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New The Rise of Skywalker score information from Don Williams


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5 minutes ago, SteveMc said:

Every theme?

I do hope there will be a lot of new thematic material, as well.  TLJ leaned just a bit too much on the established themes.

I would not take such comments as absolutely literal.  

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18 minutes ago, Tom said:

I would not take such comments as absolutely literal.  

 

Exactly.

 

What “Every theme you’ve heard” really means here is “every theme I can remember”. In my experience, most musicians, unless they happen to be serious Star Wars or John Williams nerds, only know maybe 5 or 6 themes from the series. He’s not sitting there at the sessions with Frank Lehman’s list of Star Wars motifs and crossing them off one-by-one.

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34 minutes ago, bollemanneke said:

"135 minutes of music TO WRITE." Can we talk about the linguistic meaning of this? I'm not a native speaker, does this imply he's still got loads to write?

No, it just means that Williams is anticipating the recording sessions will record around 135 minutes.  Based on everything we know (35 minutes by April 15th and such), it is good guess that most has already been written.  

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44 minutes ago, BrotherSound said:

 In my experience, most musicians, unless they happen to be serious Star Wars or John Williams nerds, only know maybe 5 or 6 themes from the series. He’s not sitting there at the sessions with Frank Lehman’s list of Star Wars motifs and crossing them off one-by-one.

 

Kamino motif or no sale!

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3 hours ago, Tom said:

I would not take such comments as absolutely literal.  

Obviously.  It's just that I hope the score is not all of the relevant leitmotivs playing all of the time.

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12 minutes ago, MikeH said:

This is another gem:

 

 

 

These are all wonderful.  I am glad the SW IX video brought them to our attention.  Who knew that Don Williams would be the key to understanding better John Williams the man and professional. I love that John plays some classical piece until bedtime.  The man lives and breaths outstanding music. True dedication to a field that most of us can only aspire to.  

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Indeed. There’s a video called “Does John Williams revise his scores?” where they talk about how he’ll go to JoAnn Kane’s after the movie is completed and see what the players wrote into their parts. 

 

Don also talks about how JW structures his days here:

 

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2 hours ago, Tom said:

 

2 hours ago, Tom said:
 

These are all wonderful.  I am glad the SW IX video brought them to our attention.  Who knew that Don Williams would be the key to understanding better John Williams the man and professional. I love that John plays some classical piece until bedtime.  The man lives and breaths outstanding music. True dedication to a field that most of us can only aspire to.  

 

I could not agree more. The man is a living miracle, a national treasure. No one compares.

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11 hours ago, Tom said:

Who knew that Don Williams would be the key to understanding better John Williams the man and professional.

 

We had already heart about John's work ethic and strict regime from other sources though.

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I hope it isn't just a medley of greatest hits. I definitely want new material.

 

I know Williams won't stoop to the level of masturbatory fan service but JJ might and force him to repeat old themes ad nauseam.

 

Then again Disney might think, we made an orgy of fan service with the concluding film in the Infinity saga, why not do the same thing in the Skywalker saga.

 

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42 minutes ago, crumbs said:

Yeah, that story about the musician who dropped a mallet (or something) mid-take and wasn't there the next day? Unexpectedly brutal.

 

The anecdote about a concert-master interrupting the violas mid-take because he wasn't happy with their bowing though? Not surprising in the slightest; what a complete tool. I have nothing to do with professional orchestras but even I know the minimum etiquette of attending a John Williams scoring session: sit down, don't talk, don't interact, only observe, unless John himself addresses you.

 

It's definitely fascinating to hear these insights about John, given his publicly calm, warm persona. But, as a master of his craft, I've no doubt he's a strict professional when it comes to his demands of the musicians performing his writings, with the appropriate amount of ruthlessness when necessary.

 

I’ve always wondered about that situation with the concertmaster: it could also have been the orchestra contractor who made the decision to install another concertmaster, while the ’old’ one simply joined the rest of the 1st violins. To simply ‘fire’ somebody after such an incident seems really ruthless.

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Ross will finish the score if Williams can't, but I'm confident John has this one in the bag. I'd say he's spent the majority of his time in Tanglewood smashing out the score so he can record the whole thing in September, leaving Oct/Nov for inserts/rewrites.

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12 minutes ago, bollemanneke said:

Personally, I don't understand the 'I don't want this or that' attitudes to the score. At this point the only thing I want is for John to finish this score so that we have 9 SW scores and the collection is complete. I don't even care whether it's good, bad, outstanding, average or great, or whether this theme or that motif returns or not. All that matters is that John completes writing it. Ross is an amazing condcutor who made HP2 the vibrant score that it is, so I'd be more than okay with him taking over if it were necessary.

I agree for the most part.  I crave new SW concert pieces, and so I always hope for more.  I am sure he will provide at least one.  Given the trend of the prequels and sequels, the pattern is to front load the first installment with a full concert suite and then give one piece per successive movie.  That being the case, we will likely get only one.  However, with the unexpected pieces of AoH and GE, I cannot complain even on this front. 

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4 minutes ago, MikeH said:

I think a lot of people have this image of the kindly old grandfather, but he’s survived in this business for nearly seven decades for a reason. 

 

Excellent point, you don't get to Williams' position by being a 'kindly old grandfather', as you put it. Even at 87 he has a keen ear for detail and he gets what he wants -- whether a change to Murphy's recording setup between sequels, a change to the roster of brass players that didn't quite cut the mustard, or even a change to MM's mastering on a fresh transfer of a score expansion.

 

1 minute ago, Disco Stu said:

This is how crumbs becomes his own source for future speculation!  3 months from now you'll post something like "I'm pretty sure I remember reading somewhere that John spent all his time at Tanglewood working on TROS"

 

Don't forget another IX speculation poll, posing questions I've already asked ad nauseum!

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2 minutes ago, Tom said:

I agree for the most part.  I crave new SW concert pieces, and so I always hope for more.  I am sure he will provide at least one.  Given the trend of the prequels and sequels, the pattern is to front load the first installment with a full concert suite and then give one piece per successive movie.  That being the case, we will likely get only one.  However, with the unexpected pieces of AoH and GE, I cannot complain even on this front. 

I would like to add to that that the TLJ concert arrangements wasn't really great, but then again that movie was anything but great as well. I have enough Star Wars suites, but would hate the thought that he hadn't finished the final score. It would be like Howard Shore not having written Hobbit 3 (granted, that might actually have been a good thing…)

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16 minutes ago, crumbs said:

 

"I'm really sorry, Sandy baby, but little Billy can't sing for shit."

 

No no he needs no go-between! 

 

Forget it kid, it’s Hollywood-town. Beat it. 

:biglaugh:

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Uh-oh, this is making the rounds on mainstream movie news websites now.

 

STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER's Runtime Possible Revealed Along With Some Potential SPOILERS

 

“Rise of Skywalker” Score Hints & Runtime Talk

 

I guess you're pretty much untouchable when you're John Williams' brother but I can imagine Disney being a little displeased at Don's comments (mainly the hints about the film's runtime and returning themes, even if Yoda returning isn't a huge surprise after TLJ -- I'd be more shocked if he wasn't). In his defence, he might not have known he was being recorded and said video would be posted on YouTube, but still...

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14 hours ago, Balahkay said:

So, did Don pretty much confirm that Yoda is in the film? Williams has used his themes quite literally lately.

 

I mean, probably - but we did get the Emperor's theme in TLJ

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2 hours ago, bollemanneke said:

At this point the only thing I want is for John to finish this score so that we have 9 SW scores and the collection is complete. I don't even care whether it's good, bad, outstanding, average or great, or whether this theme or that motif returns or not. All that matters is that John completes writing it.

 

Just wait till you hear him quote The Phantom of the Opera. It's in D minor.

59 minutes ago, crumbs said:

Uh-oh, this is making the rounds on mainstream movie news websites now.

 

Calculating the length of the movie based on DW's comments about the amount of music. Take away 15 minutes for album/concert arrangements, and you get the shortest of all SW films. ;)

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