Ennio Morricone: Paura Vol. 2: A Collection of Scary & Thrilling Soundtracks (Rustblade)
Purchased from The Attic
Do I need to state it? Vinyl is expensive. In visiting The Attic yesterday, I specifically went in hunt of more Morricone. While I have a romantic attachment to vinyl and prefer it beyond logic, the real find of the day was a used copy of Crime and Dissonance, the double CD collection I wrote about yesterday.
There's some nice Morricone records at that store. Unfortunately, most are on the expensive side. It's not that I can't afford them, but when 40 minutes of vinyl playing time is at $25 or more, it can get to be costly.
Especially considering this: there's a little risk in buying soundtrack albums for the separate listening experience. Rarely does every minute of a soundtrack, separated from the visuals of the film medium, stack up as being great. Take one of the greats for example, Bernard Herrmann's Vertigo soundtrack. It is among the finest ever written. However, when listening to the complete recording on CD, more than an hour's worth a music, I have the feeling it could have been edited as an album. But only as an album apart from the film.
Collections can sometimes be spotty too. You're being given someone else's choice of what that person believes should be included. In general, I also prefer to listen to the original recording over a recreation. That may be questionable: the performance might even be better, the recording quality sharper, but there's a spirit to the original that usually can't be reproduced. Frank Zappa notably ruffled some feathers when he reissued some of his early albums (We're Only In It For the Money specifically) with some of the instrumental parts replaced with Synclavier-produced sequences. His attitude was, well if it's played better, sounds better, why wouldn't you prefer it? But not, it's just not the original artifact, for better or worse. And in that particular case, I consider it disrespectful to the original players, faults and all.
Like Crime and Dissonance, this is a generally good collection. There's a little overlap, but what little overlap there is, is quality stuff. The program starts with one of the weaker examples though, a cue from 1973's Revolver. Its use of electronic keyboards, which must have sounded so current at the time, makes it sound more dated. I think I've made this assertion before. The choice of electronic instruments is on of the reasons I don't care for Morricone's soundtrack to The Untouchables. It doesn't sound contemporary to the film's era (1930s) and sounds like a 1980s soundtrack now.
At under $20, I considered it a reasonable price for this collection. I also thought, between this and the other collection, I might choose some individual soundtracks based on the strength of some of the tracks.
I meant to include a small bit of music theory in yesterday's text that I'll write now. It's something I first noticed the main title theme of Giornata Nera Per L'Ariete. It took me some time to figure out what was going on. The first chord in that piece is a C Major chord, but there's a B flat in the bass. Next chord is D minor, but with a C in the bass. And so forth. Every (or nearly so) chord in the work, whether major, minor, or diminished, had the flatted/dominant 7th in the bass. The result are harmonies that stay tonal, yet are also somewhat ambiguous and consistently unresolved. Interesting "trick", if you can call it that. I've noticed it multiple times. Considering Morricone wrote something like 500 soundtracks, it's to be expected that he repeats himself sometimes.
Despite having devoted so much time and space to Morricone on this blog previously, there's probably more to come as I deep-dive further.
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