"Bernard Herrmann used to write all his scores by himself. So did Bach, Beethoven and Stravinsky. I don't understand why this happens in the movie industry"
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Morricone is doing something deceptively sharp here: he flatters no one, least of all the film industry that made him famous. By lining up Bernard Herrmann with Bach, Beethoven, and Stravinsky, he’s not just name-dropping titans. He’s collapsing the artificial prestige gap between “concert music” and “film music” and daring you to admit the obvious: serious composers have historically been singular authors. If we treat film scoring as real composition, then the expectation of solitary craft should follow.
The sting is in the last sentence. “I don’t understand” reads polite, but it’s an accusation dressed as confusion. Morricone knows exactly why it happens: industrial scale, union realities, deadlines, temp tracks, endless revisions, and the modern credit economy where “additional music” quietly props up a schedule no human can meet. His point is that these logistics have hardened into a norm that starts to look like an aesthetic choice rather than a production compromise.
There’s also a defense of identity embedded in the complaint. Film composers are often asked to be stylistic chameleons, to imitate the temp, to deliver quantity as much as quality. A team can do that efficiently; a single author can do something riskier: build a coherent musical worldview. Morricone’s career was a long argument for recognizability, for the score as a signature rather than a service. This quote is him refusing the idea that authorship should dissolve just because the medium is collaborative.
The sting is in the last sentence. “I don’t understand” reads polite, but it’s an accusation dressed as confusion. Morricone knows exactly why it happens: industrial scale, union realities, deadlines, temp tracks, endless revisions, and the modern credit economy where “additional music” quietly props up a schedule no human can meet. His point is that these logistics have hardened into a norm that starts to look like an aesthetic choice rather than a production compromise.
There’s also a defense of identity embedded in the complaint. Film composers are often asked to be stylistic chameleons, to imitate the temp, to deliver quantity as much as quality. A team can do that efficiently; a single author can do something riskier: build a coherent musical worldview. Morricone’s career was a long argument for recognizability, for the score as a signature rather than a service. This quote is him refusing the idea that authorship should dissolve just because the medium is collaborative.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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