nicholas

Thanks very much for the info. All very intriguing!

Do you know what the subject of the opera was to be?

I've started going to the opera. Last week I saw Aida for the first time (a friend suggested it should be updated and set in Afghanistan and re-named Alqaida - not funny) and a couple of weeks before that Monteverdi's Coronation of Poppeia. I was quite surprised by how bored I wasn't. One would think opera and film music had quite a lot in common, so it is a little surprising it's not discussed more on these boards. I wonder what an opera by John Williams would be like - and I'm not talking "Thomas and the King." That's 'musical theatre' which is quite different. What would he choose as his subject matter? Do YOU like Opera?

I couldn't agree more. I particularly love the finale with its jig and sweeping love theme. Another score which I think is similarly under-appreciated is Empire of the Sun. Good film, too.

The LSO performance is on Disc 2 of the Varèse release, I believe. Quite correct. Funnily enough I never listen to the OST.

The Fury - the LSO version, rather than the OST. It's ragged at times - I think it was recorded when some time was left over after the original Star Wars sessions - but incredibly potent. Jaws 2 is fun with some good rollicking salty sea dog type music. And I like Earthquake too - nice main theme, with one particularly melancholic arrangement of it, but very very seventies. In conclusion: The Fury.

Arlington. Or the slow movements from the Beethoven's Eroica (perhaps a little corny) or Symphony No. 7.

The opening scene of "Four Weddings" wouldn't be quite as effective without the fucks (as it were).

I presume "cussing" means using blue language, as we say. Well, just imagine "Withnail and I" without it. It just wouldn't work. Uncle Monty would no longer be a "terrible c***" which must be one of the funniest lines in film history. Does anyone have any idea what I'm wittering on about? Has anyone actually seen "Withnail and I"?

Marcus - would you recommend a particular recording? Would love to get hold of the New York Phil one used in the documentary, but don't think it was ever released on CD.

UK Tubist - I have no idea who you are, or what you do - but you will always hold a special place in my heart! THANK YOU!

Just remembered!! How could I forget!!! I once sat next to Bamber Gascoigne in the cinema. We didn't talk. We were watching Polanski's "Tess" if I remember correctly. I'd rather have been sitting next to Nastassia Kinsky, frankly.

Thanks for everyone's replies. Sorry Neil - I wasn't able to provide the direct link myself - I'm technologically challenged and of a generation that has only just got our heads round cassettes. The quest goes on... and on... By the way, is Ellen Taaffe Zwilich a well-known composer in the US? I've heard a few bits and pieces by her now and like her work very much. How refreshing to hear a successful woman composer, of which there are so few. I wonder - I just wonder - whether the mystery piece in question could be by her?

I have being trying to identify a piece of music for two years - without success. But now I have a lead... The music accompanied the title sequence in the HBO documentary "In Memoriam: New York" which was released in 2002, a profoundly moving documentary released a year after 9/11. I know it is performed by Leonard Slatkin and the NY Philharmonic. You can hear the piece in question if you put "New York Memoriam Documentary" into Google and go into the first site that comes up. Click on the small square which says "In Memoriam: New York" and the music starts up rather quietly in the background. It starts with a ?clarinet solo but then becomes much more distinctive, almost bluesy. I LOVE it. When I first heard it I thought it might be Copland or Bernstein or even Gershwin, but it sounds more 'modern' than these. Now further, if almost fruitless, researches have led me to suspect it MAY be by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, a composer I'm not familiar with. Help me. Someone. Please.

I once spent a few hours with Fred Zinnemann (RIP). A more modest and delightful man it would be hard to imagine...

I'd probably be inclined to abduct him and hold him prisoner in the manner of that film "Misery."

He seems to be associating "low brow" with Hollywood, and including Williams in that generalisation. Of course, I do realise that Star Wars wasn't a Spielberg film!!!

There was an interesting article by Norman Lebrecht in yesterday's London Evening Standard. He is a highly regarded music critic in the UK and is very influential in contemporary classical music circles. The article was about Korngold's fall from favour and eventual rejection by the 'serious' musical community when "Hollywood success had blighted his high-brow reputation." To quote: "The line [Korngold] crossed remained inviolate until the past decade when, facing audience crisis, orchestras took up the Steven Spielberg scores of John Williams and the Lord of the Rings suite by Howard Shore ... Yet listening to current movie scores (Patrick Doyle's fine work, for instance, for the forthcoming Sleuth) you realise how little the art of movie composing has advanced since Korngold gave up in 1946, how struck directors have become in the expectations of action and emotion that he cultivated, major themes for love, minor for loss. "Korngold ... richly deserves to be welcomed back to the concert hall. But he deserves even more to be recognised as a pioneer of an allied art, an art that now cries out for a new Korngold to rejuvenate its methodology. The time has come to erase the line between movie and conert music, to encourage the likes of John Adams, Thomas Ades and Mark Anthony Turnage to try their hand at lifting film tracks out of the Korngold groove and into 21st-century modalities." It sounds to me as if Mr Lebrecht is somewhat misinformed about John Williams. For all his clear intelligence, he seems to only have been listening to Star Wars. Or do you agree with his implication - that Williams, and most film composers, are hopelessly stuck in the past?

In fact I've changed my mind about the Bach Mass. I think I'd just have silence, interrupted by the occasional polite cough.

Bach's Mass in B Minor. Played very slowly. Twice.

The one scene in a film where music playes a pivotal part and that invariably makes me boo is in "The Mighty." It's the scene where Max is running through the streets of Cincinnatti when his friend has died. Trevor Jones's music is wonderful here - a solo choirboy sings above the orchestra. It's a wonderful part of a really beautiful and underrated score. I've noticed that often the effect of music in a film is enhanced when the music is played without any background noise, as in the scene described above. There's a scene in that monumental and clumsy epic "A Bridge Too Far" (a film I was inexplicably enamoured with when a child) where a jeep, containing Laurence Olivier no less (playing a doctor) passes through a ruined Arnhem. John Addison's beautifully sad, although plagiarised, theme plays without interruption as the camera pans across the ruin. Somehow so much more powerful than if you could hear machine guns and explosions...

I don't know Raiders well enough to distinguish between tracks - they all sound pretty good to me - but from ET I would have to recommend "ET and Me". The moment when the simple but beautiful theme is taken up by the full strings - and what strings they are! - about half way through the track is one of the great moments of any Williams' track, in my view. I have to say that the Flying Music is just too familiar for me to appreciate any longer, but that's not an inherrent fault of the music.

Thanks - I'm sure you're right. I really have to make the effort and get into these scores a bit more. Sounds like I'm missing out.

I'm afraid I don't have the CD to hand, but it's the shortish melody - perhaps phrase would be a better word - that recurs several times through the piece... it has a sad nobility to it. I've always loved it.

No, since it's the wrong film. Why don't you like action cues? It's not so much action cues per se - I tend to avoid film music that exactly accompanies what's going on on the screen. I'm more of a concert suite type person. I think that's why Angela's Ashes is one of my favourites: it's like one long concert suite with very little what you might call 'narrative' music. What IS the tune in "The Penitent Man Will Pass"? or is it a one-off theme?