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Did anyone take pictures of John Williams sitting with the audience in the first half of the concert with the Philadelphia Orchestra last night? My girlfriend and I were lucky to be sitting right next to him! It was unreal! For one hour, we sat next to the maestro, listening to his music together, we looked at him nodding his head to the music and tapping with his left foot. I still can't believe what happened. I shook his hand! Sadly, Mr. Williams arrived when the first piece was starting and left as soon as the applause roared at the end of the tuba concerto. There was no chance for us to take a little selfie. Also, we were fully aware that John Williams was there to listen to his work, not to engage in social chat with his fans. And take a selfie while his music is playing? Not a chance! So, if anyone on this forum was sitting further away and took pictures of him in the audience, we would love to see them as a souvenir of this unbelievable moment!

You should tell these people that they are embarrassingly misinformed on the subject and would be well served by not talking authoritatively about shit they're deeply ignorant of.

Exactly! I just thought of another example - Howard Shore's LOTR scores are forever locked at 24/48 since they were recorded digitally to hard drives at that resolution. Granted that's a perfectly acceptable resolution, nothing to worry about at all (they sound phenomenal). It's just funny sometimes to think small drama scores from the 60s could be sold at 24/192 if they did a fresh transfer of their tapes, but LOTR can't.

I'm not @Doug Adams but I have directly compared selections from both releases and they're identical.

Perhaps the reference to 2018 being one for the books means this year will be notable for having the least number of releases of works by Williams

I just think it's great that it's finally available digitally. I still remain surprised that they reissued it with all the same packaging, rather than a cheaper jewel case. So we just need TTT to get reissued and Middle Earth has officially entered the 21st century!

This week's very unexpected used haul: Where to start? Any suggestions? Also this (not music but still very cool and unexpected - and cheep!): Edit: oh dear, me dodgy spelling again

John Williams writes everything himself. It is known. The concert suites Williams writes for the soundtrack albums and for concert setting are probably done in part for his personal satisfaction as a composer and in part for the audiences/listeners as he is very precise about how he wants to present his music to the public. It is in a way a chance to present the major musical idea or ideas found in a film score in a cohesive self-contained way without the visuals and in a form that allows the music to stand on its own in such a setting and let it breathe and develop beyond often strict time constraints of the movie. As for the naming of these suites Williams often picks names that are either dramatic or poetic or seem to capture the overarching emotion of the film or a character or idea. Sometimes these names are tied to a scene, oftentimes less specific. Something like Duel of the Fates is dramatic but slightly nebulous in its meaning, referring to the actual duel seen in the film but also the unseen battle initiated by the Sith against the Jedi. Flight to Neverland is more of an overture gathering material from the score in a thrilling miniature, which is actually part of a 5-movement suite that showcases several other themes and set pieces from the score in a concert setting, including The Face of Pan which was probably just a theme the composer decided to extend and elaborate on by adding a beautiful flute coda to the piece to round it out more satisfyingly. A Bridge to the Past (A Window to the Past on the OST) from HPPOA is both concrete and abstract in its meaning as the theme is indeed heard on a bridge in the film but is an extensive development of the new Family/Memory theme for Harry. But you shouldn't get stuck on names with this music.

Good one! Completely forgot about that one.

I'd wager a considerable number of persons actually has no opinions about film scores whatsoever.

He misremembers a lot of details when introducing concert works. For example, saying Nimbus 2000 is a theme for Harry's wand. The titles of his concert works are kind of a stretch sometimes, too. It's just artistic license that he takes. He's not very exacting about such things... Duel of the Fates was a piece written to accompany the lightsaber duel. But in the same piece, he included a translation of a poem about trees. We all know he draws a lot of inspiration from this subject, so I think we can interpret this as Williams giving something of himself to the work, and getting his own personal joy out of writing these works, while still satisfying the needs of the project. To answer the question in the thread title, he creates concert versions of themes to give a sort of idealized presentation of a major theme for album listening, as well as to have something to play in concert that can stand alone with no visuals (or, sometimes, with a vague montage of visuals). I would guess he also sees these pieces, collectively, as sort of a personal "resume" - a series of takeaways from projects he works on, that together can demonstrate some of what he thinks are his strongest ideas, and have a life outside the films they were written for. And I'm sure he's the one to decide what to arrange in concert form, in almost all cases. Maybe someone here knows an exception to this, but I don't know of any.

1. Main Title 2. Main Title 3. Main Title 4. Main Title 5. Main Title 6. Main Title 7. Main Title 8. Main Title 9. Main Title 10. Main Title 11. Main Title 12. Main Title 13. Main Title 14. Main Title 15. Main Title 16. Main Title 17. Main Title 18. Main Title 19. Main Title 20. Prelude and Main Title 21. Main Title 22. End Cast 23. End Title/End Credits 24. End Title 25. End Title 26. End Cast 27. End Credits 28. Finale 29. Finale/End Title 30. Finale 31. End Title 32. End Title and End Cast 33. Finale 34. Finale 35. End Title 36. Finale 37. End Cast 38. End Title 39. End Title 40. End Title I'll finish this later.

A devastating piece for a devastating scene. Me so horny!

Who cares? We have the Ultimate Edition.

John's brother!

Nice hauling there JTWfan77; the Young Indys are great fun :-)

My dear Margo, I'm tempted to change my nom-de-plume to Alastair DeWitt. I must resist.

A trilogy of movies for the three Great Tales seems likeliest, but if I had my way, it would be a movie (Beren and Lúthien) and then a TV series (covering Narn i Chîn Húrin, Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin, The Wanderings of Húrin, and The Nauglafring), and finally another movie (The Fall of Gondolin). With the possibility for a prequel movie (The Fall of the Noldor). As for the Amazon deal, from the news releases I saw it appears that: The license includes specifically the rights to The Lord of the Rings The show will explore storylines before The Fellowship of the Ring Which suggests to me that it will mine the Appendices. There are a lot of great storylines in the 20th c. TA—the rise of the Éothéod Northmen, the Wainrider Easterling invasion, the Fall of Arthedain (and of Angmar), the fall of Minas Ithil and the end of Anarion’s line, all of which are interconnected. And the waking of the Balrog, not as connected. Even more likely, though, if by ‘preceding The Fellowship of the Ring’ they mean more or less immediately, I would speculate that they will center it on Aragorn’s adventures in his youth, when, under the name of Thorongil, he fought for Gondor against the Corsairs of Umbar. Kind of a thin story to base a whole TV series on, but, if they really are going for a Game of Thrones type show—intrigue between human nations and houses, sex, sloooow buildup of the war, ignoring vast distances—then, they’ll want a humanocentric story based on Gondor but drawing in Arnor, Rohan, Umbar, Harad, and the Easterlings.

We've had 16-bit audio for decades.

Digital video masters for CGI-heavy films like the prequels and LOTR will only benefit from better compression of the newer codecs like HEVC and MAYBE some better color and contrast, since they're all "stuck" in the 2K resolution and its color space. I believe nothing else can be obtained from those unless they re-render all the CGI again, which may cost a few millions more than just use the 2K files. But when I say the "digital vs analog" is pointless today, I meant in the sound capturing field. Now, in the image capturing field, I believe there's plenty room for debate. Not so much in still photography, but in motion picture.

If you look at the other cinematic universes - Star Wars, Marvel and the Wizarding World - they are already growning longer than the Middle Earth universe currently is. And Tolkien's universe is the grand-dady of at least two of those!

Same with films. Lucas switched to digital photography way too soon. AOTC and ROTS are stuck at less than 1080 resolution upscaled to a 2K DI. Their eventual 4K release will probably have better contrast and colour but there's only so much they can do with them in future. Meanwhile, studios can pull out anything shot on film from any decade and, with some work, put out a stonkingly good genuine 4K transfer. Edit: Sorry @crumbs. Didn't realise you'd basically made the same point just a couple of posts up

So...........................................................................................................................................................the smell?

The "transition period" from the late 70s to mid 2000s where some things were recorded analog, some digital, and some both, is a major quagmire of different recording equipment, differing bit rates, and differing sample rates to wade through. it seems for the most part, when the specialty labels are expanding anything from that era, they ignore the digital recordings if they can find and afford to get fresh transfers of the 1st gen analog tape masters, as a fresh 24/192 digital transfer of those tapes made with modern equipment is simply going to be better that digital recordings made in that era. Most of those digital recordings are 16/441 and the actual equipment to create them was still new and not as perfect as today's equipment, while the simultaneous tape recordings were perfectly fine as they had been for decades. Of course nowadays, every score is recorded directly to hard drives in super high resolution and sound perfectly fine.

Why obviously? It's a complete score release.

All six Star Wars scores were recorded onto analog tape. ROTS and AOTC were recorded digitally simultaneously with the tape. I don't know if TPM was as well or not.

Congratulations! I know this new release can never replace the eight years you lost without this score, and that a reissue can't compare to owning the classic original, but hope you can find a quantum of solace in it nonetheless.

At a very high-level: Recording -> Editing -> Mixing -> Album editing (and possibly remixing) -> Mastering -> Album production & distribution Most things are recorded to digitally to disk nowadays - it's unlikely that tape will be involved.

Directionless is indeed a good description.

SPOILERS: the following is a leaked description of the opening scene of Star Wars: Episode IX. Read at your own risk.

1. Saving Ryan's Privates 2. The Pats riot 3. Empire on the Sun 4. Schindler's Fist 5. JF(uc)K 6. Born on the 4th In Chu Li 7. Seven Years On A Tablet 8. War Whore 9. Lincoln Logs 10. Midway Mania

Oh another top 10. No particular order, again. Historical. OK. Schindler's List Lincoln The Post Amistad Empire of the Sun Rosewood The Patriot Munich Nixon Midway

It would have been fun if he wrote a theme for each house... although Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw would never have been needed

Williams, Stéphane Denève and composer Jennifer Higdon in Philadelphia

According to Chris Malone: SW 93 Anthology: "For the first time Star Wars utilised the actual film mixes, prepared by Eric Tomlinson, sourced from two-track tapes that contained each take recorded for every cue" **SW 97 SE: "At this time the original, unedited three-track 35mm magnetic film recordings of Star Wars were located as well as the 16-track master session tapes." "The 16-track tapes were of limited value as the sections that corresponded to the preferential takes were edited out and presumably stored on another set of reels that are now considered misplaced." ESB 93 Anthology: "The Empire Strikes Back was largely mastered from four-track ¼” tape copies comprising the edited film mix as three channels of music with one track being a pilot tone for film synchronisation. These tapes were purportedly in poor condition – probably suffering from lubricant failure therefore making baking an inappropriate treatment – and were not located until near completion of the project." "To make matters worse, the Empire tapes were incomplete and PolyGram was unwilling to locate the original LP album tapes. This necessitated the use of 35mm magnetic film recordings, edited for assimilation with the picture, together with several cues lifted directly from the original PolyGram CD" ESB 97 SE: "For The Empire Strikes Back, five of the pre-edited 24- track backup rolls were remixed by Brian Risner at the Fox Zanuck Theatre in 1996. Ostensibly, these tapes contained the cues that appeared on the original double LP album." "For all other cues, the digital transfers made by Bill Wolford in 1993 appear to have been utilised." RoTJ 93 Anthology: "The production team made extensive use of two-track tapes containing the edited film mixes despite three-track tapes also being available at the time. A number of cues were also lifted directly from the original PolyGram CD because they could not be located on other available sources." RoTJ 97 SE: "A three-track reduction of the original preedited Abbey Road tapes was used to prepare the set..." **I DO remember reading at FSM that the complete 16 track tape of SW containing the correct takes were located. I'll try to find the post. I believe it was a post about an ebay auction of a set of SW and ESB master tapes... Edit: here it is, from Lukas Kendall himself: "I was at a Star Wars-related convention in L.A. maybe 6-8 years ago where Dan Melson had a booth trying to sell these tapes he got from the John Neal estate—he's been trying to unload them for years. He has every right to own and sell the master tapes, even though he does not own the intellectual property recorded ONTO the tapes. He always asked a fortune and, not surprisingly, people were not interested, seeing as how the tapes are worthless except for the "cool factor." He had a lot of rock stuff too. Of the film music, the tapes are basically dub-downs of little importance except for the Star Wars 2" 16-track masters which contain the edited "selects" Williams and Ken Wannberg chose—I remember when they did the Star Wars Special Edition CDs, they had the 16-track masters, but all of these master takes from the original album had been snipped out! So that's where they went, making those 16-tracks are highly important. Now, the good news: at that Star Wars con was Matthew Wood, a sound editor for Lucasfilm (voice of General Grievous, I think?) and he and I were like, WTF?! I am quite sure he subsequently coordinated to have the 16-tracks digitized at Lucasfilm (in exchange for a tour or something for Melson)...whatever. I think it's all OK, so people should RELAX." (http://filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?forumID=1&pageID=3&threadID=101432&archive=0)

Doubt this will happen. Clickbait headline for a film that Spielberg will probably end up producing, at best.

Rylance will play all parts.

Maybe not as "climactic" but if my memory serves correctly, the music which scores the scene where David meets the Blue Fairy in A.I. has a unique melody: 2.00-2.13......and 2.13-2.24......and 2.24-2.38.....the whole thing is simply magnificent!!!

If he's a true JW fan and really loves JW and is not a hare-brained Zimmer fantool pretending to love JW just to win approval here, then he will have typed it all out - letter by letter. If he copy pasted then he should have his JW fan credentials revoked.

Well I've heard that things are easy when you're big in Japan... Oh, when you're big in Japan. Tonight.

Over 2,000 people every day. It's perfectly OK that you don't read it but I'd appreciate if you showed some respect for them as well as for the site's editor by avoiding such dismissive generalizations

they say those 12 minutes totally change everything.

STAR OF BETHLEHEM is actually better than some of the classic carols, i think. I would go even farther and say all of the Christmas songs Williams wrote for Home Alone ,to include Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas from HA2, are just as good as most of the traditional carols.

I have yet to come out. Karol

I don't recall any bitching when Intrada released BTTF without any of the songs. No one seemed bothered that they had to buy the original CD for the Huey Lewis songs for example. These are score releases, first and foremost. Paying an expensive license for songs that have nothing to do with William's score isn't relevant for the product. And I bet that if they had included them, and spread it across 2 CDs and charged $30 for it all, there would be bitching that "we don't need those stupid songs and we're paying $10 extra".

A rather clever diversion maybe.

QWow, Home Alone!! I love Christmas releated scores! And I love Williams scores! I'm happy