What's with the whole Celtic treatment in the How To Train Your Dragon movies?

[tonaliszt]

(03-05-2017, 02:20 PM)Mattias Westlund Wrote: Well... it's an animated movie about dragon-riding vikings who live on a fictional island in a fictional world. Wouldn't you say having celtic-esque music is pretty minor compared to that?

Just kidding. I know what you mean and I've wondered the same thing. Still... it's a fantasy world. I honestly don't know why they decided to call the protagonists "vikings".

IT'S A FILM SCORE!! Of course its not authentic!  That's not the point.   

John Powell has consistently delivered the best Film Orchestra + Extra Culture scores in recent years.  His recent piece that mixed gospel elements and orchestra music is stunning.  
It is difficult for me to name a film score that has better-blended world elements with orchestral film music.  

How many has someone used a taiko drum or Shakuhachi for every Asian film?  What about all the other Asian cultures and their instruments?

The more one understands a particular culture's music, the more one notices issues in film scores.  I assume that is the case here Otto. Being versed in Jewish Klezmer music myself, I find John Williams score to Schindler's List very confusing and out of place.

[Otto Halmén]

Yes, I'm absolutely considering this a pet peeve. Fantasy films and scores thereof can and should indeed be creatively eclectic and anachronistic, but certain elements can have rather powerful existing associations, and when those clash, it hurts the suspension of disbelief. It's also entirely possible that it's just me. Still, you don't hear any uilleann pipes in The Lion King, do you?

[Mattias Westlund]

(03-06-2017, 08:48 PM)Otto Halmén Wrote: Still, you don't hear any uilleann pipes in The Lion King, do you?

No, but I hear two pasty white European guys called Elton John and Hans Zimmer. How's that for authenticity?

[Otto Halmén]

Just to be clear: My original intention was (and is) to discuss this based on suspension of disbelief or immersion, not authenticity. If one prioritizes authenticity, I do not think one will be enjoying all that many movies to begin with.

As to The Lion King and authenticity, what's with all the talking animals?

[Michael Willis]

I tell you what, when The Emperor's New Groove started playing big band swing music, it really killed the immersive feeling of pre-columbian Maya civilization for me.

[Samulis]

Honestly I think movies have gotten too realistic, to the point of surrealism. I miss the days when film carefully balanced immersion and that nagging "you're only a watcher in a dimly lit theater" feeling (and also wrote actual plots and stories). Everything is too graphic, too explosive, too predictable; it's just gaudy and full of lens flare. The music itself is always there to blindly tell us what to feel (if that), rather than act as a lens into character or provide anything remotely memorable.

I don't think I can remember a film score theme since Lord of the Rings, but I can recall most of the older film scores from the 40s through 90's from memory pretty well (particularly catchy is the theme from The High and the Mighty, which I find myself whistling at least once a week despite not seeing the film for a year or so).

Besides, I think we should be focusing on the larger travesty- using the Cor Anglais to play the "Celtic" music in the opening of the first piece in How to Train Your Dragon! No person in good conscience would ever use a French instrument commonly mistaken as English to play Irish music pretending to be "Viking" music.

Let's look at some of the cultural goings-on and useless commentary in "This Is Berk" for example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNPIih4X7SA

0:00 - Maybe a little Elgar or something?
0:24 - Irish/"Celtic"... Is this LOTR I am watching by mistake?
1:00 - CHUGGA CHUGGA CELLOS TIME, BOYS! LET'S KICK OFF THIS STEREOTYPICAL HOLLYWOOD SCORE LIKE EVERY OTHER ONE!
1:11 - Irish "Epicness" (you see what I mean when I say "all epic music is either a Dance or a March" here, right?)
1:45 - Seems Russian or Balkans in character to me... off to the Gulag!
2:10 - ah, we're back to sweet ol' Ireland... catch the Uilleann Pipes?
2:20 - Back to Hollywood boys...
3:00 - Ireland, my sweet Ireland...
3:17 - Elgar would probably approve
3:28 - Now it's Pirate music*? English Sea Shanties it is...
3:40 - be very quiet, we're sneaking into an Elven fortress guarded by Nazis time-warped out of a 1940's WWII propaganda film...
4:00 - Magical Mysteriousness awaits!

*I should note that Sid Meiers Pirates! (2004) itself is set in 1620-1700, but the instrumentation and arrangements of the game was not available until the mid to late 19th century. The music at the time, as composed and performed in the New World along the Spanish Main, would have sounded more like-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPfwfxspyRA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKXORmI9q9s
(or like the English dances I linked the other day)

The reason "Pirates" are often associated with epic sea shanty-infused fanfare music is likely related the the Pirate films of the 30's, 40's, and 50's, such as Captain Blood and the famous Sea Hawk, both featuring scores by Korngold-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAMMgOtxISo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-RPzAbW7No

[tonaliszt]

I'm starting to get really concerned with the amount of hate against this score. It might be my favorite score of all time.

[Samulis]

(03-07-2017, 01:24 AM)tonaliszt Wrote: I'm starting to get really concerned with the amount of hate against this score.  It might be my favorite score of all time.

Hate? :/

If I hated it I would say so. As it is, it certainly is one of the nicer and more memorable ones from the last few years (although the scores to the Narnias were quite nice too... and I'm a sucker for the score to the first Percy Jackson film: despite the film being more or less utter garbage, it is a perfect deconstruction of late 90's/early 2000's scoring techniques). All of these examples are heads and shoulders above what has become the "standard" fare. When I started composing this score would easily have been a favorite; the problem is, I've learned a lot more and generally changed in tastes, so what was impressive and cool to me then has shifted to new pastures.

If one can't nitpick and question the works you admire, then one has not truly listened to the work. There is only one thing I hate in music and that is blind fanaticism. I do not believe in idols or idolizing works, it is highly counter-productive because it sets up an impossible environment to evolve your own voice (see all those thousands of Hans Zimmer knock-offs out there as to why one should not make heroes blindly).

It is not about the people to me, it is about the music, and even within a piece I admire, there is much to be analyzed and discussed. Deconstruction and understanding the "why" and "how" of the music one listens to, in particular, the music one enjoys, is the fastest and easiest way to learn what to do, and what not to do. For many, this naturally takes the form of transcription, copying, and arrangement, but it can also take the form of critical analysis.

For example, in the opening cue, surely one must agree that the piece transitions between a lot of different emotions and states, some of which conflict with each other (calm vs. strong). We may analyze how this is done- is it sudden? Is it soft? Is it modulatory? Is it done through the usage of repeated motifs?

Much of the score uses sharp contrast- soft sustains interrupted abruptly by accents or traced with the steady pace of dance-like rhythms. Sections more often jump than glide into each other. It is sharp, but never jagged.

Another common element is the use of polyrhythms, such as in "The Dragon Book", with a 3:2 of strings to percussion and others.

We must ask- where do the ideas come from? The truth of music is that nothing is original, everything comes from somewhere. We can look for inspirations across the realms of film and classical music that led to the themes and ideas of the score. Even if an actual origin cannot be easily unearthed, we can break down the music into tropes that help us identify musical influences.

As we start to build up a profile, we will be begin deconstructing the score in the process; this reveals new insights and often brings ideas forth. For example, I broke down the opening of Star Trek: Voyager and picked up a new chugga chugga cellos ostinato and some horn writing ideas. Your subconscious is always deconstructing the music it listens to, but it is very difficult to train your conscious to tap directly into the subconscious, and the subconscious isn't as good at "big picture" things. Consciously deconstructing works helps the whole process become smoother and more efficient.

Of course, we can also incorporate the composer himself in the deconstruction if they have a clear enough style. John Powell is an English composer and occasionally his music shows this. Take a listen to this piece by Arnold Bax, another English composer-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGyyrGfqEDY

Or how about this part of Stanford's "Irish" Symphony, which despite being nearly 140 years old, has a similar atmosphere and melodic content to some of Powell's material-
https://youtu.be/sJ71SCI6ua0?t=829

In a way, Powell has blended the modern in with the old into something that is very interesting.

(of course, we can't finish a discussion on John Powell without mentioning the markedly bigoted American of the same name who just so happens to have written some very nice music between the white supremacy and amateur astronomy that otherwise kept him busy)-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj0WWQe8hgM

THAT John Powell also blended the old in with the new... using the techniques of the Late Romantic to express relatively ancient folk songs from the hills of Virginia that also held their origins in the country dance music of Elizabethan England.

[tonaliszt]

Thanks for the interesting post, Sam.

"If one can't nitpick and question the works you admire, then one has not truly listened to the work. "

However, I can't really agree with this. For me, the more one analyzes a work of art, the more one loses the connection to the audience of the work. There is much more power in music that one doesn't fully understand. It is the reason that so many composers rarely listen to their own work. It's not that it is bad, music loses a lot when one understands everything that is going on. For example, composers use quick harmonic changes to disorient the audience, by playing more information than a person can understand at one time. If one has analyzed such music, one becomes detached from the original experience, which made it so appealing in the first place. So while I do transcribe and study pieces of music, there are certain pieces where I'd rather retain the "audience experience" rather than the "analyst experiance."

I have spent some time studying Powells music in general, and was surprised at the connections you found, which are different than mine. I've always found Powell to be similar to Vaughn Williams (Although, we do agree on the british classical element). For example, the Phantasy Quintet is a great example of Powells harmonic ideas.

In addition, Powell has a lot of influence from latin and Cuban music, both rhythmically and melodically. His slow choral writing is very distinctive, and he is certainly biased (not in a negative way, but just a trait of his) towards piano elegies.

[Samulis]

I don't listen to my music much either, but only because it puts me to sleep!