JW's concert arrangements - what's their point?

[bollemanneke 3,343]

I realise this thread title might sound disparaging, but couldn’t come up with a better one, so allow me to explain.

 

A few months ago, I came across a YouTube video of JW conducting The Flight to Neverland live. He introduced that piece by saying it was the music for Pan and Tinker Bell flying to Neverland, which is of course inaccurate. So, I was wondering whether he just made a mistake, or whether there was something else going on there: could it be that he imagined, or would have liked, a four-minute sequence of Tink guiding Pan to Neverland?

 

Then my brother just reminded me of Duel of the Fates. What has that scene got to do with fates? Or what about The Face of Pan? (He can’t possibly imagine the Lost Boys touching Peter’s face that long.)

 

I’d also be interested to know who decides which pieces of his scores get the concert arrangement treatment and/or whether anyone else rather than him is involved in their writing.

[Smeltington 1,440]

He misremembers a lot of details when introducing concert works. For example, saying Nimbus 2000 is a theme for Harry's wand.

 

The titles of his concert works are kind of a stretch sometimes, too. It's just artistic license that he takes. He's not very exacting about such things... Duel of the Fates was a piece written to accompany the lightsaber duel. But in the same piece, he included a translation of a poem about trees. We all know he draws a lot of inspiration from this subject, so I think we can interpret this as Williams giving something of himself to the work, and getting his own personal joy out of writing these works, while still satisfying the needs of the project.

 

To answer the question in the thread title, he creates concert versions of themes to give a sort of idealized presentation of a major theme for album listening, as well as to have something to play in concert that can stand alone with no visuals (or, sometimes, with a vague montage of visuals). I would guess he also sees these pieces, collectively, as sort of a personal "resume" - a series of takeaways from projects he works on, that together can demonstrate some of what he thinks are his strongest ideas, and have a life outside the films they were written for.

 

And I'm sure he's the one to decide what to arrange in concert form, in almost all cases. Maybe someone here knows an exception to this, but I don't know of any.

 

[Pellaeon 593]

One factor may be that movies became more fast-paced over the years. It’s all recitativo and no aria, no substantially long and dramatic scenes in which an idea can be contemplated for a time. How often have you heard people complain of Star Wars (’77) that there’s like a solid TEN MINUTES of droids crawling the desert? You don’t get that very much anymore. Hence if the composer wants to develop an idea, he has to do so outside the confines of the movie action.

 

To turn this question on its head, I was with some people on Saturday who claimed they understood that JW only writes the main themes these days (we were talking about TFA), and has other people (his pupils, as they say in the classical world) handle the drudgery of adapting them scene-by-scene. I said I had never heard that this was the case, but, considering the TFA suites are sublime and the TFA score on a whole is a chore to listen to, I thought there might be some truth in it. You folks would know better.

[bollemanneke 3,343]

I'd say TLJ is a chore to listen to, but to each his own.

[Jay 37,352]

You're worrying too much about both how he title the pieces and what he says before playing them in concert.

 

The concerts arrangements are recorded (or in some cases, crafted by editing together pieces of film cues) in order to present a major theme or set of themes (or major idea for a scene) in a concise package that can be listened to without being a slave to the film it was written for.  it's something he can play in concert to showcase a part of a score, something other artists can re-record for their own albums, something kids can learn in high school band class, something sheet music can be sold of.

 

As for what he says before a piece, anything goes.  He's an 86 year old man without the best memory.

[Bespin 8,480]

“When 900 years old, you reach…Remember everything, you will not.”

 

[Tom 4,654]

Well, I assume you listen to the concert versions.  That is their point.

[pete 907]

You don’t think Flight to Neverlsnd is related to the music that plays while they’re flying to Neverland? 

[Josh500 1,615]

You guys are overthinking it. Two little words explain it: 

 

It's called "artistic license." 

 

And no, I'm sure there's nothing wrong with John Williams's memory. 

[Jay 37,352]

16 minutes ago, pete said:

You don’t think Flight to Neverlsnd is related to the music that plays while they’re flying to Neverland? 

 

Of course it is.  It opens with the trailer music then segues to that material and other stuff too.  It's kind of like an overture.

[Marian Schedenig 8,192]

2 hours ago, Smeltington said:

He misremembers a lot of details when introducing concert works. For example, saying Nimbus 2000 is a theme for Harry's wand.

 

 

He labelled the Gryffindor theme "Hogwarts Forever".

[Smeltington 1,440]

It would have been fun if he wrote a theme for each house... although Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw would never have been needed 

[SteveMc 2,674]

2 hours ago, Smeltington said:

He misremembers a lot of details when introducing concert works. For example, saying Nimbus 2000 is a theme for Harry's wand.

 

The titles of his concert works are kind of a stretch sometimes, too. It's just artistic license that he takes. He's not very exacting about such things... Duel of the Fates was a piece written to accompany the lightsaber duel. But in the same piece, he included a translation of a poem about trees. We all know he draws a lot of inspiration from this subject, so I think we can interpret this as Williams giving something of himself to the work, and getting his own personal joy out of writing these works, while still satisfying the needs of the project.

 

To answer the question in the thread title, he creates concert versions of themes to give a sort of idealized presentation of a major theme for album listening, as well as to have something to play in concert that can stand alone with no visuals (or, sometimes, with a vague montage of visuals). I would guess he also sees these pieces, collectively, as sort of a personal "resume" - a series of takeaways from projects he works on, that together can demonstrate some of what he thinks are his strongest ideas, and have a life outside the films they were written for.

 

And I'm sure he's the one to decide what to arrange in concert form, in almost all cases. Maybe someone here knows an exception to this, but I don't know of any.

 

Nothing more really needs to be said.  Question closed.

[Incanus 5,714]

9 hours ago, Pellaeon said:

To turn this question on its head, I was with some people on Saturday who claimed they understood that JW only writes the main themes these days (we were talking about TFA), and has other people (his pupils, as they say in the classical world) handle the drudgery of adapting them scene-by-scene. I said I had never heard that this was the case, but, considering the TFA suites are sublime and the TFA score on a whole is a chore to listen to, I thought there might be some truth in it. You folks would know better.

John Williams writes everything himself. It is known.

 

The concert suites Williams writes for the soundtrack albums and for concert setting are probably done in part for his personal satisfaction as a composer and in part for the audiences/listeners as he is very precise about how he wants to present his music to the public. It is in a way a chance to present the major musical idea or ideas found in a film score in a cohesive self-contained way without the visuals and in a form that allows the music to stand on its own in such a setting and let it breathe and develop beyond often strict time constraints of the movie. 

 

As for the naming of these suites Williams often picks names that are either dramatic or poetic or seem to capture the overarching emotion of the film or a character or idea. Sometimes these names are tied to a scene, oftentimes less specific. Something like Duel of the Fates is dramatic but slightly nebulous in its meaning, referring to the actual duel seen in the film but also the unseen battle initiated by the Sith against the Jedi. Flight to Neverland is more of an overture gathering material from the score in a thrilling miniature, which is actually part of a 5-movement suite that showcases several other themes and set pieces from the score in a concert setting, including The Face of Pan which was probably just a theme the composer decided to extend and elaborate on by adding a beautiful flute coda to the piece to round it out more satisfyingly. A Bridge to the Past (A Window to the Past on the OST) from HPPOA is both concrete and abstract in its meaning as the theme is indeed heard on a bridge in the film but is an extensive development of the new Family/Memory theme for Harry.

 

But you shouldn't get stuck on names with this music. 

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

9 hours ago, Pellaeon said:

 

 

To turn this question on its head, I was with some people on Saturday who claimed they understood that JW only writes the main themes these days (we were talking about TFA), and has other people (his pupils, as they say in the classical world) handle the drudgery of adapting them scene-by-scene. I said I had never heard that this was the case, but, considering the TFA suites are sublime and the TFA score on a whole is a chore to listen to, I thought there might be some truth in it. You folks would know better.

 

You should tell these people that they are embarrassingly misinformed on the subject and would be well served by not talking authoritatively about shit they're deeply ignorant of. 

[Pellaeon 593]

I see you are as wise in the ways of small talk as you are in matters of Williams’ scoring techniques.

[Chen G. 3,949]

19 hours ago, Jay said:

As for what he says before a piece, anything goes.  He's an 86 year old man without the best memory.

 

I don't think it has too much to do with his age. He's been prone to misremeber small details here and there throughout his career.

[Thor 7,495]

20 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

 

I don't think it has too much to do with his age. He's been prone to misremeber small details here and there throughout his career.

 

Exactly. He's always been an unreliable source of information about his own past.