- This topic is empty.
- Posts
elfman is a hero of mine, I adore the man and his work.
However, like EVERY OTHER FILM COMPOSER, he DOES get a substantial amount of help from orchestrators and editors.
Those who are claiming that he does everything himself on this discussion board are gravely misled.
His accomplishments, however, are in NO WAY diminished as a result of having help from people. Every film is a big job and composers NEED help on it. he works hard and does a great job and he should be respected and loved by the film community instead of shunned and criticized by it.
My Aunt is a major Television writer ( Murphy Brown, Love and War, My Sister Sam) and she recently told me that she once attempted to hire elfman for a project. Due to the fact that he charges a million .5 for every score, her budget for the project would not allow it, as it was for television and not the big screen. however, when you hire danny elfman, you are hiring his TEAM: That million 5 is split amongst the likes of Steve Bartek, Shirley Walker (now and then for her), and countless other helpers. You’re hiring Danny & co.
Danny, like I said earlier, is a great writer and musician, my favorite in fact, but people need to stop making him out to be a superhuman musician because he’s not. By HIS OWN ADMISSION he’s no Liszt or Mozart. It’s disheartening to hear people say things like “He plays 20 instruments”, which is simply, unequivocally not true. Danny should be respected for what he is, an AMAZING, EXCITING FILM COMPOSER, SINGER, SONGWRITER, AND BANDLEADER, NOT A GENIUS OF MOZARTIAN DIMENSIONS. thanks for your time and continued support for a beacon of light who illuminates a dying art (film composition)
DmW, 19 year old classical pianist, composer and musicologist, and loyal elfman devotee.
We never said that he does everything. What we don’t accept is when we hear things like “he hums a melody to his orchestrators and they do the rest”. That’s just inaccurate .
Of course, there’s an “Elfman team”; every composer has his team (or factory if we speak of Hanz Zimmer…hem…) due to the important amount of work they have to accomplish in so little time. It’s logical and we’re all aware of that kind of process.Nonetheless, Elfman still remains to me a fascinating composer, someone who can create emotions and touching music using all those instruments together; it’s as simple as that. No more no less. But there are not so many people able to do that if you ask me…
If Elfman isn’t a genius then I’m a garden hose.
I believe Elfman will go down in history with the greats, just like many of the great musicians have. That is not a falsity.
Many genius artists are not considered great artists until they’re dead and gone. It’s a damn shame…
well yeah, no one touches the greatest musical prodigy of all time who could hear every single thing in his head and just write it without anything but quil and paper and never need to make a single change or edit his work =p
but Danny DOES play a lot of instruments…just look at the Farewell DVD, and read interviews where he’s asked what he plays…he did a lot of percussion stuff for Oingo Boingo, obviously plays guitar and piano, trombone and trumpet, violin, etc. and you need to have that kind of background with all types of instruments to have a full understanding of what a score needs.
But yeah, if someone could write an entire movie score by themselves that really would be something, wouldn’t it?
and considering the salaries in Hollywood, a million .5 for each score isn’t that much considering his fame and status…especially once it’s all divided up.
lol….
edward bloom, i agree that its annoying to hear that he’s a ‘hummer’ (hanz zimmerman indeed
…. but NOT everyone is aware of the “process” you spoke of…but its also annoying to hear people bandying the word genius around like its a volleyball. and to ‘blue_rhapsody’, mozart wasnt the greatest musical prodigy of all time, and MANY MANY people can ‘hear the music in their head and compose all the orchestral parts.’ it just takes great development of relative pitch and practice and familiarity with orchestral instruments and ranges… by the way,Camille Saint-Sans and\or felix mendelssohn were the greatest musical prodigy(s) of all time, but his(their) development was somewhat stifled by a strong desire to cater to public taste at the expense of artistic development.
elfman has said himself that he’s not a genius. He’ll be remembered as one of the film greats, NOT one of the GREATS up there with beethoven, Brahms, Liszt, Chopin, Ravel, Debussy, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Mussorgsky, ect.. Hes great, GREEEAAAATTTTT, AMAZING, PHENOMENAL AND TOUCHING at what he does, but he is NOT an earth shaking artist, nor has he ever professed to be, and, contrary to mr. dantz’s views on many geniuses not being appreciated in their own time, there are PLENTY OF EXAMPLES of geniuses, like mozart, beethoven, and hundreds of others being famous, beloved artists en vogue in the 18th and 19th centuries.
All I was trying to say is that elfman himself would probably not be comfortable being placed up there with beethoven and the like.
I dont want to fight or get inflammatory and everyone is entitled to have their own opinion and views. thank you for allowing me to express mine
FYI, Danny Elfman hasn’t worked with Shirley Walker since 1992.
Ryan
I know ryan, i was simply trying to illustrate the point that elfman has members of a set team, even though shirley dropped off shortly after the ‘darkman era’, as i like to call it, considering that that is my favorite score EVER…
correct that, my fav score of all time is probably, believe it or not, planet of the apes, with darkman either a tie or a close second
Well, you gotta’ remember that Elfman himself will never admit that he’s one of the greatest artists of his time, unless of course he’s totally arrogant.
If he started composing symphonies (not for film) and orchestrating his own stuff, you think maybe you’d change your mind? I just don’t see why he’s any less of a great artist than all of the above names you mentioned just because he scores films. His music is just gorgeous, and to me, that’s all that matters.
Mr. Dantz-
I agree with you, to tell you the truth…
“His music is just gorgeous, and to me, that’s all that matters” is a great statement and more people should feel the way you do. I have these debates with my professors at college all the time, because many of these people think that film scoring and anything tonal and gorgeous is not art, these days.
I love elfman too. youre right, his music is just gorgeous. If he were to write a symphony, who knows? I’m sure you’ve heard that he will be doing a concert piece to be premiered in carnegie hall this january, so that should be really interesting.
you should read this article if you havent already:
http://oingoboingouk.tripod.com/openletter.html
its a response that danny wrote to a professor who accused him of not writing his own music and complaining that danny was self taught. youll like it… post back and tell me what you think
(just to chime in) … his response is awesome
isnt it, jess!
Yeah, I saw that many years ago. His response IS awesome!
I hate people like Rubenstein.
DmW’s talking nonsense, after years of study I can confirm that the Elfman lineage can be traced right back to the Mozarts. Eldest son Carl Thomas Mozart married into the aristocratic Elffmone family of Hamburg whose fortunes strayed into Spanish holdings which were invested heavily in the collonisation of the America, at which point the family name was changed to Elfman, and close connection was made with the Vivaldi family, hence the red hair and fondness for fast violin arpeggios.
Blunt,
former musicologist, composer of liesDmW, you’re making the huge mistake of trying to compare artists. I consider Elfman a genius. Does he have the talent of Beethoven ? No way. Does he need to have the talent of Mozart to be considered a genius ? Absolutely not.
I don’t use terms like “genius” or “masterpiece” too often to preserve their meaning. But if we can only apply them to people who died 200 years ago then, sorry, but that’s a very sad and limited way to conceive music; and that’s also the best way to miss the era you’re living in and only perpetuate basic knowledge from old and dusty books.
It’s like comparing Stan Lee to Emmanuel Kant or Joe Dante to Stanley Kubrick. It’s just pointless. Nonetheless, those guys are genius, each in their own way.
edward bloom, i will agree that comparing artists is a somewhat futile endeavor, however, mozart, beethoven and all those dead guys from 200 years ago are the measuring stick which we use to scale people accordingly to the musical spectrum of talent ranging from hack (Tausig, Hummel, Thalberg) to profound (Mendelssohn, ravel) to genius (Beethoven, Chopin). I don’t personally believe in this whole ‘genius in their own way’ thing, i believe that we must facilitate a universal definition (if possible) for genius. but whatever, to each is own. I love elman, and genius or not, he’s amazing and great. as mr. Dantz says “his music is just beautiful, and to me that’s all that matters”.
thanks for an interesting conversation
>>”I don’t personally believe in this whole ‘genius in their own way’ thing, i believe that we must facilitate a universal definition (if possible) for genius.”
Well, I think you’re fighting against human nature here. Good luck !
listen to tchaikovsky’s 5th symphony. danny could NEVER compose that, he’s simply not that that great a composer. he’s one of the best film composers without a doubt, but id say prokofiev, shostakovich and stravinsky were the only genius film composers. they created music that no film composer today cud ever write. however, danny did compose music that cud be considered better and even more complexely written than alot of classical music, particularly some baroque music and then even pieces by haydn and schubert. not every classical composer was a genius. neither is danny.
You guys speak as if the classical composers didn’t also have hordes of underlings. Hell, even your prodigy Mendelssohn went on to found the Leipzig Conservatory of Music, where I’m sure he gave hundreds of lessons. Musicians surround themselves with music and other musicians, and musicians, brotherhood as we are, are very inclined to help one another with music. If having a “set team” allows Mr. Elfman to crank out the spiffy scores he does, then woohoo for set teams.
Genius is entirely in the eye of the beholder. I’ve got friends who cringe at “The Rite of Spring,” but to me, no greater ecstacy exists. I think comparing Elfman, a 21st century film composer to someone like Mozart or Bach is ridiculous. Apples and oranges, kids. It’s like comparing Bruce Lee, who is a wonderful martial artist within his own right and field, to Sun Tzu, or any of the ancient Oriental masters.
I firmly believe that Danny is probably a better film composer than Mozart, for instance, would have been. Danny doesn’t have Mozart’s sheer talent, but he’s quite well adapted semi-popular, semi-classical action-filled music. As far as virtuosity goes, the world will never know another like Niccolo Paganini. If memory serves me correctly, he was tried, or at least publicly accused of heresy and commune with the devil because he played violin so well. And don’t call Hummel a hack. He wrote a very nice trumpet concerto.
>danny did compose music that cud be considered better and even more complexely written than alot of classical music, particularly some baroque music and then even pieces by haydn and schubert. not every classical composer was a genius
Careful here…
Hadyn and Schubert definitely *were* geniuses. There’s no point in comparing Elfman to classical composers. Statements like “considered better and more complex” etc. do not make any sense.
And: Baroque music can be extremely complex… just take a look at a fugue by Bach.
its not apples and oranges, rob veline
i refer here to your statement of danny being incapable of comparison with the masters.
he can be compared easily because the masters founded the styles which danny elfman emulates and revels in. he very clearly adopts a wagnerian sense of drama in his music, coupled with carl orff and hector berlioz. and you yourself have now compared danny elfman to mozart by speculating on which would have been the better film composer.
and we’re not kiddies
wow, DmW, you’re lame
Lol, no, he’s not lame but I’m starting to wonder what is he looking for. We all knew Danny has not the musical knowledge or genius of Prokofiev (though we also precise that comparing is a waste of time) and that he has a team helping him in his work.
It seems like he wants to teach us something we already know…Well, of course he’s a human being just doing a job that people seem to be attracted to…If it wasn’t him it’d be someone else, for sure. He’s no superman. If he was, his music would probobly suck. He’s better flawed.
Yeah, that, and teach us things which are wrong.
>very clearly adopts a wagnerian sense of drama in his music,
Yeah, people keep saying that since Batman. But Elfman didn’t even know Wagner’s music at the time he wrote that score.
>carl orff and hector berlioz
Like Flubber? A Simple Plan? Dead Presidents? Mission Impossible? Proof of Life? To die For? Come on, that’s pure Danny Elfman, nothing else.
Show me the Hector Berlioz influence in Danny’s music because I can’t hear any.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.