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What piece best represents Williams at greatest angst?


karelm

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After just seeing The BFG, I am in sweetness overdose.  It made me wonder, what work of Williams would best represent him in complete angst?  I struggled to find this emotion in his films.  Perhaps something like The Basket and The Ferry Scene from WOTW?  Anything else in his body of work that is more foreboding or showing deeper anxiety?

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I completely agree about the music from ROTJ.  "The Emperor's Death" gives me chills every time.

 

However, I think every Star Wars film has an "angst" piece even in the original (Burning Homestead, for example). So, aside from Star Wars, this comes to mind as well:

 

 

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You guys are missing the most obvious of all:

 

IMAGES!

 

Even the film itself is about 'angst'. All the aleatoric cues would qualify.

 

I would also have mentioned THE SCREAMING WOMAN (which is also very much a film about paranoia and angst), but most things indicate he only wrote the end track on that, and not the wildly dissonant music otherwise.

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The Violin Concerto.

 

I often have panick attack (and sometimes when I listen to some sort of music... hey, music is like hypnosis), it's a piece that I really don't like, it's too emotionally charged.

 

I hear attack music, I feel attacked. I hear sad music, I feel sad.  Music have a direct connection to my emotions. I have to be carefull as I get older.

 

It took me several years to understand that I don't have to hear music I don't want to hear. I'm a collector and passionate of several artists... that's hard, because sometimes we have to hear everything... the worst and the best.

 

But now, all my life is dedicated to trying to find the right music to listen at the right moment and at the right place.

 

Wrong choices can lead to panick attacks. Now I know and I stop the music when it occurs. I don't have to listen to music of aliens destroying a town when I'm on the bus.  If I watch the movie, it's okay... But in the bus, that's not ok. I'm already prisonner of a moving box with people I don't know, I don't need to feel insecure and attacked by aliens in that particular moment!

 

So yes, it means when listening to a score or a classical piece, to skip the angst or too heavy passages when I'm not in the mood for listening them.

 

That's life.

 

Of course, Images, that's a score I can't bare.

 

This week I listened to Lost in Space scores... after one album and a half, I felt totally depressed and weary of my life... that dissonant sixties sci-fi atmosphere... it drained all my energy. I didn't like it at all.

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Angst is a cool word indeed, gents, but there are enough synonyms out there. Embrace the richness of the English language.

 

Off the top of my head: The Emperor Confronts Luke, Faking the Code, The Emperor's Death (and more ROTJ moments), The Intersection Scene, Escape from the Basket (and more WOTW moments), the opening of The Probe ScannerThe Duel, the unused music for the first part of the Vader-Luke duel (ESB), Jonathan's Death (Superman - this is one of my favorite ones). That's about all I can think of, right now. I'd say the Superman and ROTJ ones are the moments that most resonate with me. 

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ToD, when Indy is being possessed maybe?

 

 

Some of the later tracks in HP1 also sound to me like a mixture of angst and despair:

 

0:00-0:56

 

I like to imagine exploring a haunted house when listening to this. The numerous changes in tempo and texture, as well as the occasional jump scares (e.g. 2:20) seem to musically resemble that sense of dread and anxiety you get when exploring a dark and abandoned location with possible spectral inhabitants. Of course, the track probably does the best job supporting the actual mirror scene in the film which it accompanies, but it's one of those particularly visual tracks which can bring about a range of "scenarios" in the listener's mind...

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4 minutes ago, loert said:

ToD, when Indy is being possessed may.

 

Definitively, this score has some heavy passages I usually skip when I'm not in the mood for a ritual sacrifice and a heart removal.

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Cues like that of TEMPLE OF DOOM is not really angst, IMO. It's more physical terror. Angst, to me, is a more psychological concept.

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6 hours ago, someonefun124 said:

I completely agree about the music from ROTJ.  "The Emperor's Death" gives me chills every time.

 

However, I think every Star Wars film has an "angst" piece even in the original (Burning Homestead, for example). So, aside from Star Wars, this comes to mind as well:

 

 

 

This is to me more depicts fear in the face of God. Angst would be something tortured or neurotic.

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4 hours ago, publicist said:

Some of the cues in 'The Fury'.

 

I was wondering if anyone (other than me) was going to mention it.

 

Though I guess most of the bigger cues are more on the physical side. The angst stuff is mostly in the tenser, mysterious underscore (like Gillian touching the staircase at night) and the actual main theme itself.

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Good choices here.

 

One "recent" example of angsty writing is the lengthy Bearing the Burden from Munich, which I think is a great musical portrait of gnawing and building psychological angst.

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2 hours ago, crocodile said:

A slightly different type of John Williams angst:

 

 

Karol

 

Yes, yes, yes!!!!!!?

Croc, I love this track!!!!!!!!!

 

23 minutes ago, Joe Brausam said:

No love for Arlington, from JFK?

 

There's a hellovalotta love for "Arlington Cemetery' at chez Richard!!!!!!!!!

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So in what way does "angst" differ from "fear"?

Because fear is what it means in Dutch, which always makes it quite a strange term to see used in an otherwise English context.

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Some excellent suggestions here.

This passage (0:56-1:35) oozes angst for me. Few scores sound as hauntingly tortured to me:

 

 

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7 hours ago, Pieter_Boelen said:

So in what way does "angst" differ from "fear"?

Because fear is what it means in Dutch, which always makes it quite a strange term to see used in an otherwise English context.

 

Angst is more like unease -- a term encompassing other psychological states such as paranoia. Several of the suggestions here are more in the 'fear' or 'terror' or 'physical horror'-type landscapes, IMO.

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"Anakin's Dark Deeds" and "Enter Lord Vader" There's those seething passages underscoring the evil and trepidation of the scenes they accompany.

 

"

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I just looked it up and apparently the English word "angst" is indeed based on the North European one (Dutch, German, Danish and Norwegian).

And in the "original" Dutch it does mean quite simply "fear".

It seems that in English for some reason it is meant to refer to a very specific type of fear and not the general term.

That makes this particular word relatively ambiguous and confusing.

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Surprised nobody has mentioned 3:57 onwards in this:

 

 

The one where Williams lavished exciting high anxiety into the angsty finale of TESB. 

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I don't quite agree. It was one of the first cues I thought of. But the bits of Luke hanging from Cloud City are more about pain and hopelessness, I think. The specific timestamp you refer to is a tension buildup to a specific moment (the Falcon coming to the rescue).

 

The Vader/Luke connection later in Hyperspace might qualify though.

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4 hours ago, Pieter_Boelen said:

I just looked it up and apparently the English word "angst" is indeed based on the North European one (Dutch, German, Danish and Norwegian).

And in the "original" Dutch it does mean quite simply "fear".

It seems that in English for some reason it is meant to refer to a very specific type of fear and not the general term.

That makes this particular word relatively ambiguous and confusing.

 

It's not quite the same as fear.  It is more general so think of it as anxiety, anguish (which have the same root).  So like a heavy tension.  I found that like you said, in other languages the meaning of the original Latin word meant "fear", but the language derived words differ in meaning to be non-specific general sense of turmoil or dread. 

 

To me, I find this emotion in music to be more consistently found in Goldsmith or Goldenthal.  For example, Poltergeist or Alien, Alien 3 are full of that sense of turmoil and dread...not the action stingers or the religioso moments but just the general tone.  I think WOTW and Minority Reports are great examples of JW in this mode but Arlington is really more sorrowful than angst.  But these are all good examples of JW in non-grandfatherly sweetness.

 

2 hours ago, Marian Schedenig said:

I don't quite agree. It was one of the first cues I thought of. But the bits of Luke hanging from Cloud City are more about pain and hopelessness, I think. The specific timestamp you refer to is a tension buildup to a specific moment (the Falcon coming to the rescue).

 

The Vader/Luke connection later in Hyperspace might qualify though.

 

I agree with you.  These are nuanced emotions and not quite the same. 

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9 minutes ago, Muad'Dib said:

Has this been brought up?

 

 

 

No, but it doesn't connote angst to me. It connotes religious reverence, sadness etc.

 

This really just cements what I've been saying -- it's a term meaning different things to different folks, so it would need some serious specification in order to make sense; to provide some "common platform" from which we can suggest stuff.

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On 2 July 2016 at 2:30 AM, karelm said:

After just seeing The BFG, I am in sweetness overdose.  It made me wonder, what work of Williams would best represent him in complete angst?

 

The first piece I thought of was the end titles from The Poseidon Adventure.  In 'group jeopardy' movies today we are more likely to hear a heroic power anthem or music that speaks of relief when the protagonists are saved, but in this seminal disaster movie Williams reserves some of his most anguished scoring for the moments when the six survivors realise they are being rescued (as the rescuers cut through the hull) and prepare to board the helicopter.  It is music that paints a picture of grief at the loss of loved ones and guilt at one's own survival.

 

 

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15 minutes ago, hornist said:

People here are mixing terror and horror to angst. I have a candinate, from SL. I couldn't find it but the music when bastian shweinsteiger's looking nazi is yelling in front of the flames.

 

Agreed, alot of mixing of nuanced emotions here but its all good since these cues I needed to remember.  It is also an important point for a composer to understand (or have an opinion) about what these various nuanced moods sound like.  For example, there is a difference between joy and happiness and they sound different. 

 

Is this the scene you are referring to?

 

Very Mahlerian there. 

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The second movement of the Violin Concerto. The range of emotions displayed there is pretty ample, but there's surely angst there especially the section from 2:45 to 4:30 (the final crescendo always gives me goosebumps)

 

 

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