What is this trend in composition to make everything sound like a soundtrack? The concert we attended last night was Verdi, Beethoven, Smetana, and a piece by one of today’s composers that included (I’m not making this up) taps, a Scottish dance tune, and a lot of other mishmashed string, brass and tympani work that sounded like scenes from a movie (it wasn’t).
Like most of this stuff, it didn’t seem to have a purpose, nor did one movement seem to lead into another.
Are there any composers out there who are turning out symphonic music that will actually be remembered ten minutes from now?
What was the composer? (I’m guessing Corigliano)
Many of the idioms (and cliches) of film soundtracks have a direct lineage back to western orchestral music, particularly through American and America-based composers such as Copland and Korngold. But it sounds like what you heard was something different, which used (or attempted to use) these cliches in other ways - it’s called intertextuality, and the principle is that gestures, or sounds, or anything else can take on a meaning and purpose of its own through our common understanding of it. A ‘celtic-type’ tune evokes far more than images Irish or Scottish folk musicians, hence the Lord of the Rings soundtrack being stuffed full of them. However, in the wrong hands, it can become laughable or just silly. And if it was Corigliano, then this was probably the case. IMO 