Angela Morley about Arranging for John Williams on Star Wars

[Jilal 681]

Morley is an orchestrator, just like Conrad Pope, Eddie Karam, Herbert Spencer, John Neufeld, etc...

What's the big deal? We all know JW lets others orchestrate his scores. That doesn't mean that they change the music, they just convert JW's multi-stave sketches to a full orchestra. They don't say things like "yeah, the trombones will play this, the trumpets that" or whatever. John Williams writes the music.

[Hlao-roo 390]

A lot of this would be put to rest if Williams gave himself the "Orchestrations" credit on his albums. We can pretend that Williams declines out of respect for his not-orchestrators, but it's such a strained compromise, really, particularly in light of Goldsmith's magnanimity.

[Josh500 1,620]

Morley is an orchestrator,

No. Morley was more than an orchestrator, she was also a highly regarded composer.

She scored many episodes of "Dallas" and "Dynasty" for example.

[Sharkissimo 1,978]

Watership Down: Crossing the River (from 1:00 onwards)

Empire Strikes Back: Lando's Palace (first minute only)

They are not the same orchestration or melodies, but I hear Morley's fingerprints all over it! It's a stylistic thing more than a direct similarity.

The fingerprints your hearing on both are Sir Williams Walton's, who was a big influence on Williams's Star Wars sound. R8P3 Lando's Palace as proven the leaked sketches is of his hand, no one else's.

[King Mark 3,975]

yes, ,now I see the light

Angela Morley is the sole responsible for the "Williams sound" . Thanks for this thread to clear that up

That means Williams detailed sketches meant nothing after all

we need to change this website name to AngelaMorley fan .com

[Quintus 6,493]

Why?

[King Mark 3,975]

I hop you can see I was being sarcastic

[Quintus 6,493]

Yes you were, but only a little bit.

[King Mark 3,975]

no, 100% sarcastic

[chuck 155]

^Sure, now I definitely see Morley's orchestrations on War Horse and The Adventures of Tintin. That's impressive.

[crocodile 9,724]

No, you're wrong, partially at least. She worked on Tintin 2009 sessions only. The Zimmerish track 7 on the album was composed by Williams and you can hear a sudden dip in quality right there. War Horse was almost entirely adapted from her unused sketches from Angela's Ashes and Far and Away (with the exception of action bit of No Man's Land, again inspired by RC aesthetics). And that's because she passed away in 2009. John is skillful enough arranger and orchestrator that he managed to create some kind of whole out of this mess, similarly to what Michael Kamen's collaborators did on Back to Gaya. But, as was the case with that score, there is apparent lack of thematic continuity in War Horse. That explains why, I guess.

Karol

[Incanus 5,890]

After all what would the world be like without Angela Morley?

[chuck 155]

I was on sarcasm mode there. But thank you for pointing that out. >.>

[crocodile 9,724]

Of course it is, silly.

Karol

[chuck 155]

After all what would the world be like without Angela Morley?

Unthinkable. It would be like imagining a world without Jerry Goldsmith.

[indy4 160]

This thread is offensive to William Ross. You are all discrediting all the hard work he put into his compositions.

[crocodile 9,724]

Angela Morley operated under a codename: Bill Ross

Karol

[pixie_twinkle 60]

The fingerprints your hearing on both are Sir Williams Walton's, who was a big influence on Williams's Star Wars sound. R8P3 Lando's Palace as proven the leaked sketches is of his hand, no one else's.

The Walton sound is certainly there in both. It's a very "English" sound. Morley's music is definitely a direct descendant of Walton. The reason the Lando theme makes me think of Morley is that I've never heard anything even remotely similar in style in any other pieces by Williams. It definitely stands out, not only in the Star Wars scores, but in all Williams scores.

Morley is an orchestrator, just like Conrad Pope, Eddie Karam, Herbert Spencer, John Neufeld, etc...

What's the big deal? We all know JW lets others orchestrate his scores... They don't say things like "yeah, the trombones will play this, the trumpets that" or whatever. John Williams writes the music.

Actually that's exactly what an orchestrator does. What you're describing is a copyist. If all the "orchestrator" had to do was copy notes from one piece of paper to another, why employ such established composers as Morley, Courage, Pope etc for the task? Why not just get a high school music student to do it?

As any serious composer knows, orchestration is a part of the process of composing. It is absolutely a creative act. It is not simply a question of copying notes, there is an artistic craft to it. A little more respect for the orchestrators, please!

[gkgyver 1,647]

Death to orchestrators!

[pixie_twinkle 60]

[Augie 1]

@Maurizio

( While your thought is certainly fascinating, I think it's stretching things a tad too far. Williams employed Morley (as well as Herb Spencer, Sandy Courage, Arthur Morton and Al Woodbury) simply because they were some of the best around and the one he trusted the most to get the work done in a brilliant and efficient way. Surely the original Star Wars score has a certain British-influenced sound, but it goes as far back as to Walton and Elgar, because that was part of the orchestral tapestry Williams and Lucas envisioned for the film.)

Maurizio, read this. Must read:

"The response of the audience that you ask about is something that I certainly can't explain. I wish I could explain that. But maybe the combination of the audio and the visual hitting people in the way that it does must speak to some collective memory—we talked about that before—that we don't quite understand. Some memory of Buck Rogers or King Arthur or something earlier in the cultural salts of our brains, memories of lives lived in the past, I don't know. But it has that kind of resonance—it resonates within us in some past hero's life that we've all lived.

Now we're into a kind of Hindu idea, but I think somehow that's what happens musically. That's what in performance one tries to get with orchestras, and we talk about that at orchestral rehearsals: that it isn't only the notes, it's this reaching back into the past. As creatures we don't know if we have a future, but we certainly share a great past. We remember it, in language and in pre-language, and that's where music lives—it's to this area in our souls that it can speak." JW

[Jilal 681]

Yes, apparently Fred steiner did Sailbarge Assault and perhaps Superstructure chase...

Orchestrated. Not composed.

The fingerprints your hearing on both are Sir Williams Walton's, who was a big influence on Williams's Star Wars sound. R8P3 Lando's Palace as proven the leaked sketches is of his hand, no one else's.

The Walton sound is certainly there in both. It's a very "English" sound. Morley's music is definitely a direct descendant of Walton. The reason the Lando theme makes me think of Morley is that I've never heard anything even remotely similar in style in any other pieces by Williams. It definitely stands out, not only in the Star Wars scores, but in all Williams scores.

Morley is an orchestrator, just like Conrad Pope, Eddie Karam, Herbert Spencer, John Neufeld, etc...

What's the big deal? We all know JW lets others orchestrate his scores... They don't say things like "yeah, the trombones will play this, the trumpets that" or whatever. John Williams writes the music.

Actually that's exactly what an orchestrator does. What you're describing is a copyist. If all the "orchestrator" had to do was copy notes from one piece of paper to another, why employ such established composers as Morley, Courage, Pope etc for the task? Why not just get a high school music student to do it?

As any serious composer knows, orchestration is a part of the process of composing. It is absolutely a creative act. It is not simply a question of copying notes, there is an artistic craft to it. A little more respect for the orchestrators, please!

Do you want me to post examples??

Ok, here is one page from a sketch from Tintin:

You can clearly see that he writes down himself that the horns play whatever in bar whatever.

By the way, posting a page from a sketch has been done before in the mockups thread.

[pixie_twinkle 60]

That's fantastic, where did you get that? Are these sketches widely available?

[Jilal 681]

There's a site which has a lot of users that own that kind of thing.

But i don't think that i'm allowed to say where to get things in an illegal way.

[pixie_twinkle 60]

I'll go a-hunting.