Batman by Danny Elfman

Abstract

Reviewed by: Batmanby Danny Elfman Michael W. Harris Danny Elfman. Batman. Los Angeles, CA: Omni Music Publishing, 2016. [Film and book credits, prelim. p. [3]; notes on the music by the composer, prelim. p. [5]; contents, prelim. p. [6–7]; instrumentation, prelim. p. [8]; score, p. 1–364. ISBN 978-0-9890047-1-8. $85.] [End Page 497] James Horner. Willow. Los Angeles, CA: Omni Music Publishing, 2015. [Film and book credits, prelim. p. [5]; contents, prelim. p. [7]; "Willow: An Analysis of the Score," p. i–v; instrumentation, p. [vi]; score, p. 1–352. ISBN 978-0-9890047-5-6. $85.] Don Davis. The Matrix. Los Angeles, CA: Omni Music Publishing, 2014. [Film and book credits, prelim. p. [3]; contents, prelim. p. [5–6]; "The Matrix: An Analysis of the Score," p. i–v; instrumentation, p. [vi]; score, p. 1–315. ISBN 978-0-9890047-2-5. $85.] Jerry Goldsmith. Total Recall. Los Angeles, CA: Omni Music Publishing, 2016. [Film and book credits, prelim. p. [3]; 1 facsimile, prelim. p. [5]; "Total Recall: An Analysis of the Score," p. i–iii; contents, p. [v]; instrumentation, p. [vi]; score, p. 1–321. ISBN 978-0-9890047-6-3. $85.] In his article, "Catching Dreams: Editing Film Scores for Publication" ( Journal of the Royal Musical Association132, no. 1 [2007]: 115–40), Ben Winters poses a simple question, one that cuts to the heart of what the discipline of film musicology needs to ask when approaching a published edition of a film score: "in what circumstances is an edition warranted, and why should we attempt such a traditional task in this newest of musicological disciplines?" (p. 116). It is a question with a seemingly self-evident answer: it makes the task of music analysis easier by taking the guesswork out of notation, especially when cues might be altered in multiple ways from the original parts used for a recording to what ends up in a film. But this answer, and many other possible answers, raises the question of text, authority, and the so-called critical edition with the guiding hand of an expert editor. In the first paragraph of his article, Winters lays out this problem: Yet there are both practical and theoretical reasons why [the task of editing film scores for publication] is also potentially problematic, and one might legitimately question film musicology's need for a film-score edition: why, after all, should this relatively new area of musicology seek to re-inscribe editorial practices commonly associated with "Old Musicology" and its unquestioned acceptance of the musical work-concept? Indeed, is this not perhaps one of the strengths of existing film-music scholarship in the new "postmodern" musicological climate—that, without editions of film scores, it is free from those very claims of ineffability and authority that seem to plague studies of published works? In the end, Winters proposes several ways in which a film score edition can take lessons from published screenplays, and seek to be more useful for study, both for the academic and the enthusiast, as opposed to performance. Winters answers his question whether a film score should be published with a "yes," though with several caveats and ideas for how it should be approached. Fortunately, many of those suggestions are incorporated into Omni Music's film scores editions, while at the same time falling into some of the traps that Winters warns against. One of the biggest traps that Winters mentions is sadly unavoidable: the creation, either intentional or not, of a film music canon. ("… film musicology threatens to follow old-established paths of musicology by creating canons of authors and works worthy of discussion," [End Page 498]p. 117.) The formation of a canon is exactly what one can observe in the scores published by Omni. They are all by big-name Hollywood composers, are among the scores most often discussed by scholars, and come from major studio productions. The catalog so far consists of seven published scores: Danny Elfman's Edward Scissorhandsand Batman, Alan Silvestri's Back to the Future, Don Davis's The Matrix, James Horner's Willow, Bruce Broughton's Silverado, and most recently Jerry's Goldsmith's score...