DarthDementous

I really love how everyone is arguing whether Rey's Theme is his best or in the top 10 or even better in the top 100. That in itself tells me how amazing it is to have modern day Tchaikovsky (tunesmith) in our time... How many other living composers have written THAT MANY themes and motifs that warrant this much of an argument about what is the best theme. Lovely!
 
Personally I think it's a beautiful theme that has part of it's roots in Dvorak's New World symphony, and it's harmonically, at least the start of it, is The Force Theme. It's feminine yet adventurous, and most importantly, for me, as I love to write themes, I love how it's simplicity can make you orchestrate it so differently, change it, use different parts of it and it's still Rey. I definitely won't say it's his best theme, but the way he wrote this, for a female adventuress, is genius in it's own way. I figured out, and Steef will back me up on this because when I first heard it, before the movie came out, I said to him, She's the one with the force. If that was known previously, it wasn't known to me, but the chord structure starting in d minor, then hitting the G major on the last chord in the first passage is the force theme's chord structure. Plus the intro, very feminine, the Dvorak inspired intro, with the same rhythm as the last 4 notes of each of Princess Leia's theme.
 
Anyway, I love that this is what people are arguing about. /popcorn
 
Edit: One of my favorite uses of the theme is in the end of The Abduction (1.35 on) with the 6 or 8 French horns blasting that counter melody. GAH! Brilliant scoring and music in that section I think I repeated over and over when I first heard it. 

Our little baby's making its way out in the world. I'm so proud.

Rey's Theme was played last night at the Closing Ceremony of the Cannes film festival for the Best Actress prize.
 
Hearing it out booming out in a cavernous auditorium confirmed it as one of those epic themes of yore which are routinely used in big ceremonies. Its absolutely as sweeping and staggering as you expect a large scale theme to be. And also quite lovely.
 
http://www.canalplus.fr/cinema/festival-de-cannes/pid6996-ceremonies-cannes-2016.html
 
You can catch the moment beginning from 48:55 into the video above.
 
PS: There's like a reaaaaaaally long ad before the video like 3-5 minutes but stick with it, you will like what you hear.
 
Also anybody wants to speculate which cut they used. I think its the one from the End Credits.

It's over, publicist! I have the high ground!

The "I will say my opponent is angry, so I have the high ground" routine and a "agree to disagree" all in one, this is good stuff!

You can lol and rofl that all you want now, it was your initial wording that seemed very 'angry fanboy'-like.
 
 
Again, instead of reading stuff i wrote (twice now) you project whatever is on your mind on my words and come up with an irrelevant answer that wasn't ever my point (hate Williams? How can you get THAT from my post??) : the composers on such projects don't make these choices - for what we know they probably would have been happy to oblige to use more Williams stuff (less work for them, too). It is almost a certainty that at some point Doyle, Hooper and Desplat had a talk with the producers (and saw the movie with the tt) and it is highly unlikely that the usage of the prior themes never came up. 
 
For whatever reason, it was decided to abandon all but the main theme - and even that was obviously only shoehorned in at very specific points from 4-7, leading me to the conclusion that what you request wasn't what they wanted. 

After a couple of listens, the following thoughts have become clear to me:
Thematically speaking, the score is not obvious. Most of the cues work subtly in their development and there's scarcely even one "big" thematic statement or repeated choice of instrumentation. Considering how the nature of this film is shaping up from reports - that the characters are on the run, unsure of each other and without the familiarity of Hogwarts and their friends - this seems an appropriate choice.
The thing that stands out to me most is Desplat's skill at instrumentation and colour. It all seems quite deliberate; I don't get the impression that much of the material is "interchangeable", orchestration-wise. I think this is an important skill, as many contemporary composers give the impression that they sit down at a piano and work out a passage or a theme without hearing any particular instrumentation in their head. Automatically this creates a sense of genericness. I wouldn't say much of this music is generic, except for maybe a few passages of the heavy action music that does sound a little Williams-on-autopilot-y. Certainly not on the level of "generic brooding" which I experience with Hooper's scores.
Interestingly, even after listening to the whole OST, my favourite moment in everything I've heard is that gorgeous clarinet melody at around 56 seconds in "Polyjuice Potion". I quite like this theme and notice that it pops up here and there in some unexpected ways. I was incredibly impressed when I realised an altered version of it is the basis of the "Harry and Ginny" track. Speaking of "Harry and Ginny", I find this one hauntingly beautiful. For some reason it really reminds me of James Hannigan's music for the OotP and HBP games, specifically "Wandering Night". Yeah they're not really that similar... they both have piano.... whatever.
I think, for me, this is a listening experience that will be rewarding over time, as more and more of the subtleties are "unlocked" so to speak and I understand more what's happening. Also, watching the film for the first time will undoubtedly have an impact.
So... It's good. But I'm not sure how much I like it yet.

You're right. Honestly, it's atrocious how many films with non-medieval settings are not scored with use electric bass!
EDIT: SF1_freeze, I think what Henry is trying to say is that this board has a certain rough-and-tumble appeal, and in order to survive here, you kinda need to have a thick skin and the right sense of humor. Took me a few YAGEs to figure that out, and I'm much happier now. If you come here expecting perfectly respectful (say that three times fast) discussions, you're always going to be disappointed eventually. Half the time, the insults are all in good fun, and the rest of the time...well, you enjoy it more if you just laugh them off and/or respond with a similar maturity level.

That's fine man, I honestly couldn't care less but your wording gives the impression that the fate of the earth hangs in the balance.

prizon of askabandit had lots of hedweegs them in it
there wuz a hole 1:40 mins of it on the songtrack!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i freaking cant believe that litul frentch basturd droped hedweegs theme again!111
wtf!? this is like harry potter hedweegs theme shud be palying all the time

That is a good sign. Hopefully it's not as out of place as the verbatim statement of Hedwig's Theme towards the beginning of Half-Blood Prince.
In other news, listening to Doyle's Goblet of Fire score for the first time in a while. It really is a rich, beautiful score. If it wasn't for the fact that it came immediately after PoA and had the Potter reputation riding on it I reckon a lot more people would like it.
The fanfares are getting old (just like I remembered), but there's a heck of a lot of good stuff here. "Voldemort" alone is worth the price for me.

If JW was watching the show...who was conducting? JW getting high on his own music? I think your dream says more about JW, than it does of you.

I don't think anyone thinks that cue isn't Williams. To me, it's very clearly an alternate for one of the early scenes. Not a doubt in my mind that this is Williams' work.

They're one and the same! I enjoy how he developed that theme, I agree that the concert track is merely okay but he did bring it out in the score in a way that we never really saw again with a Potter theme. Granted, Desplat did spin a lot of variations on "Obliviate." He does his best with it but it's not very distinctive, meanwhile "Lily's Theme" turned out to be kinda disappointing after those two lovely versions in the beginning of the film (the title and the dragon flight)
 
But Doyle did a nice job with "Harry in Winter." It works really well as a hero theme and all the Triwizard variations are really fun. He builds it well, it really soars when it's supposed to, it's legible throughout the film. It's well-done, the biggest misstep with the theme to me is "Death of Cedric" which is just too much and sums up my problem with the score which is that the tone becomes obnoxious after awhile. There's little underplaying, feels like he's only ever hitting one emotion at a time and usually as broadly as possible. Williams gets a lot of crap for that too but to me the difference is that while there's enough gooey sentimentality and cheerleading to go around (which I love in their moments), there was also always this great spooky undercurrent in even the most "magical" passages that I enjoy just as much. The stuff we always talk about with Williams, lots of modal writing and chromatic melodies, the jazzy harmonies, they give his Potter scores this blend of comfort, sadness, menace, joy etc that draws me in, often all within a single cue.
 
Just those little touches that make his music feel so well-rounded and dramatic. Doyle's score is often thrilling but lacked that kind of nuance for me, Hooper's are dramatically functional and do have their highlights but the music is mostly dry and simplistic even at its most enjoyable, whereas Desplat's stuff -- well-constructed, emotionally attuned, colorfully orchestrated -- just rarely ever sang out in the way that I wanted after hearing Williams in this series. These are not bad scores but of course it was an impossible act to follow.

I quite like whatever Doyle theme appears as Harry's parents appear in ghost-form to help him fight Voldemort in GOF. Harry In Winter is nice but repetitive; it's clearly aping Williams but doesn't understand the way he builds his concert suites with intricate orchestration.
 
There's plenty of great musical moments written by Doyle and Desplat, overall. The scores are just overwhelmingly flat due to Yates' flat direction.
 
I rate JNH higher than either composer though, so this is an exciting appointment. Just hoping the trailers are misleading and this film contains much more whimsy and magic than we're being shown.

I disagree. "The Asteroid Field" is a fun piece that fit the tone and that era of film-making very well. "The Falcon" as presented on the FYC and in the film is almost unlistenable save for the few moments of expanded material. It's like someone took a scalpel and started cutting willy-nilly. However all that being said, "The Falcon" serves its purpose for TFA. 
 
The TFA score at large has a great deal of lovely music that only gets better with age. 

I'm a bit surprised by this because I saw the film again recently and, aside from a couple of obvious moments, the score seems always pretty much intact overall. Surely I'm not uber-familiar with every single cue, but when compared to the OST album the music seems to have survived editors' usual post-production craziness. So, care to elaborate which are the most blatant examples of tracking aside from "Rey Meets BB-8" and the Falcon chase sequence?

For me, Doyle's score was glorious and magical...

I always find the discussion about how recognizable by the larger public a theme is totally irrelevant to its quality. 

That's fascinating to me that one of my favorite parts of the theme is its biggest sticking point for other listeners. "One man's trash" indeed!

You obviously don't know what you are talking about.
 
Disney doesn't decide who scores the Marvel films, Marvel does.
 
And Kathleen Kennedy will decide who scores Star Wars.

There is no Doctor Who prom this year, no.  The BBC does like to fashion at least one (but preferably three or four) of the Proms concerts around its popular TV franchises, however tenuous the musical link; this year for example there will be a prom concert based on Strictly Come Dancing.
 
There is a seemingly bottomless well for these tie-ins.  Personally I am really looking forward to next season's Don't Get Done, Get Prom in which presenter Dominic Littlewood dispenses consumer rights advice to a packed Royal Albert Hall while the BBC Concert Orchestra saws its way through the light classical repertoire behind him.
 
Book your tickets now!  You are number 47,319 in the queue!

Better to casually discuss another great composer than have certain folks spouting quasi-intellectual vitriol about Williams.  

Because this thread has served its purpose long ago, might as well convert it into a HZ Church thread.