Bond 25 + Future Bond Score Composer (Page 3 of 7)

Good point. Try listening to a CD of an entire Barry Bond score vs an entire Newman Bond score. The Barry score makes you feel like you just experienced the film again. The Newman score, not so much..... As Matt pointed out, the Newman scores are ok as generic action film scores with a few nice Bondian moments but really fall terribly short as complete Bond scores. Barry set the bar very high, with Arnold coming in a distant second but far ahead of anyone else.

SF's score certainly delivers some standout moments, think of Bond after he see's his Aston Martin get blown up or when he's fighting the bad guy underneath the frozen lake. SP on the other hand had no standout moments which is odd considering it was a more proper Bond film then SF that warranted a more bombastic Bond score.

Just from these tracks, Lennertz has done a great job creating music with a Bond feel and a complex mood. But he's also just copying David Arnold (the TND film feel for the FRWL game and the QOS film feel for the QOS game). For video games, he does a great job because it relates the music of the game to music of the films. He doesn't offer anything of his own, and I feel that it's necessary for writing a film score. Maybe he can, or maybe he can't. Granted, doing a great job at copying another composer who wrote great Bond scores would be better than Newman's drivel. It's the ability to come up with something original whilst still making it clear that the music is a Bond score that's the true challenge of writing a great Bond score. Arnold clearly took inspiration from Barry, but he didn't copy Barry. Hamlisch took from Barry at times but also added a lot of his own style. Martin had a completely different style from Barry, but he uses the Bond theme enough that you know it's Bond music. I could easily write a Bond score that sounds like something Barry wrote, but I don't know how much I could offer innovation-wise. Copying the Bond sound isn't enough. But Newman's approach of largely ignoring the Bond sound and not using the Bond theme when it needs to be there is not the right approach. When he offers his own sound in the romantic themes, it's really good. When he looks to Hans Zimmer for action music rather than to John Barry, that's not so good. He clearly didn't know how to approach action music.

Hard to really form a complete opinion regarding Lennertz's game scores from the samples that Bruce kindly posted but there certainly is potential. The one thing I find them to be missing is melody, something of course that Barry was the master of and something that Arnold
did a nice job of in both CR and QOS (which would have been even better if he had a decent theme song to work with).

I'm not hearing that at all. Could point out the time from which you heard that?

I'm still not really feeling that. I get what you're saying though. Those weren't really the best examples I could find. Sadly aside from those 2 samples the rest of the game score isn't on Youtube. One of my favorite tracks from the game uses the 4 note Motif Barry used for his music for OHMSS. It's a nice little homage.

My problem with his music was he barely used it during times it should have been used. His action music in Skyfall was much better than in Spectre though. I wonder what the hell happened that caused him to recycle so much from Skyfall...

Agreed. In my last rewatch of Skyfall, the music was serviceable to the visuals but on it's own I don't really listen it much. Though for Spectre it was much worse aside from 3 great tracks the rest is Skyfall leftovers and that disappointed me heavily.

SFX Magazine focus on Bond in their "What do you want to see?" Article this months edition.
I got name checked for highlighting that Mr Arnold should come back to do the music.

Only David Arnold has really established a solid Bond style since Mr Barry. 

  Thomas Newman does "nice" music. - Finding Nemo springs to mind...

How The West Was Won has fantastic music. Though that particular sound is outdated, the concepts behind the music could still work (memorable themes and a level of energy that fits the film). I didn't know that people find bombastic scores campy. But I suppose that also applies to any music that resembles proper music? Music that doesn't match the film, like Newman's in the Bond films, just seems completely wrong to me. An exciting scene without exciting music just seems boring. On the other hand, loud, bombastic music would not fit a small film that feels more like a play, but I just don't understand why people find the concepts of good musical composition to be campy.

But is there a reason why a kitchen sink drama couldn't have a score that uses the same principles of an old Bond score: melodic, developed music that fits the scenes and feelings of the characters? Today it's all generic "sonic wallpaper", as Gassy Man put it, no matter what the film is.

Bond scores are not a special type of music. John Barry wrote all his scores with the same attention to musicality. Just about all composers up to the late 1980s used concepts of musical composition when writing film music.