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It seems to me that part of the early appeal of Arnold was his aping of the Bond-y, Barryesque horns (which really, is a tiny part of Barry's Bond scores). It's like he took the most obvious element that people associate with Bond and ran with it. But any composer could do that - listen to the similar music used in the first season of Alias. Why not hire a composer who could write memorable melodies and then tweak the arrangement to sound more like Barry if you think that's important?
I think that Arnold can write some good stuff - his main title for Stargate was wonderful, and I love the CR score but the problem is that his batting average is pretty low.
Who honestly can say they didn't get chills at the end of CR during the final scene? A lot of that was thanks to Arnold. I also liked Vesper's Theme.
Sure, maybe it would be good to mix things up a bit with other composers but I don't think that means Arnold should get the kicking he does from hardcore fans. He seems to genuinely care about the franchise and respect his predecessor. I'm actually going to go and see a John Barry tribute concert next week where Arnold will be there. I think its going to be great.
Anyway, don't want to get too far off topic.
But alas, 'ghost writers' never get the big publicity.
The thing with Arnold is, he is not trained to orchestrate his scores, which is 50% of the job. Writing a melody is relativly easy - anyone can do that. Orchestrating, however, is much more difficult. As Arnold never went to a musical academy, his knowledge of different instruments is relativly small - compared to John Barry, for example. So, it is DODD who is responsible for the numerous re-writes of the tracks when an instrument doesn't fit... So I would say Dodd makes a good 60%, maybe even 70% responsible of the scores.
In other words - Arnold, with his limited musical knowledge, is responsible for the general 'outlook' of each track. Dodd does the majority of the rest of the work.
The reason why the orchestral diversity of Arnold scores is small, is because he simply doesn't know a lot of instrument - and doesn't want to see Dodd almost completly rewrite Arnold's melodies during orchestration. If for Bond 23, the range of instruments were to be bigger, it would mean Arnold almost did nothing on the score.
My take on Shaken and Stirred was quite split. For the most part I really liked the arrangements, although some were so close to the originals that I thought "What was the point?". If something is a carbon copy then why not just listen to the original? Some of the arrangements were slightly different, which I liked - I thought Arnold's take on Moonraker (music, not vocal) was nicely updated, as was We Have All the Time in the World. I also quite liked his version of From Russia With Love - much more changed, but really suited the idea of the song. HOWEVER - I liked the arrangements as they worked on this disc which is quite different from a film score. None of the songs sounded...orchestral, which could be a problem for a film score.
Where I really thought the disc fell apart was the vocal performances. Some of them just pushed way too far in my opinion. Moonraker would have been awesome but the singer sounded like she was doing a song from an animated Disney film in the 90's - over-doing everything and doing a lot of vocal gymnastics in each line. Same with All Time High - I get the idea that it's almost like someone whispering to his lover under the covers in the middle of the night, but the execution is nowhere as good as the idea.
But back to Arnold as someone who *writes* music - I realize that he (nor anyone!) is John Barry but where are the sweeping melodies, the leitmotifs, the music that strongly identifies each film as a distinct entry in the series? Think of how memorable each score was from say, GF, YOLT, OHMSS, DAF...wow. Think of how cohesive each score was and how identifiable each is to their films. There's nothing from any of Arnold's scores that sticks in my head other than the score to CR. That's one out of five. Is that really the batting average that a film series like Bond deserves? Maybe I've been spoiled by Barry, who I don't think any composer could live up to. But that doesn't alter the fact that a lot of Arnold's work is unmemorable filler to me.
Just because Arnold loves Bond and Barry isn't a good enough reason to keep him IMHO. I'd rather have a composer who writes great music than one who loves Barry. Maybe hire a new composer but have Arnold do the arrangement if that's a compromise that works.
I've never seen a musical supervisor getting chosen as the main composer for a film... so it seems Arnold was only chosen because of his respect/admiration for Barry, probably because he is a friend of Barbara Broccoli...
I do rather like this piece of music though - it has a "melody" and memorability to it IMO. Although I admit it does sound similar to the ending of TWINE
I think that there are two reasons why Barry's scores are memorable to me. The first is that he uses leitmotifs in his scores - repeating certain melodies and lines so that they're really stuck in you're head (that also gives each score a very distinct "personality"). The music he uses can be simple at times but the overall impact is powerful. The other thing is that he isn't afraid to "go big". Big is more memorable than small, and I think also contributes to why we think of Bond as such important/memorable movies.
A good example of the two things I mentioned above is the music from the raid on Fort Knox in GF:
That "Fort Knox" track is a good example flasheart of why Barry was so good at his craft. Another example is this:
1. Eric Serra- loved the GoldenEye music; very fitting for the tone of the movie
2. George Martin- again, very fitting for the tone of the movie, bonus points for excessive funk!
3. Bill Conti- loved his work on the pre-title sequence, escape from Gonzaleas' estate, and the Cortina ski chase
4. Michael Kamen- awesome gun barrel music, a great new version on the James Bond Theme, and some beast music during the escape from Sanchez's cocaine labs
5. Marvin Hamlisch- despite being really annoyed by TSWLM's music, there were some good moments, specifically the underwater Lotus Espirit scene, the Liparus battle, and the Bond '77 Theme.
6. Monty Norman- extremely dated and boring; simply not enough, and very annoying when the James Bond Theme plays during every scene!
* Most notably true with the original version of the Bond theme heard until OHMSS. Only Cubby and Saltzman decided where to put it in the films.