eaudissino

I'm afraid not, for the time being. The publisher has only released the hardcopy. Sorry.

Hello everyone, for those interested, attached are the Table of Contents and Abstracts. TOC.pdf Abstracts and Contributors.pdf

You are entitled to dislike the wording but be aware that both forms are correct. Have you ever heard of "Bridget Jones's Diary" or "St. James's Park"? And the book is not self-published -- as fan books often are -- but it is printed by a university press, and they chose the title. So, I guess they knew what they were doing.

Yes, indeed. I'm surprised myself about the money they're asking -- money that, by the way, is not going into the authors' and editors' pockets, I assure you. That's the wonderful world of academic publishing.

Because we're musical people. :-)

Thank you very much! It's been my pleasure working with you, filmmusic. All Best!

Conrad Pope's review.

Hi Thor. Sorry I missed you in Boston: probably that was the night I met with JW to give him a copy of the book. Best wishes for your book: can't wait to see it published!

Hi! Thank you very much. I don't have much more info about that. Annually the Pops host a Harvard night where musicians that are Harvard alumni take part in the show (e.g. three years ago Yo-Yo Ma played some music from Memories of a Geisha). I gather that in that 1989 Harvard night conducted by JW Lenny took the stage to conduct some music selections, but I don't know what selections.

Oops! I guess he is. No offence Emilio, but I just wasn't sure. I'll be keeping a firm eye on my local Waterstones, form now on. Thank you all very much!

Hello Ludwig, Thank you very much for your attentive, detailed and appreciative review. In reply to your comment re the Star Wars original music, I must say mine is an interpretation based on a series of points: 1) Lucas had successfully used a compilation score for American Graffiti. 2) from the interviews, it seems that at that time he planned to follow Kubrick's 2001 model and use classical pieces 3) Kubrick again, at the time when Lucas was engaged in the pre-production of SW, had hired Leonard Rosenman (who had not yet won an Oscar but was already an established name) to arrange classical pieces for Barry Lyndon. So, since Lucas seemed somewhat interested in Kubrick's choices he might have given a thought about hiring someone to arrange (Kubrick's "phase 2") instead of simply cut and paste the pieces from the albums. 4) Williams had just won an Oscar for Jaws but he was not yet "JOHN WILLIAMS" and therefore I wouldn't find it too strange that he might have been asked to arrange music instead of composing new one (and Williams got his first Oscar for his musical direction and arrangements of someone else's music in Fiddler on the Roof). Williams is a great arranger and I think he already had that reputation at that time. 5) I found strange that Williams said in the 1977 LP liner notes that he'd rather have original music instead of one piece of Stravinsky here, one piece of Tchaikovsky there, etc... This sound strange to me: the Hollywood norm WAS to have original symphonic music in a film, not compilations or arrangements of repertoire concert music -- those were exceptions. So why should Williams have mentioned this preference for original music (the norm) if there had been no idea on Lucas' part to do something different from the norm? But, I repeat, this is my interpretation of the interviews and the historical circumstances. And it is valid as a tentative interpretation, until someone finds out something conclusive about this issue. Thanks again and best regards to all the people in the JWFAN forum.

yes, it was. Well, you can't please everyone, I'm sorry.

Interesting comments. I'm not a marketing person, but I gather that any JW fan or anyone interested in film music would buy a book with "John Williams's Film Music" on the cover regardless of the photo on the cover, and seeing Williams's face wouldn't add much to it -- inside the book there are 12 photos were you can see the face. To those who are not interested either in film music or in Williams, seeing his face (probably an anonymous face to them) wouldn't have added much to entice them into buying the book. Personally, I liked the photo because it's intimate (it was taken by Williams's wife at home) and you can see all the old-fashioned tools that Williams, as a neoclassical composer, uses for his creations: paper, pencils, pens, stopwatch and the piano. The piano is an upright piano, yes, and I find this detail in the picture even more fascinating if compared to the photos taken in the sci-fi studios of modern high-tech composers surrounded by computers and midi devices. JW can work his magic even with an upright piano! No, I'm sorry it doesn't. As the title says, the focus is on John Williams's Film Music.

Hello. thanks for your inquiry. It's just a mistake on the Amazon.UK website. The book is of the same length all over the world. Cheers.

I see. OK, it cannot be pre-ordered in either version, only as a hard copy. But there is an e-book format and you will be able to get it in June.

It is available both as a book and as an ebook and can be pre-ordered in either version. I definitely hope NOT. But probably I'm biased, being the book's author... :-)

Ah, OK. I agree with that. I read the abstract of your thesis -- thanks for posting it -- and it is very interesting indeed! I'm really looking forward to your book!

Thank you to you both. Thor, there is definitely room for your book and I'm looking forward to reading it: mine is not a biography. I am a film historian, not a musicologist or Williams's biographer. My book is a study of why Williams has been so important not only to the history of film music but also to the history of cinema tout court. By the way, I wrote two theses on Williams (MA and PhD) and there is really nothing wrong in a book adapted from a thesis, in my opinion. The important thing is to rework the thesis into a proper book, removing the parts that are too esoteric and indigestable. My book is quite different in structure from my thesis and I'm not ashamed that it is drawn from a thesis. On the contrary, I'm proud of it: to me a book that derives from a thesis is likely to be more solid in terms of credibility -- generally more so than a self-published book that has not had any check by people other than the author. When a book is published by a reputable press as the University of Wisconsin Press is, the publication contract is signed only after a number of reviews from established experts in the field that firmly advise that the manuscript is worth publishing. Sorry for the rather long digression but I'm quite embittered when I read negative comments on a book simply because it derives from a thesis, as if this were necessarily a defect.

Table of contents, excerpts, and full cover now available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/John-Williamss-Film-Music-Classical/dp/0299297349

When out, the book will be widely available through all the distribution channels. Thanks, the photo was taken in 2012 in Boston.

I wrote it directly in English.

I'm sure it will be a very interesting read. I'll definitely purchase it. Thanks and good luck, Emilio! Hi Filmmusic, I did not take your post as a criticism. My post-scriptum originated from a feeling that I gathered from this thread. I had the impression from many of the other users that for them a proper John Williams book could come only from a musicologist or from a Hollywood professional, either of which I'm not. So, my ironic apology was not directed to you but to them ("you" here was meant as a plural). Sorry for the misunderstanding. Thanks, Maurizio.

Hello everybody, I'd like to shed some light on this thread. 1) Mr. Shark, I wish I could possess your amazing ability to judge a 260-page book by its title and a few lines of synopsis, it would save a lot of reading time! By the way, if you could have written such a book in your sleep, then why didn't you do that?! You would have spared me a great deal of labour. 2) It's not a bio (or a promo bio, whatever it might mean: I've never seen a Sony Classical insert amounting to 260 pages). It is a detailed account of how John Williams revived the classical Hollywood music style. The important thing about this book is that it is NOT self-published (which means, you pay money to some publisher on hire and they print whatever you want, regardless of its literary and scholarly value); this book is published by a major university press after a number of peer reviews by experts in the field. So, this is the first acknowledgement of Williams's work by the English-language academe. And, in reply to my facebook contact, yes: I'm not a musicologist but a film scholar -- sorry to disappoint you ;-) Best Regards, Emilio Audissino