aviazn

Apologies, didn't mean to imply that you were saying otherwise! Just meant to expand and add my own thoughts on the Williams/Giacchino dichotomy. I don't think he's doing either of those things, either. In fact, I agree with your entire post! I just think that when John Williams tells Tim that his fascination with film music is "myopic," he's revealing something — not demeaning film music per se, but rather how some people appreciate it, and his own work. I think that (unlike Alec Guinness) he's too gracious to tell his fans — and critics — that they don't have a sufficiently wide knowledge base to appreciate his music. But generally, I agree with him. I don't think it's possible to fully appreciate JW's achievements and legacy without understanding all of his influences and what came before him. Way too many music critics applaud him merely as a gifted popularizer of the classical orchestral tradition, and I think one of Tim's great accomplishments is giving such a full portrait of his influences and experiences as a jazz and pop musician (as William calls himself — which to me is a higher label than artist). I completely agree with this. But I do think that, at this stage of his career, with comments like these, JW is attempting to artfully opt out of being seen as a crusader for film music as high "art." I think of Williams' relationship to music similarly to a photographer who can go back and forth between the worlds of fine art and commercial photography. I think the discourse there is somewhat healthier, in that photo journalism or sports or wedding photography is clearly not "art," but very few people would claim that it's not "legitimate" or somehow inferior. And any photographer who does commercial work draws on the influences and techniques of "art" photography and takes pride in that work. Personally, as much as I agree with the sentiment that Williams elevates film music to an art form, I also think the impulse to legitimize film music as "high art" is misguided because it only empowers the gatekeepers of high art. I don't want to see film music let in the gate, I want to see the gate torn down. That's why I love JW's quote about how he doesn't distinguish between highbrow and lowbrow music, how music is a river with which we can all fill our cups and be nourished. But we do know that Williams holds himself and others to very high standards of musicianship, whether highbrow or low. And I detect a hint of dissatisfaction with the state of film music in comments like this:

I feel similarly. Clearly, as @Maestro's writings make clear, Williams values the vast array of influences that he brings to his music. And not just classical, but the great jazz and, as @Maurizio points out, pop music of his youth that he admires. Variety is the life blood of all art, and JW's knowledge of those varied influences — and his ability to merge them so fluently — is part of what elevates his film music and makes it distinct from the classical figures he's so often accused of ripping off. I feel like most of what Williams is saying here is simply his frank assessment of the limitations of film music as a medium and their impact on the resulting quality of the music. But if there is any self-deprecation or discomfort with "film music" in those comments, it feels to me less like imposter syndrome or internalized prejudice and more like a reaction of embarrassment or frustration at seeing legions of fans whose orchestral musical diet consists only of film music as a genre — and perhaps composers whose output is only drawing on that genre, like a form of memetic inbreeding. I can certainly imagine JW thinking so, if not saying so publicly. (The rumors of JW's dissatisfaction with Giacchino's Rouge One score — whether true or not — always rang true to me.) I was really struck by this passage that Tim (so generously!) shared on his blog: Would love to know Tim's thoughts on what he meant. Reading it, I didn't get the sense that JW meant to demean music written for the medium of film, but to argue that the genre of film music that so many of us like is deeply indebted to music and composers that came before them. I imagined JW giving a lesson on the classical origins of certain techniques or the jazz origins of certain voicings — the different influences that give film music its characteristic sound. (Could be totally wrong of course!) In any case, JW's discomfort here sort of reminded me of the story of Alec Guinness extracting a promise from a 12-year-old autograph-seeking fan to never watch Star Wars again. Or George Lucas' reaction to fans' ideas of what Star Wars is. His SW films, for all their faults, are personal films with an array of influences — 1930s serials, WWII films, Kurosawa, etc. Of course, he touched on political issues of his era (Vietnam, the rise of fascism, etc.), but he would always say that fundamentally the films were for 12-year-old boys. For me, the biggest weakness of JJ Abrams' Star Wars films was that the range of influences that he brought to bear were limited pretty much to other Star Wars films, ultimately rendering it fan fiction.

Finally saw the film. My contribution to the Helena's theme discourse is that Williams does seem intentional these days about his themes for female characters and making them less male gaze-y, which undoubtedly many of the older themes are. Maybe that's partly a response to characters these days being written less so, but maybe it's also his own "reconstruction in the gender age," as he put it. I mean, he's talked about how he wrote Leia's concert arrangement as mickey-mousing Luke and Leia boning. And how he wrote Rey's theme as a theme not for a love interest but a "female adventuress." Like @GerateWohl I also got comedy vibes from Helena's theme in the film, but kinda like something you'd find in a 1930s screwball comedy. In its bouncy, upbeat statements like in To Athens, it reminded me of the arrangement of I Can't Give You Anything But Love at the end of Bringing Up Baby. And there is something of the screwball-era banter and gender-role subversion to Helena's character. To me, the theme fits like a glove. I think the ASM arrangement of Helena's theme is just that, an arrangement for her that gives it a more romantic treatment for solo violin.

Trailer music is ok, but the best Indy theme reference in the trailer comes from the falling shelves at 0:34. G-F#-E-D

I seem to recall Samantha Winslow herself giving that anecdote to a journo at one point. Maybe to David Carr at his Carpetbagger blog.

Fun interview. Is this the first time in history that an interviewer tells the "they're all dead" story to Williams? 😅 Prompting him with the film clips was a nice interview technique. I don't know that I've ever heard him say he wrote Luke's Theme from Star Wars "out of desperation". I dream about someone one day doing an interview with him where they give him a piano and just ask him all sorts of technical questions. Also was he about to drop an f-bomb? I heard: "Music just means so much more to me every passing day. You just wish you could share that with people — how fffuu…cky we are to be working in something that you truly love." EDIT: OK, listening again, I think he started to say “fortunate” and then shifted mid-word to “lucky”. With headphones, I hear “ffflucky” But the way it comes out, I totally thought he was going to say “how fucking lucky we are,” and in my mind, I think I will remember it that way. 🥹

Wow, another appearance, a full episode on Chris Wallace’s show. Streaming now on HBO Max! Airing on CNN Sunday night. This is really a full-court press. Online story here: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/03/entertainment/john-williams-indiana-jones/index.html

The Flag Parade —> Cantina Band #2. Try it.

Ha, the irony though is that LTP is already mainstream, in the conventional sense of the word. They’re done by every major orchestra in the US and are some of their most popular and lucrative concerts. By any measure, they’re surely the most mainstream form of classical music around — certainly more mainstream than ballet or opera! It’s not like film music is some modernist atonal idiom that needs defending. LTP is embraced by the paying masses, by the musicians, and by the artistic directors in charge of programming. The critics may come around to it…or may not, but it almost doesn’t matter. To answer the original question of which JW suites could be programmed in a “traditional” classical concert, I think that most of the listed suites don’t work well in that kind of setting. I think in the ones with the most prominent material (Star Wars, HP) the individual pieces are short and too disparate, more like orchestral pop songs. For me, the MoaG cello suite and the unpublished E.T. suite hit a suite spot of variety and development of material with a consistency of tone and mood that plays well in a concert setting. I’d love to hear that RotS suite, too. If I’m being honest, I think the biggest contributing factor to JW’s suites being more widely played in traditional classical concerts will be after he dies. Hate to think about it, but that’s when he will pass into “the canon,” and programming a suite by him will carry a different meaning than programming him as a living composer. You don’t program the suite from Swan Lake because you’ve built a two-hour concert around it, you program it because you’ve got a 20-minute hole to fill and audiences will go, oh Tchaikovsky, how nice. Which leads me to think that ultimately, I don’t think I want JW to be programmed more frequently in traditional classical concerts. People go to those types of concerts to seek out musical experiences they don’t get from more mainstream, pop culture sources. When orchestras start programming Star Wars and Harry Potter in classical concerts, that means that those scores and John Williams will have fallen out of the public consciousness.

The lack of recognition of the influence of jazz on Williams' voice always rankles me. This recent critical reappraisal of his work is great, as are his appearances with the great European orchestras. But seeking to place him in the pantheon of the European classical tradition while ignoring his jazz background only gets you half the story. It's the jazz imprint on his harmonic and rhythmic language and how he brought that into an orchestral idiom that sets him apart from his peers. Maybe this is a bit grandiose, but I think of Williams as a historic, generational figure at the intersection of two musical traditions from across the world that were brought together in the US through an array of global political and socioeconomic forces — emigration, capitalism, colonialism, slavery, Nazism, abolitionism, etc. Of course, these musical traditions were intermixing for many decades before Williams, but he played no small part in how they combined to create today's modern musical landscape. That, I think, is a much more interesting and significant legacy than simply inheriting the pop mantle of Korngold and Wagner. But obviously, jazz remains a blind spot of classical music critics. You can find a lot more about Williams' jazz roots from music theory geeks on YouTube than classical critics at prestige publications.

Plot twist: Williams is actually a longtime subscriber to Doomcock's channel and watched it religiously during the SW sequels to find out in advance which cues he was going to have to rewrite for JJ

Well, that will set tongues wagging. Looking forward to all the Disney rumor blogs citing JWFan as the source for this…

I read that, too. Seems to be widespread — it's included in a recent compilation of flute audition extracts, along with Leia's Theme and Dartmoor, 1912. Some instructor at the University of Georgia has helpfully posted an extract. The performance notes from the editor are fun to read — nice to see the technical aspects of JW's music dissected along with the rest of the greats.

Wow, wasn’t expecting this. It’s a major revision of the 1998 symphonic suite, which according to my attempts at Google translating the Japanese CD description, Hisaishi overhauled in 2016 (?), and then tweaked again for this 2021 recording. I’m really, really liking this. In some ways, it’s a complete reimagining of the suite. It’s shorter than the 1998 version, with some fat trimmed from some of the cues. But it also incorporates some material from the score that didn’t make the first one (like the electronic elements in The World of the Dead, reorchestrated), and has more careful movement transitions. And it changes up the instrumentation in places, with vocals in Mononoke Hime, and a violin solo replacing the piano in Ashitaka and San, which I really dig. (Was Hisaishi inspired by JW and ASM?) For me, it feels like both a more complete presentation of the original score material, and a more engaging, cohesive listening experience as a suite. And at 26 minutes with 7 movements, I could even see it playing well programmed in a “serious” concert, like the Swan Lake suite or the WSS Symphonic Dances.

That works. I was thinking more the minor-key bridge of Blazing Saddles…