Marcus

Well, again: Congratulations on your excellent work! I actually can hear -albeit very peripherally- the 'big band' influence-, as well as (I imagine) other film musical inspirations... Your music (what I've heard on your website and elsewhere) is also generally a little more diatonic than Williams', and perhaps slightly more "vertical" (again: Big band?), and quite a lot of your motifs and melodic ideas also have a bit of a (neo-) baroque flavor to them. I have to say that your 'double act' of visual work and compositional work is an interesting combo, and there's a polish to both that I find strikingly similar (to one another). Btw, have you written much for the concert hall?

I can think of very few composers who were inherently completely "original" (whatever one makes of that term). Stravinsky and Shostakovich certainly both had obvious stylistic points of departure (Rimsky-Korsakov and Modest Mussorgsky leap most immediately to mind). Prokofiev might be one of the best examples of a composer who even in his childhood works sort of sounds like an early version of his mature self, rather than a conglomerate of others. Two even greater prodigies, Korngold and Mozart, grew up emulating others, eventually transcending their models. I do think, however, that we should aim to cultivate our idiosyncrasies to some degree once we recognize them (and ideally once we make sure they're not simply results of laziness on our part). I have no problem hearing an individual voice in Mike Verta's work, and -as always- it shines through precisely where he deviates from Williams, who still is more of a "concert composer" writing for film, which generally lends a slightly more cerebral flair to his music, even in its most sentimental moments.

I'd like to congratulate Mike Verta on his outstanding work, and for his poignant podcast as well. I sympathize with what he is aiming to do, and have been through a similar process myself (internalizing what you once set out to emulate, thus eventually -hopefully- empowering yourself to truly create from a similar place, and not just imitate). This used to be the practice for all the arts: Apprenticeship. And I'll add a point that never ceases to amaze me: It is precisely in our most blatant attempts at imitation that we run the "risk" of truly exposing ourselves; we ultimately always end up deviating from any model we choose, and in these deviations lie the fabric of our uniqueness. It is our quirks that reveal us, and our strive for (unattainable) perfection that lends form and beauty to our quirks.

I think we ought to keep Williams' modesty in mind as far as his own assertions go; it seems he'd be naturally inclined not to talk of early recognition and quick career ascension, but rather to stress a work ethic of diligence and dicipline.

I think Zimmer has the right idea here. He really isn't a "symphonic" composer, and would be ill equipped to follow in the vein of Williams' scores. But the difference between Zimmer and most other current Hollywood composers, is that Zimmer actually realizes this! I am all for a non-symphonic MOS score, as long as it is interesting and has integrity in of its own. Actually, pedal-steel guitars and drums could yield a wonderful soundscape. Zimmer is a pop/rock composer that shows a refreshing humility in accepting what his music isn't, which subsequently enables him to pursue goals he can achieve convincingly. I prefer a real pop score to a fake symphonic one.

I seriously doubt that the BSO owns anything but performance rights, and even those can hardly apply after several years... In my own contracts I've only ever encountered sole rights of the commissioner(s) to premiere a work, usually within a two year time frame, and on a couple of occasions, performance right exclusivity for the first 12 months following the premiere.

Joe is a good guy; I am so happy to see him carve out a Hollywood career for himself! He was an undergrad student at Manhattan School of Music while I was there, and there was always a sense of warmth and generosity to him that I imagine translates into his music. Hollywood needs Joe Trapanese!

Steady triads do indeed offer a point of anchorage! What lends such remarkable clarity to Williams' writing (harmonically and timbrally), is the lucidity of his textures. In this regard, Shostakovich might be a more servicable reference than Stravinsky. Also, I'd argue that whereas chromatic dissonance might have been almost a "goal" for Stravinsky, Williams -albeit decidedly more modern in technique- really strives for eloquence. As such, his rhetoric is really more that of a classicist's. Williams rarely aims to obscure, even when his music is at its most saturated.

If harmony is a continuum from chromatic saturation to white note diatonicism, all notes may "refer" back to the tonic. So we may have pumping G major chords with an added 9th in the horns, while celli and basses play a line emphasizing C#s, Ebs and Bbs, while woodwinds keep playing flourishes that accentuate Abs, Fs and Cs. The reason it doesn't sound chaotic or random, is that it wasn't chaotically or randomly conceived. Rather, all these various harmonic shades flow together and form an essentially seamless integration of all pitches. I think it might be helpful not to immediately think in terms of isolated modalities, but embrace a wider view. An exercise would be to play a major chord, and listen to how it retains its harmonic dominance also when we play its tritone, b6 or b3 as a bass note (Gb, Ab and Eb in a C-context), and how for instance a melodic line consisting of #1,2,3,#4,5,6,b7 (C#,D,E,F#,G,A,Bb in a C-context) still gravitate towards it.

I would find it very difficult to label any of Williams' themes uninteresting; they are simply to thoughtfully constructed for that. Hymn to the Fallen is one of the most beautifully reverent pieces Williams has ever written, and there's not a note of it I would change. It may not look like a whole lot on paper, but every note has meaning and tremendous dignity. Also, there's some wonderful harmonic writing going on, albeit a little 'below' surface level (the opening trumpet duo, for instance, and its gorgeous harmonic clashes once super-imposed on the general harmonic fabric of the hymn. Also: the brass and woodwind chorales!).

It depends on what you wish to examine in your analysis. If you're looking for insights into his melodic structures, horizontal is the way to go. If you wish to explore his sonorities and his harmonic tendencies, go for vertical. If you're looking for specific scales and modalities, you will find that they shift so easily and seamlessly as to truly generate an entire continuum from total chromatic saturation to diatonicism (and everything in between). His chordal constructions tend to be mixed; triadic chords are often expanded with quartal harmonies and seconds. You will find certain sonorities that keep returning, though! A few right off the bat: min6-min3, maj6-maj3, P4-min3-min3, P4-P4-min3, P4-P4-min3-min3, min2-maj2-maj2-min2, maj3-P4-min3. These can be analysed in a variety of ways, depending on how you choose to look at them (as pitch sets, modal fragments, chords etc.), but the bottom line is, Williams will potentially employ these 'sonic pets' of his regardless of modal context and/or tonality.

Is this purely a hypothetical scenario? "The Red Violin" is from 1997 and won the Academy Award in 1999, over Williams' "Angela's Ashes". They are two extremely different scores, united by one factor, which is a very prominent solo violin (albeit far more prominent in Corigliano's score). Personally, as a tune, I find the theme from "Schindler's List" to be slightly more eternal than "Anna's Theme" (the main theme from "The Red Violin"). I prefer Corigliano's concert pieces ("Chaconne for Violin & Orchestra", "Violin Concerto") based on "The Red Violin". They pack an emotional punch superior to the actual film score. As film scores go, "Schindler's List" is about as dignified and classy as they come.

Lovely! And very to the point. The "extra-musical" semantics of Williams' thematic constructions are too often taken for granted, and not discussed as the magnificent piece of musical dramatic craftsmanship that they are.

A decent article (and his assessment of most film music is -unfortunately- largely correct, given the quality of the majority of film music especially these days). Few things give me greater joy than seeing Williams' film works programmed with more serious fare (as his works surely are).

(Re:Filmmusic's previous comment) Given that the preceding part is in F, our ears will tend to pick up on its tonic feel. Were we to "erase" in our minds the part prior to where your example starts, D minor would be harder to challenge as its (temporary) tonality.

Indeed. And this type of harmonic chain derives much of its inherent logic from its tertiary construction. Examples of Williams' employment of such progressions are too numerous to mention (but I would like to add that F#minor, which in this context is the chord furthest removed from any home key, would be another Williams trademark were it to resolve to F major (bIImin-I). A typical cadence would then be Bbm-F#min-F).

This part of the theme is in D minor, where most of the gravitational pull exists between I (Dmin) and VI (Bbmin). The F#min chord is a passing chord (correctly identified as #III) mediating between I and VI. Only when we return to the opening quartal chords (last bar of the given example) is the music in F major (VI of D minor serving as minor variant of IV leading back to original I (F) ).

Well, I use the term descriptively, and it works for tonal as well as atonal music, again because what it describes is simply a lack of rigidity regarding procedures/techniques. I find it a precise description of Williams' overall harmonic strategy.

"Polymodality" still implies that the music is modally conceived, which I don't think is typically the case with most of Williams' writing. "Free chromaticism" is a term that describes all aspects of Williams' style, be it highly tonal or highly chromatically saturated, with equal precision: It merely indicates that the music freely employs a whole host of various harmonic procedures (often at the same time) without adhering rigidly to any of them. Re. "BotFoJ": my analysis of the given section argues that the D major I chord becomes a VI chord to a new I (F#min). This is completely unproblematic, and clears up any modal confusion that may (or may not) arise when we look at that passage from a D major perspective.

Functionally, I think it would make sense to analyze the 'BotFoJ' excerpt as being in the key of F# minor. The D major chord as a 'I' chord immediately re-establishes itself as VI, and we have the following progression: VI-I-V-VII-IV-I-VII(min)6-IV6-VI. But in reality, and pertaining to my previous statement, I don't really think of this music as 'functional' in a stricter sense, and feel for instance that Williams could have just as well substituted the VII (E) chord with a II (G#min) chord, and the penultimate I chord with a bII6 chord (Gmin#11/Bb), with the passage still retaining its emotionality and directionality. Another way of putting it, is that the harmonic 'lingo' of the excerpt at hand deals more with color and "overall harmonic feel" (a sort of 'unspecific' modality, certainly 'religioso' in ethos, and rather archaic in its harmonic conception), than functional pull (although there is, perhaps, a gravitational pull between VI (D) and I (F#min)).

I'm using the term "free chromaticism" as a general stylistic observation only. A Lydian passage is a Lydian passage, and an augmented 6th is precisely that. Problems arise, however, when we attempt to analyse music with analytical tools that aren't sufficiently calibrated: A functional harmonic analysis works better for music written before 1900 than music written after 1930, and purely modal writing is found more frequently in pop, jazz and folk music than in contemporary tonal classical music. It would be more accurate to look at Williams' harmonic and melodic constructs from a perspective of absloute chromaticism, meaning all chromatic pitches belong to the tonic (!). His harmonic "extensions" are rarely fixed, and as such, can seldom truly be labelled modal. A section of a piece might seemingly be Hungarian Minor, but then suddenly Williams might employ a raised 6th, or a flattened 7th, or a flat 2, and the "modality" shifts. An example would be the following harmonization of a C minor (aeolian) scale: C (Cm) - D (Ab#11/B)- Eb (Cb/Bb)- F (F/A)- G (Dbm#11/Ab)- Ab (Ebadd11/G)- Bb (Bb 1st inversion chord on top of a D 1st inversion chord; spelled upwards F#,D,A,D,F,Bb)- C (Cm, or for good measure: Gb#11/A) This is precisely the kind of harmonic density Williams might emply on even a fairly straightforward tonal context. One way to look at it, is that the horizontal and vertical tonalities/modalities don't necessarily align. If it would help us, we could see the first two chords as belonging to Harmonic Minor, or C whole/half diminished (octatonic), but from the third chord on, this would no longer be the case.

"Free Chromaticism" is actually a much more accurate term than anything essentially aiming at looking at Williams' tonalities in a strictly modal perspective, or from the perspective of functional harmony. Simply because Williams almost never writes exclusively modal, nor is his music harmonically "functional" in any traditional sense. In other words, one might be "missing the point" in any attempt to find the logic behind Williams' melodic and harmonic constructs. At least if the point is understanding how Williams actually constructs these passages. Yes, we must have a complete and thorough understanding of modalities and functional harmony (and a whole host of other things), but the real reason why this information is helpful, is so we can observe how -in this case- Williams doesn't adhere to them, doesn't abide by them. The truth of the matter, is that this knowledge (and a great deal more!) becomes internalized as a myriad of sonic options, and gradually, through our experience writing and writing and writing, forms a language that gives us the freedom to shape music naturally and freely. This is how Williams' technique evolved, and it is how we all can evolve as practitioners of the craft of writing (and analyzing!) music.

The point is, even though an isolated passage of a few bars belongs to a different key center, in Williams' writing, all tonal shifts may just as well belong to the tonic in a larger scheme. In other words, any note, any chord, any sonority would in this case still gravitate towards F.

Again, I don't think looking at this from a modal perspective reveals much about how Williams wrote this music. A general observation about Williams' "Americana "-writing, is its proneness for pulls toward tonalities in a darker direction of the cycle of fifths ( i.e. Eb, Ab, Db, Gb whithin an F major context), but this music isn't modally conceived. Rather, any note could be harmonized with any chord it may belong to (especially at cadential points). This is what lends a darker hue to the music, a "grittier" feel.

Well, Williams hardly ever writes scalarly or modally exclusive. You could opt to view this passage as a case of extended octatonicism, which is what Williams employs a lot, in both film and concert works. Simply put, he will add more notes to an existing octatonic context (in this case, adding F#, D# and A to "whole-half octatonic from G, or B and D to "half-whole", depending om how you look at it). But I think Williams approaches this much more intuitively. This particular passage pits a BmMaj7 tonality against G minor, and Williams compliments this with free dyadic and triadic writing. What he often also does, is employ constantly shifting tetrachordal units (groups of four adjacent notes), thus implying harmonic shifts, again more often than not lending such passages an octatonic flavor.