Williams confirms EPISODE IX !!

[Dixon Hill 4,233]

Stefan will be unswayed by technical discussion, which is certainly his right.

[Dixon Hill 4,233]

14 hours ago, Score said:

 

... and by far the most advanced harmonically.

 

This means nothing, though.  There is plenty of harmonically conservative music which moves and engages more people than some harmonically "adventurous" music does.  Equally meaningless is the length of the work or the composing period, the instrumentation....

 

Why these two series' need to constantly be pitted against each other is childish, or just beyond me.  One is possessed of a great artistic and spiritual depth that the other largely lacks, but the latter has decades and decades of cultural saturation... who cares?  They're both remarkable cinematic and musical achievements, whatever awards their creators have or don't have.

[Score 770]

4 hours ago, TheGreyPilgrim said:

 

This means nothing, though.  There is plenty of harmonically conservative music which moves and engages more people than some harmonically "adventurous" music does.  Equally meaningless is the length of the work or the composing period, the instrumentation....

 

More than saying that it means nothing, I'd say that it is one of many things that affect the appreciation for a piece of music, whether consciously or inconsciously, and since there are many other aspects, it is not the only defining quality and whether you value one of these more or less is subjective (others may value rhytmic variety more, for example).  

 

4 hours ago, TheGreyPilgrim said:

Why these two series' need to constantly be pitted against each other is childish, or just beyond me.  One is possessed of a great artistic and spiritual depth that the other largely lacks, but the latter has decades and decades of cultural saturation... who cares?  They're both remarkable cinematic and musical achievements, whatever awards their creators have or don't have.

 

Oh, I agree, and it was not my intention to put up this discussion again. We had it some time ago (both you and I participated, I remember) and I have realized that even people with similar musical background may assess greatness with different parameters, and several approaches are equally valid, so these discussions are bound to be based in part on subjectivity (as musical criticism has always been in the whole history). They all end with "I like both but I like A better" and "I also like both, but I like B better".

 

Here, there was a very innocent comment by TownerFan saying that the SW scores are one of the greatest achievements by a single composer (which is true and does not diminish other comparable works), then Chen replied in a way that seemed to dismiss their value by saying that Shore's LOTR scores are more thematically dense etc., and ended up saying that they are much more deserving of an award as his opinion had to be the truth, and I just didn't like the tone of those statements. 

 

[Chen G. 3,944]

1 hour ago, Score said:

Here, there was a very innocent comment by TownerFan saying that the SW scores are one of the greatest achievements by a single composer (which is true and does not diminish other comparable works), then Chen replied in a way that seemed to dismiss their value by saying that Shore's LOTR scores are more thematically dense etc., and ended up saying that they are much more deserving of an award as his opinion had to be the truth, and I just didn't like the tone of those statements. 

 

I see.

 

It should be said however that that reply was only one of a number in that vein, also from Score, igger6, and from Richard on the ranking of the Star Wars scores thread.

 

Like I said, I would like to have seen both receive an honorary oscar, and while only one of them may acquire such a title at this point (unless Shore ends up scoring more Middle Earth films, which I hope he does), I think its incorrect to claim, even indirectly, that only one of them should.

 

And I still think that unequivocally granting either of the two works the title of "achievement without peer" and "the single greatest achievement in motion picture scoring" as they have been called in these two threads, is much too bold a claim. 

[Obi 404]

He's back for Daisy you know...

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

Star Trek has music by Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner, Alexander Courage.

 

Star Wars has music by John Williams and...Michael Giacchino?

Star Trek wins.

[Thor 7,472]

Not really. John Williams beats out Goldsmith, Horner and Courage combined!

 

(PS. STAR TREK has Giacchino too....God help us all).

[filmmusic 1,823]

@thread title

Great. Let's get on with it and move to other things please..

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

I'm here. Now. What do you want to talk about?

[Thor 7,472]

6 minutes ago, filmmusic said:

@thread title

Great. Let's get on with it and move to other things please..

 

Asking JWFAN to get on to other things outside STAR WARS and similar fare, is like asking the Pope to stop talking about Christianity.

[Not Mr. Big 4,639]

Goldsmith's Trek scores are more or less in the same league as the Williams Star Wars but other than that, it can't really compare (never been a huge fan of Horner's entries or the TV scores).

[ocelot 508]

To me, the music in the Star Wars films outshines all those others mentioned musically. By a mile. There is no comparison. Musically....

 

However, people can like and prefer music without having comparisons made about harmonic language etc, because music to the listener is solely about how it hits you emotionally and cerebrally. So whatever you prefer, go for it and enjoy it. That's the beauty of any art. It's subjective, and it's great that we all have different tastes.

 

Having said that, and having said that I prefer Star Wars by a mile,  I do think one of the greatest themes in movie history is the theme Goldsmith wrote for Star Trek: First Contact. The simplicity, and majesty of that theme hits me every time. It's very similar in tone to Jurassic Park's slow theme. Both have that masculine vs Feminine element that works beautifully in a grand theme. Meaning, as powerful as they are, they also feel nurturing, like a warm blanket. 

[filmmusic 1,823]

30 minutes ago, Thor said:

 

Asking JWFAN to get on to other things outside STAR WARS and similar fare, is like asking the Pope to stop talking about Christianity.

No. I was asking John Wiliams to move to other things!

[gkgyver 1,645]

12 hours ago, Score said:

 

Here, there was a very innocent comment by TownerFan saying that the SW scores are one of the greatest achievements by a single composer (which is true and does not diminish other comparable works), then Chen replied in a way that seemed to dismiss their value by saying that Shore's LOTR scores are more thematically dense etc., and ended up saying that they are much more deserving of an award as his opinion had to be the truth, and I just didn't like the tone of those statements. 

 

 

Wrong.

TownerFan said that the only comparable equal to Star Wars would be Wagner's Ring Cycle. To which Chen added Shore's work, which indeed compensates for its lack of comparable harmonic complexity with sheer leitmotivic grandeur and textural wealth.

 

Though I have to ask how a work that juggles with ease so many different themes can be harmonically simpler.

[filmmusic 1,823]

36 minutes ago, gkgyver said:

 

 

Though I have to ask how a work that juggles with ease so many different themes can be harmonically simpler.

?

Harmony and number of themes are not related whatsoever.

I don't understand your question.

[Chen G. 3,944]

True, but on the other hand, there is a lot of harmonic forethought in terms of creating a glossary of themes which, unlike Williams' but very much like Wagner's, are all harmonically tied together in sets and subsets of related themes. Pretty damn mind-blowing.

 

These are leitmotivic works. They should be assessed based on their leitmotivic variety and intricacy, first. Again, not trying to start what is bound to be a never-ending argument, but rather to show the error in such bold statements as "Star Wars is without peer" nonsense.

[crumbs 14,302]

41 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

These are leitmotivic works. They should be assessed based on their leitmotivic variety and intricacy, first. Again, not trying to start what is bound to be a never-ending argument, but rather to show the error in such bold statements as "Star Wars is without peer" nonsense.

 

We can debate the artistic merit of these pieces for eternity but I think statements like the one you mentioned are specifically in reference to the time spent working on one piece and the volume of music it contains.

 

The closest comparisons have already been discussed. Wagner's Ring Cycle (about 15 hours of music) was written over ~26 years. LOTR/Hobbit (about 18 hours of music) spans ~15 years.

 

So in this sense, one composer over 43 years assembling ~20 hours of music building upon leitmotivic writing is without peer.

[Chen G. 3,944]

Who cares about the time between installments?! If anything, what matters is how much time the composer actually spent (overall) working on the bloody thing!

 

Wagner worked on the Ring Cycle on and-off throughout that entire time period, stopping only to write his other operas; Shore worked on Lord of the Rings for four years straight, and I believe another three for The Hobbit. Williams worked for 10-12 weeks before each installment, so less than two years, at most.

 

To be fair to Williams, he didn't have existing source material to work with, or a story of his own design, so even if he wanted to, he couldn't spend the interim time between installments developing themes that are to come.

[crumbs 14,302]

3 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

Who cares about the time between installments?! What matters is how much time the composer actually spent working on the bloody thing!

 

Who cares? You have to be joking, right? What's not utterly fascinating about a composer who wrote a suite of themes over 4 decades ago, and whose style and artistic leanings have evolved and matured in the intervening years, is still expanding upon these ideas with his modern sensibilities? That's half the reason the evolution of Star Wars scoring is so fascinating! Could Williams have written a piece like Duel of the Fates for the original trilogy? Could he have written a piece like Rey's Theme for the prequel trilogy?

 

To simply disregard this and turn it into a dick-size contest about how many minutes were spent writing the music is to completely disregard context, which is the whole point of an artistic work.

 

3 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

Wagner worked on the Ring Cycle on and-off throughout that entire time period; Shore worked on Lord of the Rings for four years straight, and I believe another three for The Hobbit. Williams worked for 10-12 weeks before each installment, so less than two years.

 

I think you'll find Williams spent about 10 months on each of TFA and TLJ, so that's completely incorrect. I'd also question that Williams wrote and recorded ANY of the OT/PT scores in the span of only 10 weeks. The recording sessions alone, and the revisions they entail, take about 2 weeks.

[Chen G. 3,944]

He didn't spend 10 months composing, they just spread out the recording sessions over that period of time. Williams, I believe, openly said that his output in terms of minutes of music per day has remained relatively consistent, in spite of his age. Its just attending recording sessions and conducting that is the issue.

 

And, I agree that its a superficial "dick-size" contest. That's what I'm trying to show: that you can't point to the superior of the two without resorting to debates on such trivialities, hence you cannot be so unequivocal in claiming that "STAR WARS IZ DU BEST FILM SKOR EVAR." The same is true of hailing Shore's work as just that.

[crumbs 14,302]

6 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

hence you cannot be so unequivocal in claiming that "STAR WARS IZ DU BEST FILM SKOR EVAR."

Are you even reading my posts? Where did I say this? I specifically went out of my way to point out I'm NOT comparing the works themselves but rather the achievement of writing it over such a period of time.

[Chen G. 3,944]

1 minute ago, crumbs said:

the achievement of writing it over such a period of time.

 

To my mind that is much less interesting than the actual work.

[Not Mr. Big 4,639]

LOTR and SW are hard to compare IMO.  Star Wars is a collection of fantastic individual scores while LOTR is more cohesive/all-encompassing with less individuality between entries (+The Hobbit scores which aren't as good).  

They are both singular achievements in film scoring and its possible to acknowledge one without subtlely knocking the other.  

[Chen G. 3,944]

My point exactly.

[Marian Schedenig 8,174]

46 minutes ago, crumbs said:

 

Who cares? You have to be joking, right? What's not utterly fascinating about a composer who wrote a suite of themes over 4 decades ago, and whose style and artistic leanings have evolved and matured in the intervening years, is still expanding upon these ideas with his modern sensibilities?

 

 

Not to forget that one of the frequently discussed aspects of Wagner's Ring is the supposed stylistic break from when he stopped working on it for 12 years.

[JohnnyD 1,220]

I had no doubt in my mind that the Maestro would do the music for Star Wars, Episode IX. That was a phenomenal article and interview.

 

Time to add Star Wars, Episode IX on the side bar of the main page that lists upcoming projects.

[ocelot 508]

Let me let you in on something I know about The Last Jedi. When Rian Johnson would send Williams his music put to scenes already done and scored, Williams himself then went and said (on many areas) Let me change this. I think I can hit it better emotionally. Without Johnson asking for it and without his input. That alone is admirable. The notion that he only spent a few weeks composing is bullshit. On both the last two SW scores and on TinTin I know he spent months on them. Rey's theme was revised countless times and rewritten plenty because he didn't like it till he finally nailed it. That alone took weeks. Just honestly hush up already. Unless you are an orchestral composer, do not presume how long things do or should take. Besides, some of the best known loved and admired pieces in History have taken anywhere from 1 week to 1 year to finish. Time does not indicate how good anything is, the product does. Love it or Hate it, that's personal choice, but the guy has done something in film, never done before, you can never take that away from him!

[gkgyver 1,645]

What is more appealing to me in Shore's opus compared to Williams' is that Shore more consistently relies on melody to move his music forward, whereas JW's recent Star Wars music, or his post 2000 action output in general, relies more on rhythmic figures and orchestrations that tend to muddle the music down, and that can sometimes be tedious to go through when you listen to a whole album. I can't get into this kind of overcomplicated action writing, overflowing with advanced harmonies that fragments the whole thing.

I'm no musician, that's the best I can do to describe it.

 

You can't go a minute in Shore's Middle Earth music without having some theme or motif playing, and even when he goes into more textural stuff, like the Dead Marshes, Fangorn or Mirkwood, it is always within a thematic context, even though it may be fragmented. These six scores are relentlessly interesting in a melodic and thematic sense, and to me personally, that's just more impressive than having technically accomplished music, where I can fast forward every 3 minutes because it sounds like nondescript action music that Williams has done a thousand times before. And which is, in the case of TLJ, not even particulary original.

 

Shore's work sounds more like he scored a story instead of syncing to picture, while Williams' new trilogy is the other way around.

I can see plenty of people listening to pretty much any track from LotR or The Hobbit, and enjoy it as standalone music without a scene attached to it. I can't see the same number of people who are NOT Star Wars fans listen to something like The Falcon or I Can Fly Anything, and be particulary engaged by the listen, without knowing what scenes it scores.

Because I do like Star Wars, and I don't know what scenes these score, and I have no emotional response to that music whatsoever.

I think it would not be wise to assume that because a shitload of people know Williams' "big" themes, and love them, they also love the score-y and micky-mouse-y stuff that comes with them. Because that's as much of an acquired taste as classical music in general can be for the general public.

 

Sometimes people also pretend like those Star Wars films are one big whole, and Williams chose the "sound" of each of them, when in reality, the film doesn't dictate the Sound of the score, the phase in which the composer is in his career does. 

And SW 1-3 are as different from the prequels, as this new trilogy is from any of them.

The Hobbit is different from LotR (though AUJ does come close), and should Shore do a Silmarillion in a few years, that will be different, too.

 

I get the distinct impression that Shore approached the whole Middle Earth thing with a much higher determination to create something that's more than the sum of its parts, than Williams did. On the original trilogy, you can say, well, nobody dared to dream that it would be a trilogy. But in the prequels, Williams consciously dropped ideas from film to film in favour of creating something new.

And in this trilogy, where Williams could do pretty much anything .... Let me put it this way, I could never imagine Shore making a conscious effort to take a verbatim quote from LotR, and implementing it into the Hobbit without rhyme or reason, like Williams does here. Last minute directorial demands to record temp tracks don't count. We have the original intention on album.

And yes, I know there are a few quotes, like the Minas Morgul motif, or Mirror Of Galadriel, or Very Old Friends. But those MAKE SENSE, and widen the scope that these scores had to begin with, or, in the case of Very Old Friends, they score the same freaking scene.

 

Even if I had an emotional response to all of TLJ, I couldn't take it into the same category as Shore, simply because of how unoriginal it is, and how little sense it makes.

I'm sorry if I have to upset some people, but to me, TLJ is in large parts pastiche.

 

 

[Trumpeteer 302]

I suppose I shall be the lone dissenter here and express my displeasure at this news. While I want John Williams to finish out the third Star Wars trilogy, I haven't been impressed with too much of the music in this new trilogy. Lots of rehashes and too many reminders of how awesome the original trilogy was musically.

 

When "The Force Awakens" ended, I shrugged my shoulders (physically and emotionally) over the music. After "The Last Jedi," I silently hoped Williams would hand over the reins to someone else for Episode 9. Oh, well. I hope there is a surge of inspiration that comes from this film. I really want the music to be good. But, I'm tempering my expectations because they have been dashed twice previously.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Wow!

[Taikomochi 1,136]

[mrbellamy 6,272]

[crumbs 14,302]

All for dissenting opinions but there's a solid 3+ hours of wholly original score between the two films, and that's just the officially released music. Yes, there's more reused thematic material in TLJ than TFA but it's outweighed by new trilogy music.

 

Either way, just don't see any benefit whatsoever to Williams not scoring IX vs scoring it. The alternative is no score at all. It's not like Star Wars is getting in the way of some unheard magnum opus; Williams is only scoring Star Wars and Spielberg now. I'm not losing sleep over the lack of Bridge of Spies or Ready Player One scores. I'd much rather hear Williams' culmination of four decades of thematic development.

[filmmusic 1,823]

28 minutes ago, crumbs said:

Williams is only scoring Star Wars and Spielberg now.

Yeah, this is pity...

[Chen G. 3,944]

Yes, there's no doubt Williams should score IX. And I wasn't too unsure that he would. The scoring process on these starts very early, so he'll be back composing before you know it.

 

5 hours ago, Trumpeteer said:

While I want John Williams to finish out the third Star Wars trilogy, I haven't been impressed with too much of the music in this new trilogy. Lots of rehashes and too many reminders of how awesome the original trilogy was musically.

 

I don't feel the same, but I do understand: The Force Awakens is fine music: I've gotten more fond of Rey's theme since The Last Jedi (its just the introduction figures that I don't like, and those are barely in it) but its not the greatest thing since sliced bread, and the whole thing is mixed so low, that the music is a none-entity during the film. The Last Jedi is much more present in the picture, and I like the new thematic material, but I can't get over just how much of the material is from pre-existing scores; also, due to what I must assume is temp-track-love, there are a couple of moment that give me serious Revenge of the Sith flashbacks. To me, this sequel trilogy is this far - in terms of the scores - the least of the three.

 

I still enjoy both entries, and I still want him to score IX. Not to mention I was very happy to learn that he's writing the main theme for Solo.

 

7 hours ago, gkgyver said:

Sometimes people also pretend like those Star Wars films are one big whole, and Williams chose the "sound" of each of them, when in reality, the film doesn't dictate the Sound of the score, the phase in which the composer is in his career does. 

And SW 1-3 are as different from the prequels, as this new trilogy is from any of them.

The Hobbit is different from LotR (though AUJ does come close), and should Shore do a Silmarillion in a few years, that will be different, too.

 

I get the distinct impression that Shore approached the whole Middle Earth thing with a much higher determination to create something that's more than the sum of its parts, than Williams did.

 

That's the triumph of Shore's work, to me, as a piece of musical storytelling: that it has a unified sense to it. With Williams, they really are a string of interconnected, but separate, entities. You have themes that are waylaid (Anakin's), themes that are gained at some point albeit being perfectly applicable to a previous entry (Imperial March, Across the Stars), themes that are repurposed throughout the narrative (Ben's, Luke's, the Rebel Fanfare), themes that are isolated to one episode in spite of being perfectly applicable to others (Droids, Imperial motif), etc...

 

To be fair, Williams didn't have existing source material like Shore did. So Shore could write and introduce the Gondor theme, knowing that it will become important in a later entry, where Williams didn't know the same with plot elements of Star Wars. But than, even with the prequels where George Lucas knew that he was going to develop Anakin and Padem's relationship from The Phantom Menace into a tragic love story, Williams didn't bother with writing a love theme. Its also true of his Harry Potter entries: Williams only writes thematic material for the piece he is working on at each point of time, he doesn't write a theme only for its significance to reveal itself in a later entry.

 

Also, since Williams' is a much, much smaller thematic catalog (even by account of the folk who like to view every couple of notes from a single theme as a separate thematic idea) he ends up flogging some of his themes way too often, to the point that the audience becomes super-saturated in them. The way The Force theme is used in The Last Jedi, unfortunately "cheapens" the theme for me. From a theme for a certain plot element (The Force) its turned into generic melancholy music. The same is true of Luke's theme becoming just "heroic" music, and of the Rebel Fanfare becoming "triumphant" music.

 

7 hours ago, gkgyver said:

Let me put it this way, I could never imagine Shore making a conscious effort to take a verbatim quote from LotR, and implementing it into the Hobbit without rhyme or reason, like Williams does here. Last minute directorial demands to record temp tracks don't count. We have the original intention on album.

And yes, I know there are a few quotes, like the Minas Morgul motif, or Mirror Of Galadriel, or Very Old Friends. But those MAKE SENSE, and widen the scope that these scores had to begin with.

 

I think those quotes are the true brilliance of the score: instead of taking an existing theme and writing it backwards (a-la Anakin's theme) Shore does this instead with none-recurring material, and also makes it a part of the overall fabric of the score. So its not just that he introduces the snippet of music from when Gandalf is looking at the map of the Lonely Mountain, its that he bases The House of Durin (and, by proxy, Thorin's theme) on it, so that when you hear it in The Fellowship of the Ring, it makes you reminisce about Thorin.

 

But than again, unlike you, I don't think one's appreciation of the music can (or should) be isolated from one's enjoyment of the films. The music is associated with the images and evokes them when you hear it. If you like the images that pop-up in your mind when you listen, you will like the music.

[Thor 7,472]

5 hours ago, Trumpeteer said:

I suppose I shall be the lone dissenter here and express my displeasure at this news. While I want John Williams to finish out the third Star Wars trilogy, I haven't been impressed with too much of the music in this new trilogy. Lots of rehashes and too many reminders of how awesome the original trilogy was musically.

 

When "The Force Awakens" ended, I shrugged my shoulders (physically and emotionally) over the music. After "The Last Jedi," I silently hoped Williams would hand over the reins to someone else for Episode 9. Oh, well. I hope there is a surge of inspiration that comes from this film. I really want the music to be good. But, I'm tempering my expectations because they have been dashed twice previously.

 

My sentiments exactly, so no -- you're not the lone dissenter at all!

 

Although I'm happy for any new Williams I can get at this point in his life, I'd rather hear him do other projects than STAR WARS.

[Score 770]

9 hours ago, Chen G. said:

That's what I'm trying to show: that you can't point to the superior of the two without resorting to debates on such trivialities, hence you cannot be so unequivocal in claiming that "STAR WARS IZ DU BEST FILM SKOR EVAR."

 

Most of us are not fanboys like those who comment on youtube, while, if you write stuff like this, you are implying that we are. None of us had made a statement like that, especially not in that way. And if someone here states that the SW scores, as a whole, are among the greatest accomplishments in film music (if not the greatest), maybe they have good reasons, and they may even be right.  

 

 

6 hours ago, gkgyver said:

What is more appealing to me in Shore's opus compared to Williams' is that Shore more consistently relies on melody to move his music forward, whereas JW's recent Star Wars music, or his post 2000 action output in general, relies more on rhythmic figures and orchestrations that tend to muddle the music down, and that can sometimes be tedious to go through when you listen to a whole album. I can't get into this kind of overcomplicated action writing, overflowing with advanced harmonies that fragments the whole thing.

I'm no musician, that's the best I can do to describe it.

 

You see, what you list here are among the reasons why I prefer the SW scores, as a whole, and I consider them a superior musical product (ok, I stress again that LOTR are very good as well, one of the greatest accomplishments in film music, etc. etc.). I'm not telling you that "you are wrong" (there is not such a thing in this context), but just to explain the different points of view, if I change your statement into the following, it will represent my position: 

 

"What is less appealing to me in Shore's opus compared to Williams' is that Shore relies almost only on melody to move his music forward, whereas JW's Star Wars music relies more on elaborate rhythmic figures, orchestrations and counterpoint that give vitality to the action, and that are exciting to go through when you listen to a whole album, and ESPECIALLY on advanced harmonies that are never trivial and greatly enhance the dramatic function of the music."

 

And since I am a musician, I'll try to explain the issue about harmony, which is for me the most remarkable aspect of SW's music (and of all of JW's music, actually), as I have said other times. Harmony is the set of choices that the composer makes with respect to the simultaneous arrangement of sounds at any given moment, i.e. the "chords". Melody and harmony go together and influence each other, and their combination is what produces a certain effect on the listener. If a composer uses a wider harmonic language (i.e. he uses simple chords when they are due, but also more elaborated ones at other moments), he simply has a much richer vocabulary than another composer who sticks to major and minor chords and little more than that. Such vocabulary also affects the possibility to write compelling melodies. Quite often, the harmonic palette is a major feature that sets apart classical music from pop music (with exceptions).

 

Now, both Shore and Williams are masterful composers, who are in full command of all the secrets of harmony and can do whatever they want with a wizard-like ability in this respect. However, in the case of LOTR, Shore used almost always an extremely simple harmonic palette, comparable to that of pop music. He deviated from that in some of the most dramatic moments, but simplicity was, intentionally, the main framework. Not surprisingly, he even turned the "Gray Havens" theme into the refrain of the song "Into the West" with no modifications. A beautiful and very moving song, but still a song. The LOTR scores are full of passages which consist in alternations of very simple (major and minor) sustained chords, typically played by the strings, with one melody on the top. There are standard sequences of chords which are recurrent in film music and pop music (e.g. after Gandalf falls in FotR, there is a sequence played by choir and strings which goes Fm - Db - Ab - Eb, I must have heard it one hundred times in other pieces of music, it was even used for a major theme from "The Chronicles of Narnia" a few years later). The fact is, if you, as a composer, restrict yourself a simple harmonic vocabulary, you are bound to write something that might be beautiful, inspiring and whatever, but will sound in several places like something already heard, almost like "pop music played with an orchestra", because the sequences of chords that you can write down are not infinite. Then, if you are a good composer (and Shore is a great one), you can add other forms of complexity and originality (the leitmotivic structure), and choir + strings is always a winning combination, whatever they play, but at the end I often have that feeling that "it's nice, but I've already heard it somewhere else". Again, this was an intentional choice for Shore, who has done much more complex stuff, for example, in the Cronenberg films.

 

In the SW scores, Williams starts, on the contrary, from a large and varied harmonic vocabulary, where simple chords are the exception, not the rule, and typically reserved for the moments where all contrasts have been solved, at least temporarily. E.g. the "simplest" cue from ANH, in terms of harmony, is probably "The Throne Room", which is in fact at the end, when the Rebels are celebrating their achieved victory. Everywhere else, there are plenty of non-conventional choices that add variety and originality, and greatly enhance drama (e.g. the Emperor's Death, a harmonic masterpiece, and almost all the battle pieces, especially in ANH and TESB, where consonant themes are turned to their dark side by applying augmented or diminished chords). Take Leia's theme, in the section leading to the climax, where the harmonies and the choices of the bass notes are so brilliant that a less gifted composer would have spent a full day on every bar. Or, since many people dismiss JW's ability to write for choir: take the choir music written for the death of Qui-Gon and Padme: this is a very elaborate piece, that sounds terrific, with wonderful harmonies, and that I find more original (harmonically) than anything written for choir in LOTR. 

 

Another chapter would be the discussion of counterpoint, but we would never end. 

 

I'd like to stress that I am aware that not everyone checks for these parameters when listening to music, and other points of view are equally valid. It's just to explain that those who do, are almost forced to find the SW scores more interesting. For the original comparison, if harmony is the main criterion, there is no doubt that SW is more comparable to Wagner's ring than LOTR.

 

It's not about being fanboys of the trumpets and the fanfares, or being excited about xylophones. There is a deeper logic than that.  

 

 

[Jurassic Shark 12,030]

16 hours ago, Thor said:

 

Asking JWFAN to get on to other things outside STAR WARS and similar fare, is like asking the Pope to stop talking about Christianity.

 

Yeah, the pope should really stop doing that. 

[Joni Wiljami 1,206]

He should orchestrate more.

[Quintus 5,399]

8 hours ago, Trumpeteer said:

I suppose I shall be the lone dissenter here and express my displeasure at this news. While I want John Williams to finish out the third Star Wars trilogy, I haven't been impressed with too much of the music in this new trilogy. Lots of rehashes and too many reminders of how awesome the original trilogy was musically.

 

When "The Force Awakens" ended, I shrugged my shoulders (physically and emotionally) over the music. After "The Last Jedi," I silently hoped Williams would hand over the reins to someone else for Episode 9. Oh, well. I hope there is a surge of inspiration that comes from this film. I really want the music to be good. But, I'm tempering my expectations because they have been dashed twice previously.

 

I haven't finished my listen through of the TLJ ost yet (it suddenly gets really good at Crait, but that's very late on), yet I'm possibly inclined to agree with the overall sentiment of what you're saying.

 

Compared to other grand romantic writing put out these days, Williams still casts a big shadow over it all, the absolute lot of it. Because even though I only find these newer SW scores good for their handful of highlights, I still get more out of those moments than I do out of pretty much any other recent movie soundtrack. And yet, at the same time, in no way are these new Star Wars scores vintage Williams. They're simply not cohesively thematic enough for my tastes to really get along with. Overall, I find them merely adequate as effective storytelling underscore, and even less successful in standalone music form.

 

On the albums, I only hear a bunch of unconnected cues which don't seem to be portraying anything other than what was on the screen at the time; I can't sense the strong musical narrative from one track to the next which I have come to expect from this composer. This was deeply disappointing to me. As I've said before though, I tend to blame the distinctly hollow movies themselves for this. I don't think Williams finds temp scores all that inspiring, for starters. When it comes to storytelling ie propulsive thematic mechanisms in the composition, pathos, catharsis... well, I know Williams is more than capable of delivering. But something about these movies isn't fully firing him up, in spite of his personal attachment to the series. Simply, the mythos and the magic are absent from Disney era Star Wars on a basic filmic level. Even John Williams can't find enough there to really flesh it out.

[Joni Wiljami 1,206]

Brexit, Trump and now this

 

what is wrong in this world???

[Dixon Hill 4,233]

6 hours ago, Score said:

 

Most of us are not fanboys like those who comment on youtube, while, if you write stuff like this, you are implying that we are. None of us had made a statement like that, especially not in that way. And if someone here states that the SW scores, as a whole, are among the greatest accomplishments in film music (if not the greatest), maybe they have good reasons, and they may even be right.  

 

 

 

You see, what you list here are among the reasons why I prefer the SW scores, as a whole, and I consider them a superior musical product (ok, I stress again that LOTR are very good as well, one of the greatest accomplishments in film music, etc. etc.). I'm not telling you that "you are wrong" (there is not such a thing in this context), but just to explain the different points of view, if I change your statement into the following, it will represent my position: 

 

"What is less appealing to me in Shore's opus compared to Williams' is that Shore relies almost only on melody to move his music forward, whereas JW's Star Wars music relies more on elaborate rhythmic figures, orchestrations and counterpoint that give vitality to the action, and that are exciting to go through when you listen to a whole album, and ESPECIALLY on advanced harmonies that are never trivial and greatly enhance the dramatic function of the music."

 

And since I am a musician, I'll try to explain the issue about harmony, which is for me the most remarkable aspect of SW's music (and of all of JW's music, actually), as I have said other times. Harmony is the set of choices that the composer makes with respect to the simultaneous arrangement of sounds at any given moment, i.e. the "chords". Melody and harmony go together and influence each other, and their combination is what produces a certain effect on the listener. If a composer uses a wider harmonic language (i.e. he uses simple chords when they are due, but also more elaborated ones at other moments), he simply has a much richer vocabulary than another composer who sticks to major and minor chords and little more than that. Such vocabulary also affects the possibility to write compelling melodies. Quite often, the harmonic palette is a major feature that sets apart classical music from pop music (with exceptions).

 

Now, both Shore and Williams are masterful composers, who are in full command of all the secrets of harmony and can do whatever they want with a wizard-like ability in this respect. However, in the case of LOTR, Shore used almost always an extremely simple harmonic palette, comparable to that of pop music. He deviated from that in some of the most dramatic moments, but simplicity was, intentionally, the main framework. Not surprisingly, he even turned the "Gray Havens" theme into the refrain of the song "Into the West" with no modifications. A beautiful and very moving song, but still a song. The LOTR scores are full of passages which consist in alternations of very simple (major and minor) sustained chords, typically played by the strings, with one melody on the top. There are standard sequences of chords which are recurrent in film music and pop music (e.g. after Gandalf falls in FotR, there is a sequence played by choir and strings which goes Fm - Db - Ab - Eb, I must have heard it one hundred times in other pieces of music, it was even used for a major theme from "The Chronicles of Narnia" a few years later). The fact is, if you, as a composer, restrict yourself a simple harmonic vocabulary, you are bound to write something that might be beautiful, inspiring and whatever, but will sound in several places like something already heard, almost like "pop music played with an orchestra", because the sequences of chords that you can write down are not infinite. Then, if you are a good composer (and Shore is a great one), you can add other forms of complexity and originality (the leitmotivic structure), and choir + strings is always a winning combination, whatever they play, but at the end I often have that feeling that "it's nice, but I've already heard it somewhere else". Again, this was an intentional choice for Shore, who has done much more complex stuff, for example, in the Cronenberg films.

 

In the SW scores, Williams starts, on the contrary, from a large and varied harmonic vocabulary, where simple chords are the exception, not the rule, and typically reserved for the moments where all contrasts have been solved, at least temporarily. E.g. the "simplest" cue from ANH, in terms of harmony, is probably "The Throne Room", which is in fact at the end, when the Rebels are celebrating their achieved victory. Everywhere else, there are plenty of non-conventional choices that add variety and originality, and greatly enhance drama (e.g. the Emperor's Death, a harmonic masterpiece, and almost all the battle pieces, especially in ANH and TESB, where consonant themes are turned to their dark side by applying augmented or diminished chords). Take Leia's theme, in the section leading to the climax, where the harmonies and the choices of the bass notes are so brilliant that a less gifted composer would have spent a full day on every bar. Or, since many people dismiss JW's ability to write for choir: take the choir music written for the death of Qui-Gon and Padme: this is a very elaborate piece, that sounds terrific, with wonderful harmonies, and that I find more original (harmonically) than anything written for choir in LOTR. 

 

Another chapter would be the discussion of counterpoint, but we would never end. 

 

I'd like to stress that I am aware that not everyone checks for these parameters when listening to music, and other points of view are equally valid. It's just to explain that those who do, are almost forced to find the SW scores more interesting. For the original comparison, if harmony is the main criterion, there is no doubt that SW is more comparable to Wagner's ring than LOTR.

 

It's not about being fanboys of the trumpets and the fanfares, or being excited about xylophones. There is a deeper logic than that.  

 

 

 

This reminds me of another thing I prefer about Shore's work.  It is far more bespoke and organic to the story.  You can hear the "limited" harmonic vocabulary, the earthy, granite like orchestration, and immediately identify Middle Earth in any isolated passage.  Take a similarly isolated and non thematic moment from Star Wars, and it's just... John Williams.  The only things that make it a Star Wars score are the themes.  There are certain little Star Wars isms, but ultimately they're few and far between, not something that defines the sound world.  

 

I've been a musician for decades now.  At no point has anything been more determining of my enjoyment of music, especially film music, than its spiritual, emotional impact.  I have little interest in music created to exemplify complexity or theory for its own sake.  The best art provides something more for us.   Obviously Star Wars as a story does that for some, but not me, and when it comes to more esoteric and purely musical concerns, I'm left similarly cold, as there's only well crafted but unrooted and at times generic (within the composer's output) music on offer.  

 

Star Wars, music and film, can't ever be more than light entertainment for me. 

[Chen G. 3,944]

Its what Adams called music "from this world", not just "about it." You can almost imagine Shore's score as a grand opera written in the United Kingdom in the Forth Age. The same is not quite true of Star Wars, minus the diegetic music.

 

Not only that, but Star Wars is "about the world" through the eyes of the composer; Middle Earth is "about the world" through the eyes of the composer and director. You have one director who approves of every single theme, and a composer who took inspiration for his themes from the way the art department (under said director) conceptualized the subject of those themes: Dwarves as rigid and square, Elves as sinuous, etc. So the score doesn't stand out of the vision of the director, but as an organic extension of it.

 

That's why Middle Earth at least seems to be the least harmonically evolved: because its supposed to sound much more antiquated than Star Wars, and it does. And not only does it has its own, overarching sound, but each culture has its soundscape, within that sonic universe, as well. You couldn't mistake a Dwarven piece of music for mannish piece of music for so much as a split-second, and yet the score don't feel compartmentalized.

 

There are other aspects to Shore's writing that satisfy my sensibilities better than Williams: his use of unusual instruments with the orchestra, his use of voices, and the inclusion of soloists. Having such people as Renee Fleming and James Galway infuse your score with their artistry certainly doesn't hurt! Williams, sadly, isn't keen on attaching his usual soloists (Perlman, Ma, etc..) with Star Wars.

[Naïve Old Fart 9,502]

On 12/01/2018 at 6:01 PM, Thor said:

 

Asking JWFAN to get on to other things outside STAR WARS and similar fare, is like asking the Pope to stop talking about Christianity.

 

As far as I have read, watched, and heard, the Pope has never talked about Christianity, except to disown it, but that is a good story...for another time 

[Bayesian 1,359]

Ah, to think what James Horner would have been able to achieve with four upcoming Avatar films...

[Wojo 2,453]

Boredom? 

[Fancyarcher 350]

Constant overusing of the danger motif? 

[armorb 9]

I find Shore generally boring as shit.

 

But I'm oh so glad Chen G. will inevitably come along, on topic, in every Star Wars thread here with a multiple paragraph exegesis on Shore's use of tonal variation in woodwinds to depict the smell of fresh cut grass in The Two Towers.

[Dixon Hill 4,233]

Your post history suggests that it is you who are generally boring as shit. 

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

13 minutes ago, TheGreyPilgrim said:

Your post history suggests that it is you who are generally boring as shit. 

 

 

TGP,  there's no need for that.