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Williams's Darkness


BLUMENKOHL

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I've been marathoning John Williams music this past week. I couldn't help but repeatedly notice. He writes with a darker palette than most composers. That's not to say he doesn't write brilliant bright music. This darker signature of his style and music gives his most playful pieces a gravitas this his peers just can't replicate.


His signature musical melancholy manifests in different ways. Sometimes it's orchestration, but most often it's just his harmonic language. But in some form it's in the music, always. John's musical "set point" is a little darker and sadder. If he were an architect I would see him using a lot of warm and dark woods.


By comparison his greatest peer, Jerry, I can only describe as "cool and grand." If an architect, he would use more metals and glass.


I wonder if it results from the projects they took on, or if it's something inherent to their person. If we assume the latter, you can see why the two were so perfect for the projects they took on.


Jerry's "cool and grand" set point works more naturally for things like Star Trek, Patton, or Total Recall. (Starfleet/Federation, Military, Government Conspiracy etc). Williams's "dark and melancholy" set point works effortlessly for the likes of Star Wars, Schindler's List or Harry Potter (The Force/mystical nature, Holocaust, Medieval setting).


Thoughts?

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hmmm. interesting idea. I have to say i'd pick Jerry over John for darkness. But I suspect that's because when JW is light and pastoral it's quite extreme for my tastes. He can get a bit twee....And jerry can be very, very dark. Think Omen ..or Outland...Alien.......there is a long list.

But I agree with you that when JW adds the dissonance so delicately that it just permeates everything. It's very subtle but has a tremendous effect . The odd bad note says so much. I wonder if Jerry was a little bit of a slave to method where JW is a tad more daring ?

t

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You know, it's interesting, "dark" isn't necessarily the word I'd use to describe a lot of Williams' work, but I know what you're talking about, especially when it comes to harmonic complexity. To my ear, it sounds more...serious, I suppose, or mature. Even his sillier moments have a certain sense of refinement.

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You know, it's interesting, "dark" isn't necessarily the word I'd use to describe a lot of Williams' work ...

That's what I would say as well.

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You know, it's interesting, "dark" isn't necessarily the word I'd use to describe a lot of Williams' work, but I know what you're talking about, especially when it comes to harmonic complexity. To my ear, it sounds more...serious, I suppose, or mature. Even his sillier moments have a certain sense of refinement.

Maybe. Maybe less dark...more..."mystical" ?

I certainly get the impression he is more at home writing this:

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  • 1 month later...

John music always did feel more "earthy" then much of Jerry's output.

On the contrary, IMO. Goldsmith was a craftsman, with touches of genius. Williams is genius throughout. The quality of the underscore (apart from the themes that is) is what a film composer is best judged by.

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I always thought two things John Williams couldn't evoke (very well) with his music were: suspense and sex. Darkness might be exactly the missing ingredient.

Karol

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Umm... no. Can't feel the terror. And that's probably because he's mostly scoring the "ideas", as opposed to the actual psychological process of human individuals. I have yet to hear a score from him that goes deep underneath the characters. Somewhere where all the darkness comes from.

Morricone, North, Herrmann, Barry, Goldsmith did it much better. Williams tends to "boil and churn", but never quite gets there.

Karol

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I don't think we're talking about the same thing. Barry's Kidnapping is certainly a very effective piece of music. But the "threat" is external, if you know what I mean. Williams was never a very psychologically penetrating of composers. As I said in one of previous posts, he mostly scores certain ideas, not so much experience through character's perspective. Which is where, I think, most effective suspense/horror music comes from.

Karol

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I think a lot of the cues posted in my 'Most Chilling' thread would qualify for that. Journey Through the Streets, The Tractor Scene and The Emperor's Throne Room all have an incredible internal terror at the heart of them, a sense of existential dread through the protagonist's perspective.

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Should we have a thread devoted to discussing aesthetic similarities between music and architecture/art? Or even anything else beyond that - landscapes/nature etc.? I'm totally serious, the little bit of it in this thread was immensely fascinating to me and the missus and I have been talking about it too. I think there's some good discussion to be had there. Or maybe this is yet another one of my thread ideas based on a subject that would be enjoyable to discuss but by its nature is a bit unspeakable.

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Should we have a thread devoted to discussing aesthetic similarities between music and architecture/art? Or even anything else beyond that - landscapes/nature etc.? I'm totally serious, the little bit of it in this thread was immensely fascinating to me and the missus and I have been talking about it too. I think there's some good discussion to be had there. Or maybe this is yet another one of my thread ideas based on a subject that would be enjoyable to discuss but by its nature is a bit unspeakable.

Intangibles are the most interesting things to discuss. Bring it on.

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I think a lot of the cues posted in my 'Most Chilling' thread would qualify for that. Journey Through the Streets, The Tractor Scene and The Emperor's Throne Room all have an incredible internal terror at the heart of them, a sense of existential dread through the protagonist's perspective.

Yeah, he does that - how could he avoid it? But Croc is not entirely not right... ;) And it is, to me, very obvious that Williams' success as a film composer is very much linked to his ability to be a musical showman, that is to elevate his movies with often broad musical strokes that "make" the movie on first sight. That he occasionally crosses the line into North/Goldsmith territory is beyond the point, totally character-based POV scoring is not JW's strong suit and i guess he does what he does like he does it for some reason and that seems to work exceptionally well for him.

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That he occasionally crosses the line into North/Goldsmith territory is beyond the point, totally character-based POV scoring is not JW's strong suit

I know, it's just what personally attracts me to Williams's scores, not the big showstopping moments.

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Have to agree about Williams being wood and JG glass... if they were materials that is..

Both are good at suspense but l think in terms of helping the movie I think Goldsmith was more effective.. there is tremendous light and shade in is scores even in the Mummy... where JW might write some churning ostinato or dissonant synth swell ( which I love.. not dissing this approach at all) in a more romantic style (the chords are 20th/21st century dissonance but the orchestration is so perfect that it sounds very polished), JG wouldn't hold back and would probably use a melody or notes...as opposed to sustained passage with harp etc...

So my 2c is both are good but Goldsmith wins for range but maybe not in terms of quality of composition.....John is more refined.

Goldsmith scores to me seem very raw and he doesn't hold back (think Star trek Insurrection, Mummy, Air Force One) I don't think JW could have written a better score than JG...

But then again I cannot imaging JG doing Star Wars...

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I always thought two things John Williams couldn't evoke (very well) with his music were: suspense and sex. Darkness might be exactly the missing ingredient.

Karol

I know EXACTLY what you're talking about, and I agree with the first sentence, but I don't think darkness is the missing ingredient. On the contrary, I think darkness might be the overused ingredient.

I think the best illustration I can think of, and this going to be a round-about example, so stay with me, is "The Prime Directive" in Insurrection (aka "The Lost Ship/Prepare The Ship"). There's a part of the track I think Goldsmith gives us one of the most John Williams' approaches to drama and suspense he ever has: just as the oboe kicks in and we get the melancholy heavy strings. But throughout the whole track Jerry walks an intricate tight rope of conspiracy, bureaucratic detachment, defeat, sadness, fear and youthful rebellion. That's what suspense is all about, per the definition:

" a state or feeling of excited or anxious uncertainty about what may happen:"

You're never quite certain what the track is really getting at, it's an infuriating and deeply satisfying dance of both positive (energizing) and negative (dark/melancholy).

John's approach to these types of scenes tends to be drenched more strongly in the dark/melancholy. I would guess that if he scored that scene, the oboe/heavy strings section would provide the predominant framework for the whole of the track (much of RotS is evidence of that, where everything in the movie is largely supplanted by the tragedy). And while he'd include other elements as well (the man writes complicated music, there's no question about that), by selecting a dominant emotion (melacholy/darkness) you by definition eliminate suspense. There's no longer any uncertainty about what the emotional core of the scene is, it's dark melancholy with other emotional elements mixed in.

Goldsmith doesn't select the dominant emotion of the scene for you, he choreographs a war between the emotions, and that creates suspense. That's why his music so often captured that sense of mental turmoil.

Hence you get the feeling that Williams writes with broader emotional strokes (though he of course employs the finer strokes). If he were a painter, if you zoomed out far enough you could pick a dominant color from his paintings. With Goldsmith's suspense writing, zooming out just makes things look black or white (mix of colors).

A sad track with happy or scary or rebellious bits sprinkled throughout is a sad track. But a track that weaves emotional cores more ambiguously is a suspenseful track.

You mentioned sex. Same principle applies with sex. Sex can be a romantic, passionate, primitive, and savage affair. It's all about how the music brings attention to those things.


[EDIT]

And just to add, I think their approaches inform their overall thematic styles as well. Goldsmith's more "suspenseful" approach means he tackled fewer but bigger ideas, otherwise his music would sound like a mess.

Williams' approach lets him use way more ideas, because he can anchor them to a unifying emotional core but at the cost of being unable to have more than one dominant emotional framework for a piece.

I would even argue the two composer's styles are driven by functional necessity. If you hold the core emotional architecture constant, it's easier to pepper and mix in more smaller different ideas: you have to meld all those ideas against one backdrop. But if you have several core emotional frameworks, every time the core architecture of the piece changes you have to re-adapt smaller different ideas against that new backdrop, and that doesn't just happen by itself.

John Williams can use complex and rich sets of leitmotivs because he anchors his pieces to a central emotional core. Jerry on the other hand needs the broader thematic ideas because his music has a less obvious emotional core.

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Blume, I want to make sure I understand your point of view because I think it provides us with some great insights.

On the surface, it may seem that things would be just the opposite of what you're saying. Because Goldsmith blends so many emotions together into a single cue, one might think that he uses many themes to do this, something like a Wagnerian tapestry of leitmotifs or at least some recurring musical aspect (like texture or timbre).

Conversely, one might believe that, since Williams deals with this emotional core you speak of, that he remains fixed to very few leitmotifs in a cue, and that having many would result in a variety of emotions, and so, suspense by the definition you cite.

So what is it exactly that constitutes this "emotional core" in Williams, and how might we say it is lacking in Goldsmith? In other words, if we accept what you're saying, Williams must be able to group leitmotifs together under a unifying emotional umbrella, if you will. Is this a case of thematic transformation, each leitmotif altered to be in emotional resonance with the others being sounded in the cue?

And in Goldsmith, is it something like thematic transformation of one or two leitmotifs, now altered to be diverse in their emotional meaning?

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I see what you're asking. :)

Does it help if you think and define themes as less a source of emotion but more as malleable musical elements that can be heavily shaped by the emotional context? Themes can be integrated romantically, triumphantly, darkly, sadly, etc. Sort of a nature-nurture relationship, where nurture is dominant. Like you said, leitmotifs under a unifying emotional umbrella.

Basically, emotional context exerts stronger influence on the theme than the theme exerts on the emotional context.

If I had to assign numbers, I'd say most themes have maybe 30-40% inherent emotional properties, and the rest comes from how they're played, when they're played (and against what), orchestration, key, tempo, etc. We can probably argue specific percentages, but I think we can agree that context provides the greatest source of emotional direction for a theme.

Within a piece, Williams holds the emotional context steady and include more thematic ideas that are shaped to fit that context. Of course the themes have some inherent emotional property, but the surrounding emotional context and the composer's manipulation of that theme really determine the emotional contribution of the theme. So for example, in a really tragic piece Williams can include Vader's theme, so you get a "tragically evil" flavor. The dominant emotion the piece remains tragedy, because the context of the Vader theme is tragic, and that context shapes the Vader's theme into something tragic as well. Again, context is a bigger determinant of emotion. But the theme still brings some of its own intrinsic emotional property, in Vader's case evil. With a broad thematic palette, you can write a piece that's on the whole deeply tragic, overlaid with tragically evil, tragically triumphant, tragically nobile, themes etc. The emotional changes are nuanced and within a particular overall context. I'd also posit that this is why Williams can get a bit more dissonant and "artsy" with his music while retaining a core emotional cohesion.

On the other hand, Goldsmith limits the number of thematic ideas, and instead varies the broader emotional context, which in turn also shape the one or two themes through that "nurture mechanism". But because emotional context has a stronger impact on the emotional direction of music (and the themes, by that nurture mechanism), varying the emotional context gives you "bigger" changes in emotion. So you get things like "sad" "happy" "rebellious," within one track.

Why does Goldsmith have to use less themes while John Williams can take a rich leitmotif approach?

Say you're writing one track:

If you have 1 domineering emotional context in that track and 20 themes/motifs, and you want to include all 20 themes in that track, that's (1 context) x (20 motifs) = 20 changes you need to make to make it all fit together.

If you have 5 equally represented emotional contexts in a track, and 20 themes/motifs you want to include, that's (5 contexts x 20 motifs) = 100 things you need to change to make it all fit. Not only is that going to be a disjointed mess, it's also a lot of work if you're on a deadline. Hence, if you're Goldsmith, you might opt to go with 4 themes in all, which means you make (5 contexts x 4 motifs) = 20 changes you need to make for that track.

Obviously, these are general trends I've noticed, and they clearly both deviate now and again. That said, I think every now and then Williams goes, "I think I'll use 20 motifs AND 5 major emotional contexts all in one track!" ;)

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I will say that when Williams gets frightening, disturbing, horrific, unsettling... it's not that it's ineffective, but, well, there are other composers who hit me in a much more visceral way with those emotions. It's almost as though - and bear with me here, don't fall out of your chair - the music is too refined, and it stops evoking an instinctive emotional response in favor of a purely musical one. It happens with Goldsmith's music too, for me, but less often. There isn't a whole lot of music by any composer that in my mind successfully conveys those darker states of mind - evoking them rather than just describing them.

When I think about music that genuinely disturbs me, limited to what has been written for the cinema, the names Shore, Davis, and Corigliano come to mind immediately. Jerry, John, and the rest to a notably lesser degree.

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Shore's 'horror music' is a bit too crude and broad-brushed to really give me the willies.

No film music terrifies me more than Leonard Rosenman at his most avant-garde. Can't really explain it. He cuts through your amgydala with cold, surgical precision.

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FANTASTIC VOYAGE, COUNTDOWN, parts of THE PROPHECY, BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APEES etc. They're not as vertically dense as Shore can be and neither are their aleatoric, but psychologically I find them much more unsettling.

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Shore's 'horror music' is a bit too crude and broad-brushed to really give me the willies.

No film music terrifies me more than Leonard Rosenman at his most avant-garde. Can't really explain it. He cuts through your amgydala with cold, surgical precision.

The end of "Se7en" is sheer unrelenting, inveitable, creeping horror. Utterly brilliant.

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Shore's 'horror music' is a bit too crude and broad-brushed to really give me the willies.

No film music terrifies me more than Leonard Rosenman at his most avant-garde. Can't really explain it. He cuts through your amgydala with cold, surgical precision.

The end of "Se7en" is sheer unrelenting, inveitable, creeping horror. Utterly brilliant.

This is a score I've never heard apart from the film. It never occured to me it would make an interesting listening experience.

Karol

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Shore's 'horror music' is a bit too crude and broad-brushed to really give me the willies.

No film music terrifies me more than Leonard Rosenman at his most avant-garde. Can't really explain it. He cuts through your amgydala with cold, surgical precision.

The end of "Se7en" is sheer unrelenting, inveitable, creeping horror. Utterly brilliant.

This is a score I've never heard apart from the film. It never occured to me it would make an interesting listening experience.

It doesn't.

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  • 3 years later...

Was re-listening to The Fury today and the thing I've always liked about the main theme itself it's that it has a mixture of what I call "light horror" but also a pinch of sadness, melancholy. It was this waltz-like nature to it, I dunno... It feels like a monster that looks itself in the mirror and is disgusted and enthralled by its own monstruous complexion.

 

Would have been a perfect Dracula theme.

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Its difficult to me to classify Williams' music as "dark" but that also has to do with the fact that so many of his prominent scores were for films that were - certainly in his eyes - as children films.

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On 5/30/2014 at 2:40 PM, Stefancos said:

John music always did feel more "earthy" then much of Jerry's output.

If Jerry is a 10 then John is a 12.

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John Williams' music has dark undercurrents? Seriously?

Yet if there is one thing I appreciate in his music, more than anything else, it is that he can find something positive in just about anything.

There is always a beauty, elegance, heroism, determination or something like that.

 

On the opposite side of the spectrum there is Hans Zimmer, who I feel really does have an oppressive dark undertone in just about everything he writes.

Even when it is heroic, it may be exciting, but never truly uplifting in a way that comes effortlessly to Williams.

 

I strongly believe that John Williams' music ultimately comes from a good and inspiring place.

So I honestly fail to understand this thread. :blink:

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