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"A Musical Biography of John Williams" (ebook by Tom Barton)?


filmmusic

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I just found this, and this is the only source in the internet:

http://books.google.gr/books?id=fiA0zbl1LcoC&pg=PA2&lpg=PA2&dq=%22A+Musical+Biography+of+John+Williams%22+%22tom+barton%22&source=bl&ots=Yp_tZIHk7x&sig=aIrA6fqEOiyPr-r3oOkul5Foxrg&hl=el&sa=X&ei=vuliUf3hBJDv0gXHroDQBw&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22A%20Musical%20Biography%20of%20John%20Williams%22%20%22tom%20barton%22&f=false

it seems it's like an ebook with links to sites and stuff about further information.

I saw in some pages which has links to "complete score analysis", "complete cue list" etc., and i have a hunch that it links to here in jwfan.

i wonder where someone can find the complete one..

It's fresh! (date of publication: March 2013)

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Thanks for the heads-up, filmmusic.

When that is said, I found it a rather lackluster reading, especially about the early years. Not only were there loads of errors (among other the eternal 'two symphonies' error), but it is written horribly. It's almost as if he's just assembled various sources online -- including Wikipedia -- and put them together uncritically. It's also pretty clear that he hasn't seen most of the more obscure films on his resume, and instead resorts to various quotes culled online. Overall disappointing.

At least I'm happy that the information I'm personally sitting on (especially relating to the early years) is far more extensive and researched, and once I get it down on paper, it will hopefully be better written in a more engaging and structured fashion too.

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Just for curiosity sake, I found while quickly browsing the text, a wrong quotation on it.

meaning?

There is a reference to a recent article that is misquoted. I would have to check the text again and in all honesty I'm too tired right now. If I don't forget I'll point it out exactly tomorrow. Anyway, I agree with Thor on this one... not the best thing around about Williams work.

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Just for curiosity sake, I found while quickly browsing the text, a wrong quotation on it.

meaning?

There is a reference to a recent article that is misquoted. I would have to check the text again and in all honesty I'm too tired right now. If I don't forget I'll point it out exactly tomorrow. Anyway, I agree with Thor on this one... not the best thing around about Williams work.

ok, doesn't matter. ;)

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At least I'm happy that the information I'm personally sitting on (especially relating to the early years) is far more extensive and researched, and once I get it down on paper, it will hopefully be better written in a more engaging and structured fashion too.

I can't wait!

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Certainly not the worst self-published book I've read . . . but hardly worthy of the subject matter.

The most valuable part is the index of scores. The "biography" itself (I hesitate to even call it that) is little more than a high school essay gushing with saccharine praise for the Maestro. Not that I think he's undeserving, but a biography's meant to be an objective presentation of a person's life story, not a publically-circulated fan letter. Throwing "sketch" into the title doesn't mitigate it. This guy could've put a little effort into making this more professional. It comes off much more like a devotee blog than a book of any kind.

- Uni

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maybe it's accessible to USA only?

I mean how did Uni read the biography?

I dunno. It's just there.

Or most of it is, anyway. A number of pages in the index section are missing, replaced by an icon of a book and a buncha Greek writing. (Microedits. . . ?)

Also, I need to revise what I said earlier about the value of said index. I'd browsed a couple of pages at the time, meaning to look into it further later. Well, it's later, I looked, and it's mostly garbage. The bulk of it consists of passages lifted from websites—what's there, anyway. Half the scores don't have any commentary at all (how could you run two paragraphs on Diamond Head and one sentence on E.T.?), making the whole thing appear uneven and incomplete.

This is really a piss-poor job. The whole thing was clearly rushed through. If it had received another few months of attention, it might be something worth having.

- Uni

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There are many inaccuracies and typos. For example, it says Williams started his collaboration with Spielberg with Jaws ... In 1965.

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I appreciate the good intentions behind such ventures, but again we have something which is sloppily researched and without any true musical insights (at least from what I read).

In my very humble opinion, anyone who'd love to write a serious book about Williams and his music should really be 1) a trained musicologist, with good knowledge of music theory & history, capable of handling well music lexicon and 2) a good film historian, with a strong preparation about film history and technique.

Even if one is the ultimate Williams fan who knows every single note he wrote and gathered every piece of press material around, this is pretty much useless if he/she doesn't possess the above mentioned skills. Of course this doesn't mean the work should be a highly technical, headache-inducing stuff for all those who don't have such preparation. The target should be something which could be comprehensible also to the simple fan. I see that a lot of people probably don't care about composition techniques, musical language/structure and stuff like that, and maybe they would be much more interested in reading anecdotes, stories and "juicy" biographical details. But that would be imho just an exploitation of a famous man, who also appears to be very humble and private when it comes talking about himself (i.e. not exactly the most interesting subject for a book with shocking revelations, as celebrity biographies aim at most of the times).

I think a perfect candidate to write a very good Williams book is Jon Burlingame, who is someone that possess the qualities I said above and who's also very very good at framing things into the perspective of Hollywood film music history.

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I agree with your second point, but not necessarily your first, Maurizio. While it's no doubt an advantage to be a trained musicologist, it's by no means a prerequisite. When you're dealing with film music, you have a whole other technical apparatus at your disposal to analyze the music in a visual context. For that, you really only need a BASIC musical understanding with some basic terms. You should, however, be equipped with skills in textual analysis. In fact, I wrote my own Ph.D. about film music that way, and that went well.

If it had been a book only about Williams' concert works, on the other hand, I'd be more inclined to agree with you. Then you would need something more than just basic musical terminology.

As for Jon Burlingame, he's very good at facts and figures. He has a lot of knowledge in that department. But his textual analysis has often been lacking, IMO, from a purely academic viewpoint. At best, it has been 95% descriptive. In textual analyses of films and how the music works with the films, it's crucial that you have ability to interpret and extrapolate.

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Maurizio, it all depends on what you want to write.

If you want to write about the music and analyse it, you must be a musicologist.

If you want to write about his life and connection of music to film, and see all this from a historical, philosophical, psychological etc. side, you don't have to be a musicologist.

If one would like to write a serious-detailed book about BOTH, the book should be at least 2000 pages, or else he would be scratching the surface.

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Of course it depends on what type of book one wants to write, anything's possible. However, it would seem pretty absurd to me to write a book about Williams without having some sort of music theory knowledge. And it would be absurd to write it eschewing completely any kind of musical discussion (or limiting it to a bare minimum), since we're talking about a composer. Yes, he's not Beethoven or Brahms, hence maybe it's not required to have the most complete tools of a highly-trained musicologist to write a good book about him. But downplaying the pure musical aspect of his artistry is unfair imho and would likely produce a book full of abstract analysis when it comes to talk about the music.

There are good examples of books about film music which are capable of being respectful both of the musical talk (without being too heady) and the cinematic aspects, like Christopher Palmer's The Composer in Hollywood or Tony Thomas' Music from the Movies (both of them would have been perfect people for a book about JW, imho). Even Doug Adams' Music from the Lord of the Rings, while quite deep in musicological terms, comes out pretty comprehensible even for the uninitiated.

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Of course it depends on what type of book one wants to write, anything's possible. However, it would seem pretty absurd to me to write a book about Williams without having some sort of music theory knowledge. And it would be absurd to write it eschewing completely any kind of musical discussion (or limiting it to a bare minimum), since we're talking about a composer. Yes, he's not Beethoven or Brahms, hence maybe it's not required to have the most complete tools of a highly-trained musicologist to write a good book about him. But downplaying the pure musical aspect of his artistry is unfair imho and would likely produce a book full of abstract analysis when it comes to talk about the music.

As I said earlier, it depends. If your goal is to say something about what Williams' music does in a filmic context, that is no less valid than investigating the purely musical values. In fact, there are cases where the latter may be less relevant.

For example, I investigated film music's ability to create audiovisual tableaux, more or less separated from the narrative (in terms of emotion, mood and symbolism). For that, I drew on a number of disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, semiotics and a little bit of musicology. I specified this theoretical discussion in analyses of the scores to E.T., BLADE RUNNER and EDWARD SCISSORHANDS. None of this discussion or analysis required more than basic musical knowledge -- it was more a matter of contextualizing the music. Maybe I used a few Italian words like tutti or legato or pizzicato or whatever, but that's about it. I was nowhere near the terminology of some of the other threads here, nor was it required or necessary for my project.

But what we can hopefully agree on is that a book about Williams should not only be well-researched, fact-wise, but also provide a) an engaging writing style and b) some attempts at interpretation and textual analysis that moves beyond the superficial. This is regardless of whether it's an academic treatise or a more accessible, 'pop cultural' book.

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Absolutely, Thor. There's more than a way to approach a serious critical writing about a composer like Williams. Film music is quite a unique beast, mostly because much more than other artforms it's really a combination of two distinct creative disciplines that collaborate together to form a unified whole. This is something inescapable for anyone who wants to tackle an analytical study about it.

What matters to me the most (as someone who tried himself to write critical pieces about film music) is that, in many cases, there's the tendency to separate too much the "film" from the "music" and viceversa. People who are more comfortable with one discipline tend to minimize or underestimate the other. Of course sometimes it's crucial to elevate one aspect more than the other, but the complexity of the subject doesn't permit to take any of them too lightly.

Personally, I tend to be more interested in studying and discovering the pure musical thought behind Williams' film oeuvre, even though I'm not uber-savvy in musical theory (I'm practicing though). I find truly engaging to understand how the composer's mind works and tries to "solve the problems" using his own musical chops. But, again, this is very much tied with the source of inspiration, i.e. the film itself, so it's pretty much impossible to separate the tables in unconditional way.

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I agree. I tried to balance those two things myself in my thesis.

The ultimate, "ideal" writer for me would be one that was well-versed in musical terminology while at the same time a good film analyst and interpreter, communicating the analysis through a more or less accesible language. Sadly, I haven't yet read one film music book that has managed to balance the two (and I've read a lot). It's either too much of the one or the other.

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The point with film music literature is that for too much time film music has been treated as the Cinderella of musical arts, hence some of the first writers who tackled the subject tried first and foremost to make a point about film music having equal dignity as other forms of "pure" music. This was inevitable in a way, because it was true that many composers have not been treated fairly and someone had to make a case for them. In this department, I truly enjoy the writings of people like Tony Thomas, Christopher Palmer and Fred Karlin, they made imho all the right points to make people more aware about the quality and dignity of film music and its most important contributors.

Then, there are the writing of people like Roy Prendergast or Royal S. Brown, which are more deep into the aesthetic form study and its artistic value. Brown has quite an insightful eye, but sometimes a bit too heavy and unconditional, while Prendergast swings too much from historical facts and musical analysis. Kathryn Kalinak is a good writer imho, she has a very good sense of both film and music aspect (her book Settling the Score is surely one of the best I've read on the subject).

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The point with film music literature is that for too much time film music has been treated as the Cinderella of musical arts, hence some of the first writers who tackled the subject tried first and foremost to make a point about film music having equal dignity as other forms of "pure" music. This was inevitable in a way, because it was true that many composers have not been treated fairly and someone had to make a case for them. In this department, I truly enjoy the writings of people like Tony Thomas, Christopher Palmer and Fred Karlin, they made imho all the right points to make people more aware about the quality and dignity of film music and its most important contributors.

Then, there are the writing of people like Roy Prendergast or Royal S. Brown, which are more deep into the aesthetic form study and its artistic value. Brown has quite an insightful eye, but sometimes a bit too heavy and unconditional, while Prendergast swings too much from historical facts and musical analysis. Kathryn Kalinak is a good writer imho, she has a very good sense of both film and music aspect (her book Settling the Score is surely one of the best I've read on the subject).

The Thomas, Karlin and Palmer stuff is too 'technical' for me (more like industry manuals), and too lean in terms of aesthetic analysis and interpretation (which is my preferance). Prendergast is what it is -- a product of its time -- but has some redeeming factors. Kalinak is good, and I love Brown's book. To me, the most influential book in the last 30 years is Claudia Gorbman's UNHEARD MELODIES. Set the benchmark for the film music books to come. And by golly, there has been an onslaught of film music literature in the last 20 years. Enough to get lost in! Which is good, but I'm still waiting for that one book to satisfy me pr. the ideal I mentioned above. Maybe I'll have to write one myself, starting with one about John Williams. :)

I think you and I have a slightly different preference in what we want to see in film music literature, Maurizio.

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I think you and I have a slightly different preference in what we want to see in film music literature, Maurizio.

Oh, the subject is so rich and layered that there's space for many approaches and every one could be as interesting and important. The most important thing is to make a work thoroughly researched and thought-out. Good luck with your projects, Thor. I look forward in reading them!

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  • 5 years later...

It's available in pdf format online. Not a Ph.D., strictly speaking, but the old Cand.Philol./'hovedfagsoppgave' which is longer and more elaborate than a Master, but shorter than Ph.D. Guess I just said Ph.D. in order to avoid the country-specific delineation: https://www.duo.uio.no/handle/10852/27550

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15 minutes ago, Thor said:

Not a Ph.D., strictly speaking, but the old Cand.Philol./'hovedfagsoppgave' which is longer and more elaborate than a Master, but shorter than Ph.D. Guess I just said Ph.D.

 

Do you mean 60 study points (20 vekttal), as opposed to 30? As far as I know, some masters programs in Norway still have theses with a "duration" of 60 study points.

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36 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

 

Do you mean 60 study points (20 vekttal), as opposed to 30? As far as I know, some masters programs in Norway still have theses with a "duration" of 60 study points.

 

Back then (I think I was in the last batch for the hovedfag-system), there was a year's difference (estimated time) between the two, and considerably more extensive requirements for the thesis itself. It was obviously not Ph.D. level, but this weird middle ground between Master's and Ph.D by today's standards. Not sure how the system works today, however, and if changes have been implemented in the 15 years since. It seems to be further watered out, from what I know, since almost every former college now seems to be a 'university'.

 

(I had to check my old documents, but it seems the thesis itself was 60 stp, while the hovedfag as a whole was 120 stp with courses included).

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6 minutes ago, Thor said:

 

Back then (I think I was in the last batch for the hovedfag-system), there was a year's difference (estimated time) between the two, and considerably more extensive requirements for the thesis itself. It was obviously not Ph.D. level, but this weird middle ground between Master's and Ph.D by today's standards. Not sure how the system works today, however, and if changes have been implemented in the 15 years since. It seems to be further watered out, from what I know, since almost every former college now seem to be 'universities'.

Does your degree and this paper correspond with the licentiate degree which at least here in Finland is the one degree below Ph.D?

 

In Finland and in Sweden a Licentiate's degree, recognised as a pre-doctoral degree, is equal to completion of the coursework required for a doctorate and a dissertation which is formally equivalent to half of a doctoral dissertation.

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1 minute ago, Incanus said:

Does your degree and this paper correspond with the licentiate degree which at least here in Finland is the one degree below Ph.D?

 

In Finland and in Sweden a Licentiate's degree, recognised as a pre-doctoral degree, is equal to completion of the coursework required for a doctorate and a dissertation which is formally equivalent to half of a doctoral dissertation.

 

Could be, I'm not sure. But it was enough to grant me a position as 'assistant professor' for a year -- so there was definitely a "licence to teach" involved. But I'm not sure we have, or had, that particular degree in Norway.

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16 minutes ago, Thor said:

(I had to check my old documents, but it seems the thesis itself was 60 stp, while the hovedfag as a whole was 120 stp with courses included).

 

Yeah, that was still the case in some masters programmes the last time I checked.

 

9 minutes ago, Incanus said:

In Finland and in Sweden a Licentiate's degree, recognised as a pre-doctoral degree, is equal to completion of the coursework required for a doctorate and a dissertation which is formally equivalent to half of a doctoral dissertation.

 

We don't have that in Norway, but there's been discussions about introducing a more or less formal half-way evaluation of the PhD candidate.

 

6 minutes ago, Thor said:

But it was enough to grant me a position as 'assistant professor' for a year -- so there was definitely a "licence to teach" involved.

 

Professor Thor sounds fun! :)

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