Prometheus

 

 

 

Some folks have such a limited understanding of musical form that they consider the reuse of a motif as self-plagiarism. This viewpoint doesn't even deserve the privilege of a response.

 

That's a very condescending viewpoint. I have a very limited understanding of music theory, but when Horner lifts the Braveheart love theme and uses it note for note somewhere else, that's self plagiarism.

 

 

No. You misunderstand. I'm not saying that if you have a limited understanding of music theory, you're not qualified to spot self-plagiarism. That would be a very condescending viewpoint. Most people on this board don't have formal music education—myself included! You don't have to have a degree from Juliard to know when two pieces sound the same, or are exactly alike.

 

I'm talking about people who know neither music theory nor film music, to the point that they can't grasp the common use of leitmotif. People who would say that the appearance of Yoda's theme during the Halloween scene in E.T. is an example of self-plagiarism, as though Williams couldn't come up with anything more original on the spot. They miss the point of the technique entirely. (And yes, I've actually met folks like this. One thought the obvious reuse of Darth Vader's theme in Return of the Jedi was entirely due to Williams being incapable of rendering a new theme for the villain . . . as though he should've retired the Imperial March after Empire.)

 

- Uni

 

 

Ah, ok yes I completely misunderstood you.

 

And yeah, I've read comments from people who didn't understand the idea of themes reused in a franchise. I'd say they simply need to be educated.

 

 

I'd say they simply need to be executed.

Good 80s synth scores for me include Michael Rubini's THE HUNGER and MANHUNTER, Georgio Moroder's CAT PEOPLE, Thomas Newman's DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN and LESS THAN ZERO, Howard Shore's VIDEODROME, Jack Nitzsche's STARMAN, and John Carpenter & Alan Haworth's collaborations.

If we're going way back...

Are there any specific examples of Williams using aleatorism? According to google, it's "by chance", so what does that mean exactly? I'm sure you all know more than me.

Some examples of aleatoric techniques that Williams uses:

- Instructing the pianist to hit "lowest cluster." This is by far Williams's most frequently used aleatoric technique. It means using one's palm to hit all white and black notes in the octave of an 88 key piano. If the pedal is down, it creates a gong-like sound - if it's off, it's a dark, metallic thud. Either way it's a very percussive effect. Most credit its development to Henry Cowell.

Some examples -

Very beginning of "The Idol's Temple" from RAIDERS.
0:!3 in the "The Visitor's" from CE3K.
0:48 in "The Shark Approaches" from JAWS.
0:12 in "The Wampa's Lair" from EMPIRE.
0:21 in "The Shoebridge Headstone" from FAMILY PLOT. Low white note cluster.
5:03 in "Eye to Eye" from JP. No pedal here, but marcato ^ accents overhead. Combined with "huge bass drum."

- The opposite of this is "highest cluster." Due to the highest strings of the piano having very little sustain, there are usually exclusively for clinky jabs.

2:48 and 4:09 (here also combined with lowest cluster attacks) "Jedi Master Revealed/Mynock Cave" from EMPIRE.
6:54 from "T-Rex Rescue & Finale" from JP. Combined with low clusters.
2:53 in "The Island Prologue" from TLW.

- "As fast as possible" (or AFAP) figures. A series of pitches are written out in sequence, and the players are told to either play them as fast possible, play them in random order, gradually increase speed, or slowly play them out-of-sync with the rest of the orchestra. Williams mostly commonly writes this for cellos and basses or harp, but can also be applied to low winds, piano, trombones, horns, trumpets, and high winds.

0:18 and 0:58 in "Han Solo Returns" from ROTJ.
0:41 in "The Clash of Lightsabers"
1:10 in "Ludlow's Demise" from TLW. Trombone figure.
2:17 in "The Trek." Low winds double tonguing chords AFAP in a Morse code-like pattern

Tonnes of other examples here - others can fill this in

- Cluster glissando. Basically a tone cluster that either slides to a designated higher or lower cluster, or to the lowest or highest possible pitches on the instrument. Usually played by strings, but sometimes horns, trombone, synth. With high winds, Williams usually just writes "shriek to highest pitch."

4:34 in "Eye to Eye" from JP. Strings and synth.
2:49 in "Rescuing Sarah" from TLW. 4 Trombones and 6 horns "rip" to highest pitches.
1:04 and 1:36 in Drawing the Battle Lines/Leia's Instructions from EMPIRE
Picc/flutes shrieks throughout "The Compys Dine" from TLW.

- Behind the bridge technique on strings. Usually violins. This is where the player bow on the other side of the bridge, creating seemingly random pitches. What you're hearing are the highest partials of each string.

0:52 in "The Compys Dine,"
When Donovan super-ages in TLC. Here the violins are playing pizzicato behind the bridge.

- Harmonic glissando. This is a usually for violins, but refers to all string instruments. Almost always touch four harmonics (the player lightly stops whatever note is a fourth above the one playing) - these sound two octaves higher than written. The glissando means than the players slide the notes up and down ad lib.

1:01 in "Bait for E.T." Violins and violas slide around harmonic cluster (D-Eb-F#-G-A).
2:42 in "Pre-Crime to the Rescue" from MINORITY REPORT. No pitches indicated - these entirely up to the players.
0:11 in "Rescue from Cloud City/Hyperspace." Love this effect - double basses doing the same thing, creating a ghostly, almost electronic sound. Also violins harmonic gliss on the first down beat of this cue, marking Vader cutting off Luke's hand.

- Piccolos shrieking at highest pitches

03:52 in "Searching for E.T."
0:31 in "Dracula's Death"

and etc.

Listen to Lutoslawski's Venetian Games. One of the earliest examples of aleatoricism, and quite similar to the kind found in Williams's oeuvre. Another recommendation is John Corigliano's score for ALTERED STATES. Corigliano is a big influence on Williams's avant-gard

You can also put me down for Nico Fidenco.

All Williams.

Contains 4 previously unreleased cues:

 

- "Stalling" (AKA "Cartoon Demonstration")

- "The History Lesson"

- "Hungry Raptor"

- "The Coming Storm"

 

https://itunes.apple...ary/id621507165

Do we have more of his modern stuff?  

 

I really do enjoy the "random" that Williams adds to his action cues, like the brass when Indy starts to fight Dovchenko, or those flute/xylophone runs that he tends to use a lot. 

 

Can you post some examples? I haven't listened to KOTCS in ages, and don't have much desire to.

I'd call this a tertiary progression. .

Jaws is three notes played in succession, not this gigantic chord.

 

FWIW, the two note Jaws theme is frequently harmonised in a way similar to the famous polychord from The Rite.

 

For example, in Main Title the strings and piano play E/Bb/C#/G/Bb/Db/Eb to F/Cb/D/Ab/Cb/D/E etc. at 0:41. At 0:51 the strings/piano/horns/trombones/trumpets sound together E/Bb/C#/E/G/Bb/Db/Eb/F#/A to F/Cb/D/F/Ab/Cb/D/E/G/Bb.

 

The score also shares other things in common with Le Sacre. Octatonicism, tritone progressions (i.e. beginning of Chrissie's Death) and syncopated accents. But there's also more modern developments in JAWS - tone clusters, aleatoricism (though there's not much, compared to the sequel), Rosenman-esque tone pyramids, a Yamaha YC30 Combo Organ (required for things like white noise and clusters), Bartókian string writing, eerie expressionism (Quint's Tale), and some pointillist passages in the style of Webern and Humphrey Searle (second half of Ben Gardner's Boat), and so on.

Funnily enough, the very thing crossed my mind when I saw this comment on Youtube for No Man's Land from WAR HORSE.
 

John Williams is King!!! He has killed this track.Jablonsky, Mancina move out the way!! Cuz the real maestro is nigh!! And he is a whopping 89 years old and still schooling young cats!!

I prefer the analogue sound anyway. By a LONG way.

 

So do I, but I can't help but have a daft grin across when I hear say 5:55 to the end of Visitor in San Diego or 1:44 in The Turbulent Years from NIXON - both written in the mid-late 90s, but still sounding utterly fresh and contemporary.

You'll probably only find this type of military brass band scoring nowadays in an ironic context. Pastiche.

I remember reading a post of someone (obviously) way more music-literate than myself which said John's approach to 20th Century avant garde techniques is quite distinctly his. In a sense it doesn't really copy anyone else's approach.

Was it me?

I think Williams has been pretty innovative over his career, from stuff like IMAGES to his merging of analogue synthesisers and orchestra in HEARTBEATS (which had been done before, but not in this way), and his use of MIDI, sampled sounds, with avant garde techniques in his Oliver Stone scores, particularly BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY and JFK - reflecting the collage-like, fragmented quality of Stone's film making. MINORITY REPORT is also quite daring, with the Takemitsu/Corigliano-influenced textural approach to 1m1 The Crime, and the recurring sequenced synth marimba figure heard in 2m4A Containment Center, 2m6A Elevator Confrontation and 6mA The Man in the Window, to name only two examples.

The difference now is that Williams's getting old. Like most ageing composers, from Bela Bartók to Jerry Goldsmith, he now favours simplicity over complexity. Any of the avant-garde passages in his scores now on (judging from LINCOLN) will probably stuff we've already heard from him before.

He's got nothing more to prove.

And Goldsmith doesn't have that much of a distinctive sound to me

Jerry Goldsmith was the ultimate chameleon film composer, though even then, he does have his own distinct sound.

Lyrical solo trumpet passages, i-IV progressions, low piano/synth ostinati, frequent metrical changes (i.e. 7/8 to 13/8 to 5/4), fondness for jazz harmonies (i.e. Lydian chords, major 7ths, suspended 4ths, minor 9ths etc...), string pizzicati (often with harp), studio echo (tape echo, MXR echoplex, or electric flutes w/echo and delay), septuplet and sextuplet runs in winds and strings, tutti horn triplet figures, fourths and fifths (i.e. the Klingon theme), snarling trombone glissandi, use of major 7ths and flat 9ths/augmented octave (intervals common in serialist works, due to them being inversions of minor 2nds), ad lib vocalistions from human voices, whole tone/augmented clusters (the harmony that opens the original Main Title to ALIEN), low horns playing 1/4 tone pitch bends, pizzicato and arco between bridge and tailpiece on strings, key clicks on woodwinds, tapping mouthpieces on trombones and tubas, col legno and snap pizz, guiro, cricket clickers, angklungs, cuicas, vibraphone w/ motor on, 1/4 tone vibrato on strings, various 'prepared piano' effects (i.e. wire brush glissandi, various mallets on the lowest strings, paper or staples to alter the sound), lowest octave of the piano, Balinese and Javanese gongs, muted strings, flutter-tonguing brass, rub rods, boo bams, bowed tremolo string clusters, static pedal point with shifting major triads above, clusters that aren't necessarily contained within one octave (i.e. the recurrent 'idée fixe' chord in THE OMEN - two juxtaposed quartal chords: G#-A#-C#-D# below and C-D-G-A above, or white note cluster in one octave, and black notes in the other) etc...

The sheer stress of having to write so much music under short time constraints, or the appeal of the familiar, means that one will fallback on certain tried-and-true techniques and work methods.

In a very different vein, there are some spectacularly dissonant woodwind/xylophone/piano chords early in ESB's "The Snow Battle" (the cue that starts with the unused low piano stuff). For instance, Williams will stack an E minor chord over a totally unrelated fifth, C# and G#...or F# major over a fourth, E and A. These are played staccato, and there's a lot of stuff going on, so there's no way you can pick out all the individual notes just from listening, but the effect is a chilling clatter of sonic messiness.

Yeah, that's pretty neat. I think it's Ab-Bb-B-D-E-G (octatonic cluster) to Bb-B-C-Db-F#-A (another one a half-step up, though this time that added B gives it a jagged 4-note chromatic cluster), and back to the first chord. Startling device - especially considering it never reappears again in the recorded score.

Filmmusic, I think you raise an interesting question about the strength or uniqueness of Williams' musical voice. I personally would say that the work of Elfman or Newman exhibits less stylistic variety. On the one hand, that establishes a more easily recognizable voice..

I'd argue that it's not they don't exhibit stylistic variety, but that they don't have much of musical personality, or craft. A self-assuredness and mastery of their own idiom that the greats had in spades.

To be honest, I think John Williams could do a Danny Elfman or Thomas Newman pastiche, and make it more compelling and re-listenable than the real thing.