> I've been reading this review and have noticed there are some strange
> declarations in it.
> 1) John Powell "bleeds creativity in relative obscurity"--then
> what about his Academy Nomination for How to Train Your Dragon, as well as
> his fairly busy career?
> 2) "Zimmer's mouth is his worst enemy for anyone interested in
> actually examining the merits of his structures and instrumentation."
> Well, sorry to be the intellectual party-pooper, but I don't listen to
> film scores for intellectual stimulation. If you want to actually work
> your brain, try analyzing Anton Webern's Symphonie, which uses
> docecophony, Pierre Boulez's Le marteau sans maître, or any other modern
> classical composers. These composers actually create musical forms in
> which their music has no image or dramatic backdrop to prop themselves
> upon. The fact is, while Bach composed fugues, while Beethoven broke
> Classical forms, while Chopin and Debussy loosened the meaning of
> tonality, and while Schoenberg did away with tonality altogether, Mr.
> Zimmer merely has to make a scene dramatic or sad.
> 3) "The "bull[bleep!] meter" is pegging on that
> explanation, with the dreaded phrase "creative differences" a
> more likely reason for Howard's wish to divest himself from the
> equation." What makes Mr. Clemmensen so sure that Mr. Howard has
> Clemmensen's exact opinion? Do they have a personal relationship? And
> also, I frankly don't care whether Mr. Howard scored or didn't score the
> movie anyways, as I do not like Mr. Howard's compositions.
> 4) "The composer needs to shut his yap, dump the ghostwriters, shift
> to F major, conjure a fluid theme, and drop a wicked oboe solo on
> us." Is the reviewer a composer too? Because he should know that F
> MAJOR HAS THE SAME KEY SIGNATURE AS D MINOR! And what's so important about
> themes? It may sound weird, but many great composers did not create themes
> in the proper sense. Beethoven's utterance in his 5th symphony is only 4
> notes long. Mr. Elfman's contribution to the Batman universe was 5 notes
> long. But, just because Elfman's theme is one note longer does not make it
> better than Beethoven's idea. The only requirement of music is that it
> must have an idea, whether 100 measures or just one note. And also, oboe
> solos are a painful cliche in scoring poignant scenes. Why not have a
> viola solo? Violas actually have a darker and more mysterious tone than
> violins.

1. Just because HTTYD received an Academy Award nomination doesn't mean anything. Clemmensen was probably commenting about other scores from Powell. And just because Powell had a busy few years, that has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the music!

2. I am sorry, but film music is supposed to have complexity for intellectual simulation, just like the story or film. Would a screenplay be dumbed-down just to the bare emotions? Would the art direction be de-colord to only support the emotions of a given scene? No. So, in all seriousness, WHY THE MUSIC???!!!! I really don't get why many small-budget films get well-thought music and so many $250 Million blockbusters get the most dumbed-down, stupidest, most generic music in existence!!!

3. Well guess what: Howard is gone from the franchise, you should be happy! And if you didn't enjoy Howard's music, than that's you own problem. Clemmensen can have his opinion, and you can have yours. Problem solved!

4. You idiot, when Clemmensen refers to "D Minor", he is talking about the note (D, in this case) that every statement of the main theme starts on! When he states "F Major", he is only saying that Zimmer should have the first note of a theme / statement / phrase be an F for once rather than Zimmer's way over-used D!!!

You people really need to stop calling the editor an idiot and calling Zimmer god. All of you brainwashed fanboys only make us hate Zimmer even more than we already did. I am tired of explaining this, so please tell all of your other brainwashed fanboys to go somewhere else (meaning off this site)!!!!!