Your favorite John Williams score of the 90's? CONCLUDED

[Jay 37,339]

Yea, it's really great.

Do you like the Expanded La-La Land version, Joey?

I don't have it. But it's still my favorite score among many good to great.

Why didn't you buy it when it came out?

http://lalalandrecords.com/Site/HomeAlone.html

http://www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=19534

Because I rarely buy scores anymore. I spend all my fun money on other stuff.

Twenty bucks cuts significantly into your fun budget????

[King Mark 3,631]

Jurassic Park action music is just chaotic.

I agree, it's the first time I remember the music being rather aimless for a Williams score.

Only Incident at Island Numblar fits more with his classic action writing

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

My theory is it has to do with your age. The 70s/80s stuff had a structure, a form, and (I'll be honest) is less challenging, more accessible.

So, what do you think my age is? (Hint, it actually has to do with music and not age).

The 90s and post-90s stuff has structure and form as well - it's just, as you point out, more challenging, less accessible - but is ultimately more unified. I find that more appealing than, say, The Battle Of Hoth, which by comparison strikes me as one of the prime examples of Williams' "chaotic" action music - whereas something like Everybody Runs is a tightly constructed tour de force where every single note has its place. Now, sometimes I'm in the mood for one, and sometimes the other. On the whole, I lean towards the stuff that "looks cleaner" in my head when I hear it.

[JoeinAR 1,949]

Yea, it's really great.

Do you like the Expanded La-La Land version, Joey?

I don't have it. But it's still my favorite score among many good to great.

Why didn't you buy it when it came out?

http://lalalandrecords.com/Site/HomeAlone.html

http://www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=19534

Because I rarely buy scores anymore. I spend all my fun money on other stuff.

Twenty bucks cuts significantly into your fun budget????

yeah when I spend a lot of bucks that time of year on blus I'm more interested in. I'm perfectly happy with the OST.

[Andy 4,118]

My theory is it has to do with your age. The 70s/80s stuff had a structure, a form, and (I'll be honest) is less challenging, more accessible.

So, what do you think my age is? (Hint, it actually has to do with music and not age).

Well, just based on your preference for 90s/modern Williams action sound over 70s/80s, I would guess you are in your early 30s.

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

Actually I'm 16.

I could be 80, I could be 42. This is why:

My theory is it has to do with your age. The 70s/80s stuff had a structure, a form, and (I'll be honest) is less challenging, more accessible.

The 90s and post-90s stuff has structure and form as well - it's just, as you point out, more challenging, less accessible - but is ultimately more unified. I find that more appealing than, say, The Battle Of Hoth, which by comparison strikes me as one of the prime examples of Williams' "chaotic" action music - whereas something like Everybody Runs is a tightly constructed tour de force where every single note has its place. Now, sometimes I'm in the mood for one, and sometimes the other. On the whole, I lean towards the stuff that "looks cleaner" in my head when I hear it.

What makes more sense - that Williams got worse at writing action music over time, or learned how to be more concise?

[Andy 4,118]

Ah, I see your point. Perhaps then it's when I grew up. (child of the 70s), but I pine for the vintage Williams sound.

Jurassic was the turning point, it's true. I seem to remember Spielberg in the liner notes to JP remarking that Williams was back in Jaws territory musically, and I couldn't disagree more. Some of the dino music is just "too many notes" to quote from Amadeus.

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

Maybe his modern action music is technically more complex than the oldies. Then I guess, less is more. There is no finer Williams than vintage Williams.

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

Ah, I see your point. Perhaps then it's when I grew up. (child of the 70s), but I pine for the vintage Williams sound.

Jurassic was the turning point, it's true. I seem to remember Spielberg in the liner notes to JP remarking that Williams was back in Jaws territory musically, and I couldn't disagree more. Some of the dino music is just "too many notes" to quote from Amadeus.

Ah ha, but it's the use of those notes that accounts for the similarity to Jaws territory. The set-pieces are dense, but there's always a certain four-note motive gluing everything together in an astonishingly brilliant way and architecturally the cues stand on their own in way that the older stuff doesn't. The earlier approach seemed to be overall about less busy textures and clearer themes, but a much more mickey-moused approach to form where things are changing every few seconds. Which is exactly what makes that era's action music more accessible - it paints a clearer dramatic picture away from the actual picture.

I think as time has gone on, he's only written more compelling music. In any mood or setting. Denser perhaps, but not more chaotic.

[Hlao-roo 389]

So "TIE Fighter Attack" and "The Mine Car Chase" have "a much more micky-moused [sic] approach to form" than "Jango's Escape" and "Anderton's Great Escape"?

Alan how did you get it to embed with that grey skin?

For whatever reason, I tend to be obsessive-compulsive about formatting on message board posts. I HTML'd the embed instead of using the shortcut and took the opportunity, as I have a few other times recently, to give the embedded video a light theme instead of a dark theme (the default).

[Red 75]

Hook is probably my favorite JW score of all time, so that one.

Angela's Ashes, The Phantom Menace, and Schindler's List would be close behind. Really though the 90's was a great decade. Probably Williams' most varied decade in terms of the litany of smaller scores alongside the big ones.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Freak!

[Trent B 337]

I went with Hook. The Phantom Menace is my runner up.

[King Mark 3,631]

To me the "chaotic action music" applies to these Williams scores:

Jurassic Park

The Lost World

Minority Report

War of the Worlds.

Tintin (kind of chaotic but with a lighter tone)

The SW Prequels and Harry Potter action music is a lot more structured, but less so than 80's Williams

[Quintus 5,399]

High Wire Stunts doesn't sound chaotic to me. I can hear a clear and typical structure, I can feel the suspense being built and the level of danger becoming more and more critical.

T-Rex Rescue and Finale is also one of my favorite action cues in his catalogue.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Yes!

KM....prequel action music....more structured?

[Arpy 4,145]

If I could vote thrice my choices would be: Jurassic Park, Presumed Innocent and Nixon.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

What?

What?

WHAT???

[Romão 2,274]

I would've also probably put Nixon in my top 3. Definitely in the top 5

[Quintus 5,399]

Never actually heard that one.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

It's great. But one of those scores one has to be in the mood for. Very dark.

[Hlao-roo 389]

Also, the Enhanced CD content is just mindblowing.

[KK 3,307]

It's a great score.

[Wojo 2,453]

I've never listened to any Williams score for an Oliver Stone film.

[Hlao-roo 389]

Listening to one is like flying through the light... whatever that means.

[publicist 4,643]

High Wire Stunts doesn't sound chaotic to me. I can hear a clear and typical structure, I can feel the suspense being built and the level of danger becoming more and more critical.

T-Rex Rescue and Finale is also one of my favorite action cues in his catalogue.

I found the best one is easily the newly released iTunes cue (Hungry Raptor?) that really grooves. The rest is good but i don't see what people find so exceptional about stuff like T-Rex Rescue. There are some good, not great moments of tension-and-relieve and of course the olympic Rózsa pomp of the last seconds but apart from that...?

[Sharkissimo 1,973]

I have to disagree with Mike re: The Battle of Hoth and Everybody Runs. The later is far too clean and pallid door my tastes, whereas the later is endlessly colour and full nooks and crannies that I'm still discovering and appreciating to this ray. I like MINORITY REPORT a lot, but more for the metrically modulating, hemiola-driven PreCrime ostinato, Seans's theme and flashbacks and the avant-garde Roger Sessions-y stuff.

[Hlao-roo 389]

I like MINORITY REPORT a lot, but more for the metrically modulating, hemiola-driven PreCrime ostinato, Seans's theme and flashbacks and the avant-garde Roger Sessions-y stuff.

I like all that plus "Everybody Runs."

[KK 3,307]

One of my favourite moments (starting 2:31) in Minority Report, especially 2:56!

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Dutch!

[KK 3,307]

Just for you Steef!

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

So thoughtful!

I will make a Poutine in your honor soon.

[Marian Schedenig 8,191]

TPM for me. Hook and Home Alone are the other medallists.

Jurassic Park is a 4/5 star score that hit many board members here at the right age, so I think it has the nostalgia advantage inflating it's ranking. The action music sometimes falls apart, with piccolos and brass competing for attention. The album arrangement is atrocious. I remember a lot of times stopping the CD after Journey to the Island, feeling like I'd heard the best of what the score had to offer.

I love the action writing and particularly the woodwinds in JP. I did indeed grow up around the time of Hook and JP; it was hearing a Star Wars CD that suddenly turned my musical tastes on their head, but I'm pretty sure JP helped pave the way a year earlier. But it took me several years to start appreciating the action cues in JP, so I don't think it's just nostalgia.

The one big Williams score where I'd call the action writing chaotic would be Superman (post Fortress of Solitude).

[Hlao-roo 389]

The one big Williams score where I'd call the action writing chaotic would be Superman (post Fortress of Solitude).

But chaotic in a "perfect" way, right?

Also, the Enhanced CD content is just mindblowing.

The Nixon soundtrack release apparently inspired a relatively in-depth article in The New York Times. The gee-whiz premise of the piece is mildly amusing, given the widespread difficulties consumers have had accessing the material on the Nixon disc and the subsequent developments in the way music would be distributed, but eighteen years later, it is interesting to read about the road not (really) traveled.

The $16.95 disk has sold only about 5,000 copies since its release in January by the Walt Disney Company's Hollywood Records label, according to Sound Scan, which tracks music sales.

Yet the Billboard music charts were not necessarily the target. Kip Konwiser, vice president of interactive entertainment for Graphix Zone Inc., the Irvine, Calif., company that developed the CD, said the disk was primarily a promotional tool for the movie that "helps people remember the music and enjoy it outside of the theater."

Mr. Williams and the director of "Nixon," Oliver Stone, declined to be interviewed for this article. But Hans Zimmer, the composer who won last year's film-score Oscar for "The Lion King," said he doubted that the enhanced CD format had anything to do with the "Nixon" score's nomination.

"The academy is made up of a lot of people who don't even know how to put a disk into a Mac or an I.B.M.," Mr. Zimmer said. " 'Nixon' was nominated because it was a serious piece of work by a serious composer."

Mr. Zimmer, the "Lion King" composer, who said he would remain open to the idea of enhanced-CD opportunities for future projects, said that he was interested in pushing the medium beyond mere movie promotion. He said he saw an opportunity to tap into the interactive capabilities of computer disks to give the user a more creative role.

"A composer could supply musical fragments, allowing people to put them against a scene and see the different emotional reactions," Mr. Zimmer said. "I could give you the tools to impose your own sensibilities onto a scene. It could be a fun game."

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Yay Zimmer!

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

Media hog!

[Naïve Old Fart 9,512]

Three letters, folks:

"J.F.K."

[Bilbo 3,709]

I went for The Phantom Menace.

[JoeinAR 1,949]

Three letters, folks:

"J.F.K."

Three letters

Y.U.K.

[Romão 2,274]

It's an incredible score, in my personal JW top 10

[Thor 7,490]

JURASSIC PARK all the way, which also happens to my favourite soundtrack of all time.

Other than that, the 90s is my favourite decade for Williams, maybe because it was my formative years.

[Stempel 136]

Hook

[Sir Hilary Bray 235]

Hard to say, Hook/Jurassic Park, maybe JFK or even Presumed Innocent. I'll plump for Jurassic Park.

[FilmManiac79 6]

A toss up between JP and Hook. Jurassic Park was the first Williams score I owned (on cassette), so I ended up choosing that one.

[indy4 155]

Another tough one. I voted for Hook, but I could also do JFK, Rosewood, Angela's Ashes or TPM.

[The Dark Trilogy 39]

The big problem I have with the Hook score is that it is a bit unoriginal, and I am not talking about the hommage of Korngold in the Ultimate War. You know every composer has their references, no big deal. But in Hook, I hear a lot of the russians, nearly 1:1. Dvorak 5th symphony, Stravinsky's Firebird, The Ride of Spring and much Tchaikovsky. Most annoying that the unused Rufio track is now on the 2CD, it's a totally rip-off Stravinsky. So not in the level of James Horner, but close. But the Ultimate War is really strong piece.

My vote is for Schindler's List, btw.

[Naïve Old Fart 9,512]

"The Ride Of Spring"? I'd buy that for a dollar!

[The Dark Trilogy 39]

Sorry, I mistyped. I mean "The Rite of Spring".

[A24 4,331]

My vote went to JFK. Williams did a few surprising things there.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

A stunning score indeed!