Ludwig

I love how the melody is basically all in C minor but when we finally get some tonic chords in the 2nd statement of the theme, they're C major chords. I hear it as a new take on the Force theme's major chord at the end of its first phrase, the "hope" that shines through the minor-key darkness.

Just catching up with this now. I have to say, I think Yo-Yo said something very profound about Williams' music in general. We all know that Williams loves those little variations of motives, particularly in his film themes. But what Yo-Yo said is that, in this particular case, they manage to express all the most important emotions he felt in holding his children and grandchildren as babies and wondering what their futures would hold. And it was great that he played the variations then expressed them as human gestures, basically forming a direct connection between music and emotional expressions that seemed to suggest something like tenderness, trepidation, and torment. In any case, I've always wondered how we might actually say in words what Williams' slight variations mean in the context of his themes, and I think Yo-Yo hit the nail on the head. If we apply what he says to Williams' themes in general, we might say that they offer a rich portrayal of their association by showing us different emotional expressions of the same character, situation, place, object, etc. Yet at the same time, Williams shows us only those expressions that are the most important (Yo-Yo's choice of "essentializing" is the perfect word) to understanding what the core nature of that character, situation, place, or object is. That seems to me to sum up a lot about what makes Williams' theme writing so great!

That may well be! It does seem like the perfect spot to refer to Ben-Hur. But if that's true musically, it's odd that the portion of the Flag Parade that sounds like the Ben-Hur parade is a tiny transitional bit buried in the middle of the cue, and that the main Flag Parade theme has very little in common with the Ben-Hur march aside from a general modal-ish sound. But the funny thing is, that imitative quartal bit I mentioned earlier, if alluding to the original main title (taken along with the other similarities mentioned above), it would come from Williams channeling Ròzsa's Ivanhoe overture, which was the temp track for the 1977 Star Wars main title. So one way or another, it's definitely Ròzsa-derived!

Yes! Completely agree. There are also a couple of other points I'd mention: 1) The scoring at the start has that "shimmering" quality with a high tremolo in the strings and winds 2) Really striking to my ears is the bit from 0:50-0:56 that sounds suspiciously like the opening fanfare of the original - a similar Bb quartal harmony arpeggiated and imitated among the brass. I've queued it up here for comparison: It certainly sounds like it was modeled on the original main title, so I'd agree this may well have been considered for prequel main-title material.

With a celeste, it'll be even more poignant than solo piano, maybe something like "Remembering Petticoat Lane" in orchestration but in structure more like the piano solos you guys are mentioning here. Considering that parts of the score (played on piano, mind you) made Spielberg weep as Williams played it, whatever the music is on celeste, it seems bound to be of the deeply emotional kind. Poignance, melancholy, nostalgia, would all be really rich emotions for Williams to score.

Thanks, Marian. I think I was trying to support what I heard with something more substantial than "I heard it this way". But now I know better! Anyway, it seems Jay and I now agree. And yes, @Jay you're right, it is easier to watch his mouth, which is what I was doing and didn't say. Sorry for all the fuss!

I checked the German subtitles given with the interview and for that bit, it says "Ich dachte, vier Folgen wären genug", which translates as "I thought four episodes were enough". And listening again, it sounds to me like "four is enough." But I mean, if we have to resort to this to find out, then yeah, it's definitely hard to hear! Also, teeny tiny point: about Spielberg's film, he says "which is not titled yet, but is very, very interesting" and again the German says the same with "der hat noch keinen Titel, ist aber sehr interessant".

Haha, I thought the same, but then he turned it around by making it the setup to his joke in a characteristically modest way. Well rescued!

Elfman (1989) --> 6 notes Zimmer (2005) --> 2 notes Giacchino (2022) --> 4 notes So we should be back to a 6-note Batman theme in only 17 more years, in 2039. Something to look forward to!

One can dream what a Williams score to a film based on a film scored by Lalo Schifrin would sound like, even if it never comes to pass. Personally I think it would be really interesting as Schifrin was more influenced by jazz and Williams grew up with that music himself. It might be a more classically tamed version of what Schifrin did, or you could say a more overtly jazzy version of what Williams might normally do. Either way, would be cool.

Musicologist Barry Cooper once recorded a 1st movement that he completed of Beethoven's 10th. Interesting, and you can hear fingerprints of the maestro there, but ultimately it doesn't amount to much as a whole, unfortunately.

Williams' film music has a very improvisational feel to it (understandably given his jazz background) and I think it serves his highly coordinated style of scoring very well, catching and clarifying many of the nuances of the events onscreen. And because the feeling in his scores can change on a dime, it can be microedited so as to improve the flow, as @Jay says, removing bits that may interrupt that continuity. If his music were more constantly thematic, say more like How to Train Your Dragon, it probably couldn't be microedited very well. That said, I agree with many here that it's the choices that are made on the OSTs as to what it microedited and how that can sometimes detract from the cue's flow. But I think his music probably fares better than many would with such editing because of the improvisational aspect, meaning that we don't usually feel that the music must go any particular place, only that when it does, it creates an appropriate kind of emotional shape for the scene at hand. I think that's probably one of the (many!) reasons why we love his music so much, anyway.

Ok, so Deborah Lurie is my new favorite person:

Yes, absolutely. And now I think the reason for the resemblance between Krypton and Close Encounters is becoming clearer. Richard Donner recalls about the Krypton theme that: And in his notes to the 40th anniversary Close Encounters soundtrack release, Mike Matessino notes that: So it seems that the similarity of the two themes may primarily be the result of both being influenced by 2001. And as Close Encounters was so recent when making Superman, there may be an added layer of choosing a collection of notes that perfectly coincides with those of the communication theme.

I believe he means that the first 3 notes of the melody in the Robin Hood overture are the same notes as the 4th, 5th, and 6th notes of the Krypton theme, which they are in terms of the notes of their relative major keys. After that, Robin Hood seems pretty different to me. But since we're talking about the Krypton theme, it's always struck me how the notes of that theme are precisely the same collection of notes in the five-note "communication" theme in Close Encounters. It's like Williams took one of the dozens of possible combinations he wrote for the latter in 1977, maybe added a few repetitions of notes and voila - Krypton's theme in a film from 1978.