernard Herrmann comes in at #3 for me. As you say, Herrmann was one of those rare film composers used unique instrumentations and things like that. But so did North and Takemitsu. All three of them also invented their own unique musical language obviously.

Some of Takemitsu's scores from around the middle century were genuinely groundbreaking and expanded our sense of what film music could be. I haven't gotten around to familarize myself with all of his film music innovations, but I think he was for example maybe even the first composer who integrated his own field recordings into his film scores. That's not to mention a landmark score like Kwaidan which was groundbreaking.

North's A Streetcar Named Desire was one of those genuinely groundbreaking scores - perhaps even the first jazz-based score ever even.

Some of the film composers you list don't even belong in the conversation in my opinion.

John Williams for example is largely no innovator, it has never been one of his strong suits.

One important innovator in film music which I expected to be included is Leonard Rosenman. He was one of the first film composers to break the romantic mold with his serial/Americana music. I believe his score for The Cobweb was the first mostly 12-tone score and there are other scores of his that are innovative also.


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## CT

I think it has to be Hans for bringing the "studio" process into film music in a more major way than before, which I think is a bigger deal than any of the new ideas others brought to what was essentially still a purely acoustic, traditionally recorded approach. 

I was going to cite Thomas Newman for this but it seems like Zimmer maybe got there just a few years earlier. Although maybe Ennio was there even earlier....


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## dcoscina

Aenae said:


> Either Toru Takemitsu or Alex North - nobody else comes close in my assessment. Bernard Herrmann comes in at #3 for me. As you say, Herrmann was one of those rare film composers used unique instrumentations and things like that. But so did North and Takemitsu. All three of them also invented their own unique musical language obviously.
> 
> Some of Takemitsu's scores from around the middle century were genuinely groundbreaking and expanded our sense of what film music could be. I haven't gotten around to familarize myself with all of his film music innovations, but I think he was for example maybe even the first composer who integrated his own field recordings into his film scores. That's not to mention a landmark score like Kwaidan which was groundbreaking.
> 
> North's A Streetcar Named Desire was one of those genuinely groundbreaking scores - perhaps even the first jazz-based score ever even.
> 
> Some of the film composers you list don't even belong in the conversation in my opinion.
> 
> John Williams for example is largely no innovator, it has never been one of his strong suits.
> 
> One important innovator in film music which I expected to be included is Leonard Rosenman. He was one of the first film composers to break the romantic mold with his serial/Americana music. I believe his score for The Cobweb was the first mostly 12-tone score and there are other scores of his that are innovative also.


Alex North, yes! But to the younger generation, I doubt his prowess would be digestible. It was heavily complex and at times, had an almost disregard for the action on screen. the music of course, was incredible. 

I love his score to Dragonslayer. Everyone goes on about Goldenthal using tone clusters in film music but North, Goldsmith, Rosenman, even Humphrey Searle (the Haunting) were using them decades before...


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## Loïc D

I voted Herrmann because of his approach of music as a character and not purely underscoring.

I don’t really consider innovation in a technological way.


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## José Herring

For me Ennio Morriconne is the one that broke most of the conventions of film scoring and created music that you wouldn't expect in a film. His scores are not only great scores but in some cases timeless masterpieces.


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## Dave Connor

Goldsmith in his time and Zimmer in his.

Both crossed into a sound design or _music concrete _area that has nothing to do with the orchestra or _any _traditional instruments. Both incorporated synthesizers as the fundamental basis of the score as opposed to addition to the orchestra (although both have done that considerably as well.)

I see a score such as The Last Samurai in the direct lineage of Tora Tora Tora as both used ethnic instruments traditionally as well as inventively: i.e. both were _innovative _in a similar fashion in these and other scores.


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## tonaliszt

Forget film music - Herrmann was one of the most innovative musicians in general in the 20th century!


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## Niah2

That's a tough list indeed.

I voted for Elliot Goldenthal, not sure if he is the most innovative but he is definitely one of my favourites. Also would like to mention Herrmann, Goldsmith and Morricone which I find definitely innovative.
I agree that Williams may not be in that category but he is great of course.
Think Zimmer in pretty daring in terms of production and sound design. Toru's work is also very exquisite.


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## Wally Garten

I voted Herrmann (and considered voting Morricone), but I think we should also tip the hat to Scott Bradley and Carl Stalling, both of whom did a lot of groundbreaking work in what might be called "collage" composing -- a constant shifting of musical styles and ideas. Here's some of Bradley's work being performed by an orchestra:



I would also mention Wendy Carlos' synth work and Lalo Schifrin's jazz-fusion-inflected scores as innovative.


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## Gerbil

Mauricio Kagel.


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## Ned Bouhalassa

For moi:
B.H.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

Everybody else


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## mscp

Overall, based on the list...Herrmann for sure.


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## SergeD

José Herring said:


> For me Ennio Morriconne is the one that broke most of the conventions of film scoring and created music that you wouldn't expect in a film. His scores are not only great scores but in some cases timeless masterpieces.


Sergio Leone would maybe add that he also broke the rules on how to make a movie. The western ones are unique as they probably the only ones that you listen instead of seeing a movie.


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## dcoscina

SergeD said:


> Sergio Leone would maybe add that he also broke the rules on how to make a movie. The western ones are unique as they probably the only ones that you listen instead of seeing a movie.


Leone owes a huge debt to Kurosawa and his samurai westerns. I’m told his Fistful of Dollars was so close to Yojimbo that there was a law suit filed.


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## givemenoughrope

I'm not sure one is thee most innovative. I just wish their respective innovations stuck around and were built upon instead of being museum items now.


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## SergeD

dcoscina said:


> Leone owes a huge debt to Kurosawa and his samurai westerns. I’m told his Fistful of Dollars was so close to Yojimbo that there was a law suit filed.


Well, everybody knows that a soya western doesn't make sense, instead of a spaghetti western


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## asherpope

More recently, Mica Levi and Christobal Tapia De Veer


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## NoamL

Film scoring is barely 100 years old... there will be innovations in the future that make current scoring practices seem old fashioned, I am sure!

So far in those 100 years the biggest innovation is breaking free of using _exclusively_ traditional western instruments. Ennio Morricone most represents that idea IMO. I'm not as familiar with Takemitsu as a film composer should be...

I don't see Hermann, Korngold, Steiner etc as innovators. They brought the language of western concert music into film, but every innovation since then has been a step away from that, so in retrospect they seem very traditional and formalist.

Then there are composers like Rosenmann, Raksin, Bernstein, who were innovators for their time but now their music feels very stuck in a midcentury feeling, so far that reason it's hard to include them in the list.

John Williams is one of the least innovative composers on the list, also one of the best. Funnily he once said that if his film career didn't take off he would have been a concert composer continuing the sort of music he wrote for _Images_.


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## Tanuj Tiku

NoamL said:


> Film scoring is barely 100 years old... there will be innovations in the future that make current scoring practices seem old fashioned, I am sure!
> 
> So far in those 100 years the biggest innovation is breaking free of using _exclusively_ traditional western instruments. Ennio Morricone most represents that idea IMO. I'm not as familiar with Takemitsu as a film composer should be...
> 
> I don't see Hermann, Korngold, Steiner etc as innovators. They brought the language of western concert music into film, but every innovation since then has been a step away from that, so in retrospect they seem very traditional and formalist.
> 
> Then there are composers like Rosenmann, Raksin, Bernstein, who were innovators for their time but now their music feels very stuck in a midcentury feeling, so far that reason it's hard to include them in the list.
> 
> John Williams is one of the least innovative composers on the list, also one of the best. Funnily he once said that if his film career didn't take off he would have been a concert composer continuing the sort of music he wrote for _Images_.


Noam, while I agree with some of your points, you are missing something. You are talking about the music and/or how innovative it was. But, we are discussing film music, no? 

Discounting Bernard Hermann and painting him out as not an innovator is a huge mistake. We are talking about film scoring and Hermann's contributions are immeasurable. How he scored to picture, the kind of music he wrote for characters, situations were totally innovative in the context of film. 

Again, John Williams is not the least innovative - IMOH. I think that statement does Mr. Williams a huge disservice.

I would say that there have been many innovations along the way - from the music itself to how it was recorded/produced, scored to picture or edited, the metaphorical exploration, structural aspects and how music has been used for storytelling and even how much contextual music, film can tolerate while still conveying the story. There is some very heavy lifting that has happened in the past.


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## Ned Bouhalassa

Thanks for that Tanuj. After all, we’re not talking about concert music. If we were, then Stockhausen, Varèse, Schoenberg, and others would top the list. We’re talking film music here.
PS: part of Herrmann‘s innovation was in his choice of instruments/arrangements.


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## wilifordmusic

I think perhaps Bernie's biggest asset and eventual downfall was his insistance on doing it his way. 
He was always willing to kick up a big stink if he thought his music was getting short-changed. It didn't matter if it was substandard musicianship or a director who screwed around with his music.
Bernie always stuck to his principles.


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## JohnG

Aenae said:


> Toru Takemitsu


my second, although not sure if I could really justify putting him behind anyone.


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## Reid Rosefelt

dcoscina said:


> Leone owes a huge debt to Kurosawa and his samurai westerns. I’m told his Fistful of Dollars was so close to Yojimbo that there was a law suit filed.


So much to unpack here. I apologize for derailing this thread by responding to this tiny remark, because I believe it cuts to the heart of Morricone's greatness and his importance to cinema.

First, without question Leone stole the _plot _for A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS from YOJIMBO. But in turn, YOJIMBO 's story owes a lot to Dashiell Hammett's "Red Harvest." George Lucas often talks about the story ideas he took from THE HIDDEN FORTRESS for STAR WARS. There are dozens of movies made from Kurosawa's plots, both credited (MAGNIFICENT SEVEN) or not. (Kurosawa also took the story of THRONE OF BLOOD from Macbeth, but what matters is he turned that plot into a 100% Kurosawa film.)

Leone's life's work was about deconstructing the classic Hollywood western. Leone came at the West with a European, much more cynical perspective. No good guys and bad guys. The taciturn cheroot-smoking serape-wearing Man With No Name character that Eastwood played was not a carbon copy of Mifune, in my opinion. Leone took the plot idea from YOJIMBO and used it to express his theme. His career wasn't about borrowing from Kurosawa, but about contrasting with a large canon of Hollywood movies, and he never again took stories from Kurosawa, or as far as I know, anybody.

And this is where Morricone comes into the picture. As Leone wanted to make the audience feel the story of the American West in a new way, Morricone's music sounded different from all the scores of those 40s and 50s movies. It's impossible to think of Leone without Morricone, and that's something that every composer should celebrate. It's not just that we can associate him so closely with a filmmaker, but that his music ushered in a whole new kind of movie.


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## dcoscina

TigerTheFrog said:


> So much to unpack here. I apologize for derailing this thread by responding to this tiny remark, because I believe it cuts to the heart of Morricone's greatness and his importance to cinema.
> 
> First, without question Leone stole the _plot _for A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS from YOJIMBO. But in turn, YOJIMBO 's story owes a lot to Dashiell Hammett's "Red Harvest." George Lucas often talks about the story ideas he took from THE HIDDEN FORTRESS for STAR WARS. There are dozens of movies made from Kurosawa's plots, both credited (MAGNIFICENT SEVEN) or not. (Kurosawa also took the story of THRONE OF BLOOD from Macbeth, but what matters is he turned that plot into a 100% Kurosawa film.)
> 
> Leone's life's work was about deconstructing the classic Hollywood western. Leone came at the West with a European, much more cynical perspective. No good guys and bad guys. The taciturn cheroot-smoking serape-wearing Man With No Name character that Eastwood played was not a carbon copy of Mifune, in my opinion. Leone took the plot idea from YOJIMBO and used it to express his theme. His career wasn't about borrowing from Kurosawa, but about contrasting with a large canon of Hollywood movies.
> 
> And this is where Morricone comes into the picture. As Leone wanted to make the audience feel the story of the American West in a new way, Morricone's music sounded different from all the scores of those 40s and 50s movies. It's impossible to think of Leone without Morricone, and that's something that every composer should celebrate. It's not just that we can associate him so closely with a filmmaker, but that his music ushered in a whole new kind of movie.


Not to keep side lining this but I always found Leone's true masterpiece was Once Upon A time in the West. Brilliant film.. Brilliant score.


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## dcoscina

Getting back on track, I found this marvelous doc about Goldsmith's score to The Mephisto Waltz. I never saw the film but it seems awfully dark and nihilistic.


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## Wally Garten

TigerTheFrog said:


> First, without question Leone stole the _plot _for A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS from YOJIMBO. But in turn, YOJIMBO 's story owes a lot to Dashiell Hammett's "Red Harvest." George Lucas often talks about the story ideas he took from THE HIDDEN FORTRESS for STAR WARS. There are dozens of movies made from Kurosawa's plots, both credited (MAGNIFICENT SEVEN) or not. (Kurosawa also took the story of THRONE OF BLOOD from Macbeth, but what matters is he turned that plot into a 100% Kurosawa film.)



Well, at least RAN was a nice, original story.....


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## dcoscina

Wally Garten said:


> Well, at least RAN was a nice, original story.....


hahah.. #kingLear


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## SteveK

dcoscina said:


> Getting back on track, I found this marvelous doc about Goldsmith's score to The Mephisto Waltz. I never saw the film but it seems awfully dark and nihilistic.



Wow looks like a Yamaha GX-1 in there as well. Very interesting video thanks


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## penfever

Carter Burwell


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## Jiffster

It's a great question but gosh the possibilities for definitive answers are far too broad! 

So many composers we know have innovated to some degree or other. That's what makes them great!

John Williams - 2 notes?
Thomas Newman - Instrumentation?
Goldsmith - Harmony?
Silvestry - Thematic melody?

What's awesome about reading through this thread though is how every post is making me smile at the thought of what the composers mentioned in them did 😀

Here's an example for me - I think about this chord progression every damn day...


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## jonnybutter

I can’t believe no one chose Prokofiev. He was very innovative for film and other word oriented language-music (opera, spoken word). ‘Alexander Nevsky’ is an outstanding piece of film music IMO.


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## Hoopyfrood

I haven't heard of a lot of these people which should be an indication of how qualified I am to give an opinion, but I think Danny Elfman should get some love, his soundtracks really are unique and include some of my all time favourites.


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## RogiervG

answer: they all did, in some form


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## dcoscina

Hoopyfrood said:


> I haven't heard of a lot of these people which should be an indication of how qualified I am to give an opinion, but I think Danny Elfman should get some love, his soundtracks really are unique and include some of my all time favourites.


Influencial? Perhaps. Innovative? Not so much. And I'm a big Elfman fan.


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## JohnG

dcoscina said:


> Influencial? Perhaps. Innovative? Not so much. And I'm a big Elfman fan.


I have to agree at least somewhat with @Hoopyfrood . His most popular scores are not so innovative, maybe, but are we neglecting "Dolores Claiborne?" (maybe I am too!) I remember at the time thinking, "wow -- that's not the Danny E we've heard before." And the daring it took to write Edward Scissorhands -- pretty audacious.

I think he's actually a musical genius, so I'm prejudiced, perhaps. Ok, and so are a bunch of the other people mentioned in this thread!


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## Hoopyfrood

JohnG said:


> I have to agree at least with @Hoopyfrood . His most popular scores are not so innovative, maybe, but are we neglecting "Dolores Claiborne?" (maybe I am too!) I remember at the time thinking, "wow -- that's not the Danny E we've heard before." And the daring it took to write Edward Scissorhands -- pretty audacious.
> 
> I think he's actually a musical genius, so I'm prejudiced, perhaps. Ok, and so are a bunch of the other people mentioned in this thread!


Also, can you really be influential without being innovative? You have to have done something to make people want to copy you. My fave of his is the Beetlejuice theme and I haven't heard anything like it before or since. Also four people picked John Williams, as talented as he is and as fantastic scores as he's written his whole appeal was that he was capable of sounding like the scores of the golden age of cinema.


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## JohnG

Hoopyfrood said:


> ....Also four people picked John Williams, as talented as he is and as fantastic scores as he's written his whole appeal was that he was capable of sounding like the scores of the golden age of cinema.


At his greatest, I think JW brought a heck of a lot more than that, but I still get your point.

Mr. Williams in some scores -- I'm thinking at the moment of "Minority Report" -- he brought together the best of the golden age yes, but a lot more intuition and playfulness than just that. There's that amazing piece when the mechanical spiders are set loose and it just comes out of nowhere, certainly not an homage to days gone by.


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## KEM

Ludwig Göransson, duhhhh


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## LamaRose

Goldsmith. The range/orchestrions of his scores is unequaled, imho. Sans Goldsmith, there is no Zimmer/modern composer. But Morricone is right up there too.


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## LamaRose

JohnG said:


> Mr. Williams in some scores...


Wiliams will be remembered far in the future where most others, unfortunately, will be forgotten... the brilliance of "simple" melody.


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## dcoscina

Okay folks, I changed the option to include your 3 choices! I couldn't really decide between Herrmann, Goldsmith and Prokofiev so I opened up the voting!


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## cmillar

dcoscina said:


> Okay folks, I changed the option to include your 3 choices! I couldn't really decide between Herrmann, Goldsmith and Prokofiev so I opened up the voting!


Those 3 composers for sure!

I love what James Horner did in his scores, and you can hear the influence of these 3 in a lot of his music....totally influenced by them right down to musical quotes that became part of Horner's 'signature'.

As Stravinsky said (?): "... a great composer doesn't borrow from others, he steals and makes it part of his own style" (....or something like that?)


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## I like music

Don't be sleeping on Goldsmith's mastery of a catchy melody. There's at least one per film (probably a couple for half of them) and the last time I checked, he'd scored some 500,000 films.


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## Project Anvil

I guess the answer depends on along which lines the innovation occurred. I voted for Herrmann because I was thinking of innovation in the sense of unusual orchestrations/combinations of instruments. If you measure along lines of technology and/or having a big impact of modern films then obviously Hans Zimmer should top the polls.

Problem is, I can think of a metric of innovation for each of the listed composers which would result in them being 1st. Now that I've given it some thought, I suspect the question is too vaguely defined.


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## MauroPantin

If you go back to who changed the game, I'd say that the golden era guys (Korngold, Steiner, Rozsa) fit that definition. Not just them, though, but that entire generation. 

Five or six years before those guys started you had live piano accompaniment for most films with very limited resources, just sheet music for "dark" or "comedic" moments and such, and nothing else. They invented a new language we still use everyday. Think of the risk Huppertz took when scoring Metropolis with leitmotifs. Or the difficulty of syncing the music to action as Steiner did for King Kong. Those things were oddities.

I also think it is fair to say that other people significantly shifted the medium later down the road. Schiffrin, Williams, those jazz guys. And Hans, more recently. He's possibly the most influential guy of the last 25 years, with Williams dominating the previous two decades before Hans started getting a lot of notoriety.


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## re-peat

MauroPantin said:


> They invented a new language


Nothing new about what the generation of Korngold, Steiner and Rozsa brought to film music. Musically, it’s all pan-European old hat. Gloriously beautiful old hat, sure, but old hat all the same.

The first wave of what could be perhaps be considered some degree of innovation occurs when non-European musical elements, like jazz, find their way into film music. But even that is, in nearly all the cases, little more than an appropriation of existing forms, styles and expressions which already had a long and rich tradition outside of (and prior to their arrival into) film music.

And it would remain like that right through to the end of the previous century: borrowing, assimilating and ruminating of musical accomplishments that were made in non-cinematic fields.

To me, the first time in its entire history that movies were given a musical language that was specifically created for the medium, is of a surprisingly recent date: it was the arrival of those non-melodic, electro-acoustic, soundscape-y, abstract, amibiguous textures which finally managed to break film music’s umbilical cord with European (symphonic and operatic) traditions, jazz, pop and the Broadway idiom. Many aspects of this style are also not new — lots of it was already present in ambient music and related genres —, but the discovery, exploitation and application of their dramaturgical power certainly was.

- - -

One other thing: there’s a name which hasn’t been mentioned thus far in this thread and which I feel deserves some credit here: Aaron Copland. As the architect of what might be called ‘orchestral Americana’, his _stylistic_ influence on the language of film music, particularly the established Hollywood variant, is difficult to overestimate. It’s, again, not particularly innovative in itself, but no less development-defining for it.

_


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## jbuhler

MauroPantin said:


> If you go back to who changed the game, I'd say that the golden era guys (Korngold, Steiner, Rozsa) fit that definition. Not just them, though, but that entire generation.
> 
> Five or six years before those guys started you had live piano accompaniment for most films with very limited resources, just sheet music for "dark" or "comedic" moments and such, and nothing else. They invented a new language we still use everyday. Think of the risk Huppertz took when scoring Metropolis with leitmotifs. Or the difficulty of syncing the music to action as Steiner did for King Kong. Those things were oddities.
> 
> I also think it is fair to say that other people significantly shifted the medium later down the road. Schiffrin, Williams, those jazz guys. And Hans, more recently. He's possibly the most influential guy of the last 25 years, with Williams dominating the previous two decades before Hans started getting a lot of notoriety.


There was in fact a whole industry for accompanying films in the silent era, and ensemble size varied from the single pianist or organist up to a full sized symphony orchestra. There likely never was a music industry as large in terms of the number of people employed as was the case in the 1920s.

Scores were often commissioned for opening runs of films (like Huppertz score for Metropolis) and sometimes travelled along with the films on road shows (as far as I can tell this did not happen for Metropolis, and Huppertz’s score was not heard in the US until the restoration of the film). Beyond that there was a lot of library music written that was used by individual theaters to accompany the films. This photoplay music was catalogued by mood and was available for various ensemble sizes, including full orchestra. There was a lot of it produced and it continued to be used in films and radio through the studio era. Some of it formed the basis for catalogs that would be developed for television music.

The first generation of Hollywood composers was drawn from the ranks of music directors of picture palaces (Riesenfeld, Rapee), composers of photoplay music (Zamecnik), and so forth, but also and especially from the ranks of music directors, arrangers, and orchestrators of Broadway (Steiner, Stotart, Newman). The latter proved more influential because they more easily weathered the big layoffs of composers that occurred in 1930-32. And it was around 1932 that accompanying music was moved to postproduction.

Some studios, Warner’s in particular, had been treating music this way from the start, but most recorded music as part of the production, with musicians on the set. Up to 1930 silent films were also being scored by studios, and in this case music was added in postproduction. So music was in most cases bifurcated into two departments, with music part of production for talkies, and it being part of postproduction for silent films. Most of the composers who had silent film experience worked on the silent films. And the talkies often featured songs, so studios hired composers, arrangers, and orchestrators experienced on Broadway to work on the talkies. You can see why the most versatile and well-connected composers hired from Broadway survived the layoffs in a way that wasn’t the case for those who worked on the silent side even though the latter were used to adding music in postproduction. They weren’t used to working on talkies.

Though composers for the talkies drew some from silent film procedures, and some from incidental music for the stage (especially melodrama) and opera, they also had to invent or heavily adapt many things. Underscoring is almost an entirely new discipline, similar in function to music in melodrama, but there the actor would perform to the music. Underscoring required music that fit in and around recorded dialogue, and on recording equipment that had a high noise floor and where sounds easily masked one another. Many instruments did not record at all well, so orchestration was very much a specialized skill. Synchronization was still hard when re-recording was required, and re-recording itself was a fickle process. Copland talks about Steiner’s invention of “neutral” music that percolated in the background without drawing attention to itself, so evidently music of that sort was perceived as novel. Yes, that generation really did invent something quite new.


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## MauroPantin

re-peat said:


> Nothing new about what the generation of Korngold, Steiner and Rozsa brought to film music. Musically, it’s all pan-European old hat. Gloriously beautiful old hat, sure, but old hat all the same.
> 
> The first wave of what could be perhaps be considered some degree of innovation occurs when non-European musical elements, like jazz, find their way into film music. But even that is, in nearly all the cases, little more than an appropriation of existing forms, styles and expressions which already had a long and rich tradition outside of (and prior to their arrival into) film music.
> 
> And it would remain like that right through to the end of the previous century: borrowing, assimilating and ruminating of musical accomplishments that were made in non-cinematic fields.
> 
> To me, the first time in its entire history that movies were given a musical language that was specifically created for the medium, is of a surprisingly recent date: it was the arrival of those non-melodic, electro-acoustic, soundscape-y, abstract, amibiguous textures which finally managed to break film music’s umbilical cord with European (symphonic and operatic) traditions, jazz, pop and the Broadway idiom. Many aspects of this style are also not new — lots of it was already present in ambient music and related genres —, but the discovery, exploitation and application of their dramatic power certainly was.
> 
> - - -
> 
> One other thing: there’s a name which hasn’t been mentioned thus far in this thread and which I feel deserves some credit here: Aaron Copland. As the architect of what might be called ‘orchestral Americana’, his _stylistic_ influence on the language of film music, particularly the established Hollywood variant, is difficult to overestimate. It’s, again, not particularly innovative in itself, but no less development-defining for it.
> 
> _


I agree in that it was not a new type of music, but (much like the electronic elements you mention later down in the post) they were brought into a new medium for the same type of dramatic exploitation. I am aware of the existence of opera, Wagner, et all, of course. But to put those in close sync with action and learn to "tread water" with underscoring while people talk is a different thing altogether. Tons of techniques and resources and tricks we still use to this day.

EDIT: Ahhh. @jbuhler beat me to the punch with a much more thorough and detailed explanation of the shockwave those guys sent across the industry!


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## re-peat

MauroPantin said:


> they were brought into a new medium for the same type of dramatic exploitation.


Again, I'm afraid I have to disagree. All the musical conventions, formulas and techniques that characterise the first few decades of film music were merely transplanted, without the slightest alteration, from the European opera and symphonic traditions into movie music. All the dramaturgical potential of this language was already well-known, fully tried and tested looooong before it entered film music.

_


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## jbuhler

re-peat said:


> Again, I'm afraid I have to disagree. All the musical conventions, formulas and techniques that characterise the first few decades of film music were merely transplanted, without the slightest alteration, from the European opera and symphonic traditions into movie music. All the dramatic potential of this language was already well-known, fully tried and tested looooong before it entered film music.
> 
> _


What was new was the cataloguing system, but that had been innovated in the silent era. I have found no published systematic catalogue until some tables of contents of moving picture house music anthologies and lists of suggestions by topic start appearing around 1913. Seredy publishes the Analytical Orchestra, a classification of the Fischer catalogue by topic, in 1920, if I recall correctly, and a number of similar volumes follow in the 1920s.

The form of photoplay music, with lots of repeats and frequent cadences, resembles salon and dance orchestra music more than theatrical music, because it’s designed for repetition and to be edited on the fly. Melodrama music, opera music, symphonic music was not well suited for the needs of picture work. Melodrama music was the best fit tonally, but its pieces were designed for intermittent use and generally too short for picture work. Opera and symphonic music had to be carefully edited or audiences would feel they were hearing a concert rather than an accompaniment to the film. None of this, of course, disputes the claim that the codes were firmly in place in such music, so the trick of the composers of photoplay music was to adapt these codes to a form that would fit easily to the film.


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## re-peat

I wrote the following several years ago for a different forum, but it goes a bit deeper into what I said earlier and what I consider genuine innovation in film music in recent decades, which is why I post it again here:

- - - - - -


(…)

What is happening these days on the other hand, is something entirely different and actually quite historic: by tapping sonically (re)sources of huge diversity (some musical, others less so), by exploring the dramaturgical power of non-melodic and seemingly non-musical ingredients and by diffusing the lines where sounddesign crosses over into composition and vice versa, scores are now able to nest much deeper inside the film than they were ever able to before. So deep in fact that, at times, the score, the sound fx and the foley (and sometimes even the dialogue) can blend and almost become one single, complex texture of great dramaturgical power and effectiveness (“Breaking Bad” is a strong example.)

Which is precisely why I believe that today, for the first time in film music’s history, dedicated composers have hit upon an idiom, a language, a grammar, a vocabularly that they can call truly their own. And not only that, but it’s also a language which is entirely created and fine-tuned to suit the medium for which it was developed, and no other. That is really quite new. Never before in the history of film music has this happened. (Even if it was already announced or germinating in the work of composers like Jerry Fielding and Michael Small, during the later 60’s and the 70’s. And, sometimes, Bernard Herrmann.)

Before, you either had neo-Strauss (Richard), ersatz Mahler, pseudo-Stravinsky, mock-Ravel, warmed-up Tchaikovsky, plagiarized Rachmaninov, mutilated Gershwin, simile-jazz, watered down pop, etc … but in recent years we have something else: genuine, 100% pure “musical sound for the cinema”. Less melodic and sometimes even completey devoid of melody, but, in my opinion, all the stronger and more effective for it: because of what it is and how it came to be, it is capable, in the right hands anyway, of serving today’s pictures much better than any traditional orchestral melodic score ever could. (I’m not saying we’re overflowing with great film music these days, I’m merely saying that today, film music has evolved in such a way that it reached a stage where it is much better equipped to serve the pictures of its age than could happen if one were to still use film music techniques of yesteryear.)

As long as film music was unable to cut the ties by which it remained attached to its many ancestral idioms, styles and traditions (opera, symphonic poems, ballet, musical, jazz, rock and pop), film music, as an artform, was always doomed to remain an imperfect, never quite fully developed species. But over the past decades or so, those ties got finally cut. Again, while lovers of ‘good, traditionally crafted melodic music’ may not like the result — and I do agree that we may have sacrificed a certain “intrinsic musical splendour” in the process — there is I think no denying that film and tv music (1) has now acquired an identity that is unmistakebly all its own, (2) needn’t any longer be applied according to old-fashioned ‘operatic’ conventions, and (3) has such a wealth of musical and non-musical resources at its disposal that ― provided these are applied with flair, talent and passion, of course ― it is far better suited to “become one with the picture” than was ever before possible in the entire history of movies.

_


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## Double Helix

I enjoyed going to movies a few years ago (not as much lately because of the extraneous noise), but I am by no means a film music historian. I voted for Jerry Goldsmith in the original poll, but if pressed to explain why he was "innovative," I would probably come up mumbling something about his attractive wife (widow). . .
However, I am glad to have read the recent posts that have outlined the history of film music--I've learned something today. This is an example of why I visit VI-Control.

@re-peat's mention of Aaron Copland reminded me of how much I have enjoyed his body of work (he studied with Nadia Boulanger, iirc); I cannot hear open fourths and fifths in any context without immediately thinking of him.

James Horner was not on the original list, but he would certainly be in my top five.


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## JohnG

Double Helix said:


> I've learned something today. This is an example of why I visit VI-Control.


Same here -- great discussion.

*Innovation? What Measure?*

Not sure exactly whether there's a disagreement or not; I think @re-peat is right to argue that nearly all the tropes of film music simply ape what already had been done in opera, tone poems, and similar programmatic music of (mostly) the 19th and early 20th centuries. I agree with him in arguing that such uses are not innovative at all, given that it's kinda-the-same -- same-sounding material, same orchestral scale, and same intention -- the same kinds of "sad" or "happy" tropes are used in much film music exactly the same as they were in opera and tone poems.

So I agree with @re-peat that film music shows very little innovation, really, at least measured that way.

*Most of Us Don't Know What We're Doing*

Moreover, whether because of ineptitude, the baleful influence of misguided directors/producers, or inadequate time (the great enemy of media composition), quite a lot of film music compares poorly to the original models. It's often feeble, warmed-over, pale -- whatever epithet for "mediocre" you want.

I believe that part of the reason we lionize those who, like John Williams, show dazzling mastery of all those old skills, lies with the innate genius and possibilities of the symphony orchestra itself. No matter how many times I hear an orchestra, I still get excited when I hear them noodling around and tuning up before a performance. 

The symphony orchestra remains one of mankind's great inventions, but there are precious few out there who really know how to wring out of it even 20% of what it can really do. There are plenty of reasons for that, but it's a loss.


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## Double Helix

JohnG said:


> *Most of Us Don't Know What We're Doing*


I thought it was just me. .


JohnG said:


> . . . I agree with him in arguing that such uses are not innovative at all, given that it's kinda-the-same -- same-sounding material, same orchestral scale, and same intention -- the same kinds of "sad" or "happy" tropes are used in much film music exactly the same as they were in opera and tone poems. . .


I wish there were some method to return to the prehistoric "ur-text," in the sense of the intrinsic human psychological makeup that--broadly speaking--makes a major chord "happy" and a minor chord "sad" -- how did we become so conditioned? (perhaps it's just that way for ol' subjective Double Helix)


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## South Thames

> Before, you either had neo-Strauss (Richard), ersatz Mahler, pseudo-Stravinsky, mock-Ravel, warmed-up Tchaikovsky, plagiarized Rachmaninov, mutilated Gershwin, simile-jazz, watered down pop, etc … but in recent years we have something else: genuine, 100% pure “musical sound for the cinema”. Less melodic and sometimes even completey devoid of melody, but, in my opinion, all the stronger and more effective for it: because of what it is and how it came to be, it is capable, in the right hands anyway, of serving today’s pictures much better than any traditional orchestral melodic score ever could. (I’m not saying we’re overflowing with great film music these days, I’m merely saying that today, film music has evolved in such a way that it reached a stage where it is much better equipped to serve the pictures of its age than could happen if one were to still use film music techniques of yesteryear.)



While I sort of see the point here, I find the argument somewhat specious. It's a weakness to disparage so much at the outset, without acknowledging it could just as readily be done for the kind of music you now appear to implying is somehow pure and fashioned perfectly for film -- 'ersatz ambient' 'second-rate minimalism' 'warmed-over electronica' etc.

The best exponents of all these antecedents in film wrote music that was clearly distinguishable from their antecedents --eg the film music 'value add' was clear and results were unmistakably filmic -- and well suited for the narrative and aesthetic conventions of the films of their time. Yes, today's narrative and aesthetic conventions are different, so composers respond differently, and again, in the right hands, can write stuff that becomes something clearly and unmistakably filmic. But there again, where a film's narrative and aesthetic conventions demanded it, film composers of the past could jettison the conventions you mention. Just as today's composers can just as easily reach back to those operatic musical conventions where the films demand it.


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## Dr.Quest

LamaRose said:


> Goldsmith. The range/orchestrions of his scores is unequaled, imho. Sans Goldsmith, there is no Zimmer/modern composer. But Morricone is right up there too.


Goldsmith always brought new things it seems. His Planet of the Apes score gave what is really a long Twilight Zone episode some depth and weight.


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## JohnG

Double Helix said:


> the intrinsic human psychological makeup that--broadly speaking--makes a major chord "happy" and a minor chord "sad"


I only met Tom Newman once but that's exactly the subject he brought up. I think he was quoting another composer, but he said almost exactly that -- "what makes music happy? sad?"


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