cmu2401

It's funny how people can hear things differently. If anything, most film composers try to copy (and fail to copy) Williams' style. Doyle's sound is among the most distinctive, you can instantly tell his stamp on any material, including Hedwig's Theme - you will never confuse his sound with anyone else's, particularly not Williams. Williams of course is highly distinctive too - but more composers are chasing after his example.

I guess I didn't want to believe Williams did the spider thing.

I like both composers approaches for the different movies, but I honestly don't think Williams would have handled the final confrontation with Voldemort in the same way. I think he would have made it a lot more busy, as is his tendency. Lord knows Doyle's music can be busy too, but it just didn't happen to be in this film, which I think was the right approach. I was sort of underwhelmed with The Black Lake actually. And I know Williams wasn't responsible for this, but I know William Ross tried to copy his scoring style as much as possible in the second film... which I just watched on the Disney Channel, and cringed every time they showed those spiders crawling and the score just went into full mickey mouse mode. I am very glad Doyle didn't attempt to copy THAT approach, even if that meant using "not enough notes." I find in general that Doyle's approach to scoring films is deeper psychologically, he does not tend to hang his scores on many "signature" themes attached to different characters, although he focused on Voldemort in this one. For instance the "Harry in Winter" music does not stand for any particular person or relationship, you hear it when he is with Cho Chang and also when his parents return at the end. It's the "anti-Voldemort" theme (represents love, or what Voldemort called "the old magic" that Harry's mother used to save Harry's life). I can understand why people used to a half dozen different themes might be disappointed - but that isn't Doyle's way of thematic development. (All I can say is, thank God we didn't get William Ross aping John Williams again... endless trills and runs... that would have been horrible, even in the action sequences.)

Reading the interview with Mike Newell (about Goblet of Fire) in the latest "Music from the Movies" issue is very interesting, particularly the part where he said he asked Doyle to hold off from making something too melodic. I watched the movie again this weekend and was very impressed with the Maze scene, and the final confrontation with Voldemort, and the whole Hogwarts March thing when he came back with Cedric. I was kind of indifferent on the question before but now I would like to see Doyle have another crack at it.

The Doyle-bashing is getting tiresome. Methinks some people doth protest too much... (And what the heck does "otiose" mean anyway? If you used less ten-cent words, you could probably afford to buy more Williams CDs.)

Yes. http://web.syr.edu/~ebedgert/pd