Ludwig
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Posts posted by Ludwig
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I presume they're before the official scoring period begins since so much music has to written on such a tight schedule that I would think there's no time to sit around for weeks tinkering with the tune. B
Yes, I believe so too.
Specifically for the Geisha, since he had read the book and asked to score it, he had plenty of time to find a theme, while the film was shot.
Although he always prefers to see the film first, and then come up with ideas.
Has he said anything about when he generally works on themes for a film?
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Wonderful. Thank you for these quotes. This confirms what we said about his theme writing being difficult. But also notice how "easy" he says composing is once the material's there, which was my point about his compositional practice.
Still, one has to wonder when these weeks take place. I presume they're before the official scoring period begins since so much music has to written on such a tight schedule that I would think there's no time to sit around for weeks tinkering with the tune. Besides, if most of the music derives from these themes, then they have to be in place first, so it's not as if he could work on many other cues and leave the themes till last.
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From what I remember, he's supposed to struggle to find the themes in all films.
One example that comes in mind is Indiana Jones and Memoirs of a Geisha.
(I mean, being interviewed on these films he said that it's difficult to find the right melody and he works on the themes for days and so on)
Did he actually say "days"? Or is that an interpretation? He's a very modest guy and "difficult" for him might mean that he worked on a theme for a few hours rather than days or weeks as one might think from such a comment.
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In the latter half of the 20th century, many pianists specialized in a certain repertoire. Take the two that Miguel mentioned. Van Cliburn did mostly Romantic piano concertos and John Browning did mostly Baroque pieces. Even today, we have Alfred Brendel, a Beethoven specialist, and Angela Hewitt, a Bach specialist. And all of these are undeniably virtuosos even though they focus on a particular rep.
So by virtuoso, what is really meant is a master of one's specialty, whatever area that may be. For Williams to have played as a jazz pianist in Hollywood and with high profile artists would certainly qualify in that respect.
Ludwig, I don't think i would be so sure about your 2nd point.
Williams himself has said multiple times how difficult it is to find the right melody, and he could be working on it for days or weeks even.
So, we don't know how many preliminary sketches he may have done, until he writes the final sketch.
Yes, that's why I admitted this in the original post. Does anyone know of cases where JW spent quite a long time on "pre-composition", i.e., coming up with themes to use as material for the score? (And I don't mean CE3K, where he wrote some dozens of themes and it was up to Spielberg to decide which one to use - that's a different matter. I mean personally struggling to come up with the music.)
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A thought occurred to me today that John Williams has quite a lot in common with one of the most respected and beloved of all classical composers - Mozart. Of course, JW has far outlived Mozart now (died at age 35) and is never profane the way the latter could be, but consider that Mozart:
1) Had a rare gift for melody.
2) Composed with considerable ease, and didn't struggle with sketches the way, say, Beethoven did.
3) Was a virtuoso pianist, a quality that gives his music a fresh and spontaneous sound through ease of improvisation.
4) Had a talent for finding just the right music for dramatic scenarios (in his case, in operas).
5) Perhaps most importantly, brought together the different styles of his era and fused them into his own unique style.
6) Is known primarily for his orchestral music (in his case, sometimes combined with voices or other instruments as in concertos)
7) Learned composition (especially for orchestra) quite young.
What's different is the styles of music that Williams deals with. He doesn't sound like Mozart of course because he deals with the variety of styles heard in film music - classical blended with jazz, pop, modern, indigenous, etc. And yes, Williams does consider the composing of themes to be difficult (a tinge of Beethoven after all?), but it seems that once he has them, the ideas flow fairly easily.
But the number of parallels otherwise are striking, which is why I would go as far as to claim that Williams is our modern-day Mozart.
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Regardless of the currently unfashionable aesthetic of the Williams March, it still remains possibly the single most personal favourite and meaningful piece of music of my life.
If you're one of the lucky ones who got to experience the film in the theatres upon its initial release, I envy you since I am a few years too young for that. Even so, the piece is a favourite of mine as well, and I still remember hearing the march as an unfamiliar but immediately impactful piece over those famous opening credits. And that was on a TV in the early 80s. It speaks to the effectiveness of the musical writing to make its mark even with such a limitation. So many of the musical parameters are all "pointed" in the same direction in that piece that even if one or two are compromised by poor quality sound, the musical image still comes ringing through loud and clear. It's a marvel of musical engineering that I still find it thrilling to this day.
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Also, although it's a very short cue and still unreleased - You Bred Raptors is worth an analysis. I still can't totally get my round it, and will probably need some help from Ludwig.
Any time. I'm eager to see what Datameister comes up with in his analysis.
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You mean Em9#11#13?
No, I mean Em9(#11,13). There are different ways of writing jazz chords, but the way I do it, I only add a sharp if the interval differs from a major or perfect interval. So in this case, because it's a major 13th, I would leave it as 13. To me, #13 would be the same as the m7. But as I say, there are different ways to do this. You're going by accidentals, I assume.
As an aside, I've always loved the hot, steamy sound of this signature chord, and wish it was used more during the trilogy. It's got one other appearance later in the film in the untitled R11P1 (dubbed 'System Ready') - it's the final chord, measure 12 to the end. Here Ludwig's suggestion about it being an extended chord really rings true. Here's the voicing: E in octaves then G-B-C#-D-F#-Bb.
Interesting. Thanks for pointing it out. I notice the bass drops from E to C# at the end (and a hint of it a few bars before). I'm wondering if this move might make the chord more atonal since it then lacks a crucial third and leaves us with a pretty strange chord if we were to analyze it with a jazz symbol.
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And why not - here's the ridiculously short analysis of the opening titles.
I would argue that the dissonant chord of the introduction is a single entity, that is, an Em7 with added notes. So Em9(#11,13). I realize polytonality is common in Williams, so an F# chord over an E minor chord has some appeal. But to me he doesn't seem to be pitting one chord against another so much as he is adding notes to a basic jazz chord, especially in the way that the added notes are in the same register as the highest Em7 notes and so blend together rather than maintain an independence.
The question is whether we hear this sound as two chords, one chord, or perhaps both depending on what we listen for.
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@Ludwig
Sorry, I took the image from a blog, I though it was maybe yours!
Of course it is. I just didn't get your joke. But it's all good.
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Hmm, this looks strangely familiar.
I accept PayPal payments.
Say what now?
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It reminds me that in a another life I played clarinet...
Interesting this "Quartal" thing.
Here's an images to illustrate that in Star Wars Main Theme :
Hmm, this looks strangely familiar.
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I'm curious Ludwig, is that something that has been done before by other composers? Or was JW the first?
If we look back to the first half of the twentieth century, we can find precursors. But none, to my knowledge, employ these chords in the same way that Williams does. Debussy, for example, loved these quartal chords, but usually embedded them in a pentatonic rather than major or minor scale. You can also hear them in the opening strains of Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress (after the short fanfare), but they're used in a setting where almost all the chords are quartal. And in jazz, you hear them all the time, but they're surrounded by typical jazz chords with sevenths, ninths, and other added notes.
So I can't say I've heard these "sus" or quartal chords used in just this way in others' music. In Williams, these chords are surrounded largely by triads, so one could say that there's a "tonalization" of non-tonal chords like this that makes his music sound traditional and modern at the same time.
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Any more thoughts, Ludwig?
I'm not sure it's possible to know exactly what's being played in these eerily dissonant passages. What I will say is that they really don't sound entirely atonal despite the harshness of the dissonance, and I think part of that is due to Williams heavy reliance on sustained pitches, whether we call them pedal points or not. In other words, there always seems to be a note or set of notes that is being held while dissonances shift above or beneath. That kind of sustained-note writing can give the sense of what they call "centrality" to the music - a kind of pitch centre that seems to move around with each chord. I think it goes a long way in explaining why these passages always have a feeling of clarity to them, like we know what's going on even when the harmonies are wrought into twisted chords. In short, they give comprehensibility to harmonies that would otherwise be rather incomprehensible. Like the non-tonal chords that he makes sound tonal. Brilliantly done in both kinds of cases.
- Dixon Hill and Sharkissimo
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I tend to think of original techniques of Williams rather than individual pieces. One of his most original would have to be his use of non-tonal chords within a tonal context. One of the most pervasive of these chords is the quartal chord (a chord built in 4ths rather than 3rds), or what is called a "sus" chord in jazz.
This chord is found in prominent places in iconic themes like the fanfare in the Star Wars main title, the ends of phrases in the theme from Jurassic Park, and everywhere in the first few bars of "Out to Sea" from Jaws. Funny thing is, these chords sound tonal, as though they substitute for a more regular chord. But if you try playing the themes with the regular chords, they suddenly don't sound like Williams anymore. A true test of originality.
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There's another passage, this time from Episode III, that I've been fascinated by for a long time. It's nowhere near as complex as these we've been discussing, but it always sticks out to me. It's only a few seconds long, and plays under Palpatine's little speech about Darth Plagueis. It's pretty standard Williams "archaic" writing, but it has always felt very evocative to me of the idea of how ancient the Sith are. I think it would be a wonderful little bit to develop if films were ever made about Old Republic era stuff.
I would venture that part of the ancient sound has to do with the fact that all of the chords in the passage are from the basic triads of any key, I, IV, and V, giving the music an elemental sound that, when combined with its minor key and low tonic pedal bass, creates an eerily mythic sound.
It reminds me a bit of the grail theme from The Last Crusade (though that one has a modal inflection at its start). And actually, if you listen to the melodies of both, you can hear a striking similarity in contour - in the grail theme, you have (after the initial rise of a 4th) a step down, a few steps up, and ending with a cadence going tonic-leading note-tonic (1-7-1). Same thing in the Sith theme here - and both are in minor as well. Williams probably associated these features with something archaic yet shrouded in mystery.
Exactly. I really enjoy the moments where he does that kind of thing. The pedal point is especially satisfying. Simple, but so effective.
Actually, looking over the score, it's even simpler than that. No tonic pedal. Just celli, violas, and synths moving through C#m, G#, F#m, and an incomplete G#m7.
So there isn't. Thanks for directing me to this. I suppose I'm hearing an implied tonic pedal here because the passage is surrounded by C#s in the bass. And I think register has a lot to do with what we hear as the "real" bass in a passage. Notice, for example, that these low C#s are in the same deep register. That gives them a connection that seems to imply that the C# persists underneath the "archaic" passage even though it's not literally present. And notice how much of a leap one would have to hear in the bass line if we consider the C# to be going directly to the G# in the cello an octave and a half higher.
An example in the classical repertoire would be the C minor prelude in book I of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. Bar 28 has a dominant pedal enter in the bass, then it disappears in the next bar and the "bass" leaps up an octave and a half. The pedal seems to be implied all the way to the end of m. 33, where another dominant chord enters to resolve the absent pedal before moving to a tonic chord (itself elided with an applied dominant). It's that kind of thing I think I'm hearing in the ROTS cue. An implied pedal that isn't literally present but implied due to a large break in the "bass" register.
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There's another passage, this time from Episode III, that I've been fascinated by for a long time. It's nowhere near as complex as these we've been discussing, but it always sticks out to me. It's only a few seconds long, and plays under Palpatine's little speech about Darth Plagueis. It's pretty standard Williams "archaic" writing, but it has always felt very evocative to me of the idea of how ancient the Sith are. I think it would be a wonderful little bit to develop if films were ever made about Old Republic era stuff.
I would venture that part of the ancient sound has to do with the fact that all of the chords in the passage are from the basic triads of any key, I, IV, and V, giving the music an elemental sound that, when combined with its minor key and low tonic pedal bass, creates an eerily mythic sound.
It reminds me a bit of the grail theme from The Last Crusade (though that one has a modal inflection at its start). And actually, if you listen to the melodies of both, you can hear a striking similarity in contour - in the grail theme, you have (after the initial rise of a 4th) a step down, a few steps up, and ending with a cadence going tonic-leading note-tonic (1-7-1). Same thing in the Sith theme here - and both are in minor as well. Williams probably associated these features with something archaic yet shrouded in mystery.
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I'm currently in a music class in college and my professor used Jaws as his introduction to melody (this is a more general class, not a music major class). He said that the tuba player was famous for playing the two noes (E-F). I remember looking this up before and reading that the tuba player played a high-register tuba. Now in the score, I recall the Jaws E-F theme being played on strings. I always called the "Shark's Theme" the three note phrase played in the first few seconds after the initial "dun dun".
Am I wrong in saying that this is the Tuba melody that Tommy Johnson is famous for?
I wish I could provide a time stamp for this, but I'm in class.
You're right. It's the three-note motive that's played by the tuba (doubled by all four horns as well), not the E-F motive - that's played not only by the strings, but by piano, harp, percussion, and low winds, at least at the start of the cue.
Tommy Johnson's famous?
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Sadly, I don't have sheet music for this cue. However, working by ear, this is how I would describe the chord progressions, at least:
Bm-Em-Bm-Fm-Bm-Em
GM-Am-Bm
Em-Bm-Em-GM-Bm-CM-DM
EDIT: Welcome to JWFan, by the way.
A good start. There's also a Bbm chord to start the cue and an Em before the CM. But it's also more nuanced in that there is typical Williams-esque parallelism after the dissonance over the Fm chord, going C/E - Bm/D - Am/C - Bm/D. This shows a bit of the bass line, which is also important. And that last DM chord has a deliciously dissonant Bb enter stridently overtop, producing a major add 6 chord that is heard elsewhere in the Star Wars music, namely just as the storyline crawl fades to black at the opening of each film.
Then of course there's the Emperor's Theme after all this, which uses parallel minor chords, as Williams often does for scenes depicting evil or mystery.
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Since you mention Williams Sr., I'm curious as to how much of a part he may have played in Williams' early success. You already point out the possible recommendation to Stoloff, but were there other connections Williams Sr. had that you know of, or did he at least have other important possible influences on Jr.'s success (apart from simply being a musician, of course), perhaps directing him to certain people, places, avenues, etc.?
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Anything specific you'd like to see done?
Hmm... Maybe something like Alex North's Spartacus, Micklos Rosza's El Cid (IMO, the finest of his period epic scores), John Barry's The Lion in Winter, Franz Waxman's Sunset Boulevard, Don Davis's Matrix Trilogy (or just the first film), or Bernard Herrmann's Obsession. All of these are thematically rich scores in their own ways (some are more leitmotivic than others) are fairly accessible, and have either been totally ignored or not written in a rigorous enough fashion.
All have been added to my list of "to dos". I must admit, I don't know a lot of North's music, but if I was to start with any of these from your list, I think it would have to be Spartacus.
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Quality analysis as usual, though I would prefer something that's been less extensively analysed by academics already. Nothing against the score - it's one of the pinnacles of Golden Age craftsmanship, but it's received so much attention over the years. Like this book, just off the top of my head:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Erich-Wolfgang-Korngolds-Adventures-Robin/dp/0810858886
I'm sure you understand where I'm coming from - I like sticking up for the musical underdogs.
Yes, I do understand, as I know you've always had a penchant for more obscure scores in addition to mainstream ones.
I suppose I feel that even an extensive analysis of a score like the Winters book you mention opens the door to discussion rather than closing it. Actually, that book is a good example because his focus is on labelling themes, finding motivic connections between them, and interpreting away. But he mentions almost nothing of harmony, which is of course crucial to any musical analysis. He also says some questionable things like Prince John's theme becomes transformed into the fanfare for the archery tournament. That connection is far from a "slam dunk" if you ask me. So I always like to build on or respond to what's already out there. Doing something not analyzed is also a great tactic, but again for me that would be a starting point rather than an end point.
But still, your point is well taken that it's not like we've never heard anyone talk about this score before. Anything specific you'd like to see done?
Great analysis! I have yet to give this score a proper listen (I did see the film recently and listen to a few tracks here and there), but this analysis will be of great help when I finally do.
Cheers.
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Here's my latest analysis - a look a thematic transformation in one of the best scores from Classical Hollywood. Enjoy.
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Me and Ludwig have already analysed that one, so we're going to be extra critical.
(Evil laugh.)
John Williams - Our modern-day Mozart
in JOHN WILLIAMS
Posted
Valuable insights from those close to JW. Thank you for sharing. It really gives us a sense of how much he works at what he does. (Composing while the family's in the pool? That's dedication to the music.)
As for the Mozart connections, I'm focusing purely on his musical rather than his personal side. If we compare the personalities of the two, they're radically different, So, yes, whatever Mozart's personality was, ADD, Asperger's, or what have you, I agree it's clearly not the same as Williams.
As we've discussed above, the main difference musically is probably that the initial idea for JW is arrived at in a much longer process than Mozart's was, as JW refines the ideas in a sort of Beethovenian manner. JW has said, however, that composing after those initial ideas are in hand is relatively easy, so the notion of JW as craftsman probably best applies to that process of refinement with those initial ideas.
I suppose where we differ in on Mozart's status in Western musical history. One of the main reasons he became famous was that he took what others were doing at the time and had been doing for some time, combined much of it and did it better than most, especially the fusion of German instrumental forms and Italian bel canto. I would consider him more the epitome of late-18th-century Western art music than a revolutionary. Revolutionaries change the game. Mozart was rather an exceptionally good upholder of the status quo, which is what was demanded of composers at the time and why there came to be a "classical style" that remained fairly consistent. To me, the idea of a revolutionary is more associated with Romantic composers who deliberately sought to be individual in their music, a trend that probably begins around the start of the 19th century, especially with something like Beethoven's Eroica Symphony.
In short, the analogy between Mozart and JW is far from perfect, but I think the similarities from a strictly musical perspective are striking, especially the highly memorable melodies, fusion of established musical styles, and flair for matching music and drama.