nicholas

You will not remember but a few months ago I posted here requesting for help with identifying a piece of music that appears over the titles to the HBO documentary "New York: In Memoriam". I'm afraid I drew a blank. The music starts with a long rather world-weary clarinet solo - then follows a jazzy pulse, punctuated by a bell-like triangle, and various instruments play short solos with really wonderful dischords. I know that the documentary features music by many great American composers, most of which I am familiar with, and this could almost be by any of them. But I noticed that someone mentions that the documentary also featured the music of John Corigliano, better known for his film scores. I know that he wrote a clarinet solo with a slow movement called "elegy", and I wondered whether this, possibly, could be the mystery music? Does anyone know the piece? Can anyone help at all?

Morricone seems to me to be the most uniquely idiomatic composer working in film today. Every one of his scores that I know has some special flavour or idiosyncracy. I'm not a great fan of the western scores (in fact I'm ashamed to admit I don't know them) but that's probably because I'm not a great fan of westerns - what is more likely to induce a yawn than a shot of cavalry riding over a dusty hillside? Highlights of Morricone's output for me would include the solo viola tune in the main title of "Hamlet" (perfectly capturing Hamlet's fatal melancholia), the string writing in "Days of Heaven", all of "Cinema Paradiso" and, of course, "The Mission" - the fusion of lines in the main title is nothing short of sublime.

I have to agree with all of the above. I love this score, and did from the moment I bought it. It would be invidious to pick out for special mention individual tracks from a score that works so beautifully as a whole - I think of it as an orchestral suite, or series of variations rather than a soundtrack. But if I had to I suppose it would be "Angela's Prayer" and "Plenty of Fish and Chips..." Uniquely atmospheric, and musically the equal of "Schindler's List," I believe...

Quite right - I suppose I was referring the sort of people who use the word "text" when the word "book" would do just as well. People often will use a word they think sounds better over the one they really mean.

As the saying goes - why use a long word when a diminutive one will do? I think this writer is never very far from his Thesaurus. Reminds me somewhat of the style of writing employed in Filmtracks - who needs "orchestra" when you can use "ensemble"? It's the dress of learning, not the substance. Other words which get my bullsh*t-detector jangling are "text" (instead of "book") and "space" (instead of "theatre"). You just know you're in for a load of twaddle.

We won't see the film for a while here in the UK, sadly. No-one seems to have mentioned the role of the score in the film. Is it prominent? or more subdued as, apparently, in United 93 (which I also haven't seen yet)?

Has anyone heard John Williams' "Thomas and the King", a musical he wrote in the early eighties? I believe a cast-recording is available. It seems to have been widely panned by the critics at the time, and then quietly forgotten. Is it an aberration worth seeking out, or best left to rest?

Originally I'm from Sussex - but now live in London. I've never really understood the term 'bootleg'. Who makes bootlegs? Are they illegal? If they are, I'd be surprised if the expanded version is one since the shop that stocks it is well-known, although independent (ie not a big chain).

I assume this score is worth having since it seems pretty highly thought of. But which version should I get? There's a shorter one on the internet priced at £10.99 and an expanded version in my local record store at £29. Is there anything I shouldn't be missing on the latter?

Another Morricone score I love is "Days of Heaven" - full of rapturous string writing which perfectly complements the imagery of the film (although I haven't seen it for many years). However, the CD must be the worst sub-bootleg sound quality I have ever heard. Twinned with the extraordinary score for "Two Mules for Sister Sara", which is charming but has to be heard to be believed. At the moment you can't turn on "Classic FM TV" (or whatever it's called) without seeing an intense Morricone conducting something very sad and introverted from "Once Upon a Time in America." Is it the main theme? Quite beautiful.

Is anyone familiar with this score? I remember the film was pretty risible - apart from a few nice shots of a whale jumping out of the sea - but the music was very haunting. I notice it has recently be re-released. WHat is the general view on Morricone? He seems almost laughably prolific but I like everything I have heard by him, particularly "The Mission" and "Cinema Paradiso", of course.

I stand corrected and offer my apologies.... And at the risk of being castigated again - surely the most famous (if not the best) waltz in all film music must be Richard Rodney Bennett's "Murder on the Orient Express"?

The Fury, of course. And "Growing up in Whittier" from Nixon has the feel of a waltz, although technically I don't think it is one.

This is getting increasingly disturbing. I mean, it HAS to be a joke about the Holst Foundation, doesn't it?

I listen predominantly to "classical" music. I wouldn't ever describe myself as a "film music" fan as such, just as a John Williams fan. 95% of my film scores are by him. I occasionally listen buy "pop" or "rock" when something grabs me as being new or interesting. I find it strange that people can be into film music yet have no interest in "classical." I'd have thought that orchestral film music, at least, had much more in common with "classical" than with "pop" or "rock." Sorry about all the inverted commas. I'm not comfortable with all these imposed genre definitions.

It's funny, but I only have the version with the voice-overs. I don't mind them at all - in fact I find, if anything, they seem to contribute to the unique atmosphere of the music.

Beautifully put - I couldn't agree more. I have always felt that Angela's Ashes was under-rated - it is, in my opinion, one of Williams's consummate masterpieces. Part of the reason for this is the way it is presented on album - there's just no waffle or dull underscore. Like Schindler's List, it feels like a suite for orchestra as much as a soundtrack. As in Schindler's List, every note conveys the composer's profound involvement with his subject matter. Thank you, Icanus, for reminding me how much I love this music. this

"The River" seems to be one of those scores hardly anyone ever talks about yet wasn't it nominated for an Oscar back in the eighties? I did hear a couple of excerpts from it a few years back and remember a rather disconcerting pop-drumbeat and yet it is sometimes described as being part of Williams's 'Americana' trilogy with "The Reivers" and "The Cowboys". Does anyone rate it? Is it worth tracking down?

I am not an enormous fan of Elgar, I must admit. I consider the Violin Concerto one of the dullest pieces of music ever composed although many people speak very highly of it. If I go for anything with Elgar it's the melancholy over the bombastic or patriotic: I love the opening of the First Symphony - that sad plodding, like a defeated army walking away from Empire - and there's a movement in the first suite from The Wand of Youth - I believe it's called the Slumber Scene - which has a unique atmosphere of nostalgia and melancholic reverie.

How's that for an obscure topic? Seriously... My girlfriend is studying to be a milliner (ie hat designer). For her end-of-term catwalk show she is using the opening of "Seven Years in Tibet" (!). Can anyone else cite even more outrageously inappropriate uses of the maestro's music? ie. the theme from "Schindler's List" in a toothpaste commercial, that sort of thing.

The Russians generally know how to throw an orchestra around. Prokofiev is always fun, particularly the jazzy and noisy piano concertos, and of course Stravinsky's 3 great ballets are set-pieces of orchestration in their different ways, The Firebird, Petrushka and Rite of Spring - the last possibly the first truly "modern" piece of music (although some would claim that for the Eroica!).

I recently met a violinist for the LSO at a party. After a few drinks (I don't know why I'm still so inhibited about my idolisation of the maestro) I asked him what he thought of the music of John Williams. Without hesitation he said "it's brilliant." Then I asked him what he thought of Williams the man (as opposed to Williams the guinea pig) and he said he thought he was "professional." Now, professionalism doesn't to my mind come very high up in the pantheon of human qualities - it's on the same level as "efficiency" and "singleness of purpose". The impression I got from our conversation was that the orchestra almost FEARED him. Certainly there was no sense that they held him in any great affection. I felt rather deflated, I must say...

Although it's a score I rarely listen to (apart from the sublime "Arlington", of course) I think that JFK has some very effective underscore. Those snare drums...!

Have you tried Prokofiev's? Wow.

Apart from the Wagner quotation in The Terminal cited above (which I did not know since I am not an avid Wagnerian) the only other direct quotation of a classical piece in a Williams score that I can think of is from a Chopin mazurka which is incorporated into a track in "Empire of the Sun" (ie I am not talking about source music here). And I'm not going to make the Krakozian (sp?) anthem joke and also "When You Wish Upon A Star" is not classical.... Williams sometimes sounds so much like another composer that you think he must be paying deliberate homage. I am thinking particularly of passages in "Hook" which sound strikingly like Debussy's "La Mer". Williams even adopts the oscillating string figure to represent waves, a device which I believe was Debussy's innovation in La Mer.