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This.
John Williams
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I don't know if these ones are his best piece, but I like them.
Home Alone - Star of Betlehem
Nixon - The Turbulent Years
Star Wars - Duel of the Fates
Star Wars - March of the Resistance
Star Wars - Across the Stars
two of the five video you embed are "not available".
If you want to post video links, please also add what they are, so people can check if they can not see them.
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Done. Which ones are not available to you?
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Yes, it's because the music of the soundtrack composers is new and many people can establish a connection only with the music of their time, with artists of their time.
What I was saying in my thread "My views about classical music" is that if classical music doesn't produce NEW melodic masterpieces it will die. I think that the antimelodic fashion inside classical music is killing it.
I think that cinematic classical shows us how classical music of today would sound if there was not the antimelodic fashion. If you want to attract young people inside classical music you just have to create symphonies inspired to cinematic classical.
The third and fifth.
The scores I said I was humming are now at least 20 years old, some about 50!
What soundtracks are today's teens humming as they go about their business?
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The list of good composers of contemporary incidental music for cinema (this is the correct descriptor @Forster @SanAntone and @Enthusiast) is long. The posers of film music only know John Williams and tell you that when John Willians will die, cinematic classical will die.
The serious listeners of film music will probably agree about the fact that John Williams is only the most famous composer of the genre, but not the only good composer inside of it. He's not even the best one.
An extended list of good composers of cinematic classical (it's not exhaustive, but longer than the typical lists written by posers): Alan Menken, John Williams, James Horner, John Barry, Hans Zimmer, Ennio Morricone, Randy Newman, Thomas Newman, Howard Shore, Marc Isham, Patrick Doyle and many others...
It's not a case that I put Alan Menken in the first position of the list. I think that he is the man of the list which deserves the title of "the Mozart of contemporary incidental music for cinema" .
He's rarely mentioned in this forum because most of us are adult males and Alan Menken has composed his masterpieces for the animated films of the Disney.
For adult males it's probably easier to connect with a film of Spielberg and therefore with the music of John Williams, but the serious listeners of film music judge the music as music, so it doesn't matter the context.
Infact the Disney animated films were not even my cup of tea when I was a child, and they are even less relevant for me today. However, what I like of Disney is that they take music seriously: they don't consider it as "background music", but as an important part of the artistic product.
The union between the philosophy of Disney and Alan Menken in the nineties created a bomb, at the point that the Disney caused the infamous splitting of the Oscar "Best original score". Once the animated movies started to compete inside "Best original music or comedy score", the great dramatic films were free to win musical Oscars, because they no more had to compete with Alan Menken (who was monopolizing the musical Oscars).
Some people say that John Williams is the greatest because he has the records of Oscar nominations. However, in most cases he didn't won the Oscar.
I'm not saying that you must not be a good composer to get Oscar nominations (of course you have, infact I put John Williams in the list of good composers), but the Mozart of film music is the one who hits the bullseye several times in a row.
This is what Alan Menken was doing in the nineties.
The only reason for which Alan Menken is not considered the greatest is that his activity as a composer of incidental music for cinema is quite limited. In respect to John Williams who has worked for his entire life in the sector and has produced many film scores, Alan Menken has only touched the waters, but he transformed the waters in wine.
Imagine if Alan Menken had not only touched the waters and he became a full time film music composers: what would be his current records in terms of nominations and winnings? In only a few years of activity he became the second man of the world with the highest number of musical oscars. He is the equivalent of someone that when he plays at dart throwing, he almost always hits the bullseye.
I know, I know: my arguments look a bit empty if I only use awards as an arguments and I don't explain which are the qualities of Menken.
Basically, Alan Menken doesn't only write great themes (which is quite common between the composers in the above list, including John Williams), but great developments. In few words, he gives a sense to the nice themes he writes, because he uses them to create stunning dramatic arcs and climaxes.
In few words, what makes Alan Menken great are the same kind of skills that many people search in classical music composers: his music is dynamic, not static. Dynamic music is not necessarily better than static music, but dynamic music with nice themes and nice developments is better than static music, which has only nice themes.
I'm sure that if Alan Menken composed music for the scores of Spielberg's films many adult males would agree with me, but many people in the category will put him down only because he has composed music for childish products.
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Funny. I can't help but feel that you take this way too seriously.
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What is "this"?Funny. I can't help but feel that you take this way too seriously.
I do find E.T. really moving as well. I remember seeing the film only once originally but for years I listened to the score. I found it captivating as a teenager and got to know it quite intimately, sometimes falling asleep to it. Perhaps it was my first "classical music experience". A few years later I got to know Holst´s the Planets and realized how much Williams was influenced by Holst´s vivid score. It does hold its own quite well compared to the Planets, although it is quite derivative at times, and easily evokes many of the same deep cosmic feelings.
It makes perfect sense that Williams used the Planets as a sonic palette for his E.T. score. He was truly inspired by the benign and friendly but cosmic theme and composed many great tunes beyond the well-known E.T. tune.
Recommended as an introduction to the Planets (or the other way around).
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John Williams leading Shostakovich's Festive Overture surprisingly remains a favorite of mine.
His NBC television commissions (Mission Suite) I also find interesting; very much in his style.
His NBC television commissions (Mission Suite) I also find interesting; very much in his style.
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Sigh...I believe that anyone who is familiar with the film scores of Raksin, Waxman, Herrmann, Korngold, Alfred Newman, Leonard Bernstein ("On the Waterfront"), Goldsmith ("The Blue Max" in particular), Steiner, William Alwyn, Malcolm Arnold, Arnold Bax ("Oliver Twist"), & others of The Golden Age will see John Williams as a third-rate (& often derivative) composer of film music.
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They might see that he, along with a number of those you name, was just drawing on the same traditions and the same sources.
Williams wrote effective music for many movies...the studios were happy enough with him. What more do you want, given that the majority of mainstream composers for mainstream movies will inevitably sound similar: they want to take short cuts to our emotions, so won't be writing the unfamiliar?
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You make several excellent points.
The number of Academy Awards and Academy Award nominations is only a decent measure of the worth of the composers' (Williams and Mencken) scores. Williams would often get nominated and fail to "win", because the voters felt he'd had enough accolades, and it was time to let others have a chance. Same with the Academy splitting Best Score category; they felt that Mencken was getting "too many" wins, and, again, it was time to let others have a chance.
And one cannot make a fair comparison between the two composers . . . they have different career trajectories, different film score counts, have scored vastly different tytpes of films, and started their film careers in different decades.
John Williams (1932 - ) has scored films (and several television shows) for over seven decades.
Oscars: 53 nominations, 5 wins
British Academy: 16 nominations, 7 wins
Golden Globes: 27 nominations, 4 wins
Grammys: 73 nominations, 25 wins
Primetime Emmys: 6 nominations, 3 wins
Saturn Awards: 16 nominations, 9 wins
Honorary Doctorates in Music from Berklee College of Music, Boston College, Harvard, and University of Pennsylvania
Inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame
American Music Hall of Fame
Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame
National Medal of the Arts
Ken Burns Lifetime Achievement Award
Gold Award from the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, which also honored him with a commission to compose a new procedural for their annual Philharmonikerball to complement or replace their hitherto used 1924 fanfare composed by Richard Straus
Richard Kirk Award from BMI
Olympic Order from the IOC
Kennedy Center Honored
Alan Mencken (1949 - ) didn't start scoring films in 1959, as Williams did. Mencken has his first film credit in 1972, and completed his first score in 1989. Most of his Academy Award nominations (and wins) in his earlier career were for Original Songs, not scores. But, just for giggles, even though Williams has a 15 year head start, let's list Mencken's accolades:
Oscars: 19 nominations, 8 wins
British Academy: 2 nominations, 0 wins
Golden Globes: 16 nominations, 7 wins
Grammys: 26 nominations, 11 wins
Primetime Emmys: 2 nominations, 0 wins
Saturn Awards: 5 nominations, 2 wins
As his music has also appeared on the Broadway stage, there are many, many more awards.
Disney Legends Award
Hollywood Walk of Fame Award
Songwriters Hall of Fame
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_and_nominations_received_by_Alan_Menken
All in all, one can only conclude that both have made a considerable impact in music.
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