Williams confirms EPISODE IX !!

[artguy360 1,842]

36 minutes ago, crumbs said:

 

Other than Colin Treverrow getting the ass, of course.

The prequels conditioned me to look forward more to a new JW Star Wars score than the actual film it accompanies. 

[Darth Porkins 53]

I always figured this was a given but its nice to have conformation.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

7 hours ago, Thor said:

Nice! Third's the charm!

 

There is one error in the article, though. PLAYHOUSE 90 was not the first TV show Williams worked on (in fact, we still miss steadfast evidence that he worked on this show at all!). As most of you know, that was M SQUAD.

 

You should contact Jon Burlingame and mention this small error.

[rough cut 1,714]

Good news! Really cool to hear of an idea of a music-only-cut! 

[Jurassic Shark 12,008]

10 hours ago, Ludwig said:

Great news. Let's hope Episode IX has some of the most compelling new characters / locales / situations of the ST so it inspires some of the best themes of the saga.

 

Maybe he'll make a theme for a rock now. 

[James 119]

On 10/01/2018 at 5:23 PM, king mark said:

When JJ was announced as director, I thought it increased the chances of Williams doing it.

 

Williams is on the list of permanents contracts since Jaws. There is nothing to fear.

[Amer 2,078]

When Maestro Williams completes the 9th film- it will be quite an achievement completing a journey that began in 1977 and ending in 2019. Quite a staggering amount of work. They should just give him another OSCAR just for that alone !

 

 

[crumbs 14,287]

17 minutes ago, azahid said:

When Maestro Williams completes the 9th film- it will be quite an achievement completing a journey that began in 1977 and ending in 2019. Quite a staggering amount of work. They should just give him another OSCAR just for that alone !

 

No hyperbole but I do think IX is the most likely 6th Oscar at this point. They just won't reward his dramatic stuff anymore.

[Thor 7,451]

14 hours ago, Thor said:

There is one error in the article, though. PLAYHOUSE 90 was not the first TV show Williams worked on (in fact, we still miss steadfast evidence that he worked on this show at all!). As most of you know, that was M SQUAD.

 

Have to correct myself here. Apparently, new research material has surfaced that not only confirms Williams' involvement in PLAYHOUSE 90, but that also dates it to March-58, several months before M SQUAD. This was alerted to me by Jeff Eldridge over on FSM.

 

Now I have to retreat and (once again) rework Williams' timeline in this particular period.

[Jurassic Shark 12,008]

57 minutes ago, crumbs said:

They just won't reward his dramatic stuff anymore.

 

That's because the taste in Hollywood has changed... to the worse.

 

I'm still hoping for an Oscar for The Post, however unlikely.

 

51 minutes ago, Thor said:

 

Have to correct myself here. Apparently, new research material has surfaced that not only confirms Williams' involvement in PLAYHOUSE 90, but that also dates it to March-58, several months before M SQUAD. This was alerted to me by Jeff Eldridge over on FSM.

 

Now I have to retreat and (once again) rework Williams' timeline in this particular period.

 

Hey, why don't you do a PhD on some aspect of JW? Then you can use the dissertation as the basis for the book you've always wanted to write.

[Once 604]

1 hour ago, crumbs said:

 

They just won't reward his dramatic stuff anymore.

The last Oscar he got was for a drama, so really they just won't reward any of his stuff anymore.

[crumbs 14,287]

Spielberg would probably have to make the best film of his career for Williams to win for another drama score.

 

There's a nice symmetry to giving it to him for a 9th Star Wars film. That's one hell of an achievement, probably one of the greatest in film music history.

[TownerFan 4,983]

It'll sure come down in history as one of the greatest achievements done by a single composer, not just film music imho. Even considering the commercial aspect of film composition (i.e.  work for hire), it's not an ordinary thing for any composer to work and develop on musical material over the course of such a long time. The only comparison is indeed Wagner and his Ring Cycle.

[Jurassic Shark 12,008]

2 minutes ago, TownerFan said:

The only comparison is indeed Wagner and his Ring Cycle.

 

Agreed. And JW is not even a narcissist.

[crumbs 14,287]

I cannot wait to hear how he wraps up Rey's Theme. I reckon he's had ideas bubbling around in his head that he might have held back from TLJ.

[Jurassic Shark 12,008]

I think JW should do a cameo for Ep. IX.

[crocodile 7,973]

18 hours ago, king mark said:

106 minutes of unreleased music  confirmed

That's like an entire massive score!

 

So essentially Williams wrote a score that is more than twice the length of the original one at 85. Crazy!

 

Karol

[Chen G. 3,940]

38 minutes ago, TownerFan said:

It'll sure come down in history as one of the greatest achievements done by a single composer, not just film music imho. Even considering the commercial aspect of film composition (i.e.  work for hire), it's not an ordinary thing for any composer to work and develop on musical material over the course of such a long time. The only comparison is indeed Wagner and his Ring Cycle.

 

And Shore's Middle Earth work.

 

If anything, the Wagner cycle is the shortest of the bunch, but also the most leitmotivically dense. Williams' is about on par with Shore in terms of hours of music, but his is by far the least thematically dense of the three, and the least expansive and varied in terms of instrumentation.

[Thor 7,451]

2 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Hey, why don't you do a PhD on some aspect of JW? Then you can use the dissertation as the basis for the book you've always wanted to write.

 

It's a good idea, but all of the books that exist on JW are already based on a dissertation. Untill someone beats me to it (like Jeff Eldridge or Doug Adams), I want to do the first biography/overview book. I have a publisher already; I just need money/a grant to live while I write it.  

[Jurassic Shark 12,008]

That sounds great! I wonder how much funding you could collect through a Kickstarter campaign.

 

However, maybe JW will be more obliging if you present yourself as a poor, struggling writer who needs his participation to complete the book.

[Thor 7,451]

3 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

However, maybe JW will be more obliging if you present yourself as a poor, struggling writer who needs his participation to complete the book.

 

That sounds pretty precise, actually. 

[Score 770]

24 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

Williams' is about on par with Shore in terms of hours of music, but his is by far the least thematically dense of the three, and the least expansive and varied in terms of instrumentation.

 

... and by far the most advanced harmonically.

 

(I'm not really sure about the instrumentation thing)

 

[Jurassic Shark 12,008]

2 minutes ago, Thor said:

That sounds pretty precise, actually. 

 

We know that JW does use Skype, so then you could save the money you'd need for plane tickets.

[Chen G. 3,940]

51 minutes ago, Score said:

I'm not really sure about the instrumentation thing.

 

What I mean is that Shore uses all these "ethnic" winds, string and percussion instruments; Wagner uses alphorns, elaborate thunder machines, and several brass instruments crafted solely for the purpose of his operas. Williams mostly sticks to a western orchestra and the occasional chorus, and some jazz instruments for the diegetic pieces. The variety, especially in Shore's work, really makes it feel expansive: like a rich tapestry.

 

Again, not trying to prove one is superior to the other, just to temper with the assuredness with which people are crowning this as the pinnacle of movie scoring and one that "is rivaled only by Wagner's Ring Cycle" etc. Tp that I say: No, there is another.

[TownerFan 4,983]

30 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

Again, not trying to prove one is superior to the other, just to temper with the assuredness with which people are crowning this as the pinnacle of movie scoring and one that "is rivaled only by Wagner's Ring Cycle" etc. There is another.

 

I don't think Star Wars is the pinnacle of movie music, as much as I don't think Wagner's Ring Cycle is the greatest achievement in opera. The comparison I made is in terms of scale and span of lifetime spent by a single composer working on it. In this sense, to find something akin to what Williams did we must look to Wagner and really not much else. The similarities end there, though. I would never do a stylistic comparison, because there are more differences than similarities between Williams' Star Wars and Wagner's Ring. 

 

Yes, Shore's Middle Earth scores are a great achievement too (of course!), but imho it's a very different beast in many regards. Perhaps the link with Wagner is stronger than Star Wars in terms of analogies and narrative threads, but musically is truly very different.

[igger6 894]

4 hours ago, azahid said:

They should just give him another OSCAR just for that alone !

 

Actually, if Williams makes it to February 2020 (or even if he doesn't), I think this is exactly what they should (and maybe even will) do.  This achievement is without peer.  Shore's work is more motivically dense, sure, but the LOTR films' impact on Hollywood is one-tenth that of Star Wars, and they had fifty years' worth of preexisting fans from the novels, and six films in 14 years is not comparable to nine films over 42 years.  Heck, they gave Lucas the Thalberg award after only two iconic trilogies, and they used to pass out honorary Oscars like candy in the early decades.  (Actually, correction: they still pass them out like candy. James Earl Jones and Jackie Chan, but no JW?  Come on. http://www.oscars.org/governors/honorary)

 

I notice no one has brought up Bill Conti's five Rocky scores as a comparable achievement...

[Chen G. 3,940]

36 minutes ago, igger6 said:

Actually, if Williams makes it to February 2020 (or even if he doesn't), I think this is exactly what they should (and maybe even will) do.  This achievement is without peer.  Shore's work is more motivically dense, sure, but the LOTR films' impact on Hollywood is one-tenth that of Star Wars, and they had fifty years' worth of preexisting fans from the novels, and six films in 14 years is not comparable to nine films over 42 years.

 

We're talking about the scores, not the films. And what matters, I think, is not the timespan between films but the timespan spent actually working on the films (Shore's being by far the longer of the two) and the length of the actual work, which is similar for both, no matter how many pieces they are subdivided to.

 

So to say that its "without peer" is a hyperbole. I certainly wouldn't be surprised if Williams recieves some sort of special award from the industry for his work, but saying that he deserves such recognition (which he does) where Shore's mind-bogglingly intricate work does not, I think is unfair.

 

I also wouldn't be too dismissive of the impact of The Lord of the Rings films on the industry, but that's another matter. And again, who cares? what matters is which product you find artistically superior.

[Pieter Boelen 740]

Just want to go out and say that, reading that article, yep Williams is still a true class act!

[igger6 894]

I didn't mean to kick a Shornet's nest, but I don't think the LOTR scores' impact is anywhere near those of Star Wars, either, and I love them dearly.  Star Wars has two platinum-certified soundtracks and two gold-certified (1 million and 500,000 copies respectively), while LOTR has only one platinum and two gold.  But beyond raw numbers, the Star Wars soundtracks have penetrated pop culture and transformed the field of film scoring in a way that few would argue is true for the LOTR soundtracks, even if the latter are denser, deeper, more complex, more cohesive, or more consistent as a multi-part work. 

 

An honorary Oscar for Williams' work on the Star Wars series would be recognizing the depth, breadth, and consistency of his achievement over the latter half of a lifetime in creating a musical work that transcended its source material and helped expand the reach and footprint of movies in general in the process.  (Everyone in America over seven years old can hum the Main Title or the Imperial March, and that's not just a function of marketing; it says something about the work itself.  The Fellowship theme may have enjoyed that status for five minutes in 2003, but it's nowhere near the same cultural achievement.)  Moreover, it would acknowledge that Williams has made a unique commitment to these films, working with three (four if you count Ron Howard, which we probably shouldn't) different directors to maintain a consistent level of quality and integrity.

 

But now that I know how liberal the Academy has been with honorary Oscars in general, it mystifies me that Williams hasn't gotten one.  Maybe this will be his year?  I mean, we can debate whether he deserves a franchise-score-specific statuette more than Shore, but does anyone want to make the case that Williams' contributions to Hollywood have failed to meet the standard of Angela Lansbury and Steve Martin (2013)?

[Amer 2,078]

Agreed. My Two and half year old son going on three can hum parts of The Main Title and Imperial March too! And after watching me watch Williams videos conducting on screen does the same when he sees me playing the music. Williams music truly transcending to a new generation. 

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

22 hours ago, king mark said:

Williams is arthritis free. good to know

 

Well he had beautiful hands, you see?

[Chen G. 3,940]

1 hour ago, igger6 said:

I didn't mean to kick a Shornet's nest, but I don't think the LOTR scores' impact is anywhere near those of Star Wars, either, and I love them dearly.  Star Wars has two platinum-certified soundtracks and two gold-certified (1 million and 500,000 copies respectively), while LOTR has only one platinum and two gold.  But beyond raw numbers, the Star Wars soundtracks have penetrated pop culture and transformed the field of film scoring in a way that few would argue is true for the LOTR soundtracks, even if the latter are denser, deeper, more complex, more cohesive, or more consistent as a multi-part work. 

 

The Oscars are supposed to reflect the artistic merit of the work, not its popularity. By that standard, the Middle Earth scores are much more deserved of an award.

 

I'm not saying Williams doesn't deserve a special achievement award, he does! But others do, too.

[Score 770]

4 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

 

The Oscars are supposed to reflect the artistic merit of the work, not its popularity. By that standard, the Middle Earth scores are much more deserved of an award.

 

 

First, the Oscars do not reflect the artistic merit of the work, especially in the case of the scores (see e.g. Brokeback Mountain). Second, it is your opinion that the Middle Earth scores are more artistically deserving than SW, not a fact. The merits of Shore's scores are well known here, as well as the merits of the Star Wars scores. There have already been several discussions about which of the two series of scores is "better", or "greater", whatever adjective one wants to use, and there will always be people favouring one or the other and providing well-thought reasons for their choice. I happen to be in the camp of those who (greatly) prefer the Star Wars scores, for a variety of reasons (mostly technical and, just to be clear, completely unrelated to the quality of the associated movies). Although I also like the LOTR scores very much, you will never convince me nor many others that they are better than SW. 

 

Third, if I remember correctly the LOTR scores have already won 2 Oscars, while SW only one. This is already quite unfair, in my opinion, and giving a further honorary Oscar to LOTR over SW would be just wrong. 

 

 

 

 

 

[Pieter Boelen 740]

44 minutes ago, Score said:

There have already been several discussions about which of the two series of scores is "better", or "greater", whatever adjective one wants to use, and there will always be people favouring one or the other and providing well-thought reasons for their choice.

They're clearly very different from each other. I'm just glad to have both.

[Chen G. 3,940]

1 hour ago, Score said:

There have already been several discussions about which of the two series of scores is "better", or "greater", whatever adjective one wants to use, and there will always be people favouring one or the other and providing well-thought reasons for their choice. I happen to be in the camp of those who (greatly) prefer the Star Wars scores, for a variety of reasons (mostly technical and, just to be clear, completely unrelated to the quality of the associated movies). Although I also like the LOTR scores very much, you will never convince me nor many others that they are better than SW. 

 

Third, if I remember correctly the LOTR scores have already won 2 Oscars, while SW only one. This is already quite unfair, in my opinion, and giving a further honorary Oscar to LOTR over SW would be just wrong. 

 

I'm not trying to argue which is the better of the two. They're different enough to render any such comparison moot.

 

I'm trying to put a dent into the "Star Wars is the crowning achievement of film music" argument, especially insofar as its being based on the argument that Williams had scored eight of them, or will score nine. If the expansiveness of the score is the point (and it isn't), than its a matter of hours of music, not number of installments. In which case both works stand on relatively equal (and very impressive) grounds. If its the time period that the work spans, than the amount of time the composer actually spent working on the piece is the criteria, not the number of years between the first and last installment, in which case Shore's work is by far the more outstanding.

 

Its just the academic in me that flinches at strong, unequivocal claims such as "Star Wars is without peer".

 

As for special achievement Oscar for the work as a whole, I'm saying I would have liked to have seen both works receive such an honor. Its actually somewhat surprising that neither had received such an award already.

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

The Star Trek series has better overall music.

[Dixon Hill 4,232]

Star Trek music > Star Wars music

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Dennis McCarthy has better orchestrations than JW.

[Dixon Hill 4,232]

Brother!

[Joni Wiljami 1,206]

But Brian Eno is best.

[Dixon Hill 4,232]

For orchestral music?  Of course not.

[Joni Wiljami 1,206]

Conrad Pope shared also this article on FB. Nice and totally different tone there in the comments by the musicians than here in a fan forum.

 

Some people here cannot talk anything else than Lotr, Shore and Star Trek plaah plaah

[Dixon Hill 4,232]

10 minutes ago, hornist said:

Conrad Pope shared also this article on FB. Nice and totally different tone there in the comments by the musicians than here in a fan forum.

 

Some people here cannot talk anything else than Lotr, Shore and Star Trek plaah plaah

 

Yes I had a look at that comment thread as I often do through my wife's Facebook.  It was devoid of some of the usual stomach turning anti Zimmer/generally anti "new" sentiments that you see pop up on his posts from some parties.  

We all love and respect Williams.  But all you seem to want, Pasi, is sycophantic praise.  

 

Ah, and I stand corrected.  That David Kole character who never misses a chance to reference his seemingly self defining hatred of Zimmer did chime in.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Williams is a more controversial composer on JWfan that Zimmer!

[Joni Wiljami 1,206]

7 minutes ago, TheGreyPilgrim said:

 

Yes I had a look at that comment thread as I often do through my wife's Facebook.  It was devoid of some of the usual stomach turning anti Zimmer/generally anti "new" sentiments that you see pop up on his posts from some parties.  

We all love and respect Williams.  But all you seem to want, Pasi, is sycophantic praise.  

 

Ah, and I stand corrected.  That David Kole character who never misses a chance to reference his seemingly self defining hatred of Zimmer did chime in.

 

I didn't mean that zimner-hatred part. I wouldn't have gone that far. Even if I do hate him.

[Docteur Qui 1,544]

Eh, I flicked through the comments on Pope's FB, while there's some nice things said there's also more than a whiff of elitist bullshit, mainly people who don't accept that there's more than one way to score a film.

 

"The Academy last year picked some “scores” which were the equivalent of noise or facades of what music should be"

 

If you gave an Oscar to JW for every score he did it would dilute the value of his work and also send the wrong message to an industry that is already struggling to be more experimental and creative than it is.

[Dixon Hill 4,232]

Indeed.  And that same comment quite handily dismisses all the nominees from last year save Newman, as lacking skill, "pedigree," that sort of thing.  Which is strange, because as far as I know they were all attendees of some rather prestigious educational institutions, and presumably have something to show for that.  Not that it matters anyway.

[Docteur Qui 1,544]

Jóhann Jóhannsson's score for Arrival is a masterclass in modern scoring, deeply influenced by late 20th/early 21st century art music. But to the untrained ear it may just sound like a bunch of synths and strings doing weird stuff.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Thats what it is, soundscape and noise.

 

Untrained ear my ass!

[Docteur Qui 1,544]

No there's quite a bit of complexity going on behind it. Have a listen to this podcast for a little bit of insight into it.