John Williams

Originally Posted by Arkhangelsk

Okay...I'm way to tired to edit and put the two parts next to each other, but just listen to "Hook-napped" from the Hook OST and "Hedwig's Theme" from the HP and the Sorceror's Stone OST.

The heck with that - try Home Alone against either of those

(Note that all three movies take place or have something to do with the season of winter at some point)

Originally Posted by Legato

I need to ask him the name of it. I would be surprised if Across the Stars predates it. I don't think it's by John Williams, either :/

It could be John Williams actually. "Across The Stars" sounds a great deal like what he wrote for Seven Years In Tibet or even Ethan Frome.

Originally Posted by orion_mk3

We all know it's coming. I actually find his opinion on the man har to discern; half the time, Williams is compared favorably to other artists, and the other half, he's compared unfavorably to his predecessors like Wagner.

Eh, thats really kind of unfair. You don't say Paul McCartney sucks because Mozart came first. John Williams is John Williams - if you had to compare him to another composer, it would have to be someone from the 20th Century - perferably to someone from his generation (as I'd loathe someone to try and pigeonhole me into a Stravinsky versus Williams arguement)

John Williams is never bad. At his worst - I'm not a fan of his first two HP scores - he's better than most. Elliot Goldenthal said of the man "He has never, ever gotten a note wrong" which is pretty damned close to what I think.

Are there better composers? Well, yeah. Bernard Herrmann scored On Dangerous Ground and The Devil And Daniel Webster - which is better than Heartbeeps or Guide For The Married Man. But then again, Williams scored The Fury and Artificial Intelligence - which is better than Fahrenheit 451 or The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. You can hem and haw over this and that but then you remember than Herrmann - who was notoriously hard to work with - doted on Johhny Williams.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Legato

You might be right. However, I don't believe my father owns those CDs (unless the songs are on another CD he owns or were performed by someone else.)

Wouldn't be the first time John Williams has quoted classical music (Artificial Intelligence), borrowed from classical music (The Star Wars main title) or outright stole classical music (The Quidditch Fanfare from the first HP movie).

But everyone has done that.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by orion_mk3

I certainly don't ding composers for borrowing the work of others (I could never be a James Horner fan if I did )

Well, think of it this way - no original music has been written in over a 100 years.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Minion

The hell are you talkin about, Willis?

The last original idea in music was from Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde - the Tristan Chord (F, B, D# and G? I forget exactly), as it was the first idea that moved towards "atonal" sound. Everything before or since is just ideas that are taken one step further (rock and heavy metal) or just variations on the same idea (prepared piano - be it with blocks of wood or peices of meat).

Because of that - nothing original has been made since 1860.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by goldeneye2131

Does anyone know if that is another album similar to that of the Phantom Menace's Ultimate Edition?

There will (thankfully) never be another UE album. Sony has said such.

Originally Posted by Arkhangelsk

Everything is both old and new.

I like how some dumbass on the internet can decide to ignore the rules of music theory for the last 140 years just because.

Originally Posted by Minion

But anyway, it's not as if harmony is the only area for possible musical innovation.

Well, then name some type of experimentation that was not an offshoot of what I previously made an example of.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Minion

What about Jazz? Music pre-dating Jazz was composed almost entire in Ionian (Major) or Aeolian (Minor) modes. Jazz's "blues scales" are actually a mode that was almost never, if ever, used previously.

I run the risk of sounding more of an ass than usual - so allow me to say this much. I am not a music professor and am not as well versed in theory as some people seem to paint me or how I sometimes paint myself. This stuff is a hobby for me and I'm learning it slowly - and in a sense backwards, since I have a hard enough time reading sheet.

I also need to correct myself. I earlier misstated the Tristan Chord - I looked it up and it's actually F, B, D# and G#.

This being said, lets move on to Minion's topic.

I've been questioning the whole "unoriginal music" thing for sometime and haven't been able to come up with a truely solid answer. Because while Wagner's Tristan... brilliantly introduces dissonance in the peice, there are other things that were musically created afterwords. Take for instance pandiatonicism which was a method of connecting notes that didn't nessessarily "make sense". It's commonly found in americana music like Aaron Copland.

However, pandiatonicism was a word made in the early 20th century by a Russian composer who's name I cannot remember. So how can something written 60 years prior be the "final" thought in music?

However, despite my misgivings and possibly because of my undereducation on music theory, I don't find myself able to contradict or dismiss the idea that Tristan is what it is seen as. I might be an ambulatory penis on the internet for the last decade, but I know better than to think my "world's smartest cockroach" mentality means anything to all the people who've studied music for the last century and a half. I cannot fight the concensus of that many people.

Does that make me right in this arguement? Not really. Not any more than any of us can say "I know Seattle is the captial of Washington"; we all learned that by rote, not because it was ingrained into our very beings by trial and error or some survival instinct.

Originally Posted by Cyrus XIII

I do for example enjoy every minute of Elfman's recent scores, no matter how re-hashed they may sound.

This isn't a knock at you - but Elfman writes like a commercial jingle. You remember it because it's catchy, not because it's good

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Originally Posted by Minion

The funny thing is, I've read that many composers, including Bach and Beethoven, and even some pre-baroque composers used the Tristan chord somewhere in the body of their works. It's in a Beethoven sonata and some piece in Bach's WTC. Actually, pretty much everything you can think of appears in Bach's WTC or Beethoven's Sonatas.

You just off-handedly agreed with me about my original Tristan... statement, Minion.

However, I failed to mention that timing is important for the Tristan Chord. The "motif" (though I loathe to use that word, most people know what it is) is only stated in fragment until the end. Wagner did that to give the story a sense of longing (as its romantic tragedy) for both the characters and as a sense of tonal completion.

Originally Posted by Josiah

I mentioned Indiana Jones in general several posts back, but you're the first to mention them again since then, interestingly enough. I like "Raiders March", particularly the version of it in The Last Crusade. Can't believe I forgot about 'Escape From Venice' too. That song's awesome.

As fantastic as Last Crusade is, I still find Temple Of Doom to be far and away the best of the three Indy scores.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Minion

I agree with you in part and in part I disagree. Nothing is new under the sun, but originality is in the presentation, not so much the materials. In that sense, Wagner is original as are many who came after him.

"It's not what you say anymore, it's all in how you say it"

-http://imdb.com/title/tt0202677/

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by kinkymagic

I much prefer Hermann.

Herrmann was many things - but I don't think he was ever once subtle.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by kinkymagic

How about Taxi Driver?

You mean outside of the gigantic building drumroll and brass hits?

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Thanatos

I like John Williams' work on the olympic themes.

Agreed. However, the 1996 "Summon The Heroes" album was a hell of a lot better than the one that followed it.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by kinkymagic

Which were off-set by the smooth jazz, representing Travis' mental decline.

That... does nothing to defuse my earlier point. Taxi Driver is not subtle.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by kinkymagic

the famous Bernard Hermann score, whose percussion is loud, commanding and scary

Originally Posted by kinkymagic

the famous Bernard Hermann score, whose percussion is loud, commanding and scary

Originally Posted by kinkymagic

the famous Bernard Hermann score, whose percussion is loud, commanding and scary

Come off it already.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Cal

Where is the four-disc SACD rerecording of the Indy scores?

We may never see an american release of Indiana Jones and The Temple Of Doom due to many mitigating factors. While a rerecording would be possible - Silva did a nice Indy Trilogy disc in 2004 - the original masters are lost and thought destroyed. The only place to order the CD is overseas, usually in Asia.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Cal

Are masters the unmixed, raw recordings or what? Can't the sheet music be used for a new recording?

The masters would be the raw recording sessions, which are probably on a BETA tape since I think they got rid of reel-to-reel in the... 1970s? (John Barry's The Black Hole was the first digital recording for a soundtrack)

I dont know about the sheet music but it's not unheard of. Sometimes music is locked up by a composer (Alex North's 2001) and sometimes the music is just plain lost (all the choral sheet work for Basil Poledouris's Conan The Barbarian) and sometimes is destroyed (Hugo Friedhofer's Joan Of Arc)

FELIPE NO

You'd be very surprised.

First off, for reasons beyond me, film score people are idiot snobs that turn their noses up at rerecordings. I personally love some of the Telarc and Silva Screen CDs but a lot of people wave their arms and scream that if its not the original recording, its flawed somehow.

Also, attempts to 'fill the gaps' with new transcription end up very badly. Silva did this for their Conan The Barbarian suite and its a godawful mess.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Minion

Couldn't a computer basically do all the work for you? Just take the sound track from the movie, minus human voices and translate the wave form into a midi/sheet music?

I don't personally know enough about such technology but I don't think thats possible considering the depth of sound. I mean, a 100+ peice orchestra and 80+ person choir (I forget the number of people in the London Voices when ToD was recorded) is pretty damned dense, especially if you consider the really "big" moments of music in the score (The Mine Car Chase, the Temple Of Doom).

It would be more fesible to hire a professional orchestrator and have them transcribe than have a computer do it - but thats just me.

Originally Posted by Minion

And wow, that is pretty elitist. Even classical snobs relish in how often a piece is performed in different ways by different people.

Three things you never bring up on a film score message board:

*Danny Elfman's Batman was so good becuase Shirley Walker orchestrated and conducted it
*John Williams is better than Jerry Goldsmith
*Rerecordings can be good and are sometimes better than the original recordings (IE: Silva's recording of First Knight compared to the original album release)

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Originally Posted by Zephos

Some parts are transcribed horridly, such as the "Medallion" theme in "Ark Trek" which is missing notes and has wrong harmonisation, resulting in the effect of the orchestra skipping over notes because they were hard

Don't get me wrong - not everything Silva has done is gold. Their earliest discs are especially painful, but they've really put out some real gems in terms of new recordings. Their version of "The Mine Cart Chase" on that Indy disc is above and beyond the original recording in terms of performance, enthusiasm and sound quality. They also did a fantastic version of "Dance Of The Witches" from Witches Of Eastwick that puts a gigantic over-emphasis on the tuba/bass trombone "answer" (enough to crack speakers) and they also did a powerful cover of "Never Surrender" from First Knight.

John Williams is easy to mess up. His scores tend to be more dense than a lot of stuff by John Barry or Jerry Goldsmith (though Jerry has a *lot* more alternating meter, so when Prauge Philharmonic screws up on Explorers, I can forgive them)

Originally Posted by Zephos

It's slower than the original recording, but I think it works much better.

Well, thats the kind of stuff I'm talking about. Did you ever hear Joel McNeely's recording of the Judge Dredd suite? Or Frederic Talgorn's "Duel Of The Fates"? Those are enough to knock the fillings out of your head - DotF is a much darker, more full-bodied peice under Talgorn's baton.

But for every great rerecording - you get 3 or 4 bad ones. The new Telarc disc is pretty damned awful because of the choir. Listen to that. Ugh.

Originally Posted by Zephos

It's when there are blatantly wrong notes, terrible acoustics (which apparetnyl plague Prague recordings) and other issues in addition to questionable interpretations (which in itself isn't really a problem as that's the idea of interpretation).

While "wrong notes" can be argued, complaining about acoustics is awfully silly given that people on the internet will download DVD Rips and live concert bootlegs. Yeah, I like a nice clear recording too - but sometimes it also helps to hear it in it's original "live" format. I have a number of live classical discs that are helped because they're kinda low-balled quality and analoge recordings.

Originally Posted by Zephos

Charles Gerhardt's rerecording of ESB is one example of a brilliant rerecording, one which some argue is superior to the original but of course which others would consider blasphemy.

When I buy a disc, theres two things I look for to judge the disc by and the Imperial March is one of them. I've yet to hear a version as good as the one Williams recorded for the original ESB album - but I'm still looking for one. (What I want to know is - why has no one rerecorded the Asteroid Field cue? Theres a suite version - but its only the first minute or so of the movie version. Why isn't the movie version recorded?)

Originally Posted by Zephos

I'm not about to say I disrespect Danny Elfman for not arranging or orchestrating or doing anything else to his own music beyond humming it into a tape recorder, nor praising Howard Shore simply because his LotR opus was written, orchestrated and conducted himself.

Well, sometimes timetables don't allow it. Michael Kamen used 12 orchestrators to get Robin Hood finished on time and thats one of the best scores he ever did.

And sometimes having an orchestrator helps you work out ideas. Goldsmith owes his Oscar to Arthur Morton for his orchestrations and choir work on The Omen. The problem is when a composer's "voice" changes depending on the orchestrator - a problem I've heard with Elfman sometimes.

On the other hand, like you mentioned with Howard Shore, Don Davis is the same way for the most part. He had to hand-off a lot of the Matrix sequels to orchestrators because of the sheer size and volume of the work - but he's also written and orchestrated and conducted scores just as complicated (Jurassic Park III, Warriors Of Virtue)

Originally Posted by Zephos

And just to add a little bit more on the subject of lost tapes/music and ToD, the masters are apparently nowhere and I don't know if someone holds the orginal scores. Williams certainly doesn't keep most of his music except for his initial sketches (i.e. before it's sent off to be professionally printed for the orchestra).

Theres probably a good chance that Williams has his conductor's sheet from the recording of ToD. I say this because on the Indiana Jones DVD set, they interview him saying he was looking over the "Indy's First Big Adventure" cue from Last Crusade and made note of how many synch points there were in it. I think it stands to fair reasoning that if he has that, he could definitely have ToD.

There's nowhere I can't reach.