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Apparently, one of the final awards approved by the Queen https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11244771/Queens-final-knight-John-Williams-honoured-creating-music-blockbuster-films.html

Why choose between fashion and protection when you can just wear a chainmail turtleneck!

The Towner of London!

official source: Honorary awards to foreign nationals in 2022 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

I wonder does this increase the chances that he will make a return trip to London to conduct the LSO after having to cancel previously due to health issues.

Maybe he was disappointed that there was no Snape's theme...

Am I the only one who just listens to and enjoys this music literally without ever comparing it to Shore's or any one else's music?

One step away from being crowned King!

Until I see John Williams in the armor, I'm not buying it

wow, that's more impressive than an Oscar

Only British nationals can be called Sir, but I will call him that anyway.

I think comparison is the basis for at least a part of our opinion on all art, whether we realise it or not. We like to believe we judge things on their own merits, but how can that possibly be true? We can certainly try to do that, but our experience informs everything we think and believe. Do I think ROP is a good score? Yes. But I can't unhear Shore's treatment of the same subject matter, so of course the latter is going to inform my opinion of the former.

Great to get official confirmation. Arise Sir Towner of Boomtish

I made it through two episodes. And about 10 minutes into the third one (with the introduction of Numenor), I gave up. I tried, I really did. It's just so...vanilla. There's no character, personality or even vision to this thing. Tolkien or not. Everything looks, feels and sounds like a plastic knock-off. It also feels very TV...meandering plot lines and contrived Hollywood beats that feel like they were designed by an algorithm of mass fantasy interests. From what I've seen, it feels like a colossal waste of $4 billion. House of Dragons has surprisingly ended up being far more interesting. I'll stick to that!

The thematic richness of ROP continues to pay dividends. Bear has done a great job. I'm also impressed by the editing and spotting. The music is consistently given big moments to shine along with the great visuals. ROP is the best tv score I've heard in a long time and it's just getting started.

Having reached the 5th episode, I still don't find McCreary's scores for this series to be inferior (musically speaking) to Shore's scores for the movies. Of course, the plot of the series is inferior to the plot of the movies, and the movies' characters were more closely related to Tolkien's poetics than the series' characters; the dialogues in the movies, as far as I know, were taken in a significant part from the books. The authors of the series had to invent most of the dialogues and situations, just to make the whole thing doable - and surely they are not Tolkien. Therefore, inevitably the marriage of Shore's music + the movies (which are still the greatest fantasy movies ever done) has a much powerful and long-lasting impact on the viewer compared to the marriage of McCreary's music + the series. But if I judge the music alone, McCreary's work is definitely deserving of praise. IMHO, of course.

They just gave him their best orchestra and a knighthood.

So there are people (myself included) who would be happy to see Williams win another Academy Award. Who cares? There are almost 8 billion (!) people on this planet my friend, all with different ambitions, opinions, goals, viewpoints and dreams. If you're going to comment on every line of thinking that deviates from your own, you're going to find yourself a very busy man.

I’m envisioning the turtleneck showing between the pieces of shining armor.

Well that's pretty great! We can call him Sir Johnny now.

I feel like this and Mandolorian are good examples of when to deviate from the established sound. The problem is, all the other D+ shows are doing it too. Had they gone the full traditional route for Obi Wan (in a perfect world where it wasn't a low budget sci fi channel original) I don't think anyone would have cared that Andor doesn't sound like SW. As is, it's just another step into the generic modernizing of SW music

I would be perfectly capable of listening to Bear's score without thinking of Shore, by the way, just like I can Leonard Rosenman's. But, unlike Rosenman's score, here each episode opens with a (fantastic, by the way) Howard Shore piece. Furthermore, each episode features timbres which are used very deliberately to evoke Howard Shore's "sound": We see Dwarves, enter the male voices. Why? Because that's an association we have in Howard Shore's scores. Elf scenes? Ethereal female choir and harps? Why, because that's a colour Shore associates with the Elves. Hobbits? tin whistles and uileann pipes galore, because that's what we associate with the Hobbits. Even the Hardinfelle that's used to score the Soutlands scenes (and Halbrand's) recall Shore's Rohan writing. Orcs get lots of percussion and very nasal exotic woodwinds. Why? Because that's what the bad guys are associated with in HOWARD SHORE'S SCORES. If you don't want to invite comparisons, write something totally different. As it is, Bear didn't do that: He intentionally wrote something that begs the comparisons, and only serves to highlight the differences.

I can listen to it without comparing it to other Middle Earth music. There are times when it’s hard to listen and not make mental comparisons to other McCreary works however.

It’s interesting to read this from a guy like Rickman and I remember also Norman Lebrecht’s comment that it ‘completely failed to match a kids movie about wizards’ or something like that. Actually the kids that grew up with it all love the score and it’s a huge part of the nostalgia for these films. Williams knows all too well what to do for this kind of film…

No they're terrible, and not in a fun way.

It's music made to be noticed so it's either gonna hit your ears as majestic as a peacock, or as hideous (garish, gaudy, lurid...) as a peacock. It's John Williams so better than 50% odds it'll be majestic but what's a sarcastic English thespian to do with a Harry Potter soundtrack, really. The funniest and probably most unsurprising thing reading these diary entries is how blase he was about the HP experience in general. "Cameras rehearse before actors" sounds about right. I'm glad he stuck it out. I love picturing him and Maggie Smith cracking up as he attempts his "unlearnable" speech in DD's office in GOF. I assume he's referring to "Headmaster, I, too, find it difficult to believe this mere coincidence. However, if we are to truly discover the meaning of these events, perhaps we should, for the time being, let them unfold."

Er, while I absolutely agree Bear's score is worthy of praise (it's one of the better TV scores going right now), and certainly superior to the show it's scored for, there's no way (in my opinion) it's in the same league as Shore's work. There's just no comparison. Simply the fact that it's so derivative of what Shore did makes it inferior. That doesn't mean it's not a good score, it is. But equal to Shore's work? No. Not in any world.

Exactly how I feel

British people just don't appreciate John Williams

That wonderful white bird that delivers the Daily Mail...

Five points from Slytherin, Rickman.

I would read it as a general, philosophical hostility, and a sardonic admission that the film and the score do work on the big screen as intended.

Sir Maestro

One of my first thoughts. Still, it is Daily Fail as well... In any case, pretty cool if true. Karol

You can watch whatever you please. Some evenings I want to just shut my brain off. Sometimes I want to be challenged, or scared, or educated. Sometimes I just want the comfort of watching something I've seen a thousand times. Sometimes I crave something emphatically new. Sometimes I want to laugh. Sometimes I want a show that just oozes "premium quality." Sometimes I'm just interested enough in a junky show to stick around for the ride. Anyone who judges someone else for what they want to watch has too much time on their hands. Probably enough time to watch another show I still haven't seen.

He came to the screening as Friedkin wanted him to score the film. But the conversation went down hill. Friedkin: I want you to write a better score than CITIZEN KANE. Herrmann: ..Then you should have made a Better film than CITIZEN KANE... Film Score Monthly covered this story in a very vivid article. I'll post the link to the download later in the day.

Here are a few examples - mic placement will have a big impact on the sound. For instance, Don Williams said he can tell if the engineer knows what they're doing by how close they have the timpani mic to the drum. Sometimes it will be just a few feet from the drum but some of the overtones are around twelve feet, so the sound of the drum won't be what you hear in the room because if the mic is three feet above the drum, it's not getting all the low frequencies! The resulting sound will be tight and emphasize higher overtones. This introduces a different challenge, mic bleed. You will get phasing issues if the timpani mic captures the bass drum (just as an example) so you want an assortment of mics with different recording patterns to minimize phasing issues. In addition, JW likes the mix to be in the room - meaning that the orchestra is already balanced and as long as the room is accurately captured, it should sound good. This means more reliance on the room mics like the decca tree and rear mics. That is a more classical approach and is not the trend today. Especially since lots of scores are striped - recorded in sections so only strings get recorded, then separately, only brass for example. Sometimes there is an A part and a B part of the strings, and the producer (er composer) can mix and match in post what part they use and how much of it. You can't do that in a room recording. It's also not unusual to record in different halls. I understand Pirates of the Caribbean did this so you might get the orchestra recorded in LA but the choir recorded in London and extra brass recorded their too then all mixed together. It's just an example of very different approaches and trends and they surely impact the final sound. I think the mic placement is an interesting one - I've mentioned this in other posts but sitting next to instruments is not the most interesting sound. They don't have their "true" characteristic sound up close. A powerful brass section might sound loud but tinny. Mics up close get more of that "tinny" sound. Generally, you mix the room with the spot mics to balance the issues each introduce. A double bass is very quiet up close but projects into the room and also has lots of subharmonic frequencies making other instruments sound louder (or fuller), these are examples of the complex considerations a mixer and engineer have to contend with. One other point that is worth mentioning - this is a chart of normal hearing loss with age. In short, the dark line at the top shows young people (in this sample 15-19 year olds) with normal hearing across all frequencies up to around 16,000 hz. 40 year olds will not hear above 14khz - the frequencies you hear drop as you age. By 70 there is almost 100% hearing loss above 10khz. So, though I have no insight to JW's hearing, the fact that he's 90, if we assume he has average hearing, he probably can't hear above about 6-8khz anymore. Include to that a lifetime of music which isn't great for hearing, it might not even be that good. It's worth pointing out that his hearing is probably better than anyone in that age, but the simple fact of his age generally impacts how good his hearing is and if he's the one approving final mixes, he's not hearing the nuances he once did. I think his engineers are all pros and know his sound well but as already mentioned, technology, styles and approaches change over time and what he might like now, might not be what he would have picked earlier in his career. Generally, instruments don't go near this high but there is a "sheen" or sparkle in those upper frequencies which he probably can no longer even hear though he knows is there. Just an opinion.

No, he needs to release a big showstopper preferably called something like 'An American Symphony' with 500 piece orchestra, mixed chorus, cannon shots and allusions to all his big blockbuster cues. I mean, what more could we ask for?

The Guardian published an excerpt from the late Alan Rickman’s diary. Here’s a bit that jumped out at me! https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/24/alan-rickmans-secret-showbiz-diaries-harry-potter

Oh good grief. I think this is the first time I've mentioned Bear's score (which I like) in relation to Shore's, and that was in response to another comment which was drawing a comparison. And look, this is a site where we discuss film music, of course people are going to make comparisons. Especially when we're talking about two scores that are written for the same source material, and one is clearly influenced by the other. To say nothing of the fact that Shore wrote the theme for the series...Shore's music literally immediately precedes Bear's in every episode. So if anyone is inviting comparisons here, it's Amazon. If Amazon didn't want such comparisons, they shouldn't have brought Shore on board. And if Bear didn't want comparisons, he shouldn't have created something so clearly reminiscent of Shore. Shore's work bears no resemblance to Rosenman's, but you can't say the same for Bear's to Shore's. So yeah, I think comparing the two works is more than fair. And in any event, comparing the two scores doesn't mean you can't enjoy both. Not that you're comparing them.

Nope.

I think its a very lovely score, but the Shore titles and the fact that Shore's colours are used: so, men for Dwarves, women for Elves, celtic instruments for Hobbits, and even the Hardinfelle - all make me ache for a Howard Shore score or at least for some of his themes. Its sad to think the downfall of Numenore won't be scored with a version of the main nature theme: think how powerful it would have been that this theme we associate with the Eagles and the Moth and the Rohirrim coming to the rescue would also be attached to the great cataclysm of Numenore.

My reading as well.

What a thing to wake up and see as the first news of the day!!! The fans calling him 'Sir John Williams' will now be seen as a bit less rabid.

Brilliantly sadistic as Kai Winn on DS9.

It’s been three years since TROS. Does anyone else miss the theatrical experience, the long time ago silence anticipating the blast of the Main Title? I’m ready for big budget full bodied cinematic 95 piece orchestra Star Wars.

It does not help that the movie makers found new ways to hinder people's enjoyment of the music in each part of the trilogy. From AUJ with its tracking and bajillion unreleased inserts. To DoS with all the frustrating silencing of music. To BoFA with the music being buried under soundeffects alltogether.