Meeting in Music: Gabriel Yared

Chat-Box Introduction Recent comments Ripping guide

Dear Visitors - Welcome to Meeting in Music !

All music lovers are cordially invited to participate at our Meeting in Music collective, a central gathering point for bloggers dedicated to sharing music and enhancing the enjoyment of same. MIMIC features pertinent articles, links to the best classical blogs on the web, and occasional links to sample some of the great music discussed amongst MIMIC members.

Please join us to contribute, partake of what is offered and to chat with fellow music-lovers from around the world. Those enrolling as FOLLOWERS of this blog are encouraged to request posting rights to become contributors.

Are you looking for a specific recording that you just can't seem to find anywhere? Maybe one of your fellow members of the this community can help you. Place your request in the chat box but please keep it on a modest and reasonable level and remember that the more you help others, the more they will try to help you.

On behalf of the MIMIC team
Scoredaddy

Most recent comments:

Widget courtesy of Helplogger

Following the guide below you will be able to create the ultimate HQ rip and upload for sharing here at the Meeting in Music Internet Community or on your own blog if you have one.

RIPPING A CD USING EXACT AUDIO COPY (EAC)

1. Start Exact Audio Copy and load the clean and scratchless CD into you drive.
2. Pressing ALT+G will pull track and album info from the FreeDB database if this feature is set up properly.
3. If no info is found the CD is not registered in the database and you will have to type in the info manually.
4. Adjust the Drive Settings according to the model of your drive and enable the ”Create Log-file” option.
5. Adjust the Compression Settings to rip in Flac format at 768 kBit/s. Alternatively rip in the Ape fomat.
6. Rip the CD by pressing Action -> Test & Copy Image & Create CUE Sheet -> Compressed...
7. Check the log-file to see if any ripping errors or AccurateRip inaccuracies were registered.

SCANNING THE COVERS OF THE ALBUM

1. Scans of the front and back covers should be included if available as should the booklet. 300dpi is standard.

COMPRESSING THE FOLDER USING WINRAR

1. Wrap the audio files and images in a folder marked the composer and album name etc.
2. Set Compression method to ”Store” and the volume size to 200000000. Add a 3% recovery record.
3. Compress the folder using a not-too-obvious filename.

UPLOADING TO A FILEHOST AND SHARING WITH THE WORLD

Now all you need to do is to upload the rar-files to a filehost of your choice. Mega.nz is the standard and most stable option but there are many others and some services even feature upload to multiple filehosts. Finally the download links are ready to be presented on your blog.

THE MEDIEVAL ERA (600 - 1450)

At around 500 AD, western civilization began to emerge from the period known as “The Dark Ages”, the time when invading hordes of Vandals, Huns and Visigoths overran Europe and brought an end to the Roman Empire. For the next ten centuries, the newly emerging Christian Church would dominate Europe, administering justice, instigating “Holy” Crusades against the East, establishing universities, and generally dictating the destiny of music, art and literature

During this time, Pope Gregory I is generally believed to have collected and codified the music known as Gregorian Chant, which was the approved music of the Church. Much later, the University at Notre Dame in Paris saw the creation of a new kind of music called organum.

Secular music was sung all over Europe by the troubadours and trouvères of France, and it was during the Middle Ages that western culture saw the arrival of the first great name in music, Guilliame de Machaut.

THE RENAISSANCE ERA (1450 - 1600)

Generally considered to be from c.1420 to 1600, the Renaissance (which literally means “rebirth”) was a time of great cultural awakening and a flowering of the arts, letters, and sciences throughout Europe.

With the rise of humanism, sacred music began for the first time to break free of the confines of the Church, and a school of composers trained in the Netherlands mastered the art of polyphony in their settings of sacred music. One of the early masters of the Flemish style was Josquin des Prez. These polyphonic traditions reached their culmination in the unsurpassed works of Giovanni da Palestrina.

The late Renaissance also saw in England the flourishing of the English madrigal, the best known of which were composed by such masters as John Dowland, William Byrd, Thomas Morley and others.

THE BAROQUE ERA (1600 - 1750)

Named after the popular ornate architectural style of the time, the Baroque period (c.1600 to 1750) saw composers beginning to rebel against the styles that were prevalent during the High Renaissance. Many monarchs employed composers at their courts, where they were little more than servants expected to churn out music for any desired occasions. The greatest composer of the period, Johann Sebastian Bach, was such a servant. Yet the best composers of the time were able to break new musical ground, and in so doing succeeded in creating an entirely new style of music.

The instrumental concerto became a staple of the Baroque era, and found its strongest exponent in the works of the Venetian composer Antonio Vivaldi. Harpsichord music achieved new heights, due to the works of such masters as Domenico Scarlatti and others. But vocal and choral music still reigned supreme during this age, and culminated in the operas and oratorios of German-born composer George Frideric Handel.

THE CLASSICAL ERA (1750 - 1820)

From roughly 1750 to 1820, artists, architects, and musicians moved away from the heavily ornamented styles of the Baroque and the Rococo, and instead embraced a clean, uncluttered style they thought reminiscent of Classical Greece.

At this time the Austrian capital of Vienna became the musical centre of Europe, and works of the period are often referred to as being in the Viennese style. Composers came from all over Europe to train in and around Vienna, and gradually they developed and formalized the standard musical forms that were to dominate European musical culture for the next several decades. The Classical period reached its majestic culmination with the masterful symphonies, sonatas, and string quartets by the three great composers of the Viennese school: Franz Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven.

During the same period, the first voice of the burgeoning Romantic musical ethic can be found in the music of Viennese composer Franz Schubert.

THE ROMANTIC ERA (1820 - 1910)

The earliest Romantic composers were all born within a few years of each other in the early years of the nineteenth century. These include the great German masters Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann; the Polish poet of the piano Frédéric Chopin; the French genius Hector Berlioz; and the greatest pianistic showman in history, the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt. The field of Italian opera was dominated by Giuseppe Verdi, while German opera was virtually monopolized by Richard Wagner.

Composers like Antonin Dvorak began looking for ways in which they could express the musical soul of their homelands. Legends were therefore used as plots for operas, and folk melodies and dance rhythms were frequently used as inspiration for symphonies and instrumental music.

With the continued enhancement of instruments, plus the invention of new ones, the late Romantic composers of the second half of the nineteenth-century created richer and ever larger symphonies, ballets, and concertos. Two of the giants of this period are the German-born Johannes Brahms and the great Russian melodist Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY ERA (1910 - 1960)

In the early part of the twentieth century music became either outwardly expressive (as in the early symphonic poems of Richard Strauss, the huge symphonies of Gustav Mahler, or the operas of Giacomo Puccini), or more introverted (as in the so-called “impressionist” music of Claude Debussy). The previous century’s tide of Nationalism found a twentieth century advocate in the Hungarian Béla Bartók.

In a time of deepening psychological awareness, the expressionistic music of Arnold Schoenberg and his disciples germinated and flourished for a time.

Twentieth-century music has seen a great coming and going of various movements, among them post-romanticism, serialism and neo-classicism in the earlier years of the century, all of which were practiced at one time or another by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky.

Many of the greatest and best-known composers of the century, including Russian composers Sergei Rachmaninov, Sergei Prokofiev, and Dmitri Shostakovich along with British composers William Walton and Benjamin Britten were those who wrote music directly descended from the approved models of the past, while investing these forms with a style and modernistic tone of their own.

THE LATE 20TH CENTURY ERA (1940 - 2000)

Composers of this era sought to free music from its rigidity, placing the performance above the composition. Similarly, many composers sought to break from traditional performance rituals by incorporating theatre and multimedia into their compositions, going beyond sound itself to achieve their artistic goals. In some cases the line is difficult to draw between genres. Composers were quick to adopt developing electronic technology. As early as the 1940s, composers such as Olivier Messiaen incorporated electronic instruments into live performance. Recording technology was used to produce art music, as well.

The musique concrète of the late 1940s and ’50s was produced by editing together natural and industrial sounds. Steve Reich created music by manipulating tape recordings of people speaking, and later went on to compose process music for traditional instruments based on such recordings. Other notable pioneers of electronic music include Edgard Varèse, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luigi Nono, and Krzysztof Penderecki.

As more electronic technology matured, so did the music. In the 1950s aleatoric music was first championed by American composer John Cage. Early minimalist compositions of the 1960s such as those by Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass stemmed from aleatoric and electronic music.

THE CONTEMPORARY ERA (from 1975)

In the broadest sense, contemporary music is any music being written in the present day. In the context of classical music the term has been applied to music written in the last quarter century or so, particularly works post-1975. Minimalism was practiced heavily throughout the latter half of the century and has carried over into the 21st century, with composers like Arvo Pärt, Henryk Górecki and John Tavener working in the more popular “mystic minimalism” variant.

Recently there has been increasing stylistic variety, with far too many schools of composition to name or label. However, in general, there are three broad trends. The first is the continuation of modern avant-garde traditions, including musical experimentalism. The second are schools which sought to revitalize a tonal style based on previous common practice. The third focuses on non-functional triadic harmony, exemplified by composers working in the minimalist and related traditions.

5/06/2009

Soundtrack - "The English Patient"

If having read the book before watching the movie, what has been written between the lines and SO much more will unfold on the screen! Watching the movie along with the tune of the soundtrack, the history told is nailed into heart and mind. And so, I do believe a soundtrack must be close to perfection…?

In a year of mediocrity and undemanding blockbusters, Anthony Minghella's The English Patient swept through the Academy Awards in 1996 with superb acting performances highlighting a strong adaptation of Michael Ondaatje's lauded novel. The narrative of the film tells of two love stories intertwined in the 1930's and 1940's, fantastically shot against the backdrop of North Africa and Italy. The film shifts between the past, present, and future at a whim, and requires the extremely compelling performances of Ralph Fiennes, Kristin Scott Thomas, Juliette Binoche, and Willem Dafoe to sustain interest in a romantic tragedy that unfolds without immediate synchrony...

To say that The English Patient is tragic would be an understatement; the film takes melodrama to a level not often achieved, and don't expect the minimal redemption at the end of the film to salvage your mood. Minghella considered the music for The English Patient quite extensively before production began; his taste for various classical and folk music would assist in shaping the film's multicultural influences. He would look towards Western classicism of a Baroque style on one side while also exploring Hungarian folk music that, for most common listeners, is indistinguishable from the perception of Arabic or North African music. He assembled several pieces along these lines for source usage in the film, while his wife, who coordinated the dance sequences for The English Patient, suggested the swing songs that would also be used as source material for the production. The director placed the same level of importance on the underscore that would tie all of these ideas together; he claims that the only composer he had in mind from the conceptual step of the production was Gabriel Yared, the Lebanese-born classical-style artist working in France on internationally obscure romances at the time. After hiring Yared, Minghella insisted that the composer be a part of early production and attend various shooting sessions. He also instructed Yared to adapt and integrate the sounds of both the Baroque and Hungarian elements into his work, all the while infusing modern romanticism into the love story.

The resulting score would steal a Golden Globe and Academy Award away from a field of more deserving candidates that year, and Yared himself would go on to international fame that would land him major scoring assignments for years to come. What he provided for The English Patient was the right score for the right film at the right time. In the film, it fits well with the fatalistic and brooding nature of the plot, resulting in catapulted sales of the album over the long-term. For many film score enthusiasts, however, this score completely fails to function outside of the film's ambient personality, and in many regards, it's one of those rare cases where the film completely carries the score. Between the source music during the dance scenes and the piano performances by Binoche's character as integral to the plot, it's easy to imagine why the music from The English Patient was memorable enough to warrant the Oscar for most voters. But this success was only fractionally due to Yared's contribution. The score is extraordinarily restrained, which is why it doesn't work for most score collectors on album. He establishes two themes and develops them very sparsely throughout the work. Each features a power inherent in its structure, but Yared is sure to tail off each of their performances due to the unrealized love in the story. As such, both themes promise much in dramatic stature but deliver surprisingly little. The overarching theme of despair exists too infrequently to really define the score. Introduced on solo woodwind midway through the opening "The English Patient," the theme's only other major performance for the full orchestral ensemble would wait until "As Far as Florence" at the end. The second theme is the more yearning love affair, structured with the same broad strokes as a John Barry effort, and you can first hear this idea later in "The English Patient." That opening cue, serving as a suite of all the major ideas, opens with the solo Hungarian vocals of Márta Sebestyén, which may be too grating for most Western ears, and concludes with a brief statement of the despair and loneliness motif, heard on what seems to be a harpsichord and featuring a droning bass note of impending doom. Several other motifs are teased out during the score, but Yared never states them with enough deliberateness to make them effective tools of affiliation.

The love theme is typically considered the easiest identifier of Yared's work. It receives its first full realization in "Swoon, I'll Catch You" and receives a tender touch on piano in "Read Me to Sleep." Lengthy performances for this theme on strings would grace "The Cave of Swimmers" and "As Far as Florence." But even in these swells of passion, Yared's score fails to muster much energy. With a film depicting a frustrating tale of lost passion and doomed fate, the score follows in those exact footsteps. Never building to its full potential in emotion, each cue typically fades away to meanderings barely audible. Compared to the mesmerizing material that Yared would eventually produce for such dramas as Message in a Bottle and beyond, he wastes the power and elegance of the players from The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields in The English Patient. The presence of the group seems to be based more on reputation for adept classical performances rather than the talent necessary to bring Yared's composition to life. The recording fails to exhibit any of the vibrance that the ensemble is capable of evoking; if anything, the score could have been performed with equal effectiveness by a studio group. Despite its noble and romantic intentions, the entire score fails to really capture the essence of any of the characters, and yet, in a very fitting way, it very well accompanies the desolate and lonely sands of the desert. Thus, you have to choose your poison. On album, the marginally interesting solos assist in breaking up the monotony; the vocals of Márta Sebestyén, the Hungarian folk artist, add a very brief sense of exotic setting, and John Constable's piano solos further develop the solitary emotions of the film. The occasional sprinkling of period songs causes distress because of their eclectic nature, resulting in an even more disjointed listening experience. Fans of arthouse films will find merit in the album as a souvenir from the film, though most listeners closer to the score collecting world will find it uninteresting, uninvolving, and underdeveloped. For a film about sorrow, alienation, and fate, the score is a great match. But who would want to listen to The English Patient repeatedly on album when there are so many more complex and melodramatic musical tragedies available for that mood?

From: http://www.filmtracks.com/ READ MORE...