olli_s

Sorry, left you shortly on page 110 ... but I read my way through and I dare say the length of this thread slowly approaches novel length ;-) As I know that reading books has always been among the most pleasant things in my life (but usually only if I wasn't forced to do so), I will not step into this debate now. Instead I would like to comment on the remarks of robthehand: Of course you may enjoy movie scores separately from the movies themselves just as music as such. But if in this case you take a judgement of a piece or score, you miss a key point - namely that this piece of music was written to fulfill a well defined task: A movie score is to support the movie in the first place. Its main task is NOT to be a good concert piece - even though in addition to the main purpose it may be one (as so many marvelous pieces of various film composers nicely demonstrate). Under this preference the score of GoF is a quite good score for the film itself, however it does not well in the additional requirement of continuing the HP series, yes it even musically contradicts it sometimes - I wrote about that earlier. Concerning the story holes in the HP movies: The plot of PoA was changed quite a bit but this in general didn't disturb me. I was a bit puzzled by the appearance of the stag (having not yet read the book at that time) - but to be honest time travels are always a bit puzzling ;-) So I remembered the (white) stag to be one of those very powerful magical creatures appearing rarely in films but the more in several tales. O.K. the book corrected this first impression towards an equally atractive explanation. In the case of GoF I was just on the last pages of the book (Harry having hidden behind a tomb stone on the grave yard) when I entered the german premiere night. After some shocking, amusing, disappointing and impressing three (!) hours in the cinemar I completed the book at the railway station (5 in the morning) and learned about the secrets, the film didn't tell me (e.g. about the wands). So my partwise confusion didn't hold for to long - or le'ts say I was enlightened shortly afterwards. Here I found the discussion between Harry and Dumbledore somewhat too short - I don't know yet, wether it can be called a good idea to have left out the starting argument between Dumbledore/Harry and the ministery of magic.; it somehow leaves the plot of the film closed on the other hand an importand lead over to the next film is somehow missing ... Whatsoever, interesting things have been going on: OotP - news is leaking out, a promising trailer has been published and if I'm not much mistaken there was a piece of music in this "behind-the-scenes-video" some pages ago, which I haven't heard so far in a Harry Potter film (shortly before the end). Should this be a glimpse of the new score already? Alltogether this makes my feelings most optimistic towards the new film. Let's hope for the best!

Sure Barry didn't score every James Bond film, but still the major chunk is his work, so clearly he set the measure for musical style of a James Bond film, other composers cannot neglect. This doesn't mean, however, that Barry himself didn't change individual compositions or didn't introduce new themes - this would be a poor reference for a composer and lead to cliché-like composing. On the other hand a composer has a certain style to do a love-scene, a march, a landscape and so on. Typically for Barry is this very melancholic "5 minutes till end of the world" style beeing prominent in "Out of Africa", Dances with Wolves" and also several Bond themes and beeing subtile ingredient of many other themes of John Barry. The in-between-composers of James Bond adapted Barry's style quite smoothely, whereas the new generation of Bond films implements some kind of "meta-composing" (by the way also meta-acting, and so on) playing actively with the thought, that James Bond is no longer only a novel figure but a common cultural good. Thus all clichés can be and are served well and especially music can and does operate relatively freely again in the films - but: is this still a James Bond movie or just another action film? At least I see the danger of Bond films loosing their individuality. John Williams' genius is it to be extremely flexible in adapting very different styles of composing (from mediaeval dance music up to complex 20th century atonal large orchestra scores, etc.) to serve the individual purpose of a film-scene AND keep the whole thing consistent! Thus even though thematic material could not (new style of film, with many still lifes and rest) and was not heavily taken over to HP&PoA the way of employing the Orchestra in the themes stays in the musical concept of the series and suggests the handwriting of John Williams. However when I was sitting at midnight in the preeview of HP&GoF I didn't know, yet, that John Williams had not composed that score. My first impression, when hearing the opening theme (title), could be expressed by the sentence "Oh my god, what did John Williams do to Hedwig, that's awfull!" - I really was disappointed without measure. In the further viewing, I found the score fitting well to the contents, e.g. supporting nicely the mood of the grave yard scene. However, somehow I found it to be like music having been taken from any magic-horror film you like; nothing special, no Harry Potter in it (quite appart from the observation, that the big symphonic John Williams luxury version of an ordinary Quidditch Match for the case of the legendary Triwizzard Tournament was reduced to a school brass band - complete inversion of importance, consider this!) When the end title showed, that not John Williams had been the composer, I was relieved by this fact as such, but saddened as well that an opportunity was missed in this film. Well, I thought, maybe you're just preoccupied, just watch it again - but to this day, having seen the movie 4 times in cinema and also on DVD, I have to say, that my impressions remain - and taking an anxious look forward to the next film, I'm really concerned. GoF is (also as a book) in some sense a complete compilation of exceptions (Quidditch World cup, Triwizzard Tournament, No Quidditch, No everyday life at Hogwards, Voldemort returning to power), somehow not requirering a strict musical bond to the other 3 parts at many places. However, the score of OotP will have to employ many of the older topics again, if it wishes to stay linked to the series - and I am absolutely not sure, wether another composer will be able to manage this in a nonclichéing way... Quite apart from this the problem now arises, that two themes are available now for the same topic (e.g. Voldemort, Hogwards hymn, ...) taking Patrick Doyle's would serve the discontinuity of the series and not doing so will make the exceptional state of GoF even more prominent. Adding even more new themes instead of using existing ones contradicts the priciple of a Leitmotif(The master of which we know ;-) - so what to do?

If I ever heard something like a phoenix' song in the sense of JK Rowling, it was the "eery, spine-tingling, unearthly" piece of John Williams, lifting the (remaining) hair on my scalp and making also my heart feel as though it was swelling to twice it's normal size. (to say it in the words of HP&CoS). Or shortly: perfect. Secondly: John Williams created the Harry Potter sound-world, thus it's only reasonable to let him do the remaining scores. If too many things in a series are changed to often, it will stop to be a series. (see James Bond-continuations with Pierce Brosnan, when John Barry stopped composing for the series; at least Madonna did a complete break with the long title-song tradition). Besides, it's all these thousands of little musical inventions of a John Williams score, that are needed to create a music fitting to a parallel world, like the wizzards' one - reinventing it will simply not work in this context. Patrick Doyle's score for HP&GoF was a good one for the film (if it had been a film as such), but a bad one for the series - having broken with nearly every "Leitmotiv" of the former scores and having treated the most prominent theme of "Hedwig's flight" with some kind of superficial arrogance (sorry, I had this grave impression several times, when watching the film 4 times in cinema and later on DVD). As the musical part of a film addresses the sense of hearing as a very ancient and direct impacting part of our conciousness, it's also the part which serves continiuity of a film series most of all. P.S.: I'd have loved to see the whole Weasley-family stuck in a kitchen, pitty, they didn't film it ... P.P.S.: But thanks for the dancing lesson!