Marcus

A lovely work!
 
The cantilena that also closes the piece sounds almost like a contorted version of "Moonlight" (from Sabrina). Makes me wonder if it could have been intentional?
 
As much as I love his first violin concerto, this is (obviously) the more mature work of the two.
 
Bravo, Maestro.
 

Joyce Kilmer was way ahead of both of them.

https://www.facebook.com/lucasfilm/photos/a.465029866888384/4105758406148827

I really enjoyed this vintage interview where JW talks about contemporary music and his ambitions for the Boston Pops.  JW comes across very professorially and I found it really interesting at the start that he admired Seiji Ozawa's performance of Maxwell Davies Symphony (I can't tell which one it is but pretty sure it is his No. 1).  I have a personal connection with Sir Peter Maxwell Davies.  In the 1990's, I was a student and found out he was coming to San Francisco to conduct a world premiere of a work the SFO had commissioned.  I sent him an email and to my surprise, he responded inviting me to come back stage during the rehearsal and watch him work with the orchestra.  I had the entire concert hall to myself.  After the rehearsal, Sir Peter, looked for me and invited me backstage to his dressing room.  He was so warm and inviting, I was not just a no body, I wasn't even a composition student.  But he was very interested in seeing what I had done and giving me advise.  That encounter had a big impact on me as a student and I never forgot his generosity and encouragement tempered with wisdom ("it's a very difficult path you're on and if you can make a living doing something else, probably better to go that route").  I found it quite interesting that JW thought so highly of him regarding the Symphony No. 1 though it's so different from JW's own style - it's a loud, hour long, atonal symphony.  I thought it was interesting to hear JW talk so much about contemporary music and his ideas plus his own works in context.
 
At 8:31, he says "Last year I wrote an overture..." what work was this?

Just announced
 
Saturday, September 25, 2021
Dallas Symphony Orchestra.  Fabio Luisi, conductor
Anne-Sophie Mutter, violin
https://www.dallassymphony.org/discover-connect/dso-vault/read/press-releases/dallas-symphony-orchestra-announces-programming-for-2021-22-concert-season/
 
 

Quote from press release:
 

Amen, brother.
 
 
Can't imagine who he's referring to here...
 
 

It can be hard to look at something so familiar with fresh eyes, but I feel I might have done that with the throne room scene that ends Star Wars.
 
Most action/adventure movies end with the protagonists winning, and often we'll get a minute or so of a closure scene, but has there ever been a movie other than Star Wars that ends with nearly two minutes of ceremony -- where not a word is spoken, there's nothing but music playing, and spectacle is minimal? On paper, it sounds as boring as hell, like watching an olympics medal ceremony. And yet the way Lucas pulled it off is wonderful. Its purity of message (something like, "good prevailing over evil deserves to be celebrated") is completely unburdened by its aw-shucks earnestness (the acting seems basically impromptu but is completely endearing). And, again, all without a single word, without a single moment of self-importance.
 
Of course, the music is indispensable. JW's masterstroke was to start off with a fanfare but then shift to a muscular version of the force theme, which of course is not celebratory in the least. The fanfare is a perfect tee-up for celebration; it primes us for a triumphant last scene. But then JW goes into muscular force theme mode here for a full 30 sec to reminds us that our heroes went through some shit to get to this moment. Then we go into a musical B-section where we see the actors smile and chuckle at each other in outtake-looking footage (again, completely endearing), which then morphs into the final triumphant fanfare, coinciding with the first and only "hero" shots and only applause of the whole scene.
 
So down-to-earth, so self-effacing, so simple... and so absolutely perfect.
 
 

"HOOK, HOOK, GIVE US THE HOOK!"
 
I would like to vote for something else, but it would be disingenious. It's one of my alltime JW scores, and I think the film is massively underrated as well. That gorgeous, stage-like production design -- beautiful.

Arguably, that’s to his credit, wouldn’t we say? It suggests he wasn’t a willing propagandist. 

Now, I absolutely adore Shostakovich, but his film music really isn't the best part of his oeuvre, and John Williams' film music is, for the most part, far more accomplished, both as pure music and as music written to enhance and coexist with another artform.
 
Some of Shostakovich's early film music efforts are quite outstanding, but as has already been mentioned, the scores he wrote for propaganda films often feel rather tepid and uninvested, and, dare I say, emotionally dishonest. 

Now, I absolutely adore Shostakovich, but his film music really isn't the best part of his oeuvre, and John Williams' film music is, for the most part, far more accomplished, both as pure music and as music written to enhance and coexist with another artform.
 
Some of Shostakovich's early film music efforts are quite outstanding, but as has already been mentioned, the scores he wrote for propaganda films often feel rather tepid and uninvested, and, dare I say, emotionally dishonest. 

Now, I absolutely adore Shostakovich, but his film music really isn't the best part of his oeuvre, and John Williams' film music is, for the most part, far more accomplished, both as pure music and as music written to enhance and coexist with another artform.
 
Some of Shostakovich's early film music efforts are quite outstanding, but as has already been mentioned, the scores he wrote for propaganda films often feel rather tepid and uninvested, and, dare I say, emotionally dishonest. 

Shostakovich was a great classical composer who occasionally did film music, but I wouldn't label him the 'greatest film composer who ever lived'. He wasn't really a film composer to begin with.

Yes! That trumpet/piano duet is a marvelous moment of gorgeous and -for its seeming simplicity- highly inventive scoring.
Lincoln is an exquisite and utterly masterful score. How lucky we are!

Another few items:
 
 
 
 

Easily "Across the Stars" for its unadulterated, GONE WITH THE WIND-type sweep. Glad I got to say that, 18 years later.

According to the feature in this month's BBC Music Magazine:
 
 

Not at all. I totally agree with crumbs. I consider the film the best since the millennium turnover, and the score one of the very, very best as well. Extrapolating on 'why' requires a whole article.

One can't have such a thread without mentioning @Marcus's fun adaptation of Mozart in his score to Upperdog!
 
 

I've been putting off starting another of these TROS track appreciation threads, because honestly talking Star Wars feels so exhausting lately. But I happened to listen the cue "Farewell" this morning and was again reminded how superb this piece is, probably the emotional heart of the soundtrack as a whole and a grand musical payoff for so many things Williams was doing in the Sequel Scores.
 
 
In a way, the power of this cue has a lot to do with the fact that Williams was forced to communicate through music what the screenplay was unable (IMHO) to accomplish: make for a convincing romantic catharsis for the underwritten Rey & Ben relationship, and convey suitable sense of galaxy-wide triumph against the ill-defined First Order. In that respect, I find it similar to some of the best stuff he did for the PT, like "The Dinner Scene," "It Can't Be," and "Lament," where the music massively picks up the slack where the writing & acting falls short.
 
It's a really dense track, with too much to delve into in one post, but here are a few observations:
The austere rendition of Rey's theme for her momentary death is exquisite, and by using the comparatively rare ending first (and only?) heard in TFA's 1M7, does a great job tying the beginning and ending of the trilogy together w/r/t her leitmotif.
  The music that accompanies Kylo Ren dragging himself out of the pit, with those overlapping statements of his motif over a D pedal, is almost Gabriel Yared-like in its dissonant but tonal longing. Delicious stuff.
  Rey's resurrection is accompanied by what I imagine many Reylos were long hoping for -- a sort of synthesis of her and Kylo Ren's themes. Notice the way melodic semitones, the markers of Ren/Ben's leitmotif, seem to push through all over the place. There's a particularly subtle way in which Ren's former 5-#4 gets turned into b6-5 and then later inverted to 5-b6 which probably deserves more study. The way this surge of musical emotion end prematurely on an unresolved chord calls to mind the other most notable time Williams did this in Star Wars, and prepares nicely the kiss music that follows on its heels. Here's the notation from the (terrific) piano album:


  Everything following Ben's death, from the tiny bit of string-section mourning Rey is allowed for Ben to the Bb-major choral hymn that concludes the track is such vintage Williams musical exultation that I dare say the whole ST was worth it if just for this sonic reward. And while simple in its emotional effect, the music is again anything if simplistic -- there's even more cool motivic transformations happening with that 5-b6 motif, which flowers into part of the Victory Theme proper. Plus what I suspect is a reconfiguration of the March of the Resistance at 4:14 that I haven't seen anyone else remark on (or maybe I'm just hearing things, wouldn't be the first time!).  
I'd love to hear all your thoughts, and see what else is going on in this track that I'm surely missing.
 

Yes, though I do worry about the "Williams as a stepping stone to better music argument."  I am middle-aged and have listened to just about every prominent (and many not-so-prominent) orchestral works over the years.  All very good, but Williams work is also something to be valued for its own sake and has the merits to hold its own.  

Great track!
 
I took a crack at analyzing this overtop of @Falstaft's excellent transcription. Williams actually de-composes Anthem of Evil for the first half of the passage, as Kylo is deciding whether or not to give up his evil ways. It's done by passing the main developments of the theme from melody to bass and back to melody (the solid square brackets). There are smaller developments of the theme as well at the same time - shown in dotted brackets. This is just too good!
 
When Kylo says "I know what I have to do but I don't know if I have the strength to do it", then we get a new motive (unrelated to other themes as far as I can tell) that is passed between the upper voices - a more positive, upward-striving motive. I see this as a musical representation of him giving up the evil and striving to climb out of the emotional hole he's dug himself into as Kylo.
 
The developments of the Anthem of Evil, though, are pretty subtle and reward careful listening. It also leads nicely into the more obvious Anthem of Evil references just before the brass come in, making the cue really hang together well. To me, these are part of what makes this score top-notch and a great final musical entry in the saga, even as Williams is in his late 80s!

That's a great OST.

He also said that he has just finished working on the Violin Concerto!

In his conversation with Dudamel at KUSC, Williams just mentioned that he was asked to write a processional for the Vienna Philharmonic annual ball.
He also confirmed that the idea is to premiere the new Violin Concerto at Tanglewood, Summer 21, covid allowing.