JWFan Unchained: We're Here Because You're Looking For The Best Of The Best Of The Best, Sir! (Or: What Is The Last Great Score You Listened To?)

[Dixon Hill 4,232]

pontification redacted

[Jay 37,280]

I listened to AI today, its a freaking masterpiece, that's all I have to say!

[Cerebral Cortex 3,357]

I'm so glad to be seeing Lincoln and The Last Samurai scores getting some love. I'm incapable of praising them as perfectly and poetically as you did, but I will say that I consider both scores to be in my top 10 of the last 15 years, and both seem to clearly illustrate two varying great musical minds beautifully illustrating why they are such. Modern masterpieces by all accounts. 

[karelm 2,903]

Since I plopped down 30 bucks for it, I have to include The Rocketeer and it was great fun to listen to from start to finish.  I haven't listened to The Wrath of KKKAAAHHHHNNNN in a while but Rocketeer might actually supersede for me.

[Romão 2,274]

 

Sleepers, by John Williams

 

Now, this might come across as an hipster declaration, but this might actually be my favorite JW score. It contains a sonic environment totally of its own (I would reckon  it's one of  JW's score with less relatives) and allows us to trully comunicate with the music, in a similar fashion of what TheWhiteRider described concering the Brian Eno album. It's not that the music is nondescript (far from it), but conveys such an array of complex, undefinable and even paradoxal emotions, that the music needs the input of the listener to actually make some sort of sense.

 

It's a score that sounds Autumnal. It sounds urban. It sounds innocent. It sounds desperate. It sounds violent. It sounds spiritual. It sounds triumphant. It's one of the most encompassing scores ever written.

 

As fantastic this score is when the full OST is heard (and that's the only way the score actually comes to fruition and makes sense), I adore so many individual moments in this thing:

 

The dreary, frightful ostinato (is it really an ostinato?) heard in the first track and at Last Night at Wilkinson (the first part of that track is alto terrific):

 

 

The wonderful dissonance on the brass on Hell's Kitchen:

 

 

The fury and propulsion of The Football Match (best appreciated in this video with the remaining audio removed):

 

 

And so many others, like the full Saying the Rosary, or the theme that opens both Father Bobby's Decision and Last Night at Wilkinson.

 

This score is an absolute gem. Regardless of me highlighting several passages, the OST must absolutely be heard in full. I hope somebody picks up this post and elaborates on this score in a much more thoughtful and eloquent way than I could ever be able to

[Koray Savas 2,251]

Much of my list would overlap with Pilgrim's. There's also my Top 10 thread that I never finished

[Disco Stu 15,495]

Happy to see McCarthy's Generations score on your list!

 

I've been saying for months that they should recycle this for the main theme of the 2017 Star Trek series just like they recycled Goldsmith's TMP theme for TNG:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooIUtXEuTYQ

 

 

[Dixon Hill 4,232]

Sleepers has remained largely unknown to me for a while, but what you've posted here is very intriguing, Romão.

 

 

1 minute ago, Disco Stu said:

Happy to see McCarthy's Generations score on your list!

 

I've been saying for months that they should recycle this for the main theme of the 2017 Star Trek series just like they recycled Goldsmith's TMP theme for TNG:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooIUtXEuTYQ

 

 

 

Yes, he's the obvious choice for composer here.  I'm sure they'll make a dumb choice instead!

[Disco Stu 15,495]

1 minute ago, TheWhiteRider said:

Yes, he's the obvious choice for composer here.  I'm sure they'll make a dumb choice instead!

 

If I see a merest hint of the word 'Djawadi' in a Star Trek press release I'm resigning from the Internet.

[Romão 2,274]

27 minutes ago, TheWhiteRider said:

Sleepers has remained largely unknown to me for a while, but what you've posted here is very intriguing, Romão.

 

 

Ditto for your post on Apollo and The Last Samurai, I'm checking those scores out (the Last Samurai I only know vaguely).

 

The LOTR trilogy is still something I respect and admire but still can't enjoy for the most part. I must try assemble a 75 minute album for each of the scores from the CR's

[Dixon Hill 4,232]

The original album releases I think are perfectly valid listening choices still for people not intimately familiar with the music.

[Muad'Dib 1,800]

All it's missing is a Morricone score and it's golden.

[Romão 2,274]

1 minute ago, TheWhiteRider said:

The original album releases I think are perfectly valid listening choices still for people not intimately familiar with the music.

 

I agree, but I'm quite familiar with the CR's at this point. There are still some great cues I'd rather have on the OST's (in place, for instance, of all the Arwen's related music, which I always skip).

 

I really love the simplicity of cues like War is Upon us from TTT

[Dixon Hill 4,232]

13 minutes ago, Muad'Dib said:

All it's missing is a Morricone score and it's golden.

 

Mission to Mars really should have been featured, there's no excuse.

[Romão 2,274]

That would've been my Morricone choice as well

[Disco Stu 15,495]

OK I listened to a personal "top favorite" on my evening commute today.

 

In my opinion one of the most essential film score recordings ever is Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky full score performed by the St. Petersburg Philharmonic from the mid-90s.  It's the only recording of the full score (as opposed to Prokofiev's cantata arrangement) that I've ever heard and it's glorious.  I was lucky to see the movie in a college class many years ago and it remains one of my favorite Russian movies I've seen.

 

Just listen to 3:10 to end here.

 

Here's another favorite track:

 

If you are so interested you can see the moment from the first highlight above in its original film context below. It's a non-Hollywood movie from the 30s so needless to say the sound quality isn't amazing.

 

 

[Koray Savas 2,251]

1 hour ago, TheWhiteRider said:

 

Mission to Mars really should have been featured, there's no excuse.

It's why I'm bummed Morricone likely did not write anything for Voyage Of Time. Imagine a 40-minute uninterrupted symphony for that!

[Dixon Hill 4,232]

I'm holding out hope/suspicions that he's involved to some degree.

[Koray Savas 2,251]

The original source that had him listed as composer no longer does. Give up hope and cry with me!

[Muad'Dib 1,800]

1 hour ago, TheWhiteRider said:

 

Mission to Mars really should have been featured, there's no excuse.

 

Excellent choice, I would have gone with Fateless perhaps. Or Once Upon a Time in America.

[Jay 37,280]

15 hours ago, Romão said:

The LOTR trilogy is still something I respect and admire but still can't enjoy for the most part. I must try assemble a 75 minute album for each of the scores from the CR's

 

The process of making your own OST program for really long scores is a fun one to me!  Sometimes the composers and I are really not on the same page about what the highlights of a score are.  I've been wanting to make my own AI one for a while, and would maybe do ones for FOTR, TPM, ST09, Jurassic World (if the sessions ever leak), and HPCOS

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

On 7/7/2016 at 2:51 PM, TheWhiteRider said:

 

 

A.I. Artificial Intelligence - John Williams

 

"Best of the best of the best, sir! With honors!" You know, he's just really excited and he has no clue why we're here. That's just. That's very funny to me.

 

[Dixon Hill 4,232]

"Ok."

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Braveheart

[publicist 4,643]

 

 

[Quintus 5,399]

15 hours ago, Jay said:

 

Sometimes the composers and I are really not on the same page about what the highlights of a score are.

 

I don't generally have this problem, but Shore's long tribute to his insufferably boring Treebeard clattering in his LotR Symphony is a baffling inclusion. 

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

The Rock

[Melange 446]

On 07/07/2016 at 10:51 PM, TheWhiteRider said:

The Last Samurai - Hans Zimmer

 

Anyone else a fan of this somewhat forgotten-about film?

 

 

 

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

ID4.

[Dixon Hill 4,232]

9 hours ago, publicist said:

 

 

 

Your posting of this a few years ago was what finally led me to this wonderful score.  

[Bespin 8,475]

Space, the final frontier. Where the hand of man has never set foot.

 

Sorry, I just saw the Start Trek poster and I tilted.

 

The more I get old... and the more I love this score. All of it.

 

The dryness of the desert scenes, the Binary Sunset, the Cantina Band, the love theme between Luke and Leia, the music inside the Death Star, the action cues, the Throne Room.

 

For me it's a hell of a score... Every scene seems to have it's own colour, it's own theme. Probably because Lucas wanted a classical score and knew exactly what he wanted for each scene.

 

Anyway, That's my best of the best. Both now and always, and unto the ages of ages.

 

Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

[Disco Stu 15,495]

2 hours ago, TheWhiteRider said:

 

Your posting of this a few years ago was what finally led me to this wonderful score.  

 

I don't know if I'd call it my favorite Goldsmith score, but it's almost certainly the one with which I have the strongest emotional connection.

 

Although after their clash over the Alien score and then this debacle of the American release of Legend, it's no wonder Scott and Goldsmith never worked together again.

[Omen II 1,235]

On 8 July 2016 at 4:44 AM, Disco Stu said:

In my opinion one of the most essential film score recordings ever is Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky full score performed by the St. Petersburg Philharmonic from the mid-90s.  It's the only recording of the full score (as opposed to Prokofiev's cantata arrangement) that I've ever heard and it's glorious.  I was lucky to see the movie in a college class many years ago and it remains one of my favorite Russian movies I've seen.

 

 

FYI Disco Stu, the Alexander Nevsky cantata will be performed at the opening night of the BBC Proms season next Friday.  The concert will also be on TV so might show up on YouTube at some point with a bit of luck.

 

One of my all-time favourite film scores is of a similar vintage and was, I believe, the first film score recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra: Things To Come (1936) by Sir Arthur Bliss, undoubtedly the first great British film score.  Legend has it that H. G. Wells asked if Bliss could score the film after attending a lecture the composer gave at the Royal Institute.  Bliss delivered some magnificent music that immediately developed a life of its own outside the film - indeed, a suite of music from the film was conducted by Henry Wood at the Proms before the film was even released, to great popular acclaim; audiences just had not heard anything like it written for a film before.  The score later became a favourite of Bernard Herrmann, who liked it so much that he recorded several selections for one of his albums after he moved to England.

 

For many years the original score as Bliss intended it was believed lost.  After Bliss recorded the score with the LSO, the film was recut and edited so much that the score had to be re-recorded under the baton of Muir Mathieson, with much of the great music that Bliss had written ending up truncated or cut from the final version of the film.  Fortunately a number of shellac discs containing versions that Bliss had recorded were discovered in the late 1990s, enabling almost the complete original score to be reconstructed and heard for the first time.

 

The march from the soundtrack is fairly well known, but I never see the rest of the music discussed anywhere.  I am sure that film music fans who like the big orchestral scores of the modern sci-fi blockbusters would find much to enjoy in tracking down the modern recording with the BBC Philharmonic conducted by Rumon Gamba.  In the clip below can be heard the cues Excavation, Building the New World, Machines and the wonderful Epilogue, the latter one of my favourite pieces of film music ever.  The complete version clocks in at nearly eight minutes and is a glorious example of English music at its best.

 

 

Not included in the suite is a fine medley of Christmas Carols arranged by Sir Arthur Bliss and immediately following the prologue.  It's quite frightening to watch now, knowing what would happen in Europe just a few short years later.

 

 

[publicist 4,643]

13 hours ago, TheWhiteRider said:

 

Your posting of this a few years ago was what finally led me to this wonderful score.  

 

Sadly the end of Goldsmith pushing boundaries. 

 

For Williams i choose (winkblinkwinkblink):

 

[karelm 2,903]

One score that I just re-listened to that needs a shout out is Williams's Far & Away.  I think along with the Cowboys, this is the only time we hear him in quasi western mode but he doesn't play it as a western, rather as an Irish/Americana adventure.  If you listen to it straight through, the emotional build up to the land rush and final villainous confrontation is a very moving theatrical experience and full of wonderful themes.  In some ways, it reminds me of E.T. as a listening experience.  Almost all of F&A is understated but the final 15 minutes or so are pure cinematic goldmine with a very rich range of emotions and almost no dialog.

 

This is the scene I am referring to...

 

That build up to the E flat major at 2:20 always gives me goose bumps.

[Faleel 5,328]

No 20,000 leagues TWR?

[Dixon Hill 4,232]

That's an egregious lapse of memory, correct.

[Disco Stu 15,495]

As in, Paul J. Smith's score for the Disney 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea? That's one of my favorites!

[Dixon Hill 4,232]

- pontification redacted

[Romão 2,274]

 

13 hours ago, TheWhiteRider said:

 

20,000 Leagues Under The Sea - Paul J. Smith

 

There's no shortage of richly orchestrated scores for films of this era, least of all for Disney.  But this one manages to stand out nonetheless.  It's one of the first scores I ever heard.  The spirits of Stravinsky and Ravel mingle with each other along with the classic "Hollywood" sound of the 50s.  A few themes and motives are woven together with a clarity that makes standalone listening quite easy, but the real treat here is the swath of orchestral color and atmosphere that Smith paints.  The discovery of the Nautilus and the underwater excursion are two defining extended balletic sequences.  The former moves through various ominous shadings and culminates in exceptionally stirring music for a submarine funeral procession.  The latter is a kaleidoscopic musical journey in the best tradition of impressionistic writing, with ravishing snatches of melodies that morph in and out of each other and an almost psychedelic degree of shifting colors.  This film perhaps seems an unlikely candidate for weed-fueled dorm room viewing parties, and yet....

 

 

 

That passage at the 6:13 mark of track 6 "Deserted Sub/Burial/Captured" is one of my all time favorite passages. Pretty much captures de spirit of the entire book in that minute alone

[Dixon Hill 4,232]

Listening to some highlights from Shore's The Fellowship of the Ring, and appreciating more than usual what a great conductor he is.

[Muad'Dib 1,800]

8 hours ago, TheWhiteRider said:

Listening to some highlights from Shore's The Fellowship of the Ring, and appreciating more than usual what a great conductor he is.

 

Interesting. Care to elaborate?

[Dixon Hill 4,232]

The performance of both the LPO and NZSO is so incredibly tight, so coordinated.  There's a sense of unity that I don't often hear elsewhere. The way that say the violins move as one instead of 16 players playing the same thing.  The pervasive "breathing" quality.  Constantly compelling sense of dramatic arc and motion.  The orchestral balances that shouldn't quite work but do.  All the results of a guy on the podium who truly knows how to get an orchestra to shine.  

[Muad'Dib 1,800]

Would you say this got a little lost in The Hobbit?

[Dixon Hill 4,232]

Curiously, in the second and third installments, yes.  

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Nonsense! Pope is the Savior of Middle-earth music!

[Dixon Hill 4,232]

Who?

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

?

 

i actually agree with you. There's something very "organic" about Shore conducted music.

[Dixon Hill 4,232]

I love this little glimpse into his take on another composer's music.  Wish there were more instances of this.  Here's that unique "Shore balance" again.

 

 

[Romão 2,274]

That's actually quite good