Ludwig
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Posts posted by Ludwig
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I would think that there are two related reasons why these B sections don't make much of an appearance in these films.
1) The A section of these themes function as the leitmotif for the hero, so there is no need to bring in the B section for any leitmotivic work (something like a little brother who's always left behind). After all, that is usually how the A section is used in these films.
2) B sections are usually a sort of liaison between two thematic statements. In Star Wars, Indy, and Superman, the main function of the B section is to provide more subdued, contrasting music that builds up to a big, triumphant-sounding return of the A section. In other words, it's there to give the music a structure based on musical principles. That's why they're an absolute necessity for main-title and end-credit versions. In the course of a film, the structure of the music is dictated by the narrative, and the emotional shifts within action films are usually so quick that there's no room to have a B section that leads to a triumphant A. All you really need is action music, then the A theme when the hero is triumphant.
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they couldn't . The lawsuit was bought by Monty Norman ( and one would presume his publishers ) as it was clear that the Sunday Times piece made a claim that Monty Normans income from the tune was fraudulent. A jury spent time considering it and decided that to all intents and purposes the "dum de de dum dum " riff WAS Monty's.......game over.
truth be told.....It Was.........
it's just a shame that WE all know...that's just a riff. The rest is all Barry's . And he got paid for it TOO. Just not "dum de de dum dum "
t
Yes, of course. I agree. I meant that they should have given both credit from the beginning. That's what I'm wondering why they didn't.
Monty Norman had sole music composition credit for "Dr. No" written into his contract.
Probably right. And as Stefan mentioned, it probably wasn't all that important at the time. Barry was just thrilled to get the work, so why make a fuss about who wrote what, especially when they dangled the carrot of the next film in front of him.
I suppose it was a catch-22 - even if he had felt it important to get credit, he couldn't have, given Norman's likely contractual stipulation. And if he had walked, he wouldn't have got all those subsequent Bond films (nor would we have got the Bond theme as we know it).
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they couldn't . The lawsuit was bought by Monty Norman ( and one would presume his publishers ) as it was clear that the Sunday Times piece made a claim that Monty Normans income from the tune was fraudulent. A jury spent time considering it and decided that to all intents and purposes the "dum de de dum dum " riff WAS Monty's.......game over.
truth be told.....It Was.........
it's just a shame that WE all know...that's just a riff. The rest is all Barry's . And he got paid for it TOO. Just not "dum de de dum dum "
t
Yes, of course. I agree. I meant that they should have given both credit from the beginning. That's what I'm wondering why they didn't.
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Unless you're a diehard Norman fan, I'd say most people know who the true composer is, regardless of what the legal system said.
The fact that one composer did nearly a dozen more Bond films, and became THE musical voice for films throughout the 60's, tells me more then any court ruling.
Well, exactly. And that's precisely what Barry himself said as evidence. They should have just said that the thing was composed by both Barry and Norman, and be done with it. I'm not sure why they didn't.
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The story of the genesis of the James Bond theme is a fascinating one that is considerably more complex than this snippet makes it out to be. All we get here is Norman's side of the story. But John Barry had one too.
Barry's story is given in Burlinghame's book The Music of James Bond. There, he says that
Barry often said that, apart from the familiar guitar notes of the opening bars, he found little to work with in Norman's material and just made up the rest, including the bass line, the countermelody and the jazz-oriented bridge. (He had, in the early 1950s, studed via correspondence course with Stan Kenton arranger Bill Russo, and the "bebop" portion of the Bond theme reflects that influence.)
He also mentions the circumstantial evidence that "Bees Knees", a recording of the John Barry seven from 1958, and especially Beat Girl, a Barry film score from 1960, owe much to the sound of the Bond theme.
Also consider that, in the video interview posted above, when asked where the Bond theme came from, Norman cited only the first four bars of "Bad Sign, Good Sign", which resemble the guitar riff of the Bond theme. He didn't mention the bass line, the jazzy bridge, or even the end of the first four bars of the Bond theme, where you get that characteristic little tag to close off the first phrase.
I find that incredibly suspicious. If he composed the whole thing, why didn't he say how he composed the other even more memorable bits?
There's also the fact that Barry began hinting in the late 1970s that he actually wrote the theme. And in 1997, he actually said so in so many words in an interview. That set in motion Norman's lawsuit against The Sunday Times, which printed the interview, for libel. They even had a musicologist (Stanley Sadie, editor of the reputable New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians) confirm that "Bad Sign, Good Sign" was a precursor of the theme in order to verify Norman's claim of authorship. Norman won the lawsuit and the composer of the theme didn't change.
It's also suspicious that fully none of the other music in Dr. No sounds jazzy in the way the Bond theme does. And that's no surprise since Norman wrote musicals. Barry had the experience in jazz.
Also consider that Barry was furious when he discovered that the Bond theme had been inserted throughout Dr. No and not just used for the main titles. But Barry was eager to continue working on the Bond films, and he was told by Noel Rogers, head of United Artists Music at the time, that producers Broccoli and Saltzman "know what your contribution is" and implied that there would be more work for him down the line. Reading between the lines, this simply means "shut up and we'll give you more work". Barry himself even said in the 1997 interview that "I didn't care that Norman took the credit ... in those days I'd write for anything that moved on celluloid."
Well, that's his side of the story, anyway. Judge for yourself.
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Prometheus: I took the solfege from the Wikipedia article Wojo mentioned.
I'm sorry all if I annoyed anyone, apparently lots of people hear Prokofiev in Parade of the Ewoks, and I'm seeing maybe Lucas explicitly asked JW for Prokofiev on this one.
To my knowledge, the movable Do system you use here is more of a North American thing, whereas the fixed Do system is more of a European and Asian thing. The movable system uses chromatic variants of solfege names whereas the fixed system doesn't. Debates rage (and I mean rage) over which approach is better. I say they both have their merits and it probably doesn't matter which system one is trained on, as long as you get to sing the bloody notes right!
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Good analyisis!
only thing, is that the concert version, you linked to, is actually just an edit, it only became the concert version after the fact
Do we know for sure that this is the case? Where is it documented exactly? The concert version is on the original CD release, which is what I linked to, so why is it you say that the concert version came afterward?
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Thanks, Incanus. I'm going to bring my work on Williams into the academic fold and try to convince others that it's a rich and sophisticated repertoire for study.
I get the sense that Williams' popularity and the financial impetus of Hollywood has created suspicion in academic circles that this kind of music can't possibly be good for those reasons.
But I'm also sensing that the academic study of film music is becoming much more acceptable, especially with younger folk. Let's hope it catches on - we really need so much more work on this great music!
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I simply called that a G11 because it's the least longwinded explanation, which is what I normally prefer. The dropped third in a dominant 11th is always implicit (as you say - due to the awkward minor 9th dissonance) so there's little danger in the pianist/interpreter making that mistake when reading the changes.
Yes, I agree that G11 (or even V11) is the nicest way to describe it. I'm just suspicious that it's not a real jazz symbol used that way. In non-dominant 11th chords like min11 or 9(#11), the third is always present, so it seems funny to me that a plain 11 chord like G11 would have it's own rule of dropping the third. I understand completely why it might be that way because of the avoid note. But I'm not a jazz "cat", so I don't know what performers think.
The only thing that the "sus" notation has going for it over the 11 is that it shows one of the ways that Williams prefers to work with "sus" chords of all kinds, other examples being the sus2 chords I pointed out in the post, or even the quartal chords in the transition to the march - those can all be notated as sus chords as well.
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I've had a long look through several books on these chords you mention (G-F-A-C). Of the jazz books I have (both of which are highly reputable), they refrain from calling anything a dominant eleventh chord. It seems that true eleventh chords are built up in thirds, and since the third of the chord above would be B and cause a minor ninth clash with the C, it becomes an "avoid" note. So true dominant elevenths from that point of view are extremely rare and usually avoided.
The term these books prefer is "sus". In the case of G-F-A-C, they would call it G9sus4, which makes perfect sense because the C replaces the B. The fifth of the chord, D, is dispensable, as in traditional harmony. But we actually have it the second time the chord is played because it appears in the melody as a variation of the first statement.
In any case, the chord is dominant in function. And even though it may appear in "slash" notation of F/G, that ends up with the same chord but tells us significantly less. Personally I find the G9sus or G9sus4 to be best. Or if you use Roman numerals, V9sus or V9sus4.
The thing about chord symbols in jazz notation is that it is a prescriptive system whereas Roman numerals are a descriptive system. In other words, jazz notation tells you how to make the chord because that's what it's whole purpose is - to tell jazz musicians what chord to play. So function never really plays any role - one has to infer from context whether a chord is tonic, dominant, subdominant, etc. Roman numerals, however, are designed to describe what is already there in the score - in short, to understand it. So function is crucial.
So this mixing of the two through V9sus or similar labels is a bastardization of the two systems, but probably one that we very much need.
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The solfege doesn't match exactly, but your message comes through loud and clear - I'm sure you mean the Ewoks above.
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Ah, ok....
Well, I used the word "just" also, so I thought you were talking to me.
Certainly, this chord is the most unique chord in this 8 bar theme and its most interesting element.
Did you call it IV in your analysis?
Yes. A IV with 11th.
But if it wasn't in that position and it was -- oh, i don't know how to say it -- in close position (eg. F-G-A-B-C-E), probably I'd say it was an added note IV chord.
Yes, close position is the term I'd use too. Yes, I agree it would probably be a different chord then even with the same notes. But it depends on the context (as always). And one of the funny things about jazz notation is that the same set of notes can be many different chords depending on how they're arranged.
It's as if chords with three or four notes can be inverted any which way and still retain their identity. But do that with a five or six note chord and for some reason all hell breaks loose. Weird.
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Ah, ok....
Well, I used the word "just" also, so I thought you were talking to me.
Certainly, this chord is the most unique chord in this 8 bar theme and its most interesting element.
Did you call it IV in your analysis?
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A lydian chord in C major wouldn't be the D-F#-A? How is that chord Lydian?
D in C Major would be a lydian chord progression, but I'm talking about the lydian chord.
oh, ok. I'm not aquainted with jazz terminology and notation.
@Ludwig
When, I used the word "just" I certainly didn't mean that it's trivial or usual.
Well as I've said sometimes, English is not my native language, so maybe some things I write are misunderstood..
I used "just" meaning that we don't have to search for complex explanations (reading Prometheu's polychords etc.) of the chord.
The word didn't refer to the use of the chord itself.
No, I meant Prometheus' use of the word (it's not even a criticism, just a way it might be misinterpreted). But I know what he meant by "just" IV - that they're not anything really off-the-wall. I think we're all in agreement that these are "special" chords in the piece, ones that give it a heroic power and certainly some of the most memorable chords in the piece.
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Another great analysis, Lud. Something you could add in is a bit about the Lydian chords found in the theme (F-A-C-E-G-B), and their function (they seem to reach up). Like the Major7sus2 chord you highlight, they evoke Copeland-esque Americana, and can be found throughout the scores of Williams, North, Goldsmith and Fielding. I guess you've could also think of them as a polychord of FMaj7 and CMaj7, but Lydian's shorter and to-the-point.
I've always wondered about these. Most likely they're just IVs, but with the extensions giving them that extra dissonance.
In jazz notation, they'd be Fmaj9(#11) chords, but that only tells you the notes in the chord, which we already know. It's context is much more important in its interpretation, especially the bass line. Basically what we have is an alternation between F chords (Fmaj9[#11]) and C chords (Cmaj7). Heard in the context of C major, I would say it's an unequivocal plagal progression IV-I. But then saying that they're "just" IV takes away from their wonderfully unique character. I mean who ever harmonizes the leading note with IV9? I've talked about diminished seventh chords acting as subdominants on this forum before, but this is different - a triad extended all the way up to the #11th, which gives us that pungent tritone between melody and bass.
Also the way it fails to resolve up to C is important. Even in this subdominant chord, I would say that the leading tone B wants to move up to C, but that it keeps getting pulled down by some resisting force, which is why the final attempt is so satisfying - it breaks though and reaches the C we so desire.
If I were giving a complete harmonic analysis of this passage, I would want to use a notation that emphasizes the B in the melody to make this point clear. Maybe combine jazz and classical notations into something like:
IVmaj9(#11)
?
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Great stuff as usual, but my pea brained theoretical ignorance meant that I didn't notice any mention of the B theme, or 'secondary fanfare' in the typical great descriptions Ludwig usually compliments these analysis with.
I love how he said "something astonishing approaching from a distance" when describing the rumbling opening ostinato, I'd never thought about it in that way before. But what about the B theme? Sure, the main brass fanfare represents the heroics of Superman and his benevolent intent, but how about how the B fanfare signals - like nothing else ever in the movies - the AWESOME power of this Man of Steel, this God beyond the capability of any man? The way JW emphasizes the character's might with that unmistakable 3 beat leap down the scale as if to say "you're witnessing power so astounding you shall be awed and humbled by it."
In the LSO's original recording I think this idea is at its most profound and true during the final reprisal of the B theme when we hear the rest of the brass pause for a short moment to make room for the soloist which at once sings the might and grace of this god in our midst, before the orchestra sweeps back in with the marching ostinato in the most satisfying way which only John Williams knows how.
You're right, it was given short shrift in its fully orchestrated form, mainly because of space. That 3-beat leap you mention does have that powerfully awe-inducing effect in the fully orchestrated form - it's so, if I had to describe it in one word... elemental.
And I love those solos at the end at they rise through the ranks of the orchestra. They almost suggest the humbled gratitude of the people he has saved. Then the brass enter one last time, as though he shoots up into the air and disappears with a bang.
Ah! Just so much to talk about in this marvellous piece.
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Great analysis, as always Ludwig! What do you think makes the crucial “build-up” passages so successful?
I think a good part of the success of these passages lies in their stretching out of harmonic functions. What I mean is that we want the music to get desperately to the next chord. We can feel where it wants to go, it's just taking a Herculean effort to get there.
Take the transition after the opening fanfare. Feeling where the music wants to go can be heard most clearly in the bass line. It starts on a hushed tonic note that's repeated on the militaristic rhythm. This grounds the music to a solid starting point and acts as a launching pad for great things to follow.
Once the chord changes, the bass goes right to the subdominant (fourth of the scale), which has a strong drive to move up by step to the all-important dominant. It seems that something important is headed this way.
When the chord changes once more, the bass reaches the dominant, and it's here that we really start to feel that sense of anticipation for god-like heroics. As if to emphasize the wonder and amazement of the moment, Williams has the trumpet stride up to a high chromatic note, like someone pointing to something incredible. What could it be?
The chord changes once again, and this time, the orchestra falls into place to give us a clear dominant function chord (a sus chord, actually), as though the object of our wonder is now coming into focus.
Finally, the trumpets rocket up to announce the march theme while the bass is anchored to a rock-solid tonic. Our jaws drop to the floor as Superman arrives in plain sight.
It's a wonderful passage that manages to create the tension of anticipation for something incredible, then release it all in a moment of awe-struck amazement.
In short, with this miraculous passage, Williams makes us believe that the impossible is not only possible, but that it has come true before our very eyes (and ears!).
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As many here have suggested to me, I've put together an analysis of Williams' Superman March. As with the other themes I've analyzed, Williams manages to suggest so much about the character through a combination of musical features. Enjoy!
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It disappoints me when John Williams is criticized for ripping off Mahler. Mahler's pieces are amazing but they are spastic and very loosely tied together. Mahler's music was made to get ripped off. For that reason, I love it. JW is taking some of Mahler's motifs and writing entire scores from them, but with his own touch (the beauty of which cannot be undestated). That is the way of all good music -- imitation. You all should know that by now.
Stravinsky once said that "Good composers imitate, great composers steal," but since I generally agree with your above statement, a better statement is "Good composers steal, great composers imitate."
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Thanks for posting this, Prometheus. As Marcus points out, the author's argument is an old one that certainly invokes Adorno. It's actually even older than the 60s and 70s - it goes way back almost to the beginning of sound film itself with Hanns Eisler's book, Composing for the Films, to which Adorno contributed.
Basically the old idea is that by having music "in parallel" rather than "in counterpoint" with the image (meaning that it supposedly conveys the same, rather than different, information as the image), audiences become so absorbed into the film that they accept uncritically (the key word here) the cultural values embedded in a film. While this may have been an understandable ideology in the 30s and 40s given fear that propaganda may spread and further the atrocities happening in the world at the time, it has since lost much, if not all, of its political underpinning. Consequently, we are led to evaluate the argument only as it pertains to film, and this is where it becomes difficult to sustain.
Nicholas Cook tackles this whole argument in Analysing Musical Multimedia, which is a great book for understanding how music works with film. Essentially, he says that music can never say exactly the same thing as the image because they are simply different media. It only makes sense. Even if, in a film, we see someone walking up a flight of stairs and the music, say, steps up a chromatic scale, it may seem that the image and music do the same thing. But that's ridiculous. If you heard the music on its own, you wouldn't be able to tell what was happening in the film - you might guess that there is some upward movement on screen, but you'll have no idea whether there's a character moving up somewhere, or an object, or it's the camera suddenly moving up, or whether it's something more abstract like an emotion gradually welling up inside someone's mind. You would need the image to tell you this, so music and image would not say the same thing. In fact, music always says something different from the image simply because the two are different media.
As hard as one may try, it's impossible to produce with music a detailed picture in every audience member's mind the way the film image does. This is why I say the argument that music and image can somehow say the same thing is difficult to sustain.
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Grossman also seems to have a problem with having certain kinds of music used regularly with certain situations, like brassy music for heroic situations and lyrical music for romantic moments, and so on. I understand that film can be used in ways that challenge certain social conventions and conceptions. There is already a history of these sorts of films, but what he seems to be critical of is Hollywood's resistance to adopt these values. It's not news that these kinds of films have a relatively small following and that Hollywood films are a business. So the two just don't add up. But just because Hollywood relies on traditional uses of music in most films doesn't mean that the music there is somehow worthless.
The reason why that kind of film music is so popular is that it feeds into a sense of what's natural. If something horrifying in a film was accompanied by happy music, it wouldn't feel right at all (unless it's supposed to be from a deranged person's point of view).. And it's just a fact of life that what most people want out of a film is a coherent and meaningful narrative. And what is required to have such a film is music that has a strong connection to what is happening onscreen.
So in short, Grossman seems to be lamenting the fact that most films aren't the kind of commentary films he so desires.
That's a bit like going into a bakery and screaming at them for not selling fruits and vegetables.
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I abstain from such a ridiculous contest until I see John Williams appear on the list.
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Which of John Williams' scores are you like this with (and are you as annoying)?
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Yeah, Williams loooooooves harmonic planing. (The concept isn't new to me, but the term is! I like it.) You see it in his action writing, his suspense writing, his adventure writing, all over the place. He'll do it with major triads (the above ROTJ example), minor triads (the Potter "Nimbus 200" theme), quartal triads (the Raiders truck chase), you name it. Sometimes he'll mix it up with some different inversions, as in the theme from TLW. There's usually some sort of pedal tone beneath, too. Sometimes the roots of the chords move chromatically, sometimes diatonically.
I wish I had some good resources to offer for this thread, but ultimately, I think you do learn the most simply by listening to the music you like and studying what the composer did to make it sound that way.
Agreed. And with Williams, I think your idea of "mixing it up" is crucial. Even in the Ewok's march above, it begins with the major-chord parallelism, but then becomes diatonic, providing some variation. Williams rarely keeps a single pattern going for long before varying it in some way. I imagine it derives not only from his creative personality but also from his training as a jazz pianist, where the modus operandi is to take a theme and endlessly vary it.
The pedal point is also exceedingly important. In countless Williams passages, it gives the music a tonal grounding (essentially an extended tonic function) while the parts above can do non-functional things like parallelism - and it doesn't have to be in full chords either. In Lincoln (as just one example), there are points where he uses open fifths over a pedal, like here at 0:29:
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Here is the last post on the John Barry Bond scores:There are so many fascinating things about this music, and I've learned a ton by doing this series of posts. Hope you've enjoyed them as well.
Williams Superman March - Analysis
in JOHN WILLIAMS
Posted
I'm afraid I don't because I really only prefer the first film's score, myself. But thanks for filling us in.
Why, then, is there a sketch for the concert march if it was done from recordings? Is that a transcription of the recording? Seems kind of silly to write it all out in sketch form after the recording's done.
Also, doesn't Williams generally write full forms of themes first before scoring the film, or is it just the short 8-bar theme or whatever that he writes first? He talks about working hard to get the themes right before he can write the score (I think it was in the E.T. DVD extras). My inkling is that one would want to write the fuller form first rather than have to expand and rewrite shorter cues. That technique still continues today with the sequencer-generation composers like Newton Howard and Zimmer, who write suites of music from which they draw their shorter cues.
Still, if Williams doesn't do this, well okay, he doesn't do this. I'm just curious.