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I am a composition major from Miami. Last year I composed a piece for piano and string quartet following the Western musical tradition. I corrupted it with some weird sounds and a sort of happy silly melody with dostorted chords. One of my music professors said to me “That’s cool, it sounds like Danny Elfman’s style” -Who is Danny Elfman? I said , since at school they teach you only about Motzar, Beethoven and the other Europeans. Well I checked is music out and of course, I had seen Batman as a kid. The guy is incredible. As a music student and aspiring composer i would love to learn Elfman’s compositional techniques as much as the ACADEMICAL ones. I think that his music is as amazing as Stravinsky’s or Bartok’s. If there are musicians who would like to discuss about his music I would love to join them. I just finished a silly kind of piece for a school project. I quoted The Simpsons’ theme as a sort of joke against scholars who consider art only Shoenberg, Shostakovich and all “serious” music.
Write me
Danny Elfman will go down in history as one of the best composers to have ever lived.
I find that musical institutions don’t even teach any contemporary classical composers (I wonder how many professors would know the name of Michael Torke or Richard Danielpour). Sure you read a little about minimalism in the back of a Music History book, but all you see is about a page and a picture of Philip Glass (hello… Michael Nyman anyone). I had to show my composition teacher a lot of what was going on NOW in classical music. I wouldn’t make a blanket statement like Mr. Dantz and proclaim him the best, but Danny Elfman has done more with the tools of music than most composers in the classical realm. Film scores are taught at some colleges, but those are in film score classes. It’s a shame that it doesn’t even get a passing mention in most Music History books. Kudos to your professor Erick and keep the flame alive and held high!
Nat
But in my opinion, he IS the current best!
thanks for your answer Nat.
erick
In my music history sequence in undergrad, we did have a lovely time doing fieldwork projects on self-selected topics dealing with contemporary orchestral and wind band composers. Of course, we got a lot of great info in university band and wind ensemble as well. However, like Nat, I’ve found that – typically – music historians don’t touch upon composers who aren’t European, male and dead. Luckily, my university was very self-structured and it allowed me to follow my own course. I was able to take elective courses on women composers and African American music OTHER than jazz and blues. During the required music history courses, though, yes, we did follow typically Western traditions – Palestrina to Schoenberg. We got a small dose of non-Western music in the World Music semester-long course, but even then it was pretty stilted.
My two cents’ worth: school isn’t an ultimate repository of knowledge, the “be all, end all” of information. If anything, it’s to kindle your interest in a particular topic, which you’ll (ideally) research outside of class time. Force-feeding information as the “ultimate” answer will prove to be the death of secondary and postsecondary education as a whole. Teachers and professors present the knowledge; it’s up to you what you’ll do with it – leave it (which we all know you can’t investigate EVERYTHING in depth) or heavily research the subjects you find particularly interesting. A truly good teacher will make everything seem interesting, and you’ll simply be left with a lot of options, savvy?
-E
I hate school, always have. I go there to learn, not to memorise which is my biggest downfall because I hate tests. When it comes to music, it’s even worse. I know enough to put together a score, orchestrate, and other little things, but I would never go there to learn how to compose. That is just me though.
Knight (Founder of the Anit-School movement hehe)
the university in which i am studying music has a filmmusic phd course, which i might do, and in it u have the opportunity to write essays on the music of danny and my lecturer said danny was probably the most important figure in filmmusic in the last 20 years.
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