This weekend the newest STAR TREK  movie opens.  Being a mild to moderate “trekkie,” I’m looking forward to seeing this newest incarnation of the franchise.  I’m also looking forward to hearing what the newest Trek composer brings to the familiar ST world, since there is a legacy of good music to live up to.

The most famous piece of Star Trek music is the main theme from STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE, although it is just as well-known as the opening credits music for the t.v. series “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”  Composed by the late Jerry Goldsmith, this theme arguably the signature musical motif of the Star Trek franchise.  Goldsmith also scored the 5th (The Final Frontier), 8th (First Contact) 9th (Insurrection) and 10th (Nemesis) installments of the Star Trek films, with “First Contact” featuring yet another stunningly beautiful melody.

James Horner did the scores for the 2nd and 3rd Trek movies (“The Wrath of Khan” and “The Search for Spock”), and these scores really helped launch his career.  While not as strong as the Goldsmith scores, there are some memorable themes to come out these soundtracks.

Leonard Rosenman scored STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME.  There is a lot of diversity to this score; almost every track features a new theme.  It is an extremely contrapuntal score, too (there is a track called “whale fugue!”).  This is also the most controversial of the trek scores; as it seems that people either love it or hate it.

STAR TREK: GENERATIONS (7th film) is easily the most forgettable of the trek scores.  This seventh installment, composed by the t.v. veteran Dennis McCarthy, just isn’t on the same level as the other soundtracks.  To be fair, however, it is possibly the worst trek movie.   Regardless, the score just seems to follow the picture; not really contributing anything to the overall story arc of the film.  No memorable themes either.  After this score, the producers went back to Jerry Goldsmith to score the subsequent films.

Michael Giachinno has scored the newest film, and I’m looking forward to hear what he has done.  Now if I can just find some time to go see it….

Every once in awhile I will “google” my name just to see what turns up.  Last week I was very shocked to see that one of my posts from this blog was quoted in a couple of different articles and blogs!  To be honest, I thought that no one was ever reading (except for maybe Mom and Dad, because, you know, they HAVE to!).

Here’s where I first saw the quote: http://www.abpnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3984&Itemid=53

It’s nice to see that there are others just as concerned as I am about where church music (and the church in general) is right now.  So it’s time to step it up notch!  I’ve tried to be very general in my criticisms; not naming names or specific songs.  But I’m going to change that.  I’m going to start critiquing specific songs and songwriters on this blog, and putting it all out there about how I believe they are damaging and neutering the church.  My intention will not be to offend people, but it will happen, since I will undoubtedly go after some “sacred cows.”  But I do this for the sake of the church.

But before I start hacking away, let me recommend some names of GOOD songwriters for the church today:  Stuart Townend, Keith Getty, Bob Kauflin, Steve and Vicki Cook, Mark Altrogge, Stephen Altrogge.  Find them, and find good and thought provoking music that is well-written.  O yeah, there might be some Scripture in there, too.

“It’s the most wonderful time of the year!”  This is a phrase that starts to get tossed around every December.  Holidays, vacations, snow, hot chocolate; so many things that make people love this ‘most wonderful time of the year.’  

For me, it’s Christmas music.  I LOVE Christmas music.  Sacred and non-sacred, I love it all!  Whether it’s Nat King Cole’s version of “The Christmas Song,” or Sir David Willcocks setting of “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” I look forward to the beginning of every winter so I can hear the holiday music.

Here are some of my other Christmas favorites:

John Rutter’s settings of “Silent Night” and “O Come, O Come Emmanuel”

Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Hodie”

Vince Guaraldi’s Jazz Trio in “A Charlie Brown Christmas”

Alfred Reed’s setting of “Greensleeves”

Leroy Anderson’s “Sleigh Ride”

Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker”

Simple 4-part a capella singing of Christmas carols

…..I could go on…..

From a Christian/church perspective, I am always happy when Christmas time rolls around because all the churches that have forsaken great music (and the arts in general) will also dust off the hymnal.  Even if it’s just once a year, it’s a good thing.

The great and memorable music is part of what makes this ‘the most wonderful time of the year.’  I encourage everyone to soak it up while we have it.  Let it help you remember good times with family and friends.  Let it remind you of the simpler times, when, as children, we waited the whole year for Christmas.  And, if you’re willing, let it tell you about the child born in Bethlehem.

I always seem to end up at this point: where do I belong as a composer?  My wife is sick and tired of me asking her this question, pointing out the fact that I’ve been here before.  Regardless, I find myself here often.  I think part of it is because composers today tend to fall into certain groups and categories, usually because of the kind of music they write or write for.  John Williams is a ‘film’ composer; Mark Camphouse is a ‘band’ composer; John Rutter is a ‘church’ composer; etc.  Whether composers try to put themselves in such categories, or if they are willingly or unwillingly placed there by the performers and listeners of their music, is what I’m trying to figure out.  

Personally, I don’t want to get locked into one ‘kind’ or ‘type’ of composer.  I want to be able to fluidly move in and through different types of music.  Is this possible?  Why don’t more composers seem to do it?  Maybe they do, or try to, but they continue to be placed into certain categories by others.  Perhaps it’s youth and naivite that have me thinking that I can transcend any labels in my composing.

Maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about….

Many theologians/bible scholars will tell you that Biblical literacy among Christians is at an historic low point.  Ironically, there has never been a time when Christians were so into so-called ‘worship.’  How can these two events, biblical illiteracy and a great passion for worship, be happening at the same time?  Simple answer: THEY CAN’T.  In fact, they DON’T.  Think about this logically: if biblical literacy is so low at this point in western history, then the God of the Bible is not the god that is being worshipped, but rather a shallow and incomplete version of Him.  Or coming from the other perspective, if worship today is really so profound and life altering, then the knowledge of that which is being worshipped would have to be at an incredibly high and accurate level.  These two ideas, high biblical illiteracy and a worship renewal/revival movement, can not be happening at the same time.

So which one is occurring now?  I’ll let you think about it…..

The week before Christmas is one of the most exciting times of the year for me: The Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic. This annual event completely re-energizes my musical goals and aspirations. This year was particularly exciting: for the first time ever there was a piece of mine that was available for perusal! SINFONIETTA, published by TRN, was on the shelf at the publishers booth. Hopefully, this will be the first of many for years and years to come.

I was listening to John Williams’ score to SUPERMAN this evening, something I haven’t done in quite awhile. Wow, what a wonderfully exciting score! The music is so rich and diverse, capturing the humor, majesty, beauty and wonder of this classic film. The themes are so wonderful and memorable; so much so that John Ottman decided to use them in his score of SUPERMAN RETURNS.

Williams’ wrote this score a year after STAR WARS, and it is so completely different yet just as great. SUPERMAN is much more lyrical throughout, including in the incidental music. In general, the score has a very “American” sound; tapping into the aural world of Aaron Copland and Samuel Barber. The score has a much ‘warmer’ feel to it than does STAR WARS, which was much more militaristic. Williams is often accused of ’sounding the same,’ (an argument usually from the bitter and jealous musicians), but an intelligent listen to SUPERMAN will show how different it is than what the American Film Institute called the greatest score of all time.

Because of it’s greatness it was awarded the Academy Award for Best Score in 1978…o wait, no it wasn’t. The Oscar went to Giorgio Moroder for his score to MIDNIGHT EXPRESS. Anyone ever remember this score?

In my quest to find new and good church music, I made my regular visit to the CCLI website.  This weeks theme for our worship service is “Walking in Maturity.”  A few hymns immediately came to mind: BE THOU MY VISION, MAY THE MIND OF CHRIST MY SAVIOR, I WANT TO BE LIKE JESUS, NEARER MY GOD TO THEE.  Unfortunately I could not think of any contemporary songs that address this idea of spiritual maturity.  So, I went to the CCLI site to try to find some.  I set up the search, clicked ’search,’ and this happened….NOTHING!!!  Nothing, there were NO songs that came up!  So, I tried an ‘advanced search,’ and the same thing!  I tried ‘maturity,’ and I tried ’spiritual maturity.’  Nothing.  ‘No songs were found with your search criteria.’  I found this to be profoundly discouraging and depressing. 

 So then I thought I would try a similar search with different wording.  Perhaps I just need to change my wording!  So, I tried ‘be like Christ;’ nothing.  ‘Imitate Christ;’ nothing.  ‘Live like Christ;’ nothing.  Finally I tried something very simple: ‘growth.’  FINALLY, several pages were available, but only a few songs actually had the music available for viewing and download.  The texts that I found were more about ‘give me more of your power’ then ‘help me love my God and my neighbor.’  As frustrated and disappointed I was, I can’t say I was surprised.

I have maintained for a long time that church music today is extremely shallow and having almost no teaching value.  If there are no songs coming out that talk about becoming more like the God we supposedly worship, how can we possibly be on the right track?  Kyrie Eleison….

Today I was browsing through some contemporary church music resources, looking for new songs that I can introduce and use at my church.  This is almost always a very discouraging process, since I usually find lackluster texts with even more lackluster music.  The ‘hottest’ ‘worship leaders’ out there (I don’t want to name any names, but we know who they are…) write the same song over and over again, and no one seems to notice.  There isn’t anything ‘un-true’ about most of these songs (though I would consider many to have questionable theology at best), but there isn’t anything really good either; and I stand by the argument that an absence of heresy does not equal the presence of quality!

 But then I remembered a very reliable website that I’ve checked into before and have always found great stuff.  Here it is, folks:  www.sovereigngraceministries.com.  If you’re looking for new, well-written, theologically sound contemporary music I suggest you visit this site often.  To be blunt, the music I’ve found on this website really puts the ‘popular’ and well-known contemporary music to shame.  A lot of thought goes into the texts and music for these songs, and they are more than just ‘general praise,’ which is where most of todays songs haphazardly fall into.  Plus, this website makes many lead sheets available for FREE!  Yep, that’s right, free.  It actually seems like the people who run this site actually care about ministry!  (I hope you noticed the sarcasm dripping from that last sentence)  I have found dozens of songs here that I have used, and will continue to use, for corporate worship as well as special music. 

So, if you’re looking for some contemporary music for your church that actually has some ‘meat on the bones,’ I strongly encourage you to visit the good folks at Sovereign Grace Ministries.  I’ve never been disappointed with what I find there.

Everyone has their own thoughts on what the best film score of all time is, or should be.  I have even changed my favorite several times over the course of my life.  In order to determine the value of a score several factors come in to play.  In some cases, the music is simply a background; nothing more than filler added to an otherwise dull movie.  In other cases, the music is purely for the sake of emoting; telling us how we are supposed to be feeling at a particular moment.  In a lot of cases, it’s actually easier to say why a score is ‘bad,’ or to even describe what makes a bad score, than it is to define what a great score should entail.  Never-the-less, I am about to do just that.  In my humble opinion, this film has the greatest score of all time:

 THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION

 The reason I have chosen this score is due mainly to two determining factors: 1) How the music aids in the telling of the story, 2) The originality of the score.

 It is difficult to choose a starting point on addressing how this score succeeds in telling, or helping to tell, this wonderful story of hope.  Thomas Newman, the brilliant creator of this score, used the philosophy of ‘less is more.’  Never once does the music get in the way of the movie (a problem with many scores today).   Newman’s score parallels the narrative of the movie, while simultaneously telling us about each character and their journey through this narrative.

 Rather than going into a lengthy essay about this score, I would just like to briefly describe two moments in the film that are particulalry powerful musically.  ‘Brooks Was Here’ is the scene in the movie where we follow Brooks, the elder inmate, from his parole through to his tragic suicide.  Even though Brooks has found freedom, he never allows himself to embrace that freedom, but rather chooses to lament over the familiar life that he has lost.  The music perfectly captures the lonliness of Brooks through the use of very stark harmonies in the piano.  Blocked chords are juxtaposed against a pedal point, and thus creates a feeling of wandering but not really going anywhere.  This is exactly what Brooks is going through;  he has a job, but with no prospect of advancement.  He has home, but no one to share it with.  He is totally alone in a world that has advanced 50 years since he was removed from it and put into Shawshank.  Unable to move on, Brooks takes his own life.

It is the character Red who understands that Brooks was ‘institutionalized,’ that he grew to depend on the walls of Shawshank, even though it was a prison.  Years later, when Red gets paroled, he also goes through the same living space, job and struggles that Brooks did.  Thomas Newman delivers the same music for Red (‘Compass and Guns’), the same stark and lonely textures of Brooks post-Shawshank life.  The music starts to change, however, once Red makes the decision to ‘get busy living.’  The initial point of musical departure from that of Brooks’ is when the oboe comes in with a pentatonic countermelody to the piano; this occurs at Soon after, the pedal point and bleak piano chords are replaced with lush string writing, that are both beautiful in their richness, yet slightly dissonant in their unsure direction.  At the end of this track, when Red is close to finding his destiny (and ultimate TRUE freedom), the harmonica enters; symbolising the previous life of Red, when he was truly a free man.

At the time of its release, this was one of the most unique scores ever written.  Since then, it has been imitated but never duplicated.  The score features acoustic instruments and also quite a lot of synthesizer; and these two are balanced and blended perfectly.  They successfully complement each other in sound and texture.  The way the piano is used is so different from other scores that feature the instrument in such a prominent way.  There is never a moment of virtuosity in the writing; in fact, there is no virtuosic writing or performance in the entire score.  This fits the film perfectly, in that there is nothing flashy about the prison or the men in it.  In this simplicity, however, is some of the most beautiful and truly moving music that I’ve ever heard in a film score.  I could write for days about this soundtrack, and maybe I will at some point, but for now I encourage all of us to get acquainted, or re-acquainted, with this masterful film score.