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Close Encounters of the Third Kind - La-La Land MUSIC Discussion


Jay

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29 minutes ago, Disco Stu said:

 

Oh I just made the thread.  I thought it made sense to have two, one for Williams videos and one for non-Williams, being that this is JWFan.  Might as well keep the Williams related videos together in one place.

Wait a minute, you're back?!

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59 minutes ago, Jay said:

 

I dunno about that, are Bloodboal's or Faleel's or Mr. Breathmask's threads "professional"?

Yes. ;)

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  • 3 weeks later...
15 minutes ago, crocodile said:

I fucking love this set!

 

There, my contribution to this discussion. ;)

 

Karol

 

What was your listening experience tonight?  Just disc 1? Just disc 2? Both discs?

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  • 1 month later...

One of the, yes. Nothing is likely to top STAR WARS for me as my favourite score, but this is truly an incredible and special masterpiece.

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On 6/26/2018 at 5:14 AM, Holko said:

The military also get a little motif, but only right after they understand the alien message - and since what they decide to do with it is to mislead and frighten the population, it's slightly sinister.

The military motif itself comprises two phrase halves that are each a variation on the Dies Irae motif (Obsession), suggesting the military as a further extension of the red herring / paranoia, and is presented at one point in a fugal treatment (a la Jaws, Black Sunday, etc.) that contrasts the hyperrational, "advanced" counterpoint in The Conversation.

 

On 6/26/2018 at 5:14 AM, Holko said:

Let's ignore Navy Planes and Lost Squadron, they're an introduction, a hook, not really a part of the main narrative.

I can see that, but I have also thought of them as occupying a hazy tonal space around the fracture point the Main Title big bang provides, and setting up the paranoia subject matter. Navy Planes presents an embryonic military motif, notes flipped for the objects from an earlier era on screen. Lost Squadron is a bit Scriabinesque, i.e. referencing the real world-meets-diegetic connection to the synaesthetic colour and pitch concept. More importantly, it hints at the Mountain theme in variation at the end; notes 2 and 3 intact, but 1 substituted by another note from the chord it belongs to. I would say the narrative begins somewhere here.

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I know I am committing a bit of a faux pas but sometimes when I try to hum Williams' military motifs from Close Encounters I somehow end up humming Giacchino's miliary motif from Super 8/Secret Weapons Over Normandy.

 

I am a bad person, I know.

 

Karol

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57 minutes ago, Jay said:

QUALITY POST RIGHT HERE.

 

Yep. So much so that it's going to be posted as a review of the set for the main page. Even though I disagree on the sequencing and will post my detailed thoughts about it one of these days.

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WHAT?

 

 

If that's true, I did a tiny bit of cleanup, and I request my two sentences of bitching about Stars and Trucks being deleted, and the set nitpicks at the end to be removed from the main page version. This turned out to be way more formal than anticipated and these are the last reminders that this is just a personal forum post - I think they'd have absolutely no place in a main page review. Also, maybe my "Let's ignore Navy Planes and Lost Squadron" sentence is useless or wrong, since I just learned yesterday that there's more to them than I previously thought, perhaps that can be taken out also.

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22 hours ago, Holko said:

Also, maybe my "Let's ignore Navy Planes and Lost Squadron" sentence is useless or wrong, since I just learned yesterday that there's more to them than I previously thought.

Doesn't Barnstorming (or whatever) kind of have a short section that kind of sounds like the Navy Planes cue?

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11 hours ago, Fal said:

Doesn't Barnstorming (or whatever) kind of have a short section that kind of sounds like the Navy Planes cue?

 

Navy Planes does subtly prefigure elements of the finale.

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On 6/26/2018 at 5:14 AM, Holko said:

The main development of The Vision is, of course, the Mountain motif, which takes the two notes and makes them into three, and adds a winding down figure to make it complete. It already tries to break out in "Forming the Mountain", but ironically, it can't form fully and properly

 

On 6/27/2018 at 3:59 PM, The Five Tones said:

Lost Squadron is a bit Scriabinesque, i.e. referencing the real world-meets-diegetic connection to the synaesthetic colour and pitch concept. More importantly, it hints at the Mountain theme in variation at the end; notes 2 and 3 intact, but 1 substituted by another note from the chord it belongs to. I would say the narrative begins somewhere here.

 

The same three-note hint/variation of the Mountain theme in Lost Squadron recurs in Forming the Mountain, which adds the "wind down" notes, also in variation.

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  • 5 months later...

To be clear, I think the experimentation with more "listening experience" focus is fantastic.  I'm not complaining about the presentation of the music.  Just the lack of context for the "Alternates and Additional Music" disc. 

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1 hour ago, Disco Stu said:

To be clear, I think the experimentation with more "listening experience" focus is fantastic.  I'm not complaining about the presentation of the music.  Just the lack of context for the "Alternates and Additional Music" disc. 

Justified. We JWFans have JWFan to figure that out, but the rest...

 

I listened to this and to E.T. approximately twice. Haven't got time so far, was busy listening to much Goldsmith stuff, I guess. But the CD is in my shelf and won't decompose...

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1 minute ago, Brundlefly said:

Justified. We JWFans have JWFan to figure that out, but the rest...

 

True! But would the rest even notice? ;)

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22 minutes ago, Brundlefly said:

I listened to this and to E.T. approximately twice.

 

About the same.  I do like the track arrangement for listening value of this release.

 

But CE3K and ET both existed in near-complete form for decades now, so these releases didn't offer so significantly much that I fixated on them.

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  • 3 months later...

Close Encounters of The Third Kind 40th Anniversary Remastered Edition : 2-CD Set Limited Edition from La Land Records I got in the mail awhile back. Great score and amazing soundtrack and I'm happy to have this in my CD Soundtracks Collection !!!

49628748_10156041180943404_2570852060564029440_n.jpg

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  • 4 months later...
1 hour ago, Richard said:

That's ok, guys. For the longest time, I didn't realise that THE ALLIANCE ASSEMBLES (or whatever it's called) is a variation on THE THRONE ROOM ;)

 

Are you thinking of 'The Fleet Enters Hyperspace'? ('The Fleet Goes Into Hyperspace' for those of us who grew up with the anthology box set.)

 

Same key, even! Enharmonically, that is.

 

image.png

image.png

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9 hours ago, Disco Stu said:

I'm not sure I've read an analysis before that connects the mountain vision theme to the "When You Wish Upon a Star" bridge, musically.  I definitely hear it, and maybe I'd read it before but I don't remember.

It is true. I first noticed it on the 1998 CD, which was my first exposure to it. You hear the cellos play the first three* notes of the mountain theme exactly as they have in earlier readings of the theme during the finale, expecting another reading, then that fourth note catches your attention as... a "variation" of the theme? No, it's a different tune altogether! And there is even a harmony present in the When You Wish bridge that pre/echoes the half-diminished chord in the mountain theme (discussed in the favourite JW harmonies thread).

*I'm counting the pickup note that isn't shown in the score example in your comment.

(at 3:50)

 

2 hours ago, BrotherSound said:

 

Are you thinking of 'The Fleet Enters Hyperspace'? ('The Fleet Goes Into Hyperspace' for those of us who grew up with the anthology box set.)

 

Same key, even! Enharmonically, that is.

 

image.png

image.png

Yes. Also, here's a quote from @Falstaft's latest edition of his leitmotif catalogue, to that point: "In a few cases, One-Scene-Wonders may even be promoted to leitmotivic status through repetition and variation in later films (ex. "Throne Room" in ANH being transformed in ROTJ..."

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The article I spoke of yesterday really is fascinating.  The bulk of it is devoted to how Williams lays the groundwork for the Mountain theme, pieces it together slowly until its truly grand debut when Roy and Jillian arrive at Devil's Tower, followed by the theme's culmination in "The Visitors."  This gradual emergence of a theme is the teleological genesis in the article's title.

 

For instance, in the Lost Squadron cue at the very beginning of the film, the author identifies two places where Williams begins to hint at the theme.  He notes that the music is first introduced around the interview with the old man, also laying the unconscious groundwork that this music is associated with the overwhelming impact contact with the aliens has on a person.

 

First, when the scientist asks the old man what he saw.

(1:08 - 1:15)

 

The top stave is the music in the cue, the bottom is the "definitive" interval spacing of the theme.

image.png

 

Then a different hint of the theme later in the same cue, after the man's story is done.

(1:53 - end)

 

This one is more obviously related to the final theme to my ears.  It sounds like it, but just darker and more ominous than the beautifully transcendent version we get in the contact scene.

image.png

 

Or, as the author puts it:

Quote

The intervallic pattern here is descending minor second/ascending perfect fourth, instead of the definitive form, which is ascending major second/ascending perfect fourth. Retrospectively, we understand that the B-flat is “wrong” (it should be a G). The first half of the motive is still embryonic—its intervallic structure has not yet been locked into place.

 

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4 minutes ago, Holko said:

So... a more fancypants version of my silly little writeup? :P

 

Let me know when you start using terms like "musico-dramatic sensitivity."  Yeah, this is mostly stuff that true Williams obsessives have taken note of for years and are more and more starting to make their way into music scholarship.

 

For real, though, it's a very well-written article, I like the conclusion a lot.

 

Quote

Of course, the opportunity to use sophisticated formal strategies like teleological genesis in film music is entirely dependent on the structure of the narrative. Williams has remarked that “[Spielberg's] subjects and way of directing are very compatible with a sense of musical development”37—no doubt one important reason for the close professional bond between the two artists, who have collaborated on twenty-five films. But it takes a composer of particular musico-dramatic sensitivity and skill to recognize the potential for employing such a structural approach. Gail Kubik (who, like Williams, was active in both film and concert music) describes the peculiar formal challenge of film composing in a 1945 essay on music in documentaries:

Most film music problems … pose this question: Can the composer discover the architectural form which the film itself takes and, assuming that he has the instinctive dramatic talent which enables him to perceive this form, can he then translate his reactions to the film's structure into sounds which are musically satisfactory and convincing, yet which also supplement the dramatic impact of the film itself?38

 

Few composers have been as consistently adept as Williams at negotiating this delicate balance between musical and filmic form.

 

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Spielberg was confused about how and why to reference Pinocchio.  I think discussing it with JW was the right idea so it could be subtly infused in the scores DNA but it seems Spielberg continued to wrestle with it.

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How brilliant to take Spielberg's concept of playing the song in the final contact sequence and subtly prepare the audience for that musically throughout the score.  Even if Spielberg ended up dropping that the actual song, it totally adds to the ambivalent beauty of the aliens/UFOs.

 

Or as Williams puts it:

 

Quote

“When You Wish Upon a Star” was in Close Encounters, disguised, for the sense of mystique. It is a beautiful song and it meant a lot to Steven, and there are strong associations, fantastic associations with it. Most people don't even notice it, and that's all right, too. It may be just a kind of artistic conceit, I suppose, but it has some meaning to us. That should be enough of a reason.

 

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And as Spielberg put it:

"On Close Encounters, I had a very important decision to make: whether or not to use the Walt Disney song, "When You Wish Upon a Star" at the end of the movie, with Jiminy Cricket's actual voice performing it. And the only way I could tell was to have two different previews, on two different nights: one night with the song, one night without it. I then analyzed the preview cards very carefully, interviewed the people who left the theater, and made a determination that the audience wanted to be transported into another world along with Richard Dreyfuss as he walked aboard the mothership. They didn't want to be told the film was a fantasy, and this song seemed to belie some of the authenticity and to bespeak fantasy and fairy tale. And I didn't want Close Encounters to end just in a dream."

 

So what Williams did was infuse that magic and nostalgia subtly. 

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His overreaction to this (tracking over the Williams credits with kinda unfitting music to get rid of all traced of the song) was pretty wrong. How the hell did he even get to the point where he put the song in?

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CE3K is in some ways a very frustrating score for me.  As heard on album, I hold it right alongside ET as the pinnacle of Williams' achievements.  In terms of absolutely perfectly supporting and enhancing both the story, and the underlying themes (the meat on the bones of the story).  But then I rewatch the film (either the theatrical or the '98) and so much of his original intentions are microedited and tracked to hell.  It's still BRILLIANT in the film.... but not quite as brilliant as it could have been (in my opinion).  This is in opposition to ET, one of his least edited Spielberg scores, which shows I think the incredible confidence both Spielberg and Williams had with ET, whereas you can tell that Spielberg was doing a lot more second- and third-guessing on CE3K.

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1 hour ago, Disco Stu said:

CE3K is in some ways a very frustrating score for me.  As heard on album, I hold it right alongside ET as the pinnacle of Williams' achievements.  In terms of absolutely perfectly supporting and enhancing both the story, and the underlying themes (the meat on the bones of the story).  But then I rewatch the film (either the theatrical or the '98) and so much of his original intentions are microedited and tracked to hell.  It's still BRILLIANT in the film.... but not quite as brilliant as it could have been (in my opinion).  This is in opposition to ET, one of his least edited Spielberg scores, which shows I think the incredible confidence both Spielberg and Williams had with ET, whereas you can tell that Spielberg was doing a lot more second- and third-guessing on CE3K.

 

I think what you just complained about is that CE3K movie is a frustrating FILM because it was microedited and had an uncertain narrative thread unlike E.T.  But somehow you said the "CE3K is in some ways a very frustrating SCORE..."

 

CE3K is a frustrating film with a very, very gorgeous score.  The score is hampered by the micro edits and multiple versions of the film that confuse the plot and added new score (mothership, when you wish upon a star in the special edition).  As far as I understand (and this is unclear to me), the Pinocchio subtext is that Roy didn't want to grow up?  He had child like wonder and this resulted in him leaving adult responsibilities of fatherhood and husband behind to have his wishes fulfilled?  Very confused plot because that is NOT what Pinocchio is at all about but Roy references how he enjoyed it as a kid early in the film.  Pinocchiois about the toy who wishes to be a real boy when he sees a falling star at all costs and that was his non stop wish (A.I.). In reading the old interviews from Spielberg, it is pretty clear, he didn't have a very strong sense for what the story meant either other than he wanted to evoke a nostalgia mood for Disney wonder which is even worse as a story subtext.

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