nicholas

I'm afraid I have always shamefully neglected these scores, probably because I am not a great fan of action cues. It's not something I'm proud of. The only one I'm half familiar with is "The Last Crusade". Can someone enlighten a poor ignoramus: is the beautiful tune in "The Penitent Man Will Pass" the Ark theme? It certainly sounds like it ought to be...

I'm afraid I can't help you with the technical info. you request, but I do agree with you, it's a wonderfully nostalgiac and colourful piece. I see it almost as a robustly masculine companion piece to Copland's beautifully evocative "Knoxville: The Summer of 1915." I love the end, particularly - so triumphant.

"A Window to the Past" is pretty damn lachrymosal. That recorder is so vulnerable and plaintive. There is also a piece in Elgar's first "Wand of Youth" suite which seems to be sadness itself - I find it almost unbearable to listen to. Can't remember the exact name of the piece but you'll know it when you hear it.

The march from "Throne Room and End Titles" in Star Wars sounds very "patriotic" - it has all the chauvinistic swagger of "Pomp and Circumstance" by Elgar.

Excuse my ignorance - which is considerable - but what the hell is "Interstellar"?

Sometimes a fragment of a melody comes into my mind and I have to notate it on the back of my hand with a biro before it disappears into the ether. But one salient and regrettable observation worth making: music's usually better drunk than sober.

It would have to be "Midway." Not sure why they bothered re-recording it. Disagree completely about "War of the Worlds". I love that score. My recent disappointment has to be "Memoirs of a Geisha." Sad, but true.

A couple of days ago I was watching a BBC documentary on the so-called Terracotta Army, part of which is currently being exhibited at the British Museum (hence the documentary). At first I was rather annoyed by the soundtrack (which I took to be source music) which was so loud you could hardly hear the narration, but as the documentary progressed I began listening in greater depth, and with increasing admiration, to the music. At the end I was rather surprised to find the "composer" was one Adrian Williams - surprised first because the music was so good I could hardly believe it was written specially just for a TV documentary, and secondly because I'd never heard of this Adrian Williams (no relation, presumably...) But check out his website (which is in the process of being constructed) - just put Adrian Williams Composer into Google, and listen partiuclarly to the tracks Terracotta Army, Pastorale, and Terracotta Army, Museum. The first couple of minutes of the Collage track at the end could almost be from The Fury. Do fellow posters have any similar stories of chance discoveries which have led to them admiring or following a previously unknown composer? Even unlikely first discoveries of our own Mr Williams would be interesting to hear about if they are bizarre enough.

I find this a fascinating topic. My own view is that John Williams's association with "pop culture" (ie. Star Wars, Harry Potter etc., perhaps even film generally, up to a point) will always make him something of a peripheral figure when it comes to "serious music". He will always be seen as a film composer first, a composer of concert music second, whereas someone like Philip Glass, who actually seems to write more and more for film, has a long established canon of concert music, and so will be more highly regarded by the cultural "elite" (forgive my proliferation of inverted commas - I want to make it clear that all these notions are highly debatable and not my own). Personally I feel that Williams' music, at its very best, can stand proudly beside anything written in the last century, or indeed in this - but he will always be considered a "populist", even a composer of "light music".

For originality I like the sad kid on "Angela's Ashes".

I've always had a soft spot for "Meet Joe Black" which seems very rich musically. The opening, however, is a shameless rip-off of Arvo Part's Fratres - still, very effective.

I'm bored. So I have come up with a really stupid idea which will probably, and quite rightly, be ignored by everyone. However, I do think we should flex our imagination a bit more on these pages, so here goes... Imagine John Williams writes a score for ANY book/story/myth etc etc. Now imagine the cue listings. Here is mine for his score for "Winnie-The-Pooh": 1) Main Title and The Woods 2) For Tigger 3) Coming down the stairs 4) Nursery Waltz 5) Eeyore in trouble 6) The Jam Jar 7) For Christopher Robin 8) Balloons 9) Playing Pooh-Sticks 10) Winnie-the-Pooh theme 11) Finale You can also name any soloists you would like featured._ Crazy.

I wonder if he's ever had a proper professional stalker?

Discussions of the music from Close Encounters tend to concentrate on the score's finale, where suddenly, and symbolically, it becomes lushly tonal and melodic. Yet the majority of the score, and, I would suggest, its most distinctive and memorable passages, are atonal, or at least "expressionist", and it seems to me as if these parts are neglected in any technical discussions of it on these boards (although the expanded CD release has perhaps the fullest technical notes of any Williams score). To those of us of a certain age who saw the film when it was first released in the late seventies its impact cannot be overstated, and a part of that experience was, of course, the music. It was the reason I became a fan of Williams - Close Encounters was the first score of his, or of anyone's, I ever bought. It was the strangeness of the music I loved, the way it seemed so intimately welded to the experience of the film - the high discordant strings, the deep rumblings and churnings in the bass - to someone who'd never heard Ligeti it was a revelation, like a new musical vocabulary. I also loved the rhythmic, more earth-bound, action music (da da da DA da da da DA), almost a Jaws-like motif, which always seemed to accompany the movement of a car in the film. All of this was unforgettable to an impressionable 14 year old... It is my belief that Williams' score for Close Encounters, in particular the atonal writing, is amongst his very finest achievements. Do others share my enthusiasm, or is there, as I suspect, sometimes a feeling of (no pun intended) alienation from this score?

He will be sorely missed, as much for his enormous personality as his enormous voice. Not quite sure I get the "Yes, Giorgio" reference - did he actually sing on the soundtrack (which I've never heard)???

I love the solo viola theme from Morricone's "Hamlet". Its hesitant melancholia perfectly depicts the character of the depressed Dane.

You could play the top note with your nose?

Two words: "Cinema Paradiso"! Such a wonderful score for such a wonderful - if borderline schmaltzy - film. Does anyone know "Orca" by Morricone? Orca, the film, was the bastard son of Jaws, a shameless cashing in on the fear of big fish. But the score is typically Morricone: idiomatic and very haunting, and the most obscure soundtrack I own. Another favourite of mine is "Days of Heaven" which has a lovely child-like quality, and ravishing string writing. Sadly, the only version I have (twinned, inappropriately, with "Two Mules...") is of such poor sound quality it's almost too painful to listen to...

I was idly watching a re-run of "The Towering Inferno" on TV the other day when I heard what I assumed to be its love theme. Isn't this, apart from a note or two, IDENTICAL to the theme from "Earthquake"? I suggest that the United Nations is convened immediately to discuss this pressing issue of world importance.

That seems sad. I would never particularly want to watch the films again but the music is remarkable. I rate "Star oif Bethlehem" in its orchestral version on the OST as one of the most poignant and touching of all William's compositions. Give it a go, and forget the films.

90% of the film music I listen to is Williams. The remainder is divided between Morricone, Yared, Thomas Newman and a couple of others... Classical music: I don't go mad on the 'romantics' so much. I listen to Bach, Purcell, and a lot of Handel, who I love, and can't help feeling is a bit under-rated - to me he's one of the absolute greats. Then - taking on board a bit of Beethoven (to my mind the first movement - not the last - of the 9th symphony is the greatest piece of music ever written) and Brahms - I tend to hop to the 20th-century: Prokofiev (perhaps the most Williamsy of 'serious' composers), Stravinsky, Britten, Copland, and, a great love of mine, Tippett. His 'Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Correlli' - particularly trhe unique, astonishing fugue at its centre - was the soundtrack to my tortured adolescence. Pop/rock: I don't often sit down and listen to this, although I do admire Coldplay and Keane as song-writers. Occasionally I dabble with The Smiths and The Cure. And Madness always cheers me up.

It's worth pointing out that the film scores are almost invariably divided into convenient bite-size cues of an average of 3-5 minutes duration, ie. the length of the average pop song, and don't take the same committment to listen to as, say, a 30 minute concerto. The attention span required is that much greater for the concert pieces, particularly when taking into account the low boredom thresholds most people have.

"When you're all alone" from Hook. Vomit inducing.

In descending order of 'most often listened to' I set out my choices below: Angela's Ashes (the only score I regularly listen to from beginning to end) Hook Schindler's List Munich Close Encounters of the Third Kind The Fury Superman Star Wars (as in all of them but mostly A New Hope and Sith) Prisoner of Azkaban ET Stepmom Empire of the Sun War of the Worlds The scores I own but very rarely listen to (in no particular order): Nixon Sleepers Lost World Stanley and Iris Saving Private Ryan (apart from the Hymn) The score I never ever listen to, ever: Midway These are all subject to constant revision. Except for Midway.

For me, The Prisoner of Azkaban works best musically. But I love Harry's Wondrous World from The Philosopher's Stone (as we call it over here) and Chamber of Secrets contains Fawke's the Pheonix, my single favourite cue from the whole sequence. I haven't heard the two non-Williams efforts but I won't let that dictate my opinion of them: they stink. (only joking).