ChrisAfonso

"Did you get the Dial of Destiny soundtrack on the CD format before it sold out?"
 

 

Here are two for Jaws
 

 

Long live JW and his legacy!
Congrats and thank you to Maurizio!

Here we go:
https://www.jwpepper.com/11523047.item
 
The suite is a professional full orchestra (John Williams Signature Edition) and includes the following movements: 1. The Rise of Skywalker
2. Psalm of the Sith
3. Rey and Ben
4. Speeder Chase

Naxos have made a new recording of JW's Trumpet Concerto, again the Detroit Symphony with Hunter Eberly as the soloist. Hopefully this might mean they are restarting the series and maybe will get to his Viola Concerto...
 
More info: https://www.naxos.com/CatalogueDetail/?id=9.70907
Buy it: https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/9521964--john-williams-trumpet-concerto
 
Yes, it's digital only, but it's lossless download to keep forever so I'm good with that!

I think this is one of those instances where "labelling" the melody line with chord symbols based on the bass line may obscure what's happening.
 
I think Williams knew that he wanted a climactic, "Americana" instance of the last three notes of the Mission Theme, and he decided that there was going to be some kind of extended harmony involved. And I think all that Williams did was move vertically downwards from the melody line, building up the harmony that way.
 
For example, for the first note, we could harmonize it like Bbmaj7 with the A at the top...because we like maj7s, and it keeps us in the right key (as opposed to, say, Dmaj7, with the A on top, which would take us out of the key).
 
But Bbmaj7 doesn't sound rich enough. So we can keep going down, first to G (Gm9), then Eb (Ebmaj#11). We could still have gone down to C (Cm13), but JW didn't.
 
The next note might have been built downwards the same way. JW decided to stop at Ab this time, thus giving us a 13th chord, "richer" than the preceding 11th. So we get a buildup in harmonic richness before arriving at the tonic.
 
But here's the thing with the final chord: we could have gone down to F, in which case the bass would in fact be the dominant tone. And if you add the extra F at the bottom, it really doesn't sound that different from the final result (far less noticeable than if you had changed the top note, for instance). So, in fact, it is a kind of v -> I cadence, only you can say that JW left out the bass note, thus replacing the v with a chord of somewhat air-ier, more ambiguous quality.
 
Anyway, this is how I would think about that passage in particular. Using chord symbols makes the most sense IMO when you have a meaningful bass line, but in this particular case I would argue that there is no "bass line" as such.

What we need is a remastered and expanded dinorama.

Congratulations, you're part of the problem.

Mockup of the beginning of The Imperial March
 
 

Haha, I do that too ... w/o commercials though:
 
After years of experimenting I have a quite satisfying setup: Hand-cut "aperture plates" for the projector to avoid any light spill depending on the width of the picture (constant height), my own 3D-animated curtains, and an automated system on the Linux box that seamlessly switches from curtains to inline trailer lists plus a short maybe - all as files launched via mplayer w/ special padding, and finally to the Kodi player waiting in the background, paused on the first frame of the studio logo of the feature film on disc.
 
P.S.: Back to the topic now...

I think, I liked Dermot Mulroney best in "Living in Oblivion".
 
Anyway one of my favourite comedies.

Here's me playing my own arrangement of Helena's Theme for piano:
 
 
Note: if you have perfect pitch, or an excellent musical memory, then this arrangement may drive you crazy as I mix and match elements from the standard version and the violin version (including some key changes). Though hopefully the final result is coherent enough.

I'm not going to lie—I was excitedly curious how quickly this news would hit JWFan!
 
For those who don't know me, I've been writing about film music and interviewing composers (and directors and actors) professionally for the past decade. Besides the many liner notes, I also write articles and create radio stories for mainstream news outlets like the L.A. Times and NPR. I teach a film music history course at USC. And I've been a card-carrying member of this site since 2003.
 
I won't divulge too much just yet, because it's still a little early, but I was excited to finally make it public that this book is happening. I've been working on it for three years now, and I've interviewed approximately 150 people. The big kahuna, of course, is John Williams. I plan to share the story of how that happened one day, but not yet.

Thanks for your excitement! I can promise you that there are many things (stories, facts, quotes) in this book you have never heard...
 
Tim

Apparently Tim Greiving has just announced the first English biography on John Williams, to be released in 2025:
 
https://timgreiving.com/john-williams-in-his-adventure-on-earth/

Wenn sie keine CDs haben, dann sollen sie doch Bücher kaufen!

Yes, welcome and this is a favorite topic of many of us here.  Basically, how did he know to do that thing he did.  This particular instance is a very famous "spacey" example and is a space cliche (time honored tradition).  He's immediately setting the location of distant, mysterious location using musical tropes of polytonality just like others did before every time they wanted to evoke the same thing.  The lesson here is that JW didn't invent this but studied this.  Many other works do this exact same thing as Loert points out.  Holst's Planets which you absolutely must study but also Vaughan Williams Sinfonia Antarctica which similarly referenced this vernacular.  Major up high and minor a half step above down below is suggestive of mysteries expansiveness.  In Holst, Neptune uses E minor in the trumpets and G# major in the trombones.  This works because it's tonally unsettling.  You have E, G, B, G#, C, D# (everything's a half step off) this minor second is unsettling but separated in tonal space just feels otherworldly.  We can even dive in to this deeper by showing that dissonances separated are more pleasing.  Of course, JW knew this.  He wasn't looking for harshness but for ambiguity...setting the stage most succinctly.  Every great artist looks to say the most with the least words.  JW did so musically in the example you are asking about. 

A very arcane detail, but something about the sound of the Archimedes theme at 1:24 in "Centuries join hands" intrigues me - it appears to be a horn(s) line with added flute octave and harp accents, but something about it sounds more noble/open/round than other comparable passages... I'm curious if that might be wagner tuba instead, or just quietly doubled by trombone (?)
 
(Generally after more repeated listens this score reveals more and more intricate details, especially in the less "obvious" places... a real gem)

we have Marc for that

Congratulations, you're part of the problem.

Congratulations, you're part of the problem.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply that, I had a knee-jerk response and didn't get the joke.

It just occurred to me while listening to The Airport that this nervous opening string ostinato seems to be derived from the first four notes of Helena’s theme. @Falstaft @Ludwig Do you agree?
 


 

Fantastic article! What I particularly love about it is how you draw the lens towards underscore/action music specifically. Usually when Williams is mentioned in articles, it's almost always in reference to his pretty themes, his use of leitmotif etc...but not much on the actual underscore per se. But for me, the underscore can be just as rewarding to listen to, if not more. So it's great to see this "subgenre" getting some love, no less in a newspaper as high profile as the NYT.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/07/07/opinion/indiana-jones-movie-john-williams-music.html
 
Wonderful article just published in the NY Times, and written by @Falstaft! Check it out!

To celebrate the release of the last(maybe) Indy movie, I made a short arrangement of the Raiders march for my brass quintet. I figured it would be a relevant short piece to play for our school concerts or as an encore at a recital. I was inspired by the shortened version Williams played a few days ago.
Don’t pay too much attention to my virtual brass quintet, although the NotePerformer software is really nice for the price.
 
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/kgiqb5e90py1vvvt0nezx/Raiders-March.wmv?dl=0&rlkey=ba9w6pz56vyrsgwe05vl1wcbt