I love Bach and Pachabel (I never tire of Canon in D) but do not have much money to invest in enough of this great music. It was with interest that I purchase McCartney's last classical "Ecce Cor Meum". I am not sure how great this is as classical music goes. I am only now fully appreciating this genre. I love the second movement on this album "Gratia." I am interested in how his work is standing up in the classical arena, and what other crossover artists have tried composing classical work. How are they faring?

quote:

Originally posted by Rev. Rikard:
I am interested in how his work is standing up in the classical arena, and what other crossover artists have tried composing classical work. How are they faring?

I can't speak to McCartney's most recent work, but I seem to remember Standing Stones being received with the same skepticism that greets a lot of film composers who make the effort to crossover into the more traditional classical world. My own personal observation dealing with individuals on the performance side and with audience suggests the hang ups aren't so much there as they are with the critics and press. Yes, shocking, I know. I don't think McCartney's contributions to the classical world will overshadow his pop songcraft, but I think it could be on a par with some of Gershwin's work if he had a partner like Ferde Grofe.

Joe Jackson (of "Is She Really Going Out with Him?" fame) has worked in classical quite often in addition to scoring films. He's obviously not so well known as McCartney, so his work has received little attention for good or for ill outside of the same circles where his popular music is reviewed where the reaction has been largely negative, if memory serves.

Now Playing: The GLRC Podcast

Probably the most successful has been Danny Elfman, from Oingo Boingo. He's composed the Simpsons theme, as well as scored most of Tim Burton's films (Batman, Edward Scissorhands, etc.)

One important thing to note is a lot of these crossover composers don't *orchestrate* their own music. I know Elfman didn't, at least as of several years ago, and neither did McCartney. This may have changed recently, I'm not sure.

I don't doubt they had major input in the orchestration of their works, but still, orchestration is an art in itself. This makes their classical ventures a little less notable for me, at least.

I imagine the collaboration between crossover composer and orchestrator finds the orchestrator saying things like, "No, that melody's too low for violin, how about viola? Don't like that? OK, how about bassoon? No? Well, we could bring it up an octave to violin range, but then we'd have to re-do this pedal chord, perhaps this way...no good? Well, here's another option..." etc. etc. That's a generalization, I know, but it seems like however you slice it the orchestrator is doing a large amount of the work.