Marcus

I find the main theme very moving, memorable, and marvellously sculpted. To me, these samples already reveal a gem of a score, of a quality not likely to be penned by anyone but Williams. There's a lot of heart in these brief sonic glimpses; this sounds like a very personal effort to my ears.

Stunningly, painfully beautiful!

For me, this example doesn't qualify as "unconscious plagiarism". Generally, instances of such plagiarism are much more obvious and undiluted. It's far too eclectically constructed, meaning there's too little in common between the piece in question and its perceived "source". I believe all artists are derivative in one way or another. It's human nature, and subsequently the nature of any cultural expression of ours. In other words, coming up with an idea that shares one or several features with another pre-existing idea by a colleague, living or dead, happens all the time. Music is a language.

To me, as a composer, there's no real "link"; there are melodic and very general textural similarities, but I consider those more a question of musical archetypes. Both the Beethoven and the Williams stem from a style that crystallized in late 18th Century revolutionary France, a kind of musical heroicism that is essentially based on the melodics of revolutionary vernacular songs (songs that also form part of the American musical core -music was always international!). It is simply an almost impossibly thankless task to go around and crib musical ideas from one's forebears. It's just not what we do! It is so much easier to be original (not to mention more fun). Therefore, I will always -unless it's a matter of conscious hommage, or unconscious plagiarism (which is mostly a children's disease plagueing amateurs, not professionals)- be dismissive of any speculation as to "other origins" of a piece of music. Like any language, a musical language doesn't originate with any one person; we all share it, practice it, form our idiosyncracies and dialects and take part in its continued, ever-expanding creation.

I'm afraid I don't quite see your point? It's tonal music in a very conservative (and in Williams' case consciously "19th Century"-restricted) idiom; the similarities are fleeting; basic melodic and harmonic building blocks of a very highly defined and stylized musical language.

No, you didn't. But you found a cadence (not endemic to Beethoven's Emperor Concerto) that constitutes the first three notes of that theme.

@Indy4: I think your original selections are all terrific works of music. The Sinfonietta for winds is not a mature work, though. A lot of great wind writing, and plenty of "Williams-isms", but still very searching as far as idiom. And not a lot of the warm expressivity of his later concert works. "Rounds" is much better, and much, much more confident. CMIYC and MoaG are both fantastic, but they are sort of "niche" scores; entirely Williams, yet through the prisms of other idioms. Therefore, they might not be the most emblematic of the Williams "core", even though every bar of them rings 100% with his voice. As far as originality as a concept is concerned, I think what we really mean is "idiosyncratic", "personal" and perhaps "unmistakable". I personally don't believe in originality in the sense of "being of its own origin"/"having no source". All art, as all people, has sources.

Original as far as personal voice, I think the concert works are where to start, but keep in mind that the early pieces are less assured, stylistically. The Flute Concerto is a rather "young" piece, and his musical voice, though entirely present, lacks the confidence of his maturer works. Two early examples that show what his true style was to become, are "Essay for Strings", and especially the 2nd movement of his Violin Concerto. To my ears, some of the pieces that let Williams core voice sparkle the most luminously, would be: -"The Five Sacred Trees" (entire concerto) -"Elegy for Cello & Orchestra" -"Cello Concerto" (especially the outer movements) -"Horn Concerto" (all of it) -"Treesong" (all of it) -"On Willows & Birches" (especially "Birches") -"Hide and Seek" (from "A.I") -"Fluffy's Harp" (from "HP1") -"American Journey" (1st movement, and "Arts&Sciences") -The concert version of "Getting out the Vote" (from "Lincoln")

I think all the cues listed sound quintessentially "John Williams". To my ears, Williams' musical identity has nothing to do with outward stylistics (i.e. what medium it was written for, density, pace and volume of music etc.). Rather, it's a matter of pure writing: pitch and interval preferences (regardless of tonality/atonality), phrase construction, emotional flow and ultimately a certain "core soul" that runs through all of it. Even "A Guide for the Married Man" (especially the harmonization of the word "married").

Good point!

Sigh... This reads like something out of the 60s or 70s, polemically. The power of incongruity -which seems to be the essay's main point of emphasis- does not automatically dismiss the power and indeed intelligence of other approaches to scoring a scene. I like incongruity if it somehow ends up being truly poetic; if it "reveals" something about a scene, and in so doing, amplifies it. Otherwise, it remains as shallow as any other approach executed badly. The author admits in his footnotes to have little knowledge of music. Which leads me to believe that he isn't equipped to properly distinguish between high and low quality of writing. And subsequently, a lot of musical layers would be lost on him. Oh well. I've read such essays and arguments before. They are Adorno's legacy, and as boring and uninstructive as I find them, I'm sure they make their authors feel educated, smart and validated. Good for them!

It isn't a Copland motif any more than a rising arpeggio is a Haydn or Mozart motif; it's simply a piece of musical glossary that we associate with Americana (and other things in other contexts). It pre-dates Copland by hundreds and probably thousands of years. Coming back to the thread: I have to say I was very much taken with how Williams had elaborated on his "Lincoln" score in the three selections I heard last Wednesday in Boston. Especially "Getting Out the Vote" has become an entirely new and different piece, colorful and energetic with lots of motivic development. Drastically changed harmonically, the original material is now super-imposed on swirling clustral/bi- and polytonal figures (a little reminiscent of textures found in the harp concerto as well as in many of his more recent film scores), and imbued with a playfulness that is wonderfully vital and vibrant. Also "The People's House" and "With Malice Toward None" were significantly embellished, the former with new woodwind doublings in the introductory bars, the latter with a quite extensive obbligato cello part.

Wonderful news! Thanks for sharing!

Collaboration for artistic purposes can be fruithful, I think, but remains contingent on an actual artistic contribution. The challenge is to have enough space to be able to offer something of merit and substance, while at the same time making sure that there's some sort of coherency -or at the very least, an interesting dynamic or tension- to the sources at hand. For this reason, I tend to prefer as heterogenous a collaborative pairing as possible. There are creative duos and teams that succeed in establishing a kind of artistic "mutuality", although I've never personally been quite as convinced by such "collective" voices. Just as a choir blurs the color of the individual voice, so do I perceive -perhaps incorrectly or clouded by prejudice- a slight diminution of personality to such ventures. Unless they work more the way a band works, with often quite clearly defined roles and capacities. (Some of the collaborations mentioned (Goldsmith&McNeely on "Air Force One", Goldsmith&Goldsmith on "Star Trek: First Contact") are primarily examples of collaboration dictated by time constraints, and that's entirely different.) True, the monetary-driven pressure to adhere to what may currently be perceived as a successful "formula" (based on perceived commercial viability) is probably the one greatest obstacle facing anyone who wishes to contribute something more personal and (very likely) of greater artistic ambition and integrity. I've dealt with this myself in my own limited experience with feature films, and it's one of the reasons why I primarily work in the field of concert music, though I'd love to score more films. Even relatively modest productions generally have a lot of money at stake, and of course, everyone wants their film to be as successful as possible (also financially), and music tends to be an easy thing to blame and replace. In my experience, producers want to hear something that is as close to the finished product as possible, as soon as possible, and ideally as close to their expectations as possible; all three potentially problematic, as far as I'm concerned.

I wouldn't want a Giacchino-Williams collaboration. Also, this "film composers aren't real composers/artists" attitude is what composers like Williams fought against their entire careers. Your first statement is a perpetuation of a stereotype that has plagued wonderful artists from the Steiners and Roszas to our modern day Williams. It seems you have adopted the stereotype, but tweaked it just enough to let John Williams in, in the process missing the spirit of these men's efforts against this stereotype for the last century. What a shame. I've never said film composers aren't real composers, that would be absurd. But I do believe that the kind of collaborative processes that have become more and more the norm in much mainstream film music production tend to diminish the singular contribution of singular talents. There are certainly still many clear, artistic voices within the film music community beyond Williams, but at the same time, there is a strong tendency towards watered down, streamlined factory-production, and it hurts film music both for those who appreciate it as an art form, and those who wish to practice it as such. Viewing this from a practitioner's perspective, I will freely admit that I am both deeply concerned and terribly disheartened by the enormous lack of musical ambition in so much current film music fare, even though it is easy to blame this on fear of insufficient commercial appeal on behalf of studios, producers etc. (Briefly, @ Koray: I wouldn't call Williams' involvement with Superman IV a true collaboration, but rather a token of friendship and loyalty. I doubt Williams truly felt involved with that score on any artistic level. For any other collaborations in his ouvre, they have been with musicians representing entirely different crafts and traditions)

I think it's likely that a whole host of themes will show up in some kind of guise or disguise. Williams generally treats his leitmotifs quite freely; they may represent more than one specific thing. Very often, they work by means of broader association, and subsequently, they are used just as much for musical effect as for specific characterization, as long as they are dramatically effective

I'm so thrilled that Williams seems genuinely excited to do this! Williams isn't a "collaborative" composer, for many -and very good- reasons: -Williams is a composer first and film composer second; there is an artistic integrity, core and soul to his work that would be lost were he to collaborate with anyone. I'm sure such a prospect would seem very uncomfortable (and uninteresting) to him. -His skill and expertise (I will refrain from mentioning talent) is presently unmatched (in Hollywood) to such an extent that unless someone were to bring an entirely different (non-classical, non-orchestral) approach, there wouldn't be room for any real contribution; all anyone could offer would really be a diminishing of quality. And I'm sure JJ Abrams and Michael Giacchino know this very well. There is a reason why Williams is such a revered figure in Hollywood. And a reason why Giacchino responded not as a colleague, not as a competitor, but as a fan.

Really? Sigh... I had no intentions of "dressing up" an argument, I merely stated an observation that I've made (having occasionally discussed Williams in a professional context). It has simply been my experience, be it in the world of classical music (my "main" world) or film and theater (two of my "auxiliary" worlds) that this aspect of Williams' work is both well known and highly regarded.

My "little" world? I wonder what world you're referring to... Actually, I've had more than one director that I've worked with praise Williams' score for "The Accidental Tourist". I've been pleasantly suprised by how treasured some of these smaller, more intimate scores are by professionals not only in the world of film and film music, but in the theater world as well, and in the world of classical music. Perhaps it isn't such a "little" world after all...

And what if they are? What if they truly are small intimate wonders of musical and musico-dramatic craftsmanship? What if your casual relativism is what's off? Fanboys needn't always be wrong...

Exciting news! Hope we'll get to hear it soon! Williams tends to always push at least one element of this style a little further from ceremonial piece to ceremonial piece, and I'm looking forward to hearing what his musical preoccupations are these days.

Octatonicism would be technically precise. Octatonically derived polychordal writing fits the bill as well...

I prefer this to quasi-symphonic writing by a non-symphonic composer. At least it doesn't take itself seriously. As is, it's really quite flat; this sort of thing can be done so much better. I would have preferred it much busier -much more flamboyantly over the top-, with many more layers and more contrast. But I do appreciate the attempt at nostalgia.

You've already pretty much analyzed it! What adds diffusion is the gong at the very beginning. Upper strings maintain their D minor shimmer, while lower winds morph to B major (preceded by Celesta). What lends logic to the passage, is that D minor and B major belong to the same octatonic scale (D-D#-F-F#-G#-A-B-C-D), thus the two triads "co-exist" relatively consonantly.

Not too many post 2005 films come to mind... The Artist would have been an ideal canvas to explore the entire history of film music (which Williams is better equipped than most to do), but at the same time add more flair and personality than what was present in that film's actual score. It could have also generated a lot of fun concert material... Although I'd generally rather have Williams pursue his own personal musical interests at this point (more chamber music, please), I do think it would be wonderful if he were given the opportunity to write music that was truly conceived as the driving force behind its film (the film serving the music just as much as the other way around), or to be given the chance to write more autonomously, giving the score its own identity as a counterpoint to the film at hand ("non-underscore"). Something I'd love to see, would have been a collaboration with a truly outstanding director of similar spiritual inclinations as Williams (profoundly humanistic). I'd be very curious to hear Williams respond to the most recent films of Michael Haneke, for instance. In general, I think Williams could work miracles for something intimate and slower paced.