Williamssage

Who is conducting?

Quite possibly. Although I still maintain that the book would have needed re-working and the lyrics more polishing. I STILL haven't gotten my book (I ordered it in February). I reached out to Oxford and haven't received a reply. I'm feeling a little bad because all of my Williams friends have all read it and the more I hear the more anticipation builds. Hopefully it will get here soon - LOL!

I'm really sorry I didn't see this thread until now. I love Broadway music and purchased the LP of "Thomas and the King" back in the early 1980's. I was, of course, THRILLED to hear that Williams had actually written a musical and couldn't wait to hear it. I think my opinion of the musical was in line with most of the reviews I read - the music was praised as being very good but the lyrics (and book) were criticized for being really amateurish and generally weak. Some of the voices were also lacking and, in a few places, the lyrics on the recording were unintelligible. I return to the recording every now and again just to hear Williams' melodies and it makes me a bit sad that "Thomas and the King" wasn't successful. If the maestro had hooked up with a better lyricist and was given better subject matter, we might have gotten a few more musicals from him.

Actually, since Tim's clarifying post, I think things have settled down considerably.

No, the only thing available was a VERY obscure boot for which I paid a large sum of money! I think the reason he laughed was, perhaps, he liked my honesty - he also knew how impossibly obscure it was and appreciated that I had actually listened to it. The conversation took place in the late 1980's. We wouldn't see an official release until it was released on compact disc by Prometheus in 2007. Quartet Records then did a release in 2021. Furthermore, the FILM was thought to be lost for a long time. They finally unearthed a print and released it on an MGM DVD in 2003. it was eventually released on Blu-ray by Arrow in 2018.

Many of the things we discussed are in this excellent article on this very site: https://jwfan.com/?p=4583 He spoke about teaming up with Stomu Yamashta, a percussionist from Japan, because he was the only one who could play instruments Williams wanted to use in the score. He told me: "Most of the instruments I used were works of art that could be percussed.. They were made by two brothers from France named Baschet. One instrument was a long, bent rod that had sculpted leaves attached to it that could be percussed. Each leaf created a different tone - the instrument was as beautiful as it was functional. I engaged a Japanese percussionist named Stomu Yamashta as he was very skilled in playing the Baschet instruments." I remember him also talking about various wind instruments that Yamashta played as well as a prepared piano. It was an incredibly fascinating discussion. There was an embarrassing moment when he asked me how I was familiar with the score. I had to admit to him that I listened to it on a bootlegged LP I purchased. He was nonplussed about the whole thing but I was very ashamed. The rest of the story is well told in the interview with Irwin Bazelon (the link I posted above).

I do want to clarify one thing: I really don't want anyone on this forum to think I was in anyway angry with the maestro. Despite my limited posts, I do visit the forum often and, for the most part, enjoy reading what people are posting about his music. I have been listening to his work since the mid-sixties and have over 600 Williams related LP's, CD's and other media. I began a database of his recorded works in the progam Filemaker Pro on a Macintosh Plus back in the late 80's. It has now grown to be over 50gb in size with nearly 8000 entries. It is fully searchable with separate fields for Track Listings, Composition Name, Record/CD Label, Reference Number, Year of Release and many many more. Each release also incudes artwork; much of which was painstakingly restored to give the best possible presentation. My Ohio license plate reads: JTWFAN. This is not meant as a boast but is my way of showing my passion for his work. There isn't a single day that I don't listen to something that he has written. As I indicated in my original post, I have had a number of delightful conversations with him and we covered A LOT of ground: The music for "Schindler's List", the writing and recording of "Images", his work with LA session musicians back in the 60's and I even got to meet and speak with his wife Samantha. He was very kind and took his time with me answering questions, taking pictures and so on. Perhaps this better explains why I was so taken aback reading his comments - it seemed so uncharacteristic for the man I know.

Thank you! Williams' statement sure read like he was disparaging the entire genre. I appreciated Tim Greiving's clarification which went a long way in making things more clear.

I watched the outstanding documentary "Max Steiner: Maestro of Movie Music" and learned a great deal about him. I made an erroneous assumption about his use of orchestrators as (and my memory might be a bit faulty) nothing was mentioned about that in the documentary.

I agree with everything you said. I don't feel betrayed either - just a bit disappointed. When the GOAT of film composing basically disses the very medium that he so brilliantly excelled at, it's a bit jarring. As I said, for me, it's about the music and my passion for that will never go away. I was not aware - thank you for educating me, Marian (about the orchestrating the Shostakovich 11th and the founding of the LA Music Festival)! I am intimately familiar with his music but not so much all the details of his life. I have all four volumes of the Legendary Hollywood series and have listened to them MANY times in addition to quite a few of his complete scores. Thanks, Tim and I am anxiously looking forward to your book! I ordered mine back in February so hopefully i will receive it not long after the 2nd.

I always forget that many of those fellows were actually born at the tail-end of the Romantic period. Steiner was an extraordinary talent and, if I’m not mistaken, he did everything without an orchestrator as did his contemporaries. i have to say that Waxman was probably my favorite of that era with Steiner a close second. By all accounts Waxman was a thin, pale fellow with coke-bottle -bottom glasses who was almost always in ill health. Yet he composed some of the biggest most epic scores ever - case in point: “Taurus Bulba”.

Your comment is certainly true of most early film music by Steiner, Korngold, Waxman and composers of that generation. Williams was given credit for resurrecting the sound with "Star Wars". But in the 60's and early 70's scores started going in so many stylistically different directions. Now, with electronics, soundscaping and so on, it's REALLY a mixed bag.

Apologies. I'm still kind of raw after reading Williams' dis of film music. Exactly. Imagine a modern composer having to write in ALL of those different styles when dictated by a period film or at the whim of a director who wants music that sounds like a temp track from some piece that was written hundreds of years ago. It's mind-boggling.

My meaning was although they wrote symphonies, concertos, etc. the PERIOD of music in which they wrote (Baroque, Classical, Romantic, etc.) somewhat dictated and confined their style. In Music History and Literature class our professor would play different compositions by various composers and we had to name the period in which the piece belonged. It wasn't hard because music composed in each of the periods of music had a very distinctive sound. You folks amaze me. THIS is what you took from what I wrote?