Below is an email from my QMUL colleague Ruby (posted with her permission) who is doing a project looking at emotion in film music. There’s a survey with two parts – asing about how you listen to music, then getting you to do a film music listening task. The results of this form part of her PhD research.
“Music, Mood, and Motion: A Survey on Emotion in Film Music.”
The primary goal of this study is to gain insights into how music in films influences our emotions. By sharing your thoughts and perceptions, you will contribute valuable information that will enhance our understanding of the emotional aspects of film music.
Survey Details: This study consists of two main surveys:
Questionnaire on Music Listening Habits: The first survey involves a questionnaire that aims to assess how participants listen to music.
Listening Tasks and Annotation of Film Soundtrack Excerpts: The second survey includes 10 listening tasks. Participants will be asked to label excerpts from various film soundtracks. Interactive graphs and pointers will be provided to facilitate the annotation of mood and emotion during these tasks.
The entire process should take approximately 30 minutes, depending on the level of detail you choose to provide in your annotations.
Important Instructions:
Device: Please complete this study on a laptop or computer, NOT on a phone.
Please use Google Chrome if you can.
Audio Quality: Use good quality headphones or speakers for an optimal experience.
Participants will receive a ‘music listening personality’ profile at the end of the study, based on your responses! It’s a light-hearted way to explore your music listening profile and unique music-listening style.
Study Deadline: The deadline for completing the study is February 20th, 2024.
How to Participate: If you are interested in contributing to this study, please click on the following link to get started.
Feel free to share this invitation with anyone you think might be interested in participating – friends, family, and fellow music and film enthusiasts.
If you have any questions or concerns or errors or just simply want to chat about it, please don’t hesitate to message me!
Hooray, David Arnold has a five-part radio show broadcasting on Sunday afternoons on ScalaRadio (at 1pm) and you can hear Episode 3here – the link will stop working on Sunday 29th March. Don’t delay 🙂
It’s excellent, he’s extremely knowledgeable and enthusiastic about film scores and music (and he’s written scores for five of the James Bond films himself!) and he’s also an excellent communicator. You’ll be able to listen live to Eps 4 and 5 here on Sunday.
Episodes 1 and 2 are no longer available though quite a few people have tweeted @ScalaRadio (and @DavidGArnold) to say how much they’d like this so why not add your voice…
The above link will open a player if you access it via a laptop browser, if you’re clicking on a phone you can either listen via your browser or, if you have the ScalaRadio app, it will invite you to open the programme in the app. Up to you 🙂
If you are trying to find the programme by searching on ScalaRadio’s website or within the app there are some additional instructions below. Possibly useful for future reference in finding other programmes.
Web browser If you are starting from the landing page https://planetradio.co.uk/scala-radio/ click More at the top, then Listen Again, then look for the date and drop-down menu just below the heading saying “Listen Again” – it’s in reverse date order so scroll down to Sunday 22nd. At the moment David’s programme is the second picture in the second row – click on that and you’ll be on the link as given above.
If your browser says “Autoplay failed” you just need to press the play button (it’s a good thing – switching off autoplay on your browser, gives you more control over what noise is emitted from your newly opened tabs).
Phone app
Lower the volume before opening the app (it’s a bit autoplay-y) or get ready to click the stop button on the bottom right, and make sure you’ve fairly recently updated (might be harder to find the show otherwise).
On the menu at the bottom click Shows, then scroll down and find “The Music of James Bond with David…’ and press play. You will be able to listen to about 20 minutes or so without logging in, so if you aren’t planning to log in, put the link above into your phone’s browser and listen via the web app.
There’s a lot of film music stuff happening everwhere all the time but as I live in London that’s what this post will focus on. If you know of a film music event I’ve missed please let me know in the comments (@JoBrodie on Twitter jo.brodie on Gmail).
Places Barbican – #OscarWinningScores season: talks by composers who’ve won an Oscar and a screening of the film for which they won it Royal Albert Hall – Film with Live Orchestra season: films projected with orchestra performing the score live. They also do Conversations with Screen Composers where a composer’s interviewed and some clips from their films are shown and discussed Southbank Centre– Film Scores Live season: films projected with orchestra performing the score live, at the Royal Festival and St John’s Smith Square
Here’s a plain-text list of the films involved
2001: A Space Odyssey
Aliens
Amadeus
Brief Encounter
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial in Concert
Emma
Gladiator Live
Gravity 3D
Hitchcock’s The Lodger
Independence Day
Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark
Jurassic Park
Napoleon
Psycho
Shakespeare in Love
The English Patient
The Full Monty
There Will be Blood
Tous les matins du monde
Under the Skin
Vertigo
and a general “Western Music in Concert”
2016
Neil Brand presented the excellent ‘Sound of Cinema’ series a couple of years ago (it’s being rebroadcast on Sun 6 March) and he’s doing some YouTube videos ‘Bells and Whistles‘ on film music.
Sound of Cinema: The Music That Made The Movies – Ep 1: The Big Score
BBC Four, 12.45pm, Sun 6 Mar 2016
Neil Brand’s excellent programme on film scores.
Clint Mansell – talk
7.30pm, Sun 27 March 2016, Elgar Room, Royal Albert Hall
Royal Albert Hall’s BAFTA Conversations with Screen Composers: Clint Mansell
Music from the film Tous les matins du monde
[film time not given] Wed 19 Oct 2016, St John’s Smith Square
6.15pm – free pre-concert talk
Jordi Savall & Le Concert des Nations – performing on C17th period instruments Southbank Centre’s Film Scores Live 2016/17 season
Jurassic Park in Concert
with the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra
7.30pm, Thur 3 – Sat 5 Nov 2016, Royal Albert Hall (2.30pm Sat perf sold out) Royal Albert Hall’s Films with Live Orchestra
I’m fairly convinced, though don’t have any stats, that there’s been a fairly large increase over the last few years in the number of concerts, talks and events for people who like hearing film music performed live and hearing from the composers who wrote it.
Living in London I’m spoiled for choice with the wonderful BAFTA Conversations with Screen Composers – a series of interviews with composers at the Royal Albert Hall. The RAH has also been increasing its programming of concerts celebrating the work of a particular film composer, including screenings of films with a live orchestra performing the music.
Movies in Concert – comprehensive worldwide listing of film music concerts
One of the best resource for film music concerts and related events around the world is the Movies in Concert website especially as anyone can submit details of a concert that’s been published on an events page.
The site is maintained by Flip Jansen & Ingmar Kohl with Elena Xalira, Nicolas Grandemange and Stefan Bosman as editors. It’s fab 🙂
I would like to encourage composers, conductors, musicians, event organisers, orchestra folk, venue staff, film music fans and anyone else to see if concerts they know of are already listed and, if not, to add them using the Submit a Concert form – and to make a note of the page for future concerts, thanks!
The site now also has a dedicated Twitter feed – @moviesinconcert – and whenever new information is added to the website, or information already there is updated, an update-tweet will be emitted automatically by the account. I created this Twitter account after spotting that they had an RSS feed, and it’s since been adopted by the site (woohoo) but I’m not affiliated with Movies in Concert.
If you’re interested in the technology behind the @moviesinconcert Twitter account (it’s not very complicated) read on, in case you want to set up something similar.
Turning website RSS updates into tweets – How to do this
Movies in Concert, like many sites, has an RSS feed already set up for its updates – you can use an RSS reader to follow these (a bit similar to signing up for email updates). It’s also quite straightforward to set things up so that each new update is turned into a tweet that anyone on Twitter can follow. There’s a great little website called IF This Then That (IFTTT) which will do it for you.
All you need is
an input – an RSS feed, Movies in Concert currently has four RSS feeds (ALL, Europe only, N America only, Rest of World)
an output – a spare Twitter account
To make your own Twitter feed based on an RSS feed you can use an IFTTT recipe that converts RSS feed items into tweets, it’s called RSS to Twitter.
The steps are
Create your spare Twitter account and log in
Create an IFTTT account and log in there too
While logged into both IFTTT and Twitter go to https://ifttt.com/twitter and activate Twitter as a channel (this will be your output) you probably won’t need to activate RSS as a separate channel but just in case its https://ifttt.com/feed
This is the specific recipe I used, adapted from the RSS to Twitter specifically for @moviesinconcert, you’re welcome to use it but note that there’s no particular benefit in recreating the same feed as it already exists!
Here’s what it looks like under the bonnet with the RSS feed as the ‘trigger’ causing the action of sending out a tweet. I’ve added the hashtag #filmmusic and asked the recipe to publish this along with the title of the update from Movies in Concert along with the address (Entry URL) and the first line of the page.
If you click into the lower box it looks like this and you can click on the blue ‘science flask’ icon to change the options, this will change what the tweets look like.
The soundtrack to Emma, by Rachel Portman, is a lovely thing (she also did Chocolat and a whole bunch of other films) and sets the tone beautifully and playfully – she won an Academy Award (Oscar) for it. Here’s the opening theme – I couldn’t find a video showing the full opening sequence which is enchanting, probably the film production company’s / -ies’ lawyers have had a word with YouTube. Fair enough I suppose 🙂
1. Studio version
2. Orchestra playing the piece live at a concert
3. The Dance, from Emma soundtrack, as seen (heard) in the film. I think this is an example of a diegetic switch in which the music changes from being ‘in story’ (as heard by the characters, diegetic) to becoming ‘external soundtrack’ (non-diegetic, not part of the story). I think it’s brilliant and it happens at ~2m14s.
4. Rachel Portman interviewed by Tommy Pearson about her work in composing for film
Anne Dudley
The theme from Jeeves and Wooster heralded joy (when the programme began) and distress (when it ended). Just brilliant.
1. The theme from Jeeves and Wooster – it also features a couple of times in the film Mickey Blue Eyes
2. The theme (at 7m 37s) reworked to sound delightfully Vaughn Williams-ish, at least I think that’s who it is. Love this.
Anne Dudley was also in the Art of Noise and has worked with Marc Almond and a whole bunch of people. She won an Oscar for her music on the film The Full Monty.
While I’m listening to Jeeves and Wooster stuff let’s also have Hugh Laurie singing, and playing on piano, the fantastic ‘Forty-Seven Ginger-Headed Sailors’ by Leslie Sarony.
Before the concert, at 6pm, there’s also a free Q&A with the composer, hosted by the flautist / flutist / flute-player (LSO Principal Flute Gareth Davies).
Alexandre Desplat, whose name I can almost pronounce, is doing a concert of his film music next Thursday. He’s done the scores for some very well-known films like Harry Potter, and The King’s Speech (I felt that needed a comma given the style of naming films within the Harry Potter franchise) as well as some as yet unknown to me.
Two of my favourites from his work include Birth which also happens to be directed by Jonathan Glazer (I think he’s amazing) who’s just been announced as the Wellcome Trust’s new Screenwriting Fellow, and Painted Veil.
It seems that Birth will be included among the concert pieces, woohoo – see the YouTube video at the end.
tl;dr version: film composer David Arnold’s doing threefour six film music concerts in 2015 in Dublin (Jan), Manchester (April), Liverpool (April) and Birmingham (June)
*****On 2 and 18 December 2014***** On Tuesday 2 DecemberDavid Arnold’s being interviewed by Tommy Pearson in the Elgar Room at Royal Albert Hall, 7pm, £11.20. Tickets have now sold out but it’s worth checking the website for returns, a couple appeared last week before being snapped up again (and also try the Box Office on 0845 401 5034).
David wrote the music for Made in Dagenham the musical which is at the Adelphi until March 2015 – it’s a joyous thing, go. If you’ve got a Visa Mastercard you can see the show on 18 December and go to the exclusive Q&A with Gemma Arterton and David Arnold. I’ve only got a Visa debit card so will have to make my own fun 🙂
Before we start, press play… (there are a few more clips from his concert recorded from an iPhone by Jack Chapple).
I really enjoyed his July 2014 concert at the Royal Festival Hall (YouTube clip above) and so did all the reviewers as you’ll see in this post (full list of reviews I’ve found at the end). We heard music from films he scored early in his career (Stargate and Independence Day) and of course all his James Bond films, but also more recently his work (with Michael Price) on the BBC Sherlock series and a whole lot of stuff in between. He’s been consistently brilliant 🙂
“What last night did was give an overwhelming sense of satisfaction to the audience and to highlight the versatile nature, talent and musical legacy that David Arnold has given us. I can only hope this is something that many others have the opportunity to see and listen to as he is one of the finest in the business and worthy of every bit of praise that comes his way after this London concert.” David Arnold Live – The Passionata Project
“While this event was a one-off, we hope that the composer has the bug for more, as his terrific music deserves to be heard live.” ‘David Arnold: Live in Concert’ review – Cult Box
Good news – his London concert wasn’t a one-off and he’s announced four six concerts for 2015, in Dublin, Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham
Dublin
Thursday 22 January 2015, 8pm
National Concert Hall, Dublin
€20-€45 (conc. €18-€40.50) Tickets and info – Dublin
Manchester
Tuesday 14 April 2015, 7.30pm
The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester
£26.50 – £44.50 + VIP packages available Tickets and info – Manchester
Liverpool
Tuesday 21 April 2015, 7.30pm
Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool
£24.50, £29.50, £37.50, £42.50, £50 Tickets and info – Liverpool
London
Thursday 18 June 2015, 8pm
Hall, Barbican, London
£22.50-£70 plus booking fee + VIP packages available Tickets and info – London
Birmingham
Friday 26 June 2015, 7.30pm
Symphony Hall, (Town Hall & Symphony Hall), Birmingham
£24.50, £29.50, £37.50, £42.50 & £75 VIP plus transaction fee (£3) Tickets and info – Birmingham
Based on the July 2014 concert I think everyone’s in for a treat again.
“The first half of the program appeared hand-selected to show off the eclectic nature of Arnold’s oeuvre. Immediately, the audience was bombarded with the heroic fanfare of his overture for the late ’90s space adventure Wing Commander. From there, the program ventured into the gorgeous, Barryesque gestures of Last of the Dogmen, the bluesy guitar of Four Brothers, the cool, understated majesty of his 2012 London Olympics Closing Medals Ceremony, the thundering monster movie heights of Godzilla, and the delirious, waltzy splendor of The Stepford Wives.” David Arnold plays his greatest hits in his London concert debut – Enjoy the crawl
“During this segment Mr Arnold unsheathed his “secret weapon”, singer David Mcalmont, who stepped onto the stage to perform Play Dead, a song made famous by Bjork. The shot was a bullseye. The target exploded. And the audience, including David Walliams, Mark Gatiss, Steve Furst, Amanda Abbington and Martin Freeman, roared with excitement.” Review: David Arnold at the Royal Festival Hall – beige
“The mood sobered briefly when Arnold assumed singing duties for a never-before-heard song from his upcoming stage musical, Made in Dagenham—a work about the late ’60s women’s rights movement in the UK. With lyrics written from the perspective of a wife and mother, this heartbreaking song was delivered by Arnold with all the passion and all the poignancy it deserves.” David Arnold plays his greatest hits in his London concert debut – Enjoy the crawl
“We enjoyed Arnold’s vocals again on the title track from The World is Not Enough, as well the unused ‘Only Myself to Blame’ from the same film, both songs written in collaboration with legendary lyricist Don Black. Arnold also performed a raw and pounding instrumental version of ‘You Know My Name’ from Daniel Craig’s debut Casino Royale.” ‘David Arnold: Live in Concert’ review – Cult Box
Incidentally his work on the Bond films has also had a nice citation in the academic literature on film music: “Arnold’s music represents an elegant integration of broad orchestral statements, big-band inspired brass, electronica, and exotic percussion. … He references the established Bond motives and gestures and, consequently, the scores sound like the contemporary continuation of a tradition. In short, Arnold fulfilled many of the unwritten rules of the Bond scores.”
“The star character of this memorable event however was not 007, but undoubtedly Sherlock. It is rare for any contemporary television series to have such an imaginative and well written score, which when performed last night as an orchestral suite, captivated and invigorated the entire auditorium.” Review: David Arnold at the Royal Festival Hall – beige
So there you go, and go you should 😀
Music
David Arnold’s film and television scores on iTunes and Amazon
If you like film music concerts in general you’ll probably like the Movies in Concert site.
Further reading Here are the reviews for David’s July 2014 concert.
Further listening
Over the next few days a couple of David’s scores for James Bond and Hot Fuzz can be heard on UK terrestrial television – Die Another Day (10.40pm, ITV, Thursday 4 December); Hot Fuzz (9pm, ITV2, Monday 8 December & rpt 9pm, ITV2, Friday 12 December), Casino Royale (10.40pm, ITV, Friday 12 December).
Here’s Tim Burden’s interview with David on Soundcloud, shortly before the July 2014 concert
David Arnold‘s debut concert in July 2014 at the Royal Festival Hall was amazing (see enthusiastic reviews at the end) and I don’t think anyone who was there will be surprised to hear he’s doing some more. No concerts in London but Manchester and Liverpool have some lovely music-y entertainments to look forward to, with the Manchester Camerata orchestra.
Tuesday 14 April 2015, 7.30pm
Bridgewater Hall, Manchester
£26.50 to 44.50 + £2 booking fee, also VIP meet and greet £72 w signed photo Concert info | Book tickets | 0161 907 9000
Tuesday 21 April 2015, 7.30pm Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool £24.50, £29.50, £37.50, £42.50, £50 + £1.50 booking fee Concert info | Book tickets| 0151 709 3789
BAFTA’s Conversations with Screen Composers is wonderful. The fantastic Tommy Pearson does the interviewing (I always think they should get someone in just to interview him one day as he seems like an interesting and knowledgeable chap himself) and we get to hear from different screen composers talking about their work. There are film / TV clips and quite often a bit of musical accompaniment.
The events take place in the Elgar room upstairs at the beautiful Royal Albert Hall: Patrick Doyle will be interviewed on Monday 13 October and David Arnold on Tuesday 2 December.
More about the launch of the new series of interviews – at time of writing the page lists the second event as happening on 3 December but the RAH tickets page below says it’s the 2nd.
For film music concerts around the world have a look at this amazing Movies in Concert page (and if you know of a concert not listed you can add it yourself, there’s a form there).
Almost exactly a year ago (12 Sep 2013) the BBC broadcast the first episode of Neil Brand’s fantastic series “The Sound of Cinema – the music that made the movies” which was part of a wider series of programmes (television and radio) about film music. Being quick off the mark where film music events are concerned I managed to get a ticket to a premiere screening of episode one at the BFI the previous week, with a Q&A afterwards. Great fun.
Hopefully they’ll show all three episodes. I also hope the BBC will commission more programmes from Neil about film music – at the Q&A he mentioned that there was soooo much more to say and I would like to hear it.
This is the RadioTimes listing for the first episode: The Big Score and see also Neil’s website (plus events page) and Twitter. The paragraph below is from last year’s blog post on the programme.
Neil Brand’s The Sound of Cinema, episode one: ‘The Big Score’ on orchestral sound, 9pm, BBC Four – detailed programme information: “In a series celebrating the art of the cinema soundtrack, the heart of a BBC-wide season playing on radio as well as TV, Neil Brand explores the work of the great movie composers, and demonstrates their techniques. Neil begins by looking at how the classic orchestral film score emerged and why it’s still going strong today. Neil traces how in the 1930s, European-born composers such as Max Steiner and Erich Wolfgang Korngold brought their Viennese training to play in stirring, romantic scores for Hollywood masterpieces like King Kong and The Adventures of Robin Hood. But it took a home-grown American talent, Bernard Herrmann, to bring a darker, more modern sound to some of cinema’s finest films, with his scores for Citizen Kane, Psycho and Taxi Driver. Among those Neil meets are leading film-makers and composers who discuss their work, including Martin Scorsese and Hans Zimmer, composer of blockbusters like Gladiator and Inception.”
I’ve found that eps 2 and 3 are on YouTube but from previous experience they might not stay for very long.