Maurizio

Hah!!  This is my favorite symphony of all time, played it, heard it many times live. Never noticed the "similarity"....???

I'll hear it live for the first time at the end of this year. It will be played here in Milan for the first time in 27 years. Can't wait!

And he's also dead serious when answering the question. Bring on the champagne!

I'm so happy and proud to be part of ColonneSonore.net. Look what arrived today on our email:

After listening to these samples I feel the urgency for a bottle of scotch.

Yea watching it again, he basically spends a minute saying how brilliant Giacchino is, how integral to his team he is, how lucky he is to get to work with him.... Then quickly says but Williams will score Star Wars. It's almost like Giacchino is his first choice, and someone above him is making him use Williams.

If that's the case, I hope he goes in with an open mind, and trusts that Williams knows what he's doing.

I don't think we should read too much between the lines on this. As I see it, it's plain and simple, just like it seems: they're waiting for JW to say "yes". And they're confident he will.

I'm sure you all know how much working relationships are a main thing in Hollywood. Giacchino and Abrams share an exclusive relationship based on mutual respect and admiration and they appears also to be good friends (i.e. it's not just work). They both reached high level of power and success working together, so it's pretty natural for both to speak high of each other in public. They both know how much one owes to the other (in the best sense).

Now, since Abrams has to work on a franchise with a more than estabilished musical identity (i.e.: it's one of the major things that makes Star Wars what it really is) and the fact its composer is still alive and kicking, I see quite natural they want to give him first option. Well, they MUST give him first option, as I see it. John Williams is Star Wars, as much as Lucas, Ford, Hamill, Fisher, Burtt and all the others who created it are. As I said before, nobody in the world would take the job out of his hands just because the chosen director has an ongoing working relationship with another composer. Also, as much as Abrams is fond of Giacchino and his music, I think he would be more than happy if JW ends up writing music for a film he's directing. For any director, it's like winning the lottery!

 

Still, it's a good indication that there could be some sort of official talks going on behind the scenes.

 
I don't think JJ would have said anything if there hadn't already been a bunch of behind the scenes decisions made.

I'd say it means the decisive factor is whether Williams wants to do it. Which in my opinion was the only real question from the beginning anyway.

This. It all depends on JW's will and nothing else. I'm pretty sure Lucas, Kennedy and Abrams are giving him first option, so to speak. Nobody in the world would take the assignment out of his hands without being sure he doesn't want to do it. If JW wanna do it, he'll do it. It's just that simple.

I made a laugh and that's it. I don't think it asks for more than that.

It was something made only for letting people have a laugh. Film score fans take things too much seriously.

Courtesy of Jon and Al Kaplan:

Is that JW music in the background?

Check out the first part of this exclusive interview with Lukas Kendall of Film Score Monthly--a look back at his long career as a soundtrack CDs producer. It's Lukas unleashed

http://www.colonneso...hly-part-1.html

Part 2 will be up in the next few days. Hope you'll enjoy!

I always thought of "Over the Moon" as a theme for Elliott. But again Williams uses it with much flexibility, without linking it too much to a single idea.

When I taught E.T. in a course on film music, I referred to this theme as the "E.T. family" theme, because it always seems to relate E.T. to his own people (with the sense of loneliness and longing that Maurizio and Thor mention) rather than to Elliott. We hear it overt the opening shot of the starry sky, for example, because that is where E.T. and his people come from. When Elliott is luring E.T. into his house with Reese's Pieces, we hear it again probably because E.T. is still unsure of Elliott and more allied with his own people at this point. And of course during the closing shots, we hear it once more because E.T. is clearly reunited with his people - or family - once more.

To me, that motif is a perfect example of a technique Williams explained several times (i.e. introducing the main theme one bit at a time): the motif is constructed on similar intervals of the "Flying" theme and we tend to familiarize with that particular construction since the beginning of the movie, so when the Flying theme finally appears in full form, we're kind of already "prepared" for it and every piece fall into one single place.

I'm sure many of you here have seen that MTV video, which is also part of the bonus material in the E.T. Bluray, with Williams referring to that E.T. motif (the one that opens and closes the film) as "The Call".

 

any idea why he calls it that way? what does he mean?

Is it a call, like a visit? (eg. Et's visit to earth)

is it a call like "i'm calling someone"?

and if yes, whose call is it? (E.t. to his parents?)

Williams in many cases uses themes/motifs in a deliberate way, without linking them too much to a single character and/or idea, but playing with them on a broader emotional function (i.e. the theme works in an emotional way hence I'll use it even though it's apparently out of place--the most famous example is the use of Leia's theme when Ben Kenobi gets killed).

In this specific case you mention, I think the "call" motif represents a broader, more general idea within the score. While we have specific themes for E.T., Elliot and for their relationship, this motif (which however is built on similar intervals of E.T.'s theme, i.e. a perfect fifth at the beginning, followed by a descending group) seems to represent a general idea of E.T.'s loneliness on Earth and the subsequent strive to "call home" to get back there. Of course Williams doesn't use only with that purpose, because of what I stated before--his consummate musicianship makes him pretty flexible with his own thematic creations.

I'm resorting this up because I think all this useless and stupid controversy needs clarifications. I already wrote this on the FSM board, but I guess repetita juvant:

First of all, let's get down to facts: the day after this stupid controversy exploded (keep in mind it was created and agitated by incorrect Italian news agency reports and then reprised by international agencies), Morricone released an official press statement to correct and clarify what he said. Here's a translation:
 

"What I read about my statements on Quentin Tarantino is a partial writing of my thoughts which has deprived the true meaning of what I said, isolating a part from the rest. In this way my statement sounds shocking, penalizing me and bothers me a lot.
"I have a great respect for Tarantino, as I have stated several times, I am glad he chooses my music, a sign of artistic brotherhood and I am happy to have met him in Rome recently. In my opinion, the fact that Tarantino chooses different pieces of music from a work in a film makes the pieces not to be always consistent with the entire work.
"The risk for me, when I compose, is not to be consistent with the film work and my desire is that the director accepts my consistency...
"Regarding Django, the thing is that I cannot see too much blood in a movie due to my character, is how I feel and impress me especially with a film that is made very well and where the blood is well shot. But this has nothing to do with my respect for that Tarantino which remains great."

http://bit.ly/YnteFz

I think this clarifies everything. The fact he isn't comfortable with a movie showing so much blood and carnage maybe sounds ridiculous to some fellows here considering he scored A LOT of violent and disturbing films over his long career. But we should take into account that he's now 85 years-old and probably his taste in movies has changed.

Also, everyone who knows and follows Morricone since a long time knows very well that the core matter about consistency and coherence of film composition has ALWAYS been one of his strongest aesthetic flags, which he sometimes defended to the point of sounding a bit rude. He always believed in film music as something that needs artistic integrity and he spoke against the usage of "preexisting tracks-as-film-score" many times, especially when this approach is in conflict with an original score. He had strong discussions with Terrence Malick during DAYS OF HEAVEN and he had the guts to tell him: "Terry, you HAVE TO choose!" (this is a story he told during a public conference I attended). But he always acknowledged the FREEDOM of the director to choose whatever approach is right for the movie (in fact, he spoke highly several times about Kubrick's use of music in his movies and it looks like he's fine with Tarantino's as well). But he pertains to a generation/category of film composers (like Williams and Goldsmith) who STRONGLY believe in the creation of original music suited and tailored to the film's needs, with the utmost respect of the film itself. As he many times stated, the primary task of the film composer is TO SERVE the film. In this sense, I find perfectly understandable he maybe doesn't see eye-to-eye with some of Tarantino's musical choices. Nevertheless, he respects and admires him.

What I found quite insulting in all this useless controversy is the fact that most of the people who commented it around the internet quickly divided into fanboy factions (be it Tarantino's camp or Morricone's camp), following this nowadays common internet behavior of taking a stance over every single matter to the point of catfighting over it. And this happened also with film music lovers, who should probably be more aware than others that what Morricone said is something that's part of the job of the film composer (i.e. discussing and even dissenting with the director, finding the right approach for the movie, etc.). Instead, many score nerds popped up and started to lambast Morricone, depicting him as an old fart who is out of touch with contemporary film aesthetics.

Yesterday I did a piece about this for the website I write for. It's written in Italian, but maybe with an automated translator you'll get what is my feeling over all this:

http://bit.ly/114TAii
 

In my own very humble opinion, the "problem" lies within the Hollywood industry itself, which always had and still has the tendency of pigeon-holing individual talents.

There are quite a few great contemporary composers who writes emotional, engaging, direct, creative music... but they simply are not writing for Hollywood movies. I'm talking about people like Eric Whitacre, Mason Bates, Kevin Puts, Peter Boyer, Kevin Kaska and a few others. Then there are highly talented composers like Austin Wintory who found great creative stimulus within the videogame industry. Oh, and don't let me started with the current exciting generation of young European composers who write for independent films over here.

And you know what's the irony? It's that almost EVERY ONE of these talented fellas recognize publicly composers like Williams, Goldsmith, Barry, Morricone among their major influences.

In a nutshell: the talent is definitely out there. There are a lot of great composers who are writing and even experimenting highly creative stuff intermingling traditional concert presentation with visual media (check out some of Mason Bates' stuff or Whitacre's virtual choir projects). But all of this is happening outside Hollywood.

In my opinion, the future of media music has a much broader scope than the one currently proposed by Hollywood studio productions.