Music
What method did Zimmer use to solicit voices for the chant used in the score for The Dark Knight Rises?
The Dark Knight Rises
The Dark Knight Rises The Dark Knight Rises (soundtrack) The Dark Knight Rises (soundtrack) Hans Zimmer Sherlock Holmes (soundtrack)
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In an interview in October 2010, composer Hans Zimmer confirmed that he would be returning to score "The Dark Knight Rises." James Newton Howard was offered to return and write the score with Zimmer as he did for "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight", but he chose not to because he noted that the chemistry established between Zimmer and Nolan during the making of "Inception" would make him seem like a "third wheel". Zimmer included several cues from the earlier scores, but explains that he wanted to go in a "completely different direction" for Bane's theme. While the theme accompanying Selina Kyle is deliberately ambiguous, the musical thread spanning throughout the trilogy was composed exclusively for Bruce Wayne. The film features a prevalent Moroccan chant of the phrase "deshi basara" (proper transliteration: "teeji basra") (Arabic: تيجي بسرعة), which translates to "rise up" (literally: "come quickly"). In November 2011, Zimmer crowdsourced online audio recordings of the chant to be used in the film's score. When asked about the chant for clarification, Zimmer said, "The chant became a very complicated thing because I wanted hundreds of thousands of voices, and it's not so easy to get hundreds of thousands of voices. So, we Twittered and we posted on the internet, for people who wanted to be part of it. It seemed like an interesting thing. We've created this world, over these last two movies, and somehow I think the audience and the fans have been part of this world. We do keep them in mind."
The film features a prevalent chant of the phrase "deshi basara", which, according to Hans Zimmer himself, means "rise up" in a language which he says he's happy to have maintained secret (most likely Moroccan or another Arabic dialect). The chant can be interpreted as a mispronunciation with incorrect word stress of the dialectal Arabic phrase تيجي بسرعة ("Tījī basara’ah"), translated as either "come quickly" or "she comes quickly" (both forms are identical in Arabic), which is loosely consistent with Hans Zimmer's provided meaning of the chant. When asked about the development of the chant, Zimmer said, "The chant became a very complicated thing because I wanted hundreds of thousands of voices, and it's not so easy to get hundreds of thousands of voices. So, we Twittered and we posted on the internet, for people who wanted to be part of it. It seemed like an interesting thing. We've created this world, over these last two movies, and somehow I think the audience and the fans have been part of this world. We do keep them in mind."
The score received mostly positive reviews. Heather Phares of Allmusic commented that "while Hans Zimmer's music for Christopher Nolan's Batman movies aren't as high-concept as some of his other scores, such as "Inception" or "Gladiator", Zimmer ties the music for the final installment of Nolan's "Batman" trilogy to his previous scores, but allows these pieces to have their own flourishes as well". Filmstracks, on the other hand, stated that "Zimmer was lost in all of the media hype and sensationalism surrounding this franchise second coming is the artistic merit of Nolan's achievements" and that "a contributing factor to the frenzy is undoubtedly Hans Zimmer's involvement most frequent musical voice." Filmtracks even went to the next level by stating that "Unfortunately for Zimmer, his actual speaking voice is so prevalent in interviews that soundtracks for these films have become their own form of spectacle. Not since John Williams of the early 1980's has a film composer become such a mainstream attraction, and Zimmer indulges the attention by constantly unleashing his thought process and sense of humor in interviews that don't always make much sense when strung together. "Jonathan Broxton of Movie Music UK stated that "In many ways, "The Dark Knight Rises" showcases the best and the worst of Hans Zimmer's musical personality in one all-encompassing score", "on the one hand, the intellectual design and intelligent use of Bane’s Chant shows Zimmer at his creative best, taking a simple idea and working it around to suggest complex concepts and subtle changes in context", and that "On the other hand, you have the same old arguments: the Zimmer sound permeating the Hollywood mainstream to such a degree that composers as talented as Alan Silvestri and Patrick Doyle are being asked to ape the style; the fact that Zimmer himself seems to be stuck in a rut, writing what in effect are little more than variations of the same score on almost every action film he tackles; the over-reliance on electronic enhancements, ghostwriters, arrangers, and so on and so on. The bottom line is this: fans of the Zimmer style will love it, fans and of the current Batman style will love it, whereas anyone whose musical tastes tend to veer towards the predominantly orchestral will find a great deal of it boring, or unpalatable, or both."
In the 2000s, Zimmer has composed scores for Hollywood blockbuster films including "Gladiator" (2000), "Black Hawk Down" and "Hannibal" (2001), "The Last Samurai" (2003), "Madagascar" (2005), "The Da Vinci Code" (2006) "The Simpsons Movie" (2007), "Angels & Demons" (2009) and "Sherlock Holmes" (2009). While writing the score for "The Last Samurai", Zimmer felt that his knowledge of Japanese music was extremely limited. He began doing extensive research, but the more he studied, the less he felt he knew. Finally, Zimmer took what he had written to Japan for feedback and was shocked when he was asked how he knew so much about Japanese music. During the scoring of "The Last Samurai" in early 2003, Zimmer was approached by the producer Jerry Bruckheimer, with whom he had worked previously on "Crimson Tide", "The Rock" and "Pearl Harbor". Bruckheimer had finished shooting "" but was unhappy with the music composed for the film by Alan Silvestri and wanted a replacement score. Bruckheimer wanted Zimmer to rescore the film, but due to his commitments on "The Last Samurai", the task of composing and supervising music for "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl" was given to Klaus Badelt, one of Zimmer's colleagues at Media Ventures. Zimmer provided some themes that were used in the film, although he is not credited on screen. Zimmer was hired as the composer for the three subsequent films in the series, ' (2006), ' (2007), and "" (2011), collaborating with Rodrigo y Gabriela for the latter. For the 2009 film "Sherlock Holmes", "The Daily Variety" reported that Zimmer purchased an out-of-tune piano for 200 dollars and used it throughout the scoring process because of its "quirkiness". For the 2011 sequel "", Zimmer and director Guy Ritchie incorporated authentic Romani gypsy music, which they researched by visiting Slovakia, Italy and France. The gypsy music in the film is played by Romani virtuoso musicians. Zimmer is also noted for his work on the scores of Christopher Nolan's "Batman Begins" (2005) and "The Dark Knight" (2008), on which he collaborated with James Newton Howard. For the soundtrack of "The Dark Knight", Zimmer decided to represent the character of The Joker by a single note played on the cello by his long-time colleague Martin Tillman. Zimmer commented "I wanted to write something people would truly hate." The scores for these films were disqualified from receiving Academy Award nominations for Best Original Score due to too many composers being listed on the cue sheet. Zimmer succeeded in reversing the decision not to nominate "The Dark Knight" in December 2008, arguing that the process of creating a modern film score was collaborative, and that it was important to credit a range of people who had played a part in its production. Zimmer explained his approach to scoring with other musicians in an interview with "Soundtrack.net" in 2006:"Originally I had this idea that it should be possible to create some kind of community around this kind of work, and I think by muddying the titles – not having "you are the composer, you are the arranger, you are the orchestrator" – it just sort of helped us to work more collaboratively. It wasn't that important to me that I had "score by Hans Zimmer" and took sole credit on these things. It's like Gladiator: I gave Lisa Gerrard the co-credit because, even though she didn't write the main theme, her presence and contributions were very influential. She was more than just a soloist, and this is why I have such a problem with specific credits. "Zimmer works with other composers through his company Remote Control Productions, formerly known as Media Ventures. His studio in Santa Monica, California has an extensive range of computer equipment and keyboards, allowing demo versions of film scores to be created quickly. His colleagues at the studio have included Harry Gregson-Williams, James Dooley, Geoff Zanelli, Henning Lohner, Hugh Marsh, Steve Jablonsky, Mark Mancina, John Van Tongeren, John Powell, Nick Phoenix and Thomas J. Bergersen. In October 2000, Zimmer performed live in concert for the first time with an orchestra and choir at the 27th Annual Flanders International Film Festival in Ghent. He has received a range of honors and awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award in film Composition from the National Board of Review, the Frederick Loewe Award in 2003 at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, ASCAP’s Henry Mancini Award for Lifetime Achievement, and BMI's Richard Kirk Award for lifetime achievement in 1996. Recent work includes the Spanish language film "Casi Divas", "Sherlock Holmes", "The Burning Plain" (2009), and "Inception" (2010). He composed the theme for the television boxing series "The Contender", and worked with Lorne Balfe on the music for "", which was his first video game project. Zimmer also collaborated with composers Borislav Slavov and Tilman Sillescu to create the score for the video game "Crysis 2". For the 2010 film "Inception", Zimmer used electronic manipulation of the song Non, je ne regrette rien. The horn sound in the score, described by Zimmer as "like huge foghorns over a city" became a popular feature in film trailers, with Zimmer commenting "It's funny how that sort of thing becomes part of the zeitgeist. But I suppose that's exactly what trailers are looking for: something iconic, lasts less than a second, and shakes the seats in the theater. "In December 2010, Zimmer received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He dedicated the award to his publicist and long term friend Ronni Chasen, who had been shot dead in Beverly Hills the previous month. In 2012, Zimmer composed and produced the music for the 84th Academy Awards with Pharrell Williams of The Neptunes. He also composed a new version of the theme music for "ABC World News". Zimmer also composed the score for "The Dark Knight Rises", the final installment of Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight" Trilogy. The film was released in July 2012. Zimmer described himself as "devastated" in the aftermath of the 2012 Aurora shooting, which occurred at a screening of "The Dark Knight Rises", commenting "I just feel so incredibly sad for these people." He recorded a track entitled "Aurora", a choral arrangement of a theme from the "Dark Knight Rises" soundtrack, to raise money for the victims of the shooting. He co-composed the music for the television series "The Bible", which was broadcast in March 2013, with Lorne Balfe and Lisa Gerrard, and the score for "12 Years a Slave", which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in March 2014. Zimmer lives in Los Angeles with his wife Suzanne, and has four children. 
Director Guy Ritchie used the soundtrack from the film "The Dark Knight" by Hans Zimmer as temporary music during editing. Zimmer was pleased when Ritchie asked him to do the score but was told to do something completely different. Zimmer described his score to Ritchie as the sound of The Pogues joining a Romanian orchestra. For the musical accompaniment, composer Hans Zimmer used a banjo, cimbalom, squeaky violins, a "broken pub piano" and other unconventional instruments such as the Experibass. At first, Zimmer had his own piano detuned, but found that it just sounded out of tune. He asked his assistant to locate a broken piano. The first piano they located was passed over as it obviously had been loved and cared for, but the second one was the one they used in the production. Zimmer said "We rented 20th Century Fox’s underground car park one Sunday and did hideous things to a piano. "The boxing scene in the film also features a version of "Rocky Road to Dublin" by The Dubliners, which is not included in this album. 