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The Official James Horner Thread


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Sounding like film music is not a bad thing!

yeah, I'd like Williams concertos to sound more like his film scores

BTW this Horner piece sounds pretty good to me. I hear some Star Trek 2

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Sounding like film music is not a bad thing!

yeah, I'd like Williams comcertos to sound more like his film scores

That is one issue I do have with his concertos and other concert stuff. It sounds to "classical" and not "John Williams" enough. Like he's allowing his own musical voice to sink into the background in favor of what classical elitists would find more acceptable. It's an unfortunate failing on the Maestro's part. His humility doesnt allow him to properly establish himself outside his chosen field of film music!

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Sounding like film music is not a bad thing!

yeah, I'd like Williams comcertos to sound more like his film scores

That is one issue I do have with his concertos and other concert stuff. It sounds to "classical" and not "John Williams" enough. Like he's allowing his own musical voice to sink into the background in favor of what classical elitists would find more acceptable. It's an unfortunate failing on the Maestro's part. His humility doesnt allow him to properly establish himself outside his chosen field of film music!

I agree

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Williams is playing mostly his film music at his own concerts, so he's clearly not distancing himself away from his film music to promote his concertos as his true musical voice

Somewhere he must know that's the music people like .In the end he might have done a good job of making some film music acceptable in classical concerts and the Star Wars Suite played 200 years from now alongside Mozart

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I agree with KM that his true musical voice, and his legacy lies with his film work. Not his sideline of stand-alone compositions.

I think his film work will be the future's classical pieces. JW's true legacy

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Mark, no one is saying that film music isn't what people go to Williams' Pops concerts to hear. They're Pops concerts. The focus is on... popular stuff. And of course John Williams will be remembered as a composer for film who also wrote some concert music and not the other way around. But there are many people who treasure that concert music, who find it truly rich in that genuine Williams soul that we all love so much. So please don't act like it's just second-rate noise meant to suck up to the classical elite. Or that you know better than to like anything but his most popular works.

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I didn't say his concert music was bad (I still want have recordings of all of them) but I don't think it flows as effortlessly as his film compositions or even his celebratory fanfares .And it does sound like he's straining to impress a a totally different group of people

I also think the "Raiders March" has probably more inherent musical value as his horn concerto or whatever, and not the other way around where his film music would be considered minor "pop concert pieces". It's you that's placing a more elitist view of his concert works

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Sigh.

Try reading my posts without dramatizing them in your mind based on your opinions about me, and you'll find I'm not being elite about anything I like or dismissing anything that you (read: both of us) like.

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You're being absurd if you think Williams' concert works don't represent his true musical voice. Just listen to his recent works, and you'll hear more similarities to his concert works than his 80s classics.

With film music, Williams must write what is expected of him, what the filmmaker wants, and what suits the film best. With concert music, he can write what he truly wants to write. No restraints there. It doesn't get more honest than that. Just because that doesn't happen to be your favourite side of the composer doesn't mean that's any less "true" to his musical voice.

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KK, obviously you havent been listening to John Williams as long as me and KM, so your ignorance may be forgiven. But there can be little doubt his true musical voice resides in his film work. Ones you get more familiar with his sty you will also become aware of this. His musical fingerprint os far more undiniable in his scores then they are in his concert works.

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It happens a lot. Shore, Horner, Goldenthal, Goldsmith, Desplat... there are many composers that take their film music to the concert hall.

Yes, but I have a real belief Williams music will mean more for future generations and in terms of being integrated with classical music programs

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Lol at that Stefan.

For how many years, exactly, have you been listening to Williams' music? How extensively have you studied his output, his technique, his philosophy? Have you heard his complete works? Several times over? Have you spoken with the man? Have you sat at his piano examining your own and his work for an afternoon? Would you like to compare penis size too?

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There has been a noticeable change in perceptions about JW's music in the last few years. Thanks to the increase of slightly elitist members like KK who judge music on it's technical and compositional qualities rather then the actual emotions that they raise with the listener. Therefore his 70's and 80's work are slowly beginning to be less appreciated by this new generation of fans, who consider the more technically polished and complex style from the late 90's till today superior.

In truth though the Maestro's golden years were obviously the 70's and 80's.

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There has been a noticeable change in perceptions about JW's music in the last few years. Thanks to the increase of slightly elitist members like KK who judge music on it's technical and compositional qualities rather then the actual emotions that they raise with the listener. Therefore his 70's and 80's work are slowly beginning to be less appreciated by this new generation of fans, who consider the more technically polished and complex style from the late 90's till today superior.

In truth though the Maestro's golden years were obviously the 70's and 80's.

Yep.

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Why not just acknowledging that a whole lot of you are ignorant slobs who collect Star Wars action figures and never have set a foot into a concert venue or - god forbid - ever listened to a Shostakovich symphony? There, it's out, nobody's harmed...

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Then it shouldn't become a tired routine to always act like a centuries-old pope still trying to condemn condoms. It's fucking like that since the 60's: Williams has a different film voice than the idioms he prefers to write his 'private' pieces in. Maybe u profit by that in immeasurable ways - because it allowed him to refill his batteries for another Star Wars or god knows what else drives him not to even feeding his not-all-too-adventurous film output (at least the stuff that got famous) to concert halls all over the world.


PS: as for the Horner piece, the excerpts sound 'beautiful' in a film music kind of way which is not meant in a denigrating way but why place something within the huge musical legacy of the double concerto and then limit yourself to something that sounds cut from the same cloth as his more expansive film pieces? Just wondering. It will be a nice addition to the Horner collection...as for the repertoire of double concertos...duh.

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KK, obviously you havent been listening to John Williams as long as me and KM, so your ignorance may be forgiven. But there can be little doubt his true musical voice resides in his film work.

I think we can hear Williams' true voice in his film scores as much as in his concert works. It's just different facets of the same artist, expressing himself in two different mediums of musical expression. Williams himself once told that, for him, concert works are "nice distractions" from obligations and constraints typical of film work. It's a field where he can flex a different set of muscles and explore ideas and notions that film music usually doesn't permit. Surely we can say that he made a point to make his concert music sounding deliberately different from his film scores (especially the most popular ones), i.e. he stays away from any kind of illustrative language or programmatic forms like symphonic poem, preferring instead pure forms like concertos and sonatas. But I see this more as the result of keeping himself entertained, engaged and stimulated during the process, for the pure fun of doing something different than his usual day-to-day work. It's what musicians call "private music".

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yes,I think he made his concert work sound different on purpose. Like he removed all the emotion that's usually present in his film music

but that also means that fans of him BECAUSE of his film music will like his concert works less

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No, it's not a matter of "removing emotion" (whatever that means), just expressing himself in a different way, within a different musical environment. His concert music, to me, always seems to evoke very intimate emotional landscapes.

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KK, obviously you havent been listening to John Williams as long as me and KM, so your ignorance may be forgiven. But there can be little doubt his true musical voice resides in his film work.

I think we can hear Williams' true voice in his film scores as much as in his concert works. It's just different facets of the same artist, expressing himself in two different mediums of musical expression. Williams himself once told that, for him, concert works are "nice distractions" from obligations and constraints typical of film work. It's a field where he can flex a different set of muscles and explore ideas and notions that film music usually doesn't permit. Surely we can say that he made a point to make his concert music sounding deliberately different from his film scores (especially the most popular ones), i.e. he stays away from any kind of illustrative language or programmatic forms like symphonic poem, preferring instead pure forms like concertos and sonatas. But I see this more as the result of keeping himself entertained, engaged and stimulated during the process, for the pure fun of doing something different than his usual day-to-day work. It's what musicians call "private music".

Thank you.

Jeez, you guys are really clingy to your Star Wars and ETs eh? Why must a composer only be limited to a singular musical style? Why is it someone as enormously talented as Williams, incapable of having different facets to his voice that he'd like to explore. Why are the 70s/80s fanfares any more closer to his "true musical voice" than his wonderful cello concerto? Why is it suddenly "elitist" to say that Williams is just as honest with his music in the concert hall as he is on the scoring stage?

The idea that he "removes emotion" or purposely "over-intellectualizes" his concert music to fit in with his peers is a very naive one. You just can't expect a composer to limit himself to a singular musical niche for a career spanning decades. The concert hall allows him to write music and explore tones that he just can't in the film medium, and he makes advantage of that. After all, we're talking about a composer who writes everyday, just because he loves writing.

Heck even listen to how his sound evolved over the 00s. Just because the man wants to push his own musical boundaries in the concert hall, suddenly his music is no longer "true to his voice". I don't care if you prefer his concert works, or his film classics, but this notion that he's less musically honest than he used to be is totally absurd.

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The problem is that we are old. So everything used to be better in the old days.

Certainly film music was better, even JW's

You will understand 15 years from now when some whippersnapper is fawning over a piece of music the appeal of which totally escaped you!

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Well yeah, sure. That's not what I was debating. Just KM's claim that JW is more honest in his film music than his concert hall music. What you prefer is subjective and entirely fine, but to say Williams sacrifices his musical voice for a more "elitist" sound is a bit silly. That's all.

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Just KM's claim that JW is more honest in his film music than his concert hall music. What you prefer is subjective and entirely fine, but to say Williams sacrifices his musical voice for a more "elitist" sound is a bit silly. That's all.

It may be the other way around: the thieving magpie maestro (as a scathing review called him 15 years ago) for the maesses (always susceptible to easy manipulations), the real Williams in his concert work - though i play devil's advocate here (i don't prefer his concert work).

Incidentally, James Horner befell the same fate recently:

"Horner's Pas de Deux: Double Concerto was ghastly. The first movement was a boring, unoriginal attempt to rip-off Vaughn Williams. The movement dragged on, occasionally Horner excited the audience with a perfect cadence, signalling the end, only to start the whole sorry affair off again for what felt like another hour and a half. The soloists were the epitome of mediocrity and even managed to make Petrenko look like a semi-competent conductor! The second movement was perhaps even more arduous than the first and was musically bland- the Samuelsens didn't do much to counteract this at all. After those two awful movements came the third- an immature, rushed attempt at serious concert music by a film composer. It was during this movement that Horner's mask slipped and he was revealed as the cheesy, generic Hollywood composer that he is. A sorry attempt by Horner to try and be taken seriously. If I was to rate the concert based on this performance alone it would be struggling to get one star. The RLPO approached the work with a brave face and managed to keep it ticking over. This concerto is what prevented me from rating the concert four stars. Horner's attempt at writing a concerto was pitiful. "

© http://classicalconcertreviews.blogspot.hk/

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LOL yikes.

Just KM's claim that JW is more honest in his film music than his concert hall music. What you prefer is subjective and entirely fine, but to say Williams sacrifices his musical voice for a more "elitist" sound is a bit silly. That's all.

It may be the other way around: the thieving magpie maestro (as a scathing review called him 15 years ago) for the maesses (always susceptible to easy manipulations), the real Williams in his concert work - though i play devil's advocate here (i don't prefer his concert work).

Incidentally, James Horner befell the same fate recently:

"Horner's Pas de Deux: Double Concerto was ghastly. The first movement was a boring, unoriginal attempt to rip-off Vaughn Williams. The movement dragged on, occasionally Horner excited the audience with a perfect cadence, signalling the end, only to start the whole sorry affair off again for what felt like another hour and a half. The soloists were the epitome of mediocrity and even managed to make Petrenko look like a semi-competent conductor! The second movement was perhaps even more arduous than the first and was musically bland- the Samuelsens didn't do much to counteract this at all. After those two awful movements came the third- an immature, rushed attempt at serious concert music by a film composer. It was during this movement that Horner's mask slipped and he was revealed as the cheesy, generic Hollywood composer that he is. A sorry attempt by Horner to try and be taken seriously. If I was to rate the concert based on this performance alone it would be struggling to get one star. The RLPO approached the work with a brave face and managed to keep it ticking over. This concerto is what prevented me from rating the concert four stars. Horner's attempt at writing a concerto was pitiful. "

© http://classicalconcertreviews.blogspot.hk/

Yikes.

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Though if you judge it by even the lowest journalistic standards, he doesn't say much about why it sucks (in an analytical manner), he just piles the insults. I suspect Brahms may have met the same fate in his time (it's bad, bad, bad!).

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He gives the previous concert of RLPO the same cold treatment though even if he extrapolates a bit more on why he didn't find Elgar's cello concerto and Faure's Requiem Mass particularly exciting. He is an exacting fellow. :P

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I'm not quite sure where all this elitism is coming from anyway. "Serious music?" What is that exactly, I have no clue. Isn't all classical repertoire... dinner music anyway?

Karol

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I think the notion is still the same as in the 30's: that film composers are essentially music hall hacks who steal and plunder the precious classical repertoire. That in Horner's case that argument is not entirely without merit, well...

It goes without saying that a character like this very reviewer certainly has never made the effort or even had a piqued curiosity in exploring a film composer (why bother?). They live in a secluded world forever sealed from modern culture.

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