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John Williams

15K views 40 replies 30 participants last post by  pianozach 
#1 ·
Yo guys, I'm posting this thread purely for the appreciation and worship of the great man; John Williams. It's true he has had a massive advantage working with the top directors in the buisness, but you have to admire his natural genius for melody an orchestration. What are your favourite scores of his? Personally, my favourite are the Star Wars movies, the Indiana Jones trilogy and Schindlers List.
 
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#6 ·
I'm going out on a limb and choose a cheesy old TV show theme by the then little known Johnny Williams as he was called. I listen to the all too brief main theme from The Time Tunnel just for its quirky "where's-the-downbeat?" rhythms and fantastic horn ensemble work. It's almost jazz, almost classical.

I hated the show -- loved the theme music.
 
#10 ·
It's difficult to know where to start when nominating the best JW scores, there have been so many over the years, and he is absolutely by a wide margin the greatest living composer in my view. It seems to me that these days the vast majority of the finest living composers work in cinema, and sadly very few of them in the 'classical' mainstream.

For me E.T. is his most beautiful and in some ways his most purely symphonic score, it is truly wonderful.

I would say that in recent years his music for 'Catch Me if You Can' and 'Terminal' are so original and interesting, in both cases you would not even think that you were listening to a John Williams score.

I also love his scores for Saving Private Ryan, all the various Star Wars movies, and Empire of the Sun.

A word also for Jaws, which will probably remain forever his most iconic score, that ominous sound of the approaching killer shark is perhaps the most instantly recognisable and terrifying musical theme in cinema since Bernard Herrmann's famous shower scene in Hitchcock's 'Psycho'.
 
#12 ·
While owing a lot to John Adams, Williams' score to A.I. is absolutely marvelous.

Whats most amazing about Williams is how his sequel scores almost always trump the original. The Empire Strikes Back, Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom, The Lost World, that third Harry Potter score... he consistantly just ups the ante in the most wonderful ways.

Dracula, The Fury and Empire Of The Sun may be his best and least respected works though.
 
#16 ·
He doesn't orchestrate all his scores.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0121765/fullcredits#cast

Edward Karam .... orchestrator (as Eddie Karam)

In a marvelous interview given a long lime ago I remember a hollywood orchestrator was asked what his work entailed and his reply prety much holds true for todays orchestrators.
He said something like: "The composer gives me the pieces writen on this white paper and my job is to write it out again on this cream coloured paper."

Most film composers write in pretty detialed short score of about nine or ten staves (nowadays midi files of about 10 channels are common too). Most of the details are already there and the orchestrator puts in a crescendo or a slur here and there. Not to demean the work they do I must add that the work load is usually immense and mind-bogglingly heavy with a zero tolerence for mistakes so there is a lot of pressure and responsibility involved. I know, I've done this kind of work and although it's tough, it by no means undermines the orchestrational ability of the composer. (I won best orchestrated score at the 2001 Thessaloniki film festival for 'Peppermint' with music by Panayotis Kalantzopoulos, which recieved 8 other awards!)
FC
 
#14 ·
While it's true that Williams doesn't orchestrate many of his scores, he does write a lot of very specific and meticulous notes on his sketches, which can span several staffs, in regards to instrumentation. Sometimes the orchestrator finds themselves merely assigning the parts to its corresponding place in the full score.

So I think we could give some credit to Williams for the amazing orchestration found in his scores.

I love his score for the Original Star Wars Trilogy.
 
#17 ·
While it's true that Williams doesn't orchestrate many of his scores, he does write a lot of very specific and meticulous notes on his sketches, which can span several staffs, in regards to instrumentation. Sometimes the orchestrator finds themselves merely assigning the parts to its corresponding place in the full score.
William Ross stated that the work he did on the second Harry Potter score was next to nothing - Williams writes with such detail that theres very little for an orchestrator to do with it. Ross's credit on the score was nothing more than a professional courtesy
 
#18 ·
Hello again Edward! I am happy to note that you follow John Williams earnestly. He is one of the greatest living composer legends today. I have been following his compositions from a very early age. My order of John's music is Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Extra Terrestrial, Star Wars series, Schindler's List, Indiana Jones series and not to forget the Superman series. His scores for Terminal, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's stone as well as the Chamber of Secrets are also gems.
 
#20 ·
I have a soft spot more for the John Williams of yesteryear, when he was known as Johnny, and with that, I would have to say my favorite score of his is a little-known comedy/crime caper from 1967 called Fitzwilly, which starred Dick Van Dyke and Barbara Feldon (away from Get Smart for this one). It's a transitional score which, on the one hand, evokes all the light comic scores he was doing, such as Penelope and How to Steal a Million (Williams was afraid of what Stravinsky would have thought of it, as he came to the film's premiere), and fortells the coming of the scores he would do for the Home Alone series, Harry Potter and Catch Me If You Can. Even the film's song, "Make Me Rainbows" (lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman) is a precursor to his love themes from Star Wars and Superman.

My second favorite Williams score is for Brian DePalma's The Fury, their only collaboration. It's a shame, as Williams evokes two of his mentors, namely Bernard Herrmann and Franz Waxman, and giving DePalma one of the best scores apart from those Herrmann delivered for Sisters and Obsession.

My third favorite is another little-known film, a 1965 war film entitled None But the Brave, the only movie Frank Sinatra directed. Ahead of its time, this film dealt with a US Marine unit sharing the island (sort of) with a detachment of Japanese soldiers. Some of the music for the action scenes are quite good, setting the stage for Williams in later years to deal with Spielberg's take on WW2. Of the three scores I mentioned, this is the only one that I believe did not have a soundtrack album issued.

That said, I do love his later scores, but these, along with films like Diamond Head and The Killers, as well as his television scores for Irwin Allen, set the stage for the John Williams we all know.

By the way, he also composed a very dark and dramatic violin concerto that deserves more performances as well.
 
#25 ·
Superman, HP1 and 3 and Jaws. I do love the ET score too and used to deliberately love winding the windows down in traffic and turning it up full blast to see what reactions i got :)

A very diverse and underrated genius. Many purists on here will bang on about him just being a film composer or making out he is borrowing themes but i'm pretty convinced that if mankind continues to exist in 200 years (like the greats before him), Williams music will still be being played ... which is long after the words from todays critics are forgotten.
 
#29 ·
Superman, HP1 and 3 and Jaws. I do love the ET score too and used to deliberately love winding the windows down in traffic and turning it up full blast to see what reactions i got :)

A very diverse and underrated genius. Many purists on here will bang on about him just being a film composer or making out he is borrowing themes but i'm pretty convinced that if mankind continues to exist in 200 years (like the greats before him), Williams music will still be being played ... which is long after the words from todays critics are forgotten.
What reactions did you get?
 
#26 · (Edited)
So I recently came across this article about Williams talking about how he never watched the Star Wars movies. http://thecomeback.com/pop-culture/...mits-hes-never-actually-seen-those-films.html

I must say, I like the man more now after reading it.

The composer is also unrelentingly modest about his work. He acknowledged that these compositions[Stars Wars film music] have garnered worldwide adulation and acclaim, but refused the call them "classics" himself.

" So I'm a composer of music and I look at Mozart and I look at Beethoven and Bach, the greatest organizers of sound that we've ever had, and you need to be humble when the shoulders that we stand on are so great. "

He doesn't think he has ever got it right.

" You hope that you've gotten 90% of it or as close to it as you can. But at least with me, and I think with most writers of any kind, you really don't say "Eureka! This is it!"

"It's work on this, come the next week and reshape it and do it-like honing away at it.

" I'm not so brilliant that I can sit down and write a melody or a theme or a whole scene or a whole work as Mozart might have done."
 
#27 ·
Saving Private Ryan is my favourite, the wordless choral harmony added so much emotions.

I think JW excels other area outside movie music, his Olympic Fanfares are wonderful pieces. Good stuff!
 
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