TheTennisBallKid

John Williams Biopic? The UFO drops off a higher being, that composes the greatest music known to man?
 

The best year was 2008. We were actively involved with harassing some intern at Concord Records via E-mail about unreleased IJ music. I swear they tossed in that fifth disc because of that.

https://www.amazon.com/Yo-Yo-Ma-Years-Outside-Box/dp/B002IC10Y8
 
It was first released as part of this 90 cd box set. It’s selling for under $500 now, but I recall it being significantly more when it came out.
 
it was a pretty big deal when this Williams set came out and it was actually affordable.

One celeste:
 

 
Two celestes:
 

 
Three celestes:
 

Well, the article certainly stirred the pot big time...
 
From a journalistic point of view, the choice of making the subject look like a hypocrite or someone ungrateful to the discipline that brought him fortune and glory is very regrettable. I never held The Guardian as a benchmark of great journalism, but this is another sign that legacy media is just chasing clicks. Oh well.
 
In terms of the content, while some of JW's remarks may look like bombshell statements, I was surprised but not shocked in reading these quotes. He said similar things in the past, perhaps just not as bluntly as reported here, but there have been similar statements from him about the value of film music in general and also about how he values his own work for the cinema. That being said, if one looks at these comments as retractions of an entire career (and I think we shouldn't), they're coming waaaay too late at this point in his life. As other have noticed, we can find many quotes and remarks from him across several decades where he defended and legitimized film music as an artform, so all of this may come out as puzzling to say the least, if not contradictory. Perhaps he felt more naked when speaking with @Maestro for the book, but as he documented on his Substack, he also scrutinized a lot of what Tim was saying, pigeonholing several of his thesis. I think both the book and the documentary forced him to look at his life and career retrospectively and perhaps, given how modest and self-deprecating he is, he may have started to doubt his whole artistic endeavour.
 
I won't repeat things that other fellows have already stated quite well here (especially @Marian Schedenig, @Loert and @Chen G.) and with whom I agree wholeheartadly, but I just want to add that Williams is hardly the first successful practitioner of movie music that has a love/hate relationship with the discipline: Ennio Morricone, Miklos Rozsa, Aaron Copland, all have said the same things in various circumstances, adhering to the old Theodor Adorno trope of gebrauchsmusik vs. absolutmusik. It's a forma mentis typical of people who grew up in certain environments and had to endure the prejudice and the stygma of working in the field of commercial music. In the end, it's the same old shit that went on for decades and which had in Pierre Boulez its most venomous hero. It's kind of sad if JW, at this point in his life, has come to the conclusion that those cultural elites were right, especially after doing so much for legitimizing the artform. 
 
Yet, as you will read in Tim's biography, he also gets very defensive when it comes to face the panning of his work from detractors, therefore it seems to me that JW embodies both the imposter's syndrome and the validation monster. Perhaps no film score will ever equal Mozart's Requiem, or Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande, or Stravinsky's Le sacre, or any of Bach's cantatas or Chopin's sonatas (choose your own classical masterwork of reference), but JW's output has showed time and again that film scoring can be done with the same integrity and dignity as concert music (how it's best presented in the concert hall is a whole other topic, imho). And I bet that he knows that. 
 
That's why perhaps the best thing we can do is listening to the music and get our evaluation from that, and not necessarily from public declarations, interviews and statements. His music has touched so many lives to the point of becoming an inspiration, a beacon and a role model for millions of people, including composers, musicians and creative individuals. He may be embarassed that all of this happened because of music composed to accompany "kiddie fare" with space battles, aliens, men in tights and roaming dinosaurs...  But that's what happened and he cannot reverse the course of history, even though from his personal perspective all of this is "just a job".
 
So, the bottom line is: sorry Mr. Williams, we all love you, but the final word on the value of your output - and of film music in general - does not belong to you

I want peace on Earth and goodwill toward man.
 
We're the United States government, we don't do that sort of thing!

Indeed.
 
 

It was very specifically stated on the site that the pre-orders could not be changed or cancelled because they were pre-orders. This is what prompted me to order it when it was it was still available; it sounded just strange enough to make me nervous.

I’ve gotten the shipping notice for mine, but like others have said if you track it looks like it’s just sitting there.
 
The way this is going I half expect to receive an email at some point: “We are sorry to inform you that your order has been cancelled, we did not actually expect anyone to order this product so we did not make any.”

I’ve gotten the shipping notice for mine, but like others have said if you track it looks like it’s just sitting there.
 
The way this is going I half expect to receive an email at some point: “We are sorry to inform you that your order has been cancelled, we did not actually expect anyone to order this product so we did not make any.”

It was very specifically stated on the site that the pre-orders could not be changed or cancelled because they were pre-orders. This is what prompted me to order it when it was it was still available; it sounded just strange enough to make me nervous.

I’ve gotten the shipping notice for mine, but like others have said if you track it looks like it’s just sitting there.
 
The way this is going I half expect to receive an email at some point: “We are sorry to inform you that your order has been cancelled, we did not actually expect anyone to order this product so we did not make any.”

I’ve gotten the shipping notice for mine, but like others have said if you track it looks like it’s just sitting there.
 
The way this is going I half expect to receive an email at some point: “We are sorry to inform you that your order has been cancelled, we did not actually expect anyone to order this product so we did not make any.”

Hitt's Yellowstone album is amazing.

The Sun Also Rises -- Hugo Friedhofer (Gerhardt's recording of this on the Captain Blood disc is superb!)
 
There's also a great sunrise cue in his score for The Best Years of Our Lives.
 

Soul of the Ultimate Nation
Skip the Hobbit crap! This is the only follow-up to Shore's Ring Trilogy that you need.

1. The Artist Who Did Not Want To Paint
2. The Wind and the Lion
3. Night Crossing
4. Star Trek: The Motion Picture
5. Planet of the Apes
6. Capricorn One
7. The Blue Max
8. The Final Conflict
9. Star Trek: The Final Frontier
10. 100 Rifles

'

'


You can never have enough Jerry.

Jaws 2 as well, please!

Stanley and Iris
Lovely, intimate. Perfect for an Autumn afternoon, with the leaves starting to fall...
Above and Beyond (Hugo Freidhofer)
His music for the atomic bomb is much akin to his searing main/end titles from The Sun Also Rises (as heard on the Gerhardt Errol Flynn album). I really need to check out more of his stuff.
The Jayhawkers (Jerome Moross)
This is The Big Country: Part Two. I'm not complaining.
The Hobbit: AUJ
War Horse
Plowing

It was inevitable that I'd eventually order this one, despite already owning the Rhino, the Sony 2-Disc form the early 90's, and Rozsa's London re-recording.
"One God, that I can understand; but one release of Ben-Hur? That is not civilized! It is not generous!"

(been meaning to get this for a while, finally ordered largely because of some of the recent comments about the Memoirs of a Geisha suite)
I'm listening to The Five Sacred Trees right now, I'm not really familar with Williams' concert work, so this is new territory for me.

Another Gerhardt crossed off the list; this disc tends to get mixed reviews, from what I've seen (James Southhall's fervent recommendation seems to be an exception), I'm curious to judge for myself.

My second Gordon (already have Moby Dick), I'm begining to think this guy can do no wrong. What else of his do I need?

(been meaning to get this for a while, finally ordered largely because of some of the recent comments about the Memoirs of a Geisha suite)
I'm listening to The Five Sacred Trees right now, I'm not really familar with Williams' concert work, so this is new territory for me.

Another Gerhardt crossed off the list; this disc tends to get mixed reviews, from what I've seen (James Southhall's fervent recommendation seems to be an exception), I'm curious to judge for myself.

My second Gordon (already have Moby Dick), I'm begining to think this guy can do no wrong. What else of his do I need?