Classical Music : Composers compared to film directors

Composers compared to film directors

1. Bach = Hitchcock
Both had a workmanlike approach to their craft, and excelled at one style in particular (fugue, suspense). Hugely influential to those who came after them.

2. Beethoven = Kubrick
Made some obtrusive works for their time. Slightly less prolific than fellow artists but took great care in making each work and taking on large themes.

3. Haydn = Spielberg
Father of the symphony, father of the blockbuster. Both well respected and prolific.

4. Mozart = Coen brothers
This one may turn a few heads. Very, very skilled in the execution of their respective crafts. Works are embedded with an idiosyncratic sense of humor. Consistent output that is always original.

5. Brahms = Paul Thomas Anderson
Newer generation artist highly influenced by older styles and masters. Excels in the technical aspect, but works are sometimes criticized as being too intellectual or empty.

Re: Composers compared to film directors

Good idea for a thread.


Mozart = Coen brothers

Excellent.


3. Haydn = Spielberg

Never. Haydn = Capra maybe. Spielberg = Puccini


5. Brahms = Paul Thomas Anderson

I'd say Woody Allen is a closer match - Brahms and Allen are stuffy and proud of it, Anderson wants to be cool - though this is all just with respect to intent - as far as outcome, Brahms is one of the greatest composers ever, Allen is a minor artist, and Anderson sucks.


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Re: Composers compared to film directors

1. Beethoven = Kurosawa
Sidney Lumet called this one. Both artists were hugely influential in their respective forms on future generations in motivating a shift from Classicism to a more personal and dynamic approach. They both also shared a high-minded social consciousness which they sometimes stumbled over - but which also lead to some of their greatest work. Both had a very robust style in their primes, but then shifted to more contemplative and philosophical styles in their last works.

2. Haydn = Hitchcock
Both were consummate craftsmen who put out large quantities of work with little variation, but with a seemingly endless ability to rework that material in interesting ways. Much of the language of Classic Cinema was derived from Hitchcock, who in turn was carrying on the traditions of the German Silent Cinema, just as the language of Classicism was derived from Haydn, who in turn was carrying forth from the ground laid by Bach. Both lived long enough to see themselves become old fashioned, and both slowly declined after reaching a relatively late peak. Both became beloved public figures - as "Papa Haydn and as "Hitch", the host of Hitchcock Presents.

3. Mozart = Renoir
Both prolific and with frothy styles masking hidden depths.

4. Wagner = De Mille
Big, big, big. They both helped define the words "epic" and "gargantuan" for generations.

5. Berlioz = Welles
Both were stupefyingly innovative and talented, creating their most famous single work in their 20's, but then struggling for acceptance and understanding from an indifferent public after that. Both were brilliant Renaissance men with many talents. Both had tempestuous personal lives and tended towards self-destruction.

6. Copland = Ford
Both epitomized and codified in art the mythical American West, although they were politically and culturally night and day, and Copland only wore that mantle temporarily before casting it off for a more intellectual and "international" persona, while Ford did not.

7. Bernstein = Lucas
Both started out as wunderkinds, having a few huge early successes, but then squandering much of that potential after focusing on other pursuits - Lucas as a producer and businessman and Lenny as a conductor and lecturer. Their later creative efforts suffered due to this divided focus. Later attempts to tweak and improve their early successes (Lucas' "special editions" of Star Wars and Bernstein's "opera house" versions of Candide and West Side Story) were not accepted by the public. Needless to say, Bernstein was a much greater conductor Lucas than was a producer. What would the musical equivalent of Howard the Duck be anyway?

8. Webern = Kubrick
Both very cold, analytical and meticulously craftsmen with very small bodies of work, although Webern lacked Kubrick's showmanship and grandiosity.

9. Willams = Spielberg
This one's a no-brainer. Sunny and mostly optimistic poster children of Americana.

Re: Composers compared to film directors

Webern isn't cold, he's just played that way.


In Webern, Boulez is cool and detached. Chaste, you might say. His performances are supple and beautiful, which is terrific to hear, after so many others that are ugly and rough.

But there’s an element of the music I think he doesn’t get. In the Webern biography by Hans and Rosaleen Moldenhaur, you can read reminscences of a pianist, whom Webern coached when he played Webern’s Piano Variations, Op. 27.

Webern, in his coaching, wasn’t restrained or chaste. He aang and danced. He wanted dynamic and tempo changes to be big, and wanted some that aren’t marked in his score.

Quite the opposite of a Boulez Webern performance. And there’s musical documentation of how far Boulez seems to be from what Webern intended.

Webern made orchestral arrangements of some Schubert dances, originally written for piano. And there’s a recording of him conducting them. It’s included on the first Boulez recording of Webern’s commplete works, and it’s a remarkable performance, almost unique in how flexible it is, with so many tiny changes of dynamics and tempo.

On Boulez’s second complete Webern recording, he conducts these dances. And he’s worlds apart from Webern. Heavier, less flexible. He dances much less. I’m not saying that’s wrong or bad. But if you want to know how Webern thought music — surely including his own! — should go, his recording of the Schubert dances will show you.


http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/2016/01/memories-of-boulez.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6avxpj2LSg


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Re: Composers compared to film directors

Reminds me of Stravinsky's critique of Karajan's suave and cultivated 1964 recording of his Rite of Spring, which he hated: "Karajan is not out of his depth so much as in my shallows”.

Re: Composers compared to film directors

Never heard that before. Oh that's BEAUTIFUL!


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Re: Composers compared to film directors

I'd like to hear that recording, but they only have jumbled fragments of it on YouTube. Karajan's 1977 recording, which is apparently quite different, is up in its entirety.

Re: Composers compared to film directors

Eh, I'm 31, statistically probably have 50-60 years left to live, probably too short to justify listening to Karajan conduct Stravinsky.


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Re: Composers compared to film directors

His approach is more appropriate for Stravinsky's neoclassical works but ill-suited for the savagery of the Rite. I just listened to Karajan's 1977 version and didn't like it, so if the 1964 version is worse I won't bother seeking it out.

Karajan's reading of the Concerto In D For String Orchestra is not bad.

Concerto In D For String Orchestra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWw8YKXsfxw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEKMMnBfiRU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmUGDHGWa1k

Re: Composers compared to film directors

I like most of these, though I'm not sure if Kurosawa was quite as revolutionary and pivotal as Beethoven; it's probably as good a choice as any. I think both Haydn and Bach are good counterpoints to Hitch for different reasons: Haydn because Hitch was also one of the key proponents of solidifying the classical style; Bach because of how much a technical wizard he was. Mozart/Renoir and Berlioz/Welles are both inspired choices. Fonti may hate me for saying this, but Rules of the Game is as close as film has come to replicating the spirit and artistry of Figaro. I do think Ford is far better than Copland, though I understand the comparison. Webern/Kubrick isn't bad, but I honestly have a hard time finding a great match for Kubrick. He was a really fascinating mix of the mainstream and the avant-garde with a perfectionist's temperament. Webern hits on the last note, but not on the mainstream aspect.

Rabbit: It's rare that stupid doesn't bring douchedom with it.

Re: Composers compared to film directors

Nice idea, though re Mozart; since so many Coen brothers films consistently disappoint after promising starts or concepts, I can't really see the resemblance.

Who'd Wagner be? DW Griffith? Cecil B. DeMille? Neither seems good enough!

I'm trying to think of a David Lean-esque composer, but can't think of one that would have 'composed' both Oliver Twist & Lawrence of Arabia...

Re: Composers compared to film directors


Who'd Wagner be? DW Griffith? Cecil B. DeMille? Neither seems good enough!
If DW Griffith hadn't been run out of Hollywood I think he would've been the closest analog. As is it's tough to think of another filmmaker that captured both Wagner's grandness and his revolutionary formal ideas. Kubrick is honestly the first that comes to mind.


I'm trying to think of a David Lean-esque composer, but can't think of one that would have 'composed' both Oliver Twist & Lawrence of Arabia...
Verdi? Though Falstaff is really his only "light" work.

Rabbit: It's rare that stupid doesn't bring douchedom with it.

Re: Composers compared to film directors

Paganini = M Night Shyamalan

Re: Composers compared to film directors

If people still remember Shayamalan 200 years from now I'll come back from the grave and eat my hat.

Or 20 years...no resurrection (hopefully) required.

Re: Composers compared to film directors

Well it's not like people should be remembering Paganini's compositions either.


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Re: Composers compared to film directors

I can't say I really listen to him much myself, but the 24 Caprices (especially as played by Midori) certainly have something to recommend them, and he'll probably always be played as long as there are violinists around. Anyway, deserved or not, it is what it is.

Re: Composers compared to film directors

Two that came first to mind:

Mahler = Bergman
Both worked out their inner demons through their art in the most personal and grandiose manner possible, often to the point of self-parody where the sublime crossed into the silly.

Stravinsky = Bunuel
Both had a similar 3-period evolution: early avant-garde, middle neoclassicism, late (new) avant-garde.

May think of some more tomorrow (and comment on some of those already offered).

Rabbit: It's rare that stupid doesn't bring douchedom with it.

Re: Composers compared to film directors


Two that came first to mind:

Mahler = Bergman
Both worked out their inner demons through their art in the most personal and grandiose manner possible, often to the point of self-parody where the sublime crossed into the silly.

Stravinsky = Bunuel

Yes!!!


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Re: Composers compared to film directors


Stravinsky = Bunuel


Interesting! As much as I love both of them, I'd never have made that connection.

Also, both Bunuel and Stravinsky spent a good part of their life in exile from their native countries.

Re: Composers compared to film directors

Kind of want to say if Beethoven = Kurosawa, which seems reasonable enough, then Ozu = Schubert


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Re: Composers compared to film directors

Mizoguchi = Janacek

Both often focused on the inner lives of women and with an occasional penchant for fairy-tale/fantasy elements. Janacek is more "oddly Czech", just as Mizoguchi is "oddly Japanese", hence less popular than the more "international" Dvorak and Kurosawa, respectively.

P.S. I'm a huge Japanese film buff, but I'm ashamed to say I've never watched any Ozu. Which film would you recommend I start with"

Re: Composers compared to film directors

I'm neither enthusiastic nor well versed on the subject, so I'm not the person to ask, but Tokyo Story, I guess. Eva, you wanna step in here?


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Re: Composers compared to film directors


Which film would you recommend I start with
Tokyo Story is the obligatory first watch. Last Theyshootpictures list had it #5 of all time IIRC. Ozu once said Tokyo Story was his most popular because it was his most "melodramatic." There is some truth to that. It's more overtly emotional than most of his, though still restrained and artful by Western standards. My personal favorite is Late Spring, which I think is more quintessential Ozu-esque with how elliptical and subtly poignant it is, relying on absence rather than death to make its point.

I recall that I had a good discussion about Ozu over on the Evangelion board a while back in which I wrote an "intro" of sorts and had some good back-and-forth about him. One of the posters there archived the entire thread so I'll copy/paste what I wrote there for further reading/recs:

Most start with Tokyo Story and it's as good a place as any. My personal favorite is Late Spring, which is the first of what some call the "Noriko" trilogy--Late Spring, Early Summer, Tokyo Story. They're not really a "trilogy" in the traditional sense, but all three star Setsuko Hara as a girl named Noriko, but they're different characters. They are kind of the pinnacle of his "mature" style, and while he made masterpieces before (The Only Son, There Was a Father, I Was Born But...) and after (Floating Weeds, An Autumn Afternoon), those films are kind of the centerpiece of his oeuvre. If you want to watch a lot of his films, I'd recommend watching I Was Born But... from his silent period, then just going chronologically through the sound films starting at The Only Son. Once you've seen a few Ozu films you'll know precisely what one means by "Ozu-like" as he has as distinctive a style/tone/genre as any director ever. They're mostly films about family and everyday life, no heroes or villains. They're quiet, patient, never melodramatic, usually quite wistful and poignant. He's the embodiment of mono no aware (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_no_aware) in cinema.

...

An obvious predecessor to Ozu's Tokyo Story is Leo McCarey's Make Way for Tomorrow, and
given that Ozu was an aficionado of American cinema, I have to believe he saw it. Once when
asked about Make Way for Tomorrow, Orson Welles said "Oh my god, that's the saddest film ever made! It would make a stone cry!"

...

(mono no aware) just amounts to a kind of awareness of transience, of the wistful passing of time and how that makes us appreciate the things of the moment, rather than being too concerned about the past or future. In so many narrative films we're so focused about some future goal, what all the characters are after or trying to achieve. In Ozu, you're usually just meant to appreciate all the small moments, even if they are (imperceptibly) culminating into big moments, or something greater than the sum of the moments...

Ozu didn't seem capable of shooting anything unless he could find something of visual interest in the image, even if it was something as simple as randomly placing a red teapot somewhere in the frame (like in Equinox Flower), or creating frames-within-frames, or defining the edges and "shortening" the frame to place emphasis on characters. His symmetrical editing seems to emphasize his symmetrical shots as well...

As for the next Ozu film, if you plan on seeing most of them there's no reason not to go chronologically. If you want to hit all the highlights first and then maybe go back and watch the lesser ones, I'd go in this order:
1. A Story of Floating Weeds
2. The Only Son
3. There Was a Father
4. Late Spring
5. Early Summer
6. Tokyo Story
7. Floating Weeds
8. An Autumn Afternoon

These are what I'd consider the masterpieces and near-masterpieces. A Story of Floating Weeds is probably the weakest, but it makes for a great comparison with the later and superior Floating Weeds. Ozu "remade" (more like "used a strikingly similar scenario") several times in his career, so it's always interesting to compare the different takes. Late Spring is, eg, very similar to the (very good, but no masterpiece) Late Autumn, and I Was Born, But... is quite similar to Ohayo (which also has children first starting to question their parent's authority; though it's more an attempt at comedy). One caveat I'd mention, though, is that because of the similarity of Ozu's style, I wouldn't recommend watching too many too close to each other. I used to like to watch them after watching Bergman films, since the heaviness of Bergman and the lightness of Ozu were good counterweights to each other.


Rabbit: It's rare that stupid doesn't bring douchedom with it.

Re: Composers compared to film directors

Pretty good on the first two, but I object for the last three.

Spielberg was "co-father" of the summer blockbuster with George Lucas, but really there were "blockbusters" long before either; they just weren't quite as dominant; but big-budget spectacles go back to the origins of film. In any case, Haydn invented and innovated where Spielberg really didn't. Spielberg was thoroughly neo-classical in his approach to narrative form and style, while Haydn was the first classicist and was always experimental.

Mozart/Coens... I can't see it. Coen's humor is extremely dark, Mozart's is light and witty. Coen's are existentialists worried they exist in a nihilistic universe; Mozart is a humanist and (ultimately) a mystic that sees meaning everywhere.

Brahms/PTA only fits in the way you describe, but no way is Brahms "empty," and I've rarely heard him described that way. PTA may not even be the best neo-classical craftsman alive today; that may be David Fincher (who's so neo-classical he doesn't even insist on writing his own scripts!). Brahms is hard to find a counterpoint for, but I might go with Scorsese, who was a similarly virtuosic and versatile craftsman who also happened to achieve great art despite his strong influences.

Rabbit: It's rare that stupid doesn't bring douchedom with it.

Re: Composers compared to film directors


Mozart/Coens... I can't see it. Coen's humor is extremely dark, Mozart's is light and witty. Coen's are existentialists worried they exist in a nihilistic universe; Mozart is a humanist and (ultimately) a mystic that sees meaning everywhere.

Those descriptions are both wonderfully apt.

Where I see a similarity is in their producing works that are both "difficult" - enough that the connoisseurs in their own time complain about it a lot - and (sometimes) popular.


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Re: Composers compared to film directors

Honestly, I don't see much "complaining" about the Coens. They've been critical darlings since the beginning. Though there was some mild hand-wringing about the open-ended nature and irresolutions in No Country and A Serious Man, but more among common viewers than connoisseurs.

Rabbit: It's rare that stupid doesn't bring douchedom with it.

Re: Composers compared to film directors

One complaint I've seen leveled at the Coens more than once is that their films lack heart. Their films have so much dazzling virtuosity and sophistry that it smothers a deeper human message. I mostly don't agree with that, but I can kind of see where that criticism is coming from.

This reminds me of a similar criticism leveled at Saint Saens. So maybe we should be comparing Saint Saens and the Coens.

Re: Composers compared to film directors

It is true (to an extent) that The Coens have that Kubrickean/Bunuelian mentality of viewing humans from a distance in a way that exposes their flaws more than their virtues, and this is often seen as a more intellect-over-heart approach. Saint Saens isn't a terrible comparison, but I think even there his music lacks the dark intellectuality of the Coens. Saint Saens is also far more capable of sentimentality (slow movement of the Organ Symphony, eg).

Rabbit: It's rare that stupid doesn't bring douchedom with it.

Re: Composers compared to film directors

Some more:

Bruckner = Malick
Unfashionable Christians in secular times working on the grandest of scales, with odd juxtapositions between perpetual motion (Bruckner's motivic scherzos; Malick's camera/montage) and granitic, meditative stillness (Bruckner's adagios; Malick's Days of Heaven)

Chopin = Rohmer
Composers of small, quiet, beautiful miniatures (though Chopin is moody while Rohmer is more intellectual)

Tchaikovsky = Tarkovsky
Besides the Russianness, both were Johnny-come-lately's to their movements (romanticism & European art cinema) that had a tendency to mistake largeness for profundity (though Tchaikovsky is LOUD while Tarkovsky is considerably quieter). Though both had the capacity to capture luminous beauty in their best work.

Schoenberg = Godard
Pivotal figures in their mediums, both rejecting classical notions of composition/filmmaking and came to their work from a highly intellectual, theoretical background. Both continue to divide opinion on the value of their formal experimentation.

Mendelssohn = Hawks
Versatile, superb craftsmen who had an early period of masterpieces but whose quality weakened over time as they ceased to evolve.

Scriabin = Lynch
Very personal artists who turned their idiosyncratic personalities into nightmarish, dreamlike works.

Liszt = Wong Kar-Wai
Virtuosos whose work is often rapturously beautiful but too often bombastic and empty.

Palestrina = Dryer
Austere, spiritual perfectionists whose work is fraught with a paradoxical mixture of sensuous beauty and severe intellect.

Rabbit: It's rare that stupid doesn't bring douchedom with it.

Re: Composers compared to film directors


Schoenberg = Godard
Pivotal figures in their mediums, both rejecting classical notions of composition/filmmaking and came to their work from a highly intellectual, theoretical background. Both continue to divine opinion on the value of their formal experimentat

Oooo, counterintuitive!

I do think it's important to stress, though, that Schoenberg did NOT initially come to his work from an intellectual, theoretical background. In the beginning he was just a largely self-taught kid trying to be more Richard Strauss than Richard Strauss himself (and orchestrating operettas to put food on his table). His theoretical work began only after he got writer's block in the middle of writing Glückliche Hand in 1910 - that is, AFTER the first explosion of atonal compositions in 1909, The Book of the Hanging Gardens, the three pieces for piano, the five pieces for orchestra, and Erwartung.


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Re: Composers compared to film directors

In that case then the comparison is even closer as Godard did not initially come to his work that way either. He also in the beginning was an autodidact trying to be like the various American filmmakers he (and the other Cahiers du cinema crew) admired. His theoretical work just grew naturally out of his prodigious reading (especially Marxism) and growing disillusionment with the business (not the act) of filmmaking. At first he tried to express his frustration and burgeoning theoretical interests through "normal" (by his standards) narrative films--Masculin/Feminin, 2 or 3 Things..., Contempt, Weekend--but by the end of the 60s and through the 70s he abandoned narrative entirely to focus on his theoretical experiments. Though he did eventually come back to it in the 80s, while still remaining difficult and nigh impenetrable to most mainstream audiences.

Rabbit: It's rare that stupid doesn't bring douchedom with it.

Re: Composers compared to film directors

Well, Godard was a critic before he became a filmmaker. In that sense he's different from Schoenberg - though, come to think of it, similar to Berlioz.


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Re: Composers compared to film directors

True, but the critic Godard began as is different than the theoretician he became as he was more and more influenced by Marxism. The latter is really what lead to his metafictional critiques and ultimate rejection of classic conceptions of film narrative.

Wasn't Schumann a critic first too? Or did his criticism more-or-less coincide with his first compositions?

Rabbit: It's rare that stupid doesn't bring douchedom with it.

Re: Composers compared to film directors

I think Schumann started composing before he started writing criticism. On the other hand, as a kid he was into literature before he was into music. Anyway you're a genius - Schumann does feel kind of like Godard to me (as Schoenberg doesn't and Berlioz still less so) - the mix of quirky innovation and cheap popular culture, the college boy affect that never really goes away.


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Re: Composers compared to film directors

Yeah, but Schumann always had a far more neo-classical streak than Godard did even in the beginning, and he never completely broke away from it. Schumann was really the composer situated most squarely in the middle between the "War of the Romantics," whereas Godard was always a radical who just got MORE radical with time.

Rabbit: It's rare that stupid doesn't bring douchedom with it.
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