Jump to content

Here is what other composers are saying about John Williams


Lewya

Recommended Posts

8 minutes ago, Steve McQueen said:

Am I wrong, or is he commending Williams for taking a diverse array of influences (Jazz, Stravinsky, Ravel, Massenett) into unique music that has broad public appeal?  

@Bespin? @Chewy?

 

Correct. Immediately before that, he also said something like "he opened to the wide public and audience the music of the 20th century", and that he (Desplat) finds it fantastic. A very nice comment. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Steve McQueen said:

Am I wrong, or is he commending Williams for taking a diverse array of influences (Jazz, Stravinsky, Ravel, Massenett) into unique music that has broad public appeal?  

@Bespin? @Chewy?

That's exactly what he said ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 hours ago, Score said:

 

Correct. Immediately before that, he also said something like "he opened to the wide public and audience the music of the 20th century", and that he (Desplat) finds it fantastic. A very nice comment. 

 

Yep. He also says that Williams managed to merge in his music various styles that you would not think about and that it made people listen to something they would not have listened otherwise.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Not sure if it was ever posted here but I do remember that interview/quote at the time. “It’s forever,” perfect.

 

Desplat certainly worships Williams, it’s very sweet. Few more here. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...
5 hours ago, SteveMc said:

A Scottish accent.  

Indeed. Charming Scottish brogue, the key to his success.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, crumbs said:

 

I'm sure Stepmom was a close 4th.

 

Follow by Rosewood! :lol:

 

11 hours ago, TheUlyssesian said:

Patrick Doyle asked to pick his top 3 scores ever: The Godfather, E.T. and Close Encounters.

 

I wonder when those scores will get proper rereleases.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Just found this, some old comments on Williams by Nico Muhly:

 

"Movies with scores by John Williams are always satisfying; it’s always just interesting enough that you don’t want to kill yourself and always splashy enough that you feel like you are In the Movies. So, that’s fun. I think he’s the only person who can even come close to doing an okay job of ytt.]"

 

"I do like those John Williams scores because he knows his way around the orchestra, and he knows his way around character development through music."

 

I can't find the exact comment right now, but I also think he said something among the lines that the Star Wars scores work fine in the films, but on their own, he is not really eager to listen to them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, Lewya said:

I think he’s the only person who can even come close to doing an okay job of ytt.

 

What's ytt?

 

4 minutes ago, Lewya said:

 

I can't find the comment, but I also think he said something among the lines that the Star Wars scores work fine in the films, but on their own, he is not really eager to listen to them.

 

I'm not eager to listen to Nico Muhly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I also found this about Andrew Norman and his connection to Williams - Star Wars in particular - perhaps the leading American composer of his generation.

 

LOS ANGELES — When Andrew Norman was growing up, “Star Wars” was the only film his family owned on video. “We watched it every weekend for, seriously, years on end,” he said in October, during a short hike up a steep hill near his home. Fascinated by John Williams’s classic score, Mr. Norman decided when he was young that he wanted to be a composer.

 

Little on the surface of “Split” resembles Mr. Williams’s scores, but Mr. Norman’s symphonic works are suffused with cinematic scope. “It’s all swirling around in my head,” Mr. Norman said of his childhood fascination with “Star Wars” and video games. “But I think it has more to do with storytelling, now, than the actual musical gestures.”

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/arts/music/andrew-norman-on-loving-star-wars-and-pushing-musical-boundaries.html

 

["Norman was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, but grew up in Modesto, California. His father was an evangelical pastor; in childhood, Norman played keyboards in church bands. It was repeated viewings of Star Wars, with John Williams’s thrilling score, that first attracted him to the idea of composing. Lush neo-Romanticism infused much of his early work, which received performances at the Modesto Symphony. As his education proceeded, first at USC and then at the Yale School of Music, he underwent a crisis: His encounters with masterpieces of modernism caused him to reject what he had done up to that point and to doubt his forward path. In an interview with William Robin, for the New York Times, Norman recalled telling a professor: “I would rather quit composing, period, than be viewed as a neo-Romantic, or a reactionary, or a naïve composer.”
 
The problem is a common one among young composers: how to find a voice that absorbs contemporary currents while retaining the expressive urgency that drew you to composing in the first place. In a series of works in the first decade of the 21st century—the orchestral piece Sacred Geometry; Gran Turismo, for eight violins; and an extended trio titled A Companion Guide to Rome—Norman not only solved this problem but found a voice singularly his own. He is the rare living composer whom you can recognize from just a few bars of an unknown piece. At the heart of a typical Norman passage, you find straightforward harmonic or melodic materials. For example, the final movement of Play is based around a bright little squiggle in the key of A major. But such half-familiar fragments are thrown into a kaleidoscopic swirl, fragmenting and reconstituting themselves before one’s ears. An almost childlike simplicity is folded into musical processes of dizzying energy and complexity..."
 
 
22 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

What's ytt?

Should be *it I think.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Michael Daugherty: "The wonderful music of John Williams is old school: you hear counterpoint, counter melodies, great orchestrations, changes of tempo and rubatos. I must say, I miss the old days of film music; the scores of Alfred Newman, Max Steiner and Bernard Herrmann for example. That way of composing virtuosic film music may come back someday, but at the moment we are in a very technologically driven world of film music, that, in my personal opinion, has inhibited the creative possibilities."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 3/13/2019 at 6:07 PM, Lewya said:

Michael Daugherty: "The wonderful music of John Williams is old school: you hear counterpoint, counter melodies, great orchestrations, changes of tempo and rubatos. I must say, I miss the old days of film music; the scores of Alfred Newman, Max Steiner and Bernard Herrmann for example. That way of composing virtuosic film music may come back someday, but at the moment we are in a very technologically driven world of film music, that, in my personal opinion, has inhibited the creative possibilities."

 

That's a beautiful quote. Where did you find it?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...

This is the first comment I have ever seen from Philip Glass on John Williams. A stupid interviewer by the way. Philip Glass on John Williams (from 2002) -

 

Glass basically said that Williams is very talented, but not an inventor - he writes his music by just creating new packaging, not inventing a new musical language.

 

Interviewer: Arrived in the 21st century, the best-known and most creative composers of classical music mainly work in Hollywood. Would you confirm any influence from them?


Glass: No. We're talking about composers who discover something new, who invent it, who develop a new musical language.

 

Interviewer: And Williams, Horner, Zimmer?


Glass: No, no. They just repack things, they recombine. But inventing and recombining are very different things. It's the same in pop music, not everyone just recombines, there are inventors there too, you just have to know the difference. Bob Dylan, that's an inventor. Just like Paul Simon, the Beach Boys in the 60s / 70s or Frank Zappa - something really new was invented. John Williams, James Horner, they are very talented, but they are not inventors, they write their music by just creating new packaging.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Thor said:

That is true. The recent TALES FROM THE LOOP score is, in fact, an example of Glass approximating Max Richter's approximation of Glass. But the interview is from 2002, he was more cutting edge then.

 

I wouldn't say he was much inventive back then either, but at least he wasn't as self-plagiarizing as he's been the last decade.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, Marian Schedenig said:

 

That quote is of course taken out of context, but nowhere in what's been posted above does he say that inventiveness is the only criterion, or necessary, or that he has no respect for "talent". It's certainly true that Glass's primary claim to fame is his co-invention of "minimalism" and his very distinct style. Williams is a master at what he does, and that includes writing themes, dramatic structures, orchestration, and changing his style according to the needs of the film (often radically - see Images and Rosewood). But in the grand scheme of things, "invention" isn't what he does.

 

The rational post I was too lazy to write, thank you!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

25 minutes ago, Marian Schedenig said:

 

That quote is of course taken out of context, but nowhere in what's been posted above does he say that inventiveness is the only criterion, or necessary, or that he has no respect for "talent".

 

No, but it's inherent in the quote. All the context we have is the interview; if there was anything else said, we don't know it. While he doesn't say it's the ONLY criterion, he puts unnecessary stress on it, compared to the other things.  Otherwise, there would be no point mentioning it in the first place.

 

25 minutes ago, Marian Schedenig said:

It's certainly true that Glass's primary claim to fame is his co-invention of "minimalism" and his very distinct style. Williams is a master at what he does, and that includes writing themes, dramatic structures, orchestration, and changing his style according to the needs of the film (often radically - see Images and Rosewood). But in the grand scheme of things, "invention" isn't what he does.

 

Exactly. Williams' qualities lie elsewhere. That's what Glass fails to comprehend, or "embrace", to so speak.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Thor said:

No, but it's inherent in the quote. All the context we have is the interview; if there was anything else said, we don't know it. While he doesn't say it's the ONLY criterion, he puts unnecessary stress on it, compared to the other things.  Otherwise, there would be no point mentioning it in the first place.

 

The rational post I was too lazy to write, thank you!

 

Seriously though, I see your point @Marian Schedenig. I just found his comments totally dismissive of what Williams has achieved as a composer, and found his analogy to pop music writers particularly condescending. That is just my interpretation of his comments and yes, they could well be taken out of context. I'd be curious to hear the complete interview.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, Marian Schedenig said:

You're putting words in his mouth. He was asked a specific question, and he answered that question. More than that, Glass's entire M.O. (modus operandi) suggests that he himself is more interested in invention than in some other aspects of the art, so groundbreaking, inventive composers will naturally be the more interesting to him, or close to his heart. But that still doesn't imply a disregard for those whose focus lies elsewhere.

 

No, I get that, but it is that very attitude that IMO limits the scope of what music is, and can be. He's free to have his preference, of course, but the way he talks about 're-packaging' and 're-combination' for anyone that isn't 'inventive' is highly derogatory and surprisingly ignorant. It's his choice of words that are problematic here, the rhetoric.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, Marian Schedenig said:

But that still doesn't imply a disregard for those whose focus lies elsewhere.

 

Look, context is everything, but to me these comments are dismissive of his work:

Quote

They just repack things, they recombine ... John Williams, James Horner, they are very talented, but they are not inventors, they write their music by just creating new packaging.

 

Yes, the questions in this interview are specific to the topic of inventiveness, but Glass disregards the occasions where Williams has written original music not derived from existing works. I'm not saying Williams hasn't taken inspiration from the masters of classical music (because clearly he has), I just feel Glass' response (and his pop song analogy) was dismissive.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

He's not saying Williams is writing the same thing over and over again. But he's right that in the grand scheme of things, Williams will not be remembered as a revolutionary, or for any particular innovation - he didn't "invent" the symphony, like Haydn, or establish his own tonal language like Wagner, Stravinsky, or Schoenberg, or in fact his own influential style like Glass. He does generally take what's there already, and "repackage" it in his own voice and with his own musical and dramatic instincts. That's not derogatory, it's a simple fact. Goldsmith, in his earlier years, was more inventive, and even he might not be that relevant in that regard outside of introducing things to film music which had already been pioneered outside the film world.

 

It would be interesting to list other established composers throughout history who were not particularly inventive. It does seem that mostly those that are widely remembered and respected for their body of works (rather than a few individual highlights) are indeed those who brought something decidedly new to the table, but certainly there must be highly respected ones who were just excellent artists and craftsmen, even if they didn't invent something of significance.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, Lewya said:

"The Hours", a film with Nicole Kidman, a bit more mainstream

 

This sentence made me laugh and gives you all the perspective you need. Glass is from literally a different universe compared to Williams with respect to the kind of projects they do and their sensibilities.

 

That Glass would call a dour depressing movie about repressed female desire, AIDs and suicide to be mainstream is hilarious.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 minutes ago, Marian Schedenig said:

He's not saying Williams is writing the same thing over and over again. But he's right that in the grand scheme of things, Williams will not be remembered as a revolutionary, or for any particular innovation - he didn't "invent" the symphony, like Haydn, or establish his own tonal language like Wagner, Stravinsky, or Schoenberg, or in fact his own influential style like Glass. He does generally take what's there already, and "repackage" it in his own voice and with his own musical and dramatic instincts. That's not derogatory, it's a simple fact. Goldsmith, in his earlier years, was more inventive, and even he might not be that relevant in that regard outside of introducing things to film music which had already been pioneered outside the film world.

 

I agree with your basic sentiment, but I'm surprised you don't see the derogatory quality of his comments (or in the rest of the interview, for that matter). If it's not in the lines, it's definitely between the lines of his rhetoric.

 

Look, I'm a Glass fan, and I appreciate honest comments (much like Horner in the famed Schweiger interview). These comments also don't depreciate my value of his music (just as I don't depreciate the works of Terry Gilliam just because he seemingly hates the work of my favourite director Spielberg). But I think his limited view of what 'good' music is, shines through very much in this interview.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 minutes ago, SteveMc said:

Williams and other film composers are in an odd place.  In a criteria dynamic that demands originality and individuality, these composers are too tied in to traditional idioms and not larger than life and non-commercial enough as musical personalities to be fully accorded the respect they deserve.

 

Really interesting observation, thanks for this.

 

Gotta say this has been a really enlightening discussion, especially with all the contrasting opinions. Just another reason this forum is so damn fantastic. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, Thor said:

I agree with your basic sentiment, but I'm surprised you don't see the derogatory quality of his comments (or in the rest of the interview, for that matter). If it's not in the lines, it's definitely between the lines of his rhetoric.

 

Look, I'm a Glass fan, and I appreciate honest comments (much like Horner in the famed Schweiger interview). These comments also don't depreciate my value of his music (just as I don't depreciate the works of Terry Gilliam just because he seemingly hates the work of my favourite director Spielberg). But I think his limited view of what 'good' music is, shines through very much in this interview.

 

I don't see it as derogatory. It's music that's not very interesting or "important" within the criteria that Glass is interested in and looking for, and that's ok. I'm a Glass fan, and I will say that is own style is very distinct and quite limited. I'm sure he couldn't write a score for a Star Wars film (not that he'd want to), or many other kinds of "mainstream" films, simply because he isn't skilled in writing that way, because he never had an interest to develop that skill. But I don't see that as a derogatory description of him.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, Thor said:

If it's not in the lines, it's definitely between the lines of his rhetoric.

 

I agree. In the full context of the interview, you could read between the lines of several other comments (like his annoyance at Titanic simply because it was the same year he was nominated for Kundun; he didn't even see the film but saw fit to reiterate his point that composers like Horner don't invent anything). 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

32 minutes ago, Disco Stu said:

Braaaaaahms

 

I've never been a big Brahms fan, and perhaps that's why I can't put my finger on what his innovation was, but he certainly must have been a driving force in advancing the symphonic form, considering he has always been the figurehead of the non-Wagner side of contemporary music of his time.

 

I imagine the "nationalist" composers of the 19th century may qualify, because their main influence was to bring their own country's musical idioms to the table, i.e. their "invention" is mainly integrating existing styles and idioms into the symphonic settings developed by others. That would include people like Dvorak and Smetana, possibly Brahms (but see above).

 

What about the Strauß dynasty? They were the pop composers of their time, but certainly highly skilled in their craft and influential in shaping the direction of popular music (perhaps closest to how Steiner operated in shaping film music). Like the "nationalist" composers, they're held in high regard in their own way, and frequently performed by top orchestras, but few would list them as revolutionary influences on the musical language of later composers.

 

And perhaps Richard Strauss? I'm a big fan, and his style was certainly at the height of the tail end of the main Romantic era, but perhaps his most defining aspects are how he refined programmatic symphonic settings and (often together with important literary figures) operas. Like Puccini's lasting feat was helping to popularise verismo. Come to that, was Verdi groundbreaking in any way, or is he mainly a major example of successful nationalist composers?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Guidelines.