I think a lot of composers get into trouble just making up a plot and expecting an audience to follow that.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
There are wonderful composers and librettists out there. It's the lack of creative producers that is troubling.
The great composers I worked with along the way, I always felt they were filmmakers more than composers. They would talk about the story rather than the music.
When I don't know what the music is going to be for a scene, I imagine some sort of orchestration going on and damned if they don't usually come up with a similar kind of thing.
I'm obviously very keen on the theater and I think it's inevitable that some of the orchestral and chamber pieces have got dramatic elements which might even suggest an unspecified dramatic plot of some kind or other, even though it's not in my mind at the time.
I think with musicals, it's much more part of the script. They don't want songs that would stop the show; they need songs that keep the plot moving.
If a composer is to reach his audience emotionally - and surely that's what theatre music is all about - he must reach the people through sounds they can relate to.
One of the major aspects of film composing is that it's not so much a musical thing as it is communicating your ideas with the director, who often does not come from a musical background.
The music's job is to get the audience so involved that they forget how the movie turns out.
With a musical, you kind of have to do a mind-meld with the book-writer, the lyricist, the composer, the director - sometimes the producer. I think that's a reason why musicals are the hardest form.
Composers and lyricists are not responsible for storyline and casting. One can imagine actors shouldering this responsibility, since they charge for half the film. But producers never ask actors to share the losses. Instead, they train their guns on composers and lyricists.