ChrisAfonso

Not sure if this warrants its own thread or not, but I've done a first pass at transcriptions of the new themes from DoD. I don't know if we've come up with consensus labels for all of these, besides the obvious for Helena and Voller. Also have little confidence that the Archimedes theme is transcribed rhythmically 100% accurately, or the tertiary Nazi theme harmonically.
 
 
Helena (transcribed from arrangement that premiered last year):

 
 
 
 
Antiquity/Antithykera Mechanism (transcribed from "Prologue")

 
 
 
Antithykera Mechanism (transcribed from "Archimedes Tomb")

 
 
Antikythera Piano Figure (transcribed from "Battle of Syracuse")
 

 
 
 
 
 
Archimedes (Transcribed from "Prologue")

 
 
 
Nazis 0 "Voller" (transcribed from "Airport")

 
 
 
 Nazis 1 "Spirit" (transcribed from "Prologue")

 
 
 
Nazis 2 "Supremacy" - exotic and furtive (transcribed from "Prologue")

 
 
 
Nazis 3 "Might" -- chorale(transcribed from "Prologue")

 
 
 
Nazis 4 "Determination" -- Transcribed from "The Airport"

 
 
 
 
Syracuse -- Transcribed from "The Battle of Syracuse"
 

 

No, I was thinking of another theme. I am not sure who named it (or if it was me)*, but it was the "memory of a child" theme.
 

 
edit: Ah, yes! I have written it in a footnote in my dissertation too, that it wasn't included in the ost. 
 
* Oh, it was named here:
https://jwfan.com/?p=3196

Decided to take a little dip into Tintin.
 
The old version of Sir Francis and the Unicorn.

As with many other scenes in the film, JW wrote two versions of the cue for Haddock's first vision (in the desert). 
In fact, the visions were originally organized in a different way: apparently, at first we were just shown two ships, and Francis giving orders [cues The Unicorn (unnumbered) and 1m20A Sailing with Sir Francis, recorded in 2010, were written for this version]. And already in the next vision (in the hospital) we were shown the fight with the pirates, the appearance of Rackham and the beginning of the confrontation [cue 1m21B Old Enemies Meet was written for start of this sequence]. This version can be seen in the featurette about music. 
That's why the old version is much shorter than the final version. In this version also interesting the pulsation of the drums throughout the cue (3 hand drums and 1 with sticks, dubbed by synth are indicated). The syncing in my video is very uncertain: I'm pretty sure that most of the shots have been redone over the year, but here's my rough attempt.

 
Later, a full-length battle was created, as well as a teasing appearance by Rackham at the end. So in 2011 an insert was written for the end of The Unicorn (4m20R The Unicorn) and a new cue 4m19C Sea Battle. JW strategically adapted material from 1m21B Old Enemies Meet (1:00-1:25 in the video), and used a snippet from the old version (1:42-1:52), but everything else is original material. 
In fact, the percussion is also noteworthy here: the pulsation now indicated as 3 'pirate' drums was still to be heard a lot, and should even have appeared in the middle of 4m20R. However, apparently, they were already abandoned during the recording, and so the last bars of the insert were retimed, and even recorded without the click track (because the pulsation is now gone). @TheUlyssesian did a video with synced OST version, and I tried to restore this along with drums and other bits: the chime hit for the pirate flag, the glisses of the harps when the pirates descend, the flutes during the piano solo...

I don't think I've been aware of Sea of Thieves until now. Apparently it's some pirate-themed action-adventure MMO. In any case, they've just announced a Monkey Island themed expansion:
 

https://neumation-music.com/products/danny-elfman-beetlejuice-in-full-score
 

 
Pity there is no complete score release to follow with the sheet music...

Mike Matessino just confirmed on @TownerFan's podcast that the Original Soundtrack album for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is coming from Disney Records, and also that as of the podcast recording (Sunday April 23rd), the album was "just finished". 
 
https://thelegacyofjohnwilliams.com/2023/04/28/sabrina-exclusive-first-listen/
 
About the movie, he says "I think there's still some dubbing to do, but the album is done".
 
The Indy 5 talk begins around 54 minutes into the episode, but check out the whole thing for a terrific preview of La-La Land's Sabrina!

The actual film doesn't use Williams' intended end credits piece; No one had heard it for 28 years until Mike debuted it here in this new set

Thirty Years Later: Scoring "Return to Monkey Island"
A video of a talk by Clint Bajakian, Michael Land, and Peter McConnell
https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1029371/Thirty-Years-Later-Scoring-Return

That 'another composer' is Garry Schyman, last I heard, who's one of the best video game composers around. His score for TORN is excellent, as is his iconic BIOSHOCK from years ago. To be honest, his involvement makes me want to check out this more than McCreary, who's been very hit/miss for me recently.

Was just about to post that performance. I liked it. That conductor just leaded us last week. 

I'm still bummed I missed this performance a few months ago just an hour from where I live, but thankfully they put it online:
 

Exactly this idea came to my mind at my last LtP concert! (RotJ in January, with much too loud sound effects for a reverberant concert hall) - Provide open-ear earbuds (so the orchestra still comes through clearly when put on) attached to devices with audio track selection - that way anyone can choose to hear the sfx and/or original/dubbed dialogue track according to their preference - or just take it off and enjoy the score, unamplified (depending on venue). This would also help too keep dialogue/sfx dry instead of reverberating through the hall.
One can dream...

Exactly this idea came to my mind at my last LtP concert! (RotJ in January, with much too loud sound effects for a reverberant concert hall) - Provide open-ear earbuds (so the orchestra still comes through clearly when put on) attached to devices with audio track selection - that way anyone can choose to hear the sfx and/or original/dubbed dialogue track according to their preference - or just take it off and enjoy the score, unamplified (depending on venue). This would also help too keep dialogue/sfx dry instead of reverberating through the hall.
One can dream...

I'm still bummed I missed this performance a few months ago just an hour from where I live, but thankfully they put it online:
 

Tonight at the Arkansas symphony orchestra 

What!
 
As far as prestige goes, I think that's at least as big as the concert at the Musikverein.

One of the most breathtaking pieces of music I've ever heard in a TV show.
 
 

The Musikverein's newsletter confirms that a new Williams fanfare for the ball will premiere this January.
 
 

Well, I wouldn't call 60 years a slight difference...
 
One important factor is probably whether these albums were part of your introduction to film music. For me, one of them were (listened to it a lot when it came out, but didn't own it): Schindler's List: The Classic Film Music Of John Williams. It contains several good performances, especially the piano version of the SL theme, but it probably contains just as many performances that I wasn't happy with. Still, I should probably track down a copy for sentimentality's sake.
 

C’mon, his peak at least started in the 70s… Jane Eyre, his first Oscar win for Fiddler on the Roof, The Cowboys, Images, JAWS (and its first sequel), Close Encounters, The Fury for DePalma, Family Plot for Hitchcock, SUPERMAN, a little film called STAR WARS???
 
What’s this 1954 film score you’re referring to? Was it a student film or something he did for the Air Force? Because his first Hollywood film score was Daddy-O in 1958…
 
And while I’ve got my pedantic professor hat on…
 

Anyone who regards it as such is being ignorant; anyone who declares it as such is either that or dishonest. King Kong in complete form is a little over 70 minutes long. And it’s not even “wall to wall” because the film has almost half an hour without music. Check out this great podcast episode for interesting commentary on that:
https://www.settlingthescorepodcast.com/14-king-kong/
 
In the previous decade composers such as Gottfried Huppertz (Metropolis, Die Nibelungen) were composing even larger scale and more wall to wall orchestral film scores of much greater sophistication and complexity than what Steiner did for King Kong (or similarly for the same creative team the previous year for The Most Dangerous Game, for that matter!)
 
(2.5 hours!!)
 
(4.5 hours! It was an epic two-part film, but still…)
 
Hell, the very first original orchestral film score by Camille Saint-Saens way back in 1908 was virtually wall to wall itself! (It’s just that the film was only about 20 minutes long.)
 
(Start on Track 5.)

My favorite French film score from the 20s is Salammbo by Florent Schmitt:
(This isn’t even the complete score, but three suites from it cut down for concert performance purposes.)
 
None other that Doug Adams (The Music of the Lord of the Rings Films) is another champion of this one:
https://florentschmitt.com/2014/06/12/film-music-specialist-doug-adams-talks-about-florent-schmitts-salammbo-and-other-music-scores-from-the-silent-film-era/amp/
 
And it’s not just the French and Germans. Dmitri Shostakovich started writing long form film music in Russia during the 1920s. His score to Odna was years before King Kong, was long form, played with diegetic and non-diegetic, and even was the first film score to feature the theremin, many years before Rozsa or Herrmann used it!
(79 minutes long)
 
Then we have Spanish composer Ernesto Halffter (Carmen, 1926):
 
(66 min long)
 
Finnish composer Armas Jarnefelt with the very first original orchestral film score written in Finland (just 11 years after Saint-Saens’s sole film score):
(99 minutes long!)
 
Italian composer Pietro Mascagni’s score for Rapsodia Satanica (he’s best known for the opera Cavalleria Rusticana but he did this one film score in 1917):
 

“But Yavar! Max Steiner was the first person to write full length orchestral scores in HOLLYWOOD!”
 
Nope! None other than La-La Land Records released a restoration of the Zamecnik score to Wings (1927) years ago — 76.5 minutes, longer than King Kong:
https://lalalandrecords.com/wings-limited-edition/

And he’s not the first in the United States either! That might(?) have been for the odious (but historically important) Birth of a Nation (1913), with original orchestral score composed by Joseph Carl Breil:
https://moviemusicuk.us/2022/01/10/the-birth-of-a-nation-joseph-carl-breil/
 
And for Spotify users, we have this new (released earlier this year!) Mark Fitz-Gerald-conducted recording of The Thief of Bagdad — no, not the well remembered 1940 version by Miklos Rozsa, but one by American composer Mortimer Wilson for the 1924 Hollywood version starring Douglas Fairbanks… 74 minutes on album, also more substantial than King Kong which it pre-dated by nine years:
Wilson was something of a film music specialist all through the 1920s in Hollywood, by the way… at least a half dozen film scores starting with 1920’s The Mark of Zorro and going through 1928’s The Good-bye Kiss and The Night Watch.
 
So yeah, while the 1933 film King Kong was the first Hollwood film to achieve *that* level of popularity, and therefore Steiner’s lengthy (but not unprecedentedly so) orchestral score has gotten a lot of press and attention over the years… NO, it wasn’t “first”… by any meaningful metric.
 
Yavar

Another awesome detail I never picked up on until today: JW sneaks in the ostinato motif from Duel of the Fates! Listen extremely closely to the viola part at 0:14.
 

@fommes on the left, @bigjimwilson, @Jim Ware, @Jay, @TownerFan on the right
 

Oh yeah, here's something that might justify having the OST being included: reminding you how shitty modern mainstream mastering can be, as the new expansion (the top track) actually handles the compression much better!