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What could be Williams' big "problem"?


filmmusic

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I personally think it is exceedingly crass to delve into an artist's personal life to look for meaning in their work. It is the most banal way to approach art.

 

As if art is only therapy. Only excorcising the artist's demons. It often can be that but oftener it is more.

 

Such a reading almost always comes at the expense of human ingenuity.

 

How about the artist is just fucking brilliant and loves to create?

 

Not every artist has to be raped in their childhood or have some other devastating trauma in their life to produce great art. It's a bit of an ass backwards concept.

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17 minutes ago, publicist said:

 

Reminds me of Goldsmith's answer to a student who proudly told him he easily could whip up an orchestral piece although he barely attended composition classes, to which Goldsmith replied: 'It shows'. 

 

 

We need him back.

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12 hours ago, Loert said:

 

 

 

However, he has hinted in the past that he is no "Mozart" in the sense that he has to work very hard to come up with a good melody.

 

Again, how do we know if Mozart didn't do the same thing?

We like to have a romantic view of him being a genius and coming up with a great melody in a matter of seconds.

What if he really worked hard too to get to that?

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35 minutes ago, TheUlyssesian said:

I personally think it is exceedingly crass to delve into an artist's personal life to look for meaning in their work. It is the most banal way to approach art.

 

As if art is only therapy. Only excorcising the artist's demons. It often can be that but oftener it is more.

 

Such a reading almost always comes at the expense of human ingenuity.

 

How about the artist is just fucking brilliant and loves to create?

 

Not every artist has to be raped in their childhood or have some other devastating trauma in their life to produce great art. It's a bit of an ass backwards concept.

I think its a romantic way to approach art, but on the contrary i think that personal life has very much to do with how and what you create.

(at least from my own experience)

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13 hours ago, Loert said:

 

Not only is he probably something like 99.999th percentile in conscientiousness but probably very high in openness too, which is not a very common combination.

 

However, he has hinted in the past that he is no "Mozart" in the sense that he has to work very hard to come up with a good melody. He says that composing for film is very arduous but that it's always worth it in the end. I think it's somehow in JW's blood that he understands the idea that if you do the best work you possibly can then somehow the hard work will pay off in the end. As far as I can tell he wasn't a wunderkind, he started playing piano comparatively late IIRC, but somehow he got in the mindset of putting in the work to do the best job he can, be it performing or composing (and to be honest, from what I've heard his piano playing in the 50s-60s recordings is pretty much first rate). There is no doubt that he's supremely gifted in his ability to tell what "works" in music, otherwise all his hard work wouldn't have taken him very far. But I think there's something very rare about his determination to put in all the effort he can to make his music the best sounding he can make it.

 

He's been very inspirational to me in this sense. Naturally I am not conscientious at all, but reading about how it is not easy for JW to come up with good music and how he has to work hard to get it, has encouraged me to try to work harder too, in whatever I do (...well, maybe with the exception of JWFan shitposting).

 

If I might offer a diametrically opposite view, I think on the contrary JW is very obviously gifted, outrageously so. It might be difficult for him to come up with a melody by HIS standards, but not by normal human standards. In an oeuvre that is quite literally overflowing with outstanding melodies, it is hard to square it with the claim that his work is belabored.

 

I think fluidity and a flowing imagination more than anything convey genius. And JW's best music definitely has that. It is the definition of inspired. It is so effortlessly buoyant. 

 

And herein is the opposing view, I actually find genius more humane and relatable than hard work. Because I am not capable of hard work, that much I know. I write. Often my best work is stuff that is not even proof read. I have to make marketing pitches which I get months to prepare. The best ones are the ones which I slap together in 30 mins out of desperation after months of procrastination. Not to say I am a genius, I would never say such a conceited thing. But sometimes the human imagination sparks the brightest when it is at its most spontaneous, when the human mind is at its most nimble, when there is drive to do the work.

 

I'll offer another example. In tennis, we can all agree that Roger Federer is god on earth. I think anyone can see he's sickeningly gifted. No bulging biceps or pecs to show years of hard work in the gym. No t-shirt soaked in sweat to show the hard work on court during a match. Just plain genius. THAT is relatable to me. When I see what Nadal does, which is the 100% opposite, I find that forbidding and unattainable. I can never attain a body like that. Or that level of fitness. Or that amount of athletic ability. But I look at Fed, a modestly built man with an ever so slight paunch hitting winners right and left, and I find that human. I feel I can do THAT. Federer plays the way he does because he thinks. And I feel I can think too.

 

We all just need to find something we are good at. People will call that genius. But it is not, it is just aptitude and something you took to. It can even be multiple things. Hard graft is the challenge which only the most psychotically focused people can commit to. I admire it and appreciate it perhaps because I know I cannot do it.

 

JW is like that. When I hear Powell's music or JNH, that sometimes sounds belabored. I know they worked hard to get that kind of sound. I hear it from JW. And I know it just flows out of him. And it is all the lovelier for that.

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JW has mentioned in many, many interviews how much he labors over his melodies to give them the quality of effortlessness and inevitability as if the themes have always existed along side their film counterparts and are a completely natural part of the film. He specifically works very hard to give his music those qualities of effortlessness and inevitability and his ability to capture both is what separates his themes and scores from most of his peers. 

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3 hours ago, artguy360 said:

JW has mentioned in many, many interviews how much he labors over his melodies to give them the quality of effortlessness and inevitability as if the themes have always existed along side their film counterparts and are a completely natural part of the film. He specifically works very hard to give his music those qualities of effortlessness and inevitability and his ability to capture both is what separates his themes and scores from most of his peers. 

 

True, but Spielberg has also said that Williams has walked out of screenings with music in his head. So I think there's give and take. I agree with Ulyssessian in the sense that you think of all these scores that are just brimming with catchy tunes and there's really no way that he put his nose to the grindstone on every last one of those fuckers. I think we'd be surprised. I think we could guess that generally a lot of the major themes took some grief while the incidental earworms took less time and effort, but I bet some of our favorites were not very labor-intensive at all while some random 8-bar ditty was a nightmare to figure out. 

 

Anyway, life isn't entirely fair. The music gods give certain people a leg up and John Williams is one of them. But that's not everything. He could have had the story of a talented amateur, hack, or miserable failure and it's to his credit that he's made tangible use of his gifts. It's an amazing thing for him and all of us. I don't think his success means he was the absolute hardest worker or the most naturally talented. I think it just means that in the history of film music, he's a great poker player who was dealt a great hand. And in a world with great players, shitty players, great hands, shitty hands, who's had a better game than John Williams?

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9 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

John Williams.

 

It's a wee bit of an euphemism to call a man who has no hair on his plate since probably 1960 as 'balding'. 

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12 hours ago, publicist said:

There is a streak of bittersweet regret and romantic yearning in both Georges Delerue's and John Barry's music, both composers who suffered through a problematic childhood/adolescence (Delerue being forced to stay inside due to a bad accident leaving him crippled, Barry suffering through years of London bombings in WWII, seeing friends die through this ordeal) and i am convinced their experiences coloured their musical imprint. 

 

You nailed it, Pubs.

 

Barry spoke very candidly of his traumatic memories of the Baedeker Blitz in this 1999 Vanity Fair interview.

 

Quote

But where were we? Melancholy and loss. Rather than tackle the subject head-on, Barry segues rather abruptly into a long remembrance about the Luftwaffe fire bombing that devastated York in 1942, when he was eight: “I remember looking over the city—this big, big red thing in the sky. And then my mother took me down into the city. And the stink—ugh—the burning … whatever. It was just … it was just horrendous. My school was hit. And five of the nuns who stayed there—they were all killed. That was the first time we were in the thick of it. And the streets had melted. The heat from the houses burning on both sides actually melted the tar in the road. And years later they found all kinds of stuff that had been blown out of windows and into the tar. I still think of the stench. Oh god, it was unlike anything you ever smelled or smelled since.”

 

This isn’t the first time he has shared this memory with a journalist, and there’s something almost rote about the way he launched into it as soon as I brought up the subject of loss. But it’s hardly a canned response. His voice has gotten softer and even lower, and he seems genuinely moved by the memories he has summoned, that early experience of fragility of life and place. What he’s showing me, I think, either purposefully or reflexively, is that he’s a kind of Method actor, or Method composer.

 

“You make it personal,” he says. But he’s reluctant to delve too deeply into his psyche, plus he seems tired—we’ve been talking for a few hours—so instead I ask if I can look at his Oscars, and we both brighten up.

 

 

https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2009/02/john-barry200902

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13 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

He could be balding on the sides.

At least JW didn't go through Goldsmith's ponytail phase.  But then again, maybe he did.  He was one cool cat in the swinging '60's and early 70's. 

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John Barry obviously felt WW2 closer than JW ever did. I've always wanted to hear more about Williams' childhood days during the WW2. Although I have bits and pieces of information, he's been very restrictive about it.

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2 hours ago, kaseykockroach said:

John Williams' biggest problem is that he's overshadowed by Jerry Goldsmith's superiority.

No!!

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2 hours ago, kaseykockroach said:

John Williams' biggest problem is that he's overshadowed by Jerry Goldsmith's superiority.

 

No, that was Goldsmith's biggest problem.

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What's John Williams' biggest problem?

 

Aside from having a fan forum dedicated to his life and works full of sycophants like myself, I can't say...

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  • 8 months later...

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