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Posts posted by Skelly
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For some reason Williams didn't do any press interviews for the movie.. Maybe he talked on radio but I don't have anything in print.
The main dramatic thrust of the movie is internal (which is why the big theme of the movie is about Harry's parents) not external, and so a lot of the "extra" scenes -- the bus, the aunt blowing up, the monster book -- come as is, with special sounds disconnected from each other. Harry's perception of them isn't as important. And even Hogwarts has an almost diegetic medieval sound (one scene even has a boy playing the music in the background). In the first movie it was all about discovering this new world, and they even took the Great Hall music and pasted it over Diagon Alley so that they could keep emphasizing this sense of magical novelty. Azkaban was different because the music is deliberately meant to be disparate except in scenes of Harry's parentage.
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On 08/01/2023 at 5:02 PM, Docteur Qui said:
Wasn't there a story going around that during the recording sessions it turned out that Williams had not been given the latest edit of the film and subsequently had to rush to revise a whole bunch of cues?
This story came from the film's re-recording mixer, Richard Beggs.
http://web.archive.org/web/20160805013817/http://www.soundsonline-forums.com/showthread.php?t=30499QuoteTonight I attended a master class by Academy Award winning sound designer Richard Beggs. Here are some interesting points I took away:
- On one of the movies he worked on, Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban, the sound design deliberately did not 'hit' anything 'run of the mill magical' (to suggest that that was normal in the world of Harry Potter).
- In that same movie (Harry Potter), John Williams was given an old version of the movie (as in: not the final cut). They found out at the recording stage in London where the score was to be recorded live using the London Symphony Orchestra, much to the distress of John Williams (and probably everyone). They had to rewrite and reorchestra parts of the score (the musicians in the meanwhile doing crossword puzzles).
- John Williams typically delivers 6 tracks of music, to be mixed down with the dialogue and effects. On the same Harry Potter movie, the director didn't like certain harp glissandos. Since they didn't have individual tracks, it was quite a burdon to recut the music to eliminate. In the wake of that experience, John Williams apparently has considered delivering individual stem tracks instead of just six mastered tracks.
On the last point he mentions something about harp glissandos. I don't know what he's talking about. A long time ago I took a good look at the written score and I didn't notice any big harp things which were cut out of the movie. Perhaps the poster misheard harpsichord as harp, since I remember there were some harpsichord parts in the written score that are either missing or mixed very low in the final score.
Beggs also did "Sleepers" and JW did him a big favor by respecting the sound effects. In 2020 Beggs said: "I did a Barry Levinson picture, Sleepers, where I put a tonal sound in a temp mix--a dramatic sound--that had no basis in reality. It worked well. I got a call from John Williams's music editor. John wanted the original sound so he could listen to it and score against it. But not everyone will do that." -
I already know you and Once are exceptions. I'm just saying -- four years later and the same conversations are being had, usually by the same people who have already had them several times. Get some new material, JWFan!
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Man, all you guys do is complain. Often they're about things you already have (like the Shawm track and Double Trouble transition) but for some reason want an even more arcane version of. In fact, I'm beginning to think that you guys don't listen to music or watch movies either. I think you just complain about them on JWFan all day. That's why some of you have thousands and thousands of posts.
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3 hours ago, Brundlefly said:
The trailer music of Azkaban is really a terrible closer for the bonus program. Hopefully, it won't make it onto a future release.
3 hours ago, crumbs said:Agreed – waste of space and poor album closer, especially when there was more Williams-composed music that went unreleased.
No fun allowed!
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THE WIZARD OF FILM SCORING TACKLES 'HARRY POTTER'
Article by Richard Dyer published May 18, 2001 in the Boston GlobeQuoteRecently John Williams had an experience the rest of us will have to wait until Nov. 16 to share.
In London, Williams met with film director Christopher Columbus to look at the rough cut for “Harry Potter” and “spot” the film – that is, decide which parts of the movie need music. Williams will composer the score at home in Los Angeles and at Tanglewood, Mass. this summer, before returning to London in August to record the music.
Over tea last week, the genial composer talked about the “Harry Potter” project and the “Evening at Pops” television program that he taped earlier last week.
“I’ve actually seen a little of the film already,” Williams said. “A couple of months ago I saw the first trailer, which is 110 seconds long, and I wrote and recorded some music for it.”The trailer is now on the Web (harrypotter.com), where it has been minutely analyzed and hotly discussed. In it we see the Hogwarts Express depart from Platform 9-¾ at King’s Cross Station and catch glimpses of some of the key characters – Harry, of course (Daniel Radcliffe), his nemesis Draco Malfoy, his best friends Hermione and Ron, Hagrid the giant, and the Dursleys, his awful muggle family. We also see Alan Rickman as Snape, Dame Maggie Smith as Professor McGonagall, and Hedwig the bird.
There is little dialogue; what carries the trailer along is a darkly alluring orchestral waltz by Williams. “I developed a theme for Hedwig,” Williams says. “Everyone seemed to like it, so I will probably use that music as one thread in the tapestry.”
Williams does not yet know the score’s length, but he says, “I imagine there will be a lot of music in the film, and Chris Columbus has told me that the film is long and he needs to whittle it down. That’s a very hard and heartbreaking process for a director, and it’s very difficult for a composer, too. Sometimes I have written as much as 20 minutes of music for a film that was never used. I am a composer who likes to develop and combine themes, and it is awkward to develop themes that have never been properly introduced because the scenes they were written for have been cut from the film.”
One of Williams’s long-standing rules is not to read books or plays on which the films he scores have been based. “It is more valuable to me to be a tabula rasa – most of the audience doesn’t know what’s coming, and it’s important to place myself in that same position. I want the film to make the first impression, and it is also the film itself that has to give me the right sense of pace and timing.”Williams did break this rule this time; he has read the first “Harry Potter” book. “I liked it very much, and it made me want to read on, especially now that people have told me that each book gets better than the one before.”
Experience has made Williams wary of prominent parts for children. “It is very hard to predict on the basis of auditions just what you are going to get from a young performer; but sometimes you get lucky. I have to say that everyone from Warner Brothers who has seen the film is very excited about it, including the hard-bitten professionals.”THEY SHOOT, HE SCORES
Article by Geoffrey McNab published September 24, 2001 at The Times
QuoteJohn Williams is the man Hollywood calls on for widescreen musical magic, so who else would you expect to do “Harry Potter”?
John Williams does not act the part of the maestro. A sagacious, owl-like man with a white beard and glasses, soft-voiced and courteous, the 71-year-old composer has garnered more Academy Award nominations than anyone else alive (a staggering 39), but he won’t boast about it or speculate whether his latest scores, for Steven Spielberg’s “A.I.” and “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”, will add a sixth Oscar to the mantelpiece.
Williams’s work is often described as quintessentially American. He writes big music for big studio movies. He has been called “the king of grandiosity”. If dinosaurs are on the rampage (as in “Jurassic Park”), a great white shark has sniffed Robert Shaw’s blood, Luke Skywalker is tussling with Darth Vader or Superman is soaring through the sky, he’s the one the studios send for. The New York Times recently suggested that when social historians look back on the late 20th century, “no music will better capture the swollen ego and solipsistic ambition of the bipedal animals that stalked the Earth and stuck gum under movie theatre seats than the compositions of John Williams”.
On the morning I meet him, he has just finished recording the “Harry Potter” score. What attracted this Hollywood titan to the very British world of Harry, Professor McGonagall and the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry? His enthusiasm for J. K. Rowling is the main reason. “I have grandchildren who read them (the ‘Harry Potter’ books) and love them. I have children who read them and love them. In my family, there are three generations of American people enjoying Rowling.”
The upbeat, mischievous “Potter” score is in stark contrast to “A.I.”, which features some of the most sombre, mournful music Williams has written. “‘A.I.’ is dark. It was about time, ecology and death. In a fanciful, Spielbergian way, it touched on some very serious subjects,” he says.
No, it doesn’t throw him having to compose two such different scores in rapid succession. “The job of writing film music is to try to find a sound, a timbre, a texture, whether vocal or choral, that fits the narrative. We’re required to be very chameleon-like.”
Williams does much more than crank out movie scores. He spent 13 years as conductor of the Boston Pops. Every summer, he gives a concert with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, where he performs music from some of the most popular of his 80 or so music scores. He has written symphonies and concertos and is soon – film commitments permitting – to collaborate with Placido Domingo on a new opera.
CDs of his work sell in millions. Even so, he is still a hired hand. That is the paradox about film composers. They are virtuosos who play second fiddle to the directors who hire them. The test of a good score, Williams suggests, is that you hardly even notice it. “It’s like a good tailor. You don’t want to know how he sewed it, you just want to know that it holds.” Not that he complains about the (relative) anonymity. “Working in music is the greatest privilege.”
It’s a matter of professional pride that he finishes any given job, whether a hyperkinetic conspiracy thriller such as Oliver Stone’s “JFK”, a sci-fi pic such as “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” or something as emotive as “Schindler’s List”, within the very tight deadlines that the studios set. “It’s a difficult craft,” he sighs. “I have that feeling all the time of ‘how am I going to deal with this? How am I to find a musical thread?’ Anybody who’s ever put music to a home video will know how the same film will change completely if you use different music.”
Film music is still treated with some snobbery by the classical music world. The fact that Williams made his name with his score for “Valley of the Dolls” and that his original “Star Wars” album sold so well is regarded as grounds for suspicion. “I’m not worried by that,” he smiles ruefully. Attitudes, he believes, are changing and the old hierarchies are crumbling. “When I began, any serious composer wouldn’t have any truck with film music because it was so commercial. That’s not true any more.”
He cites his friend Peter Maxwell Davies as the perfect example of a composer “cutting through the snobbery”, writing music for film, theatre and even kids. “And it’s all valid. Someone playing on a little tin fife is spiritually in the same place as someone composing something for chorus and orchestra.”
Perhaps because he’s in London and works so frequently with the LSO, Williams seems eager to talk up the merits of British composers. In the mid-1970s, when he scored Hitchcock’s Family Plot, he and Hitch discovered a shared enthusiasm for Arthur Bliss and Elgar. Over the years, Williams has worked with mavericks from Billy Wilder and Frank Sinatra to Spielberg (“a close friend”), Oliver Stone (“a volatile man but a brilliant film-maker and a fascinating character”) and Alan Parker. And, no, he has no horror stories about bullying directors trying to lord it over him. The “old myth of the megaphone-tilting tyrant” no longer has much currency.
It’s more than 60 years since Williams’s father, a New York-based musician who had just got a job working for the 20th Century Fox Orchestra, first took him out west. Back then, LA was a very different town. The Williams lived in Culver City, where they had a view of the ocean. Williams’s older sister used to go to Shirley Temple’s birthday parties.
“I can remember feeling that it was all very beautiful and that the Fox Studio was a magical place,” he says, reflecting on the innocence of America in those long-gone prewar years, when kids like him had never heard of Mr. Hitler, before Pearl Harbor or the Holocaust, and when ordinary Americans “could go for a dime into the movie theatres and see Ginger Rogers dancing on an aeroplane wing or Shirley Temple singing her little songs and be carried away from the grimness of the Depression for an hour or two by these simple little movies”.
Williams is as busy now as he has ever been. With “Harry Potter” and “A.I.” done, he has already booked the LSO to record the music for the next Star Wars movie. After that comes Spielberg’s “Minority Report” and there are countless other commitments too.
Despite the workload, the enraptured awe he felt about Hollywood as a kid has never quite dissipated. That’s why he’s the perfect choice to score “Harry Potter”. The music, he explains, is meant to be “magical, theatrical” and to capture a child’s sense of wonder in the world.WILLIAMS CASTS SPELL FOR 'POTTER' SCORE
Article by Richard Dyer published November 11, 2001 in The Boston Globe
QuoteLONDON – Air Lyndhurst may be a recording studio, but from the outside, this converted church in Hampstead could be taken for the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, especially when its stone turrets, stained-glass windows, and high Gothic arches are lit up at night.
Inside is a state-of-the-art facility.
For a week and a half in September, the studio sounded just like Hogwarts because John Williams was in residence, recording the score he composed for the film of the first of J.K. Rowling's books about Harry Potter, the child wizard who must master his craft in order to fulfill his destiny.
"Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" is a modest volume of just over 200 pages. The movie is a big movie, and Williams has written music for all but about 10 minutes of it – 142 minutes of music in all, more than 4,000 bars. This is longer than many operas – only about half of it made it onto the "first edition" soundtrack album that has now arrived in stores. Some of Williams' melodies are already familiar from their use in the trailers; before long, every child and most adults in the Western world will know them, and hearing them will summon up visual memories. And if the film is as successful as many expect it to be, the music will enter the permanent soundtrack playing in our heads.
MUSIC TELLS THE STORY
The process of scoring the film began back in the United States, when Williams and director Chris Columbus "spotted" the film. That is, they watched the first cut together, and decided what parts needed music.
Then Williams went to work in his office/studio in Los Angeles, and over the course of four months composed all the dozens of cues he and Columbus had settled on – from "The Arrival of Baby Harry" all the way up to the end, "The Face of Voldemort" and "Leaving Hogwarts." Williams composes with videos of the film at his side, and also with the movie as it is set down in two large volumes bound in black leather, like a book in the Hogwarts library, "From Egg to Inferno: A Dragon-Keeper's Guide."
These are the music breakdown books, kept in the care of Ken Wannberg, Williams' music editor for 40 years. The books divide the film into every reel and shot, with exact timing. A bit of one page, describing the sequence where Harry finally sees the sorcerer's stone, looks like this:
4:56:06 The stone as the camera moves in
4:58:40 Harry looking down at the stone
5:02:64 Camera holds on stone; we see a fire flickering out of it
5:04:14 Harry's hand comes in to pick up stone.
It is Williams' job not just to mirror these movements and images in music, but to give them a precise emotional coloration. The music tells the story of the film, using its own language, adding its own meanings and implications, sounding its own resonances.
EIGHT THEMES
The basis of Williams' work, his raw material, is a series of principal themes – eight in this film. There is a longing theme for the idea of family. A lopsided-grin waltz theme, sprinkled with the magic dust of celesta and fluttering strings, heralds the appearance of Hedwig the Great White Owl and the transition between our world, the magicless world of the Muggles, and the world of enchanters and enchantment. There's a theme for Harry, of course, and a theme for his nemesis, the evil Voldemort, music that turns and twists in on itself.
These melodies are individually memorable and susceptible to a variety of orchestral colorations and formal developments; they can combine and contrast with each other, even morph into each other in a vast storytelling Wagnerian tapestry, although the glistening sound world is closer to that of Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker."
Williams said he didn't start out with a table of themes. Often he works against expectation, avoiding cliché. During a scene of celebration where another composer might bring on the trumpets and drums, for example, Williams unfurls Harry's theme in a noble Elgarian setting that suggests the cost of victory and the depth of the emotional issues involved.
The composer has been quick to seize on the potential of this material for furthering the cause of musical education. During the days before the recording sessions, he organized themes from the score into an eight-movement suite that shows off the various instruments and sections of the orchestra; connected with a narration, it will serve the same purpose as Benjamin Britten's "Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra."
Williams deliberately "hoarded" time at the end of each session to record this suite based on the "Harry Potter" themes. He knows this music will have an afterlife and take on its own identity independent of the film.
During months of work, the score moved from Williams' imagination onto the page. About 30 people have been involved in the process – computer experts, music editors, copyists, proofreaders, librarians. After all of this, recording the score took only nine days. Fourteen boxes of music – 415 pounds of it – were shipped to London, where a group of the city's best freelance musicians gathered every day in Air Lyndhurst, the studio built by Beatles producer George Martin.
Director Columbus was around most of the time, eager to hear what Williams had come up with.
In the studio Williams worked on a music stand that has been padded to make it noiseless. The score is not recorded in sequence, and the short film cues aren't easy to follow if you don't already know the story – they're out of order, there is no dialogue, and many of the 500 or so special effects are not yet in place. Far from it. You can see how some things were actually filmed – harnesses aid flying and stairs move on casters the public will never see. In its way, this feels no less magical than the final result.
Williams is totally professional and focused. He creates a pleasant working atmosphere but does not let anything get past him; he may address people as "angel" or "baby" or even "angel baby," but they jump when he asks for something.
In this business, time is money, big money. Like every musician, Williams concerns himself with countless details of intonation, phrasing, dynamics, articulation, rhythm and balance.
THE DARK SIDE
Sometimes he turns to metaphor. During some slithering, chromatic Voldemort music he says, "Nasty, isn't it? Spidery. It should feel as if a spider is crawling all over you, and you can't get him off you." ("I love it when John crosses over to the Dark Side," exclaims Wannberg.)
The recording studio phase of the work is not a place for improvisation. But Williams delights in spontaneous impulse. This time he's concerned about a brief scene in which three ghosts sing a Christmas carol.
This has been set up to "Deck the Halls," but Williams is not happy with this choice, even though it is a secular carol chosen to avoid giving offense to any religious group.
"Why should there be anything from the Muggles world at Hogwarts?" he asked. So at night, he wrote a little tune for a new carol, and then he amused himself by producing the lyrics too.
Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, ring the Hogwart bell,
Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, cast a Christmas spell . . .
Find a broomstick in your stocking, see the magic on display.
Join the owls' joyous flocking on this merry Christmas day.
Later he was delighted to learn that his lines would need to be translated into six languages.
At one point Williams looks around and tries to put things into perspective by making a joke. "All this work – and it's only a movie." Of all people, he knows better.
DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS DISCOVERED THE RIGHT COMPOSER FOR 'HARRY POTTER'
Article by Richard Dyer published November 11, 2001 in the Boston Globe
QuoteLONDON–Chris Columbus and John Williams formed a mutual admiration society in 1990, when the director, then only 32, approached the 58-year-old composer about writing the score for a little movie called "Home Alone."
"This picture was so small and insignificant that it was not even mentioned in the fall preview issues of the film magazines," Columbus recalls during a short break in the "Harry Potter" recording sessions. "I never thought a composer of his stature would be interested in a picture like ‘Home Alone’; it wasn't conceived of as a big picture. But I thought he would be perfect, and he was. He captured something in that score that was warm, unsentimental, and all-American."
Williams remembers his decision to write the score. "I saw this movie, and I just went dippy for it," he said in Hollywood in 1990.
Later Williams composed the scores for Columbus's "Home Alone 2" and "Stepmom"; there could be no other first choice for "Harry Potter."
"This is a complex, rich score, and I think it represents some of the best work John has ever done," Columbus says. "I went to visit him at Tanglewood last summer when he was composing it, and I could see by his own excitement how very special this project was for him, as it was for me. This is the fourth film we've done together, and I've never seen this kind of intensity and excitement in him."
Until the recording sessions, Columbus had heard only the 3 1/2 minutes of music that appears in the trailers. "Every day when I get here, I am stunned at how wonderful the music is. It feels immediately familiar, but also wondrous and strange. I had taken out some shots because I felt they were slowing down the action, but when I heard the music, I put them back because John's work helped those scenes, improved them, and solved the problems."
Columbus's work, on the evidence of the brief sequences shown during the recording sessions, is faithful not only to the charm and humor of Rowling's book but to its darker side. He combines the virtues of a people film and a special effects film; the special effects are fun, but what you care about are the people.
"This film has put me back in touch with the darker, edgier, quirkier side of my own personality," Columbus says. "'Harry Potter' is a text that everybody loves, and to be faithful to it, I never pulled back from the darker images. I explored these dimensions of myself when I was writing screenplays, but until now I haven't done it as a director."
Expanding on this theme, Columbus says, "This is a story about a child in an abusive relationship; his relatives make him live in a cupboard under the stairs. He has no idea of who his real parents are, of what happened to them, or of who he is himself. This part of the story is very Dickensian, and before the first volume is over, he comes face to face with the person who murdered his parents.
"This is strong stuff, and adults and kids relate to it for the same reasons–all the great literature for children deals with darkness and loss. Children understand this already, and as we get older we understand it better."
Columbus is famous for drawing great performances from young actors. He knows a lot about children – he has four, one of whom, Eleanor, a devoted reader of Harry Potter, kept up a running commentary about what her father could, and could not, do.
So far, Columbus has not committed himself to directing anything beyond the second film. "The four books Jo Rowling has written so far get progressively darker, and from my point of view, more interesting. I am not sure we can keep up the pace of doing one movie a year, which is what we would have to do. I can't bear to think about letting these kids go when they get too old."
Columbus says he "can't imagine" working on film adaptations of the later “Harry Potter” books without Williams. "When I show him a film, we seem to be in synch immediately. He doesn't have to play the music to me on the piano because I know it will be right. He understands the heart of the film."
WILLIAMS BRINGS MUSICAL MAGIC TO 'HARRY POTTER'
Article by Andy Seiler published November 13, 2001 in USA Today
https://web.archive.org/web/20160802130006/http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/movies/2001-11-13-john-williams.htmQuoteWhen it came to “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone”, John Williams had to break his own rules. As the top movie composer whose celebrated scores include those for the “Star Wars” and Indiana Jones films, Williams always approaches a movie with a fresh outlook. He never reads the script before seeing the film, and, if the movie is based on a book, he doesn't read that, either.
"I don't want to have formed images when I see the movie," he says. "I live with the film every day. I have the film in my offices and listen assiduously."
But with his latest score, “Harry Potter”, opening Friday, Williams was caught off guard.
"In this case, because my kids were all reading the books, I read the first ‘Harry Potter’ book," he says. "I never even imagined I would be writing a score for the film. I didn't even know they were planning to make a film when I was reading it."
Fortunately, the movie version was almost "religiously faithful" to the book, so Williams did not have to worry about his early impressions. He just had to express them through music.
"So much of successful film scoring relies on a gratifying melodic identification for the characters," Williams says. "I try to draw on something that marries very well with what I'm seeing."
Williams concurrently composed an alternate version of the score, eight short pieces, for eight of the film's characters, to be performed at children's concerts. "Fluffy (the three-headed guard dog) is distinguished by the contrabassoon. You can almost see the snoozing dog."
And Williams predicts that fans of the book will be pleased at the verisimilitude of other parts of the film.
"We had a group of 8-year-olds to one of our recording sessions," Williams says. "Though they could see the film and hear the music, they couldn't hear any dialogue. But they were able to identify all the characters. The costumes fit their preconception, and the settings fit their preconception. They knew what they were seeing without being told what they were."
There was one word that Williams kept in his head while writing what he calls the "voluminous" score for the 2-hour, 33-minute “Harry Potter” – "magic."
"I wanted to capture the world of weightlessness and flight and sleight of hand and happy surprise. This caused the music to be a little more theatrical than most film scores would be. It sounds like music that you would hear in the theater rather than the film."
And Williams even has a favorite scene: the mail delivery by Hedwig the owl. "The first great mail delivery," Williams says. "It starts with one envelope and ends with a thousand envelopes on the living room floor. I just love that scene. I've never seen anything quite like it in a film."
And yes, Hedwig gets her own theme, too.
COMPOSER JOHN WILLIAMS TRIED TO MAKE MAGIC WITH 'HARRY POTTER' SCORE
Article by Matt Wolf published November 15, 2001
https://web.archive.org/web/20210703192947/https://www.deseret.com/2001/11/19/19617515/williams-works-his-wizardryQuoteSpecial-effects artists aren't the only wizards responsible for bringing an element of magic to “Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone”.
When the veteran composer John Williams was drafted to work on the film, he found himself saying the m-word, too.
"I kept using the word 'magic,'" says the soft-spoken composer, 69. "There's a wonderfully childish aspect to ‘Harry Potter’, so I just thought the orchestral music should be coloured in that way."
Williams, who has been nominated for 39 Academy Awards over 44 years, has won five times: for “Fiddler on the Roof” (1971), “Jaws” (1975), “Star Wars” (1977), “E.T.” (1982) and “Schindler's List” (1993).
One recent day found him in action at north London's Air Studios, thoughtfully scratching his grey beard and swigging a bottle of water.
Williams' task that day was to lead a crackerjack ad hoc orchestra in applying some of the final musical touches to the season's most anticipated movie. One minute they worked on a fanciful theme known as “The Friendly Reptile”, the next on the more wistful and plaintive “Dumbledore's Advice”.
Steve Kloves, author of the Harry Potter screenplay, particularly responded to Williams' theme for Hedwig, the owl.
"It had that thing," says Kloves, said from Los Angeles, "that I always thought Harry should have, which was an element of darkness and a haunted quality; it was beautifully rendered, that piece, to show Harry's interior life. "
The movie's director, Chris Columbus, had worked with Williams three times before, on the two “Home Alone” movies and “Stepmom”. In employing Williams once again, Columbus hoped the composer would "create a realistic world in Hogwarts" – the wizards' school where Harry is a student – "but, at the same time, have it be a little quirky, a little edgy."
"Things aren't exactly perfect" at Hogwarts, Columbus says, "and John captured that perfectly."
The owl music–scored principally for celeste and strings–kicks off a nine-movement Harry Potter orchestral suite made up of eight miniatures and a grand finale, “Harry's Wondrous World”. The sequences include a French horn section introducing music associated with Hogwarts, woodwinds for the magical broomstick, a duet for harp and contra-bassoon, and a dramatically percussive penultimate movement describing Diagon Alley.
The shimmering flavour of the score exists in marked contrast to some of Williams' best-known works, notably the rousing anthems and fanfares of the “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones” films.
Heroism has been an apparent musical constant for him, whether on screen for the “Superman” movies or in his various commissions over the years for Olympics celebrations.
Does he ever worry about being typecast?
"It is true, you do get typecast in Hollywood," Williams says. "In the 1960s, I did a series of comedies, and people think all you can do is comedy."
In the '70s, disaster movies took pride of place–he scored “The Poseidon Adventure”, for instance, and “The Towering Inferno”. The '80s included “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “E.T.”
Williams wants to keep moving forward.
"I've always felt that if you did a big heroic piece for orchestra," he says, "your next assignment should be a trio for strings."
This year, he preceded “Harry Potter” with another eagerly awaited film, Steven Spielberg's “A.I.”, his latest collaboration with the director.
"Steven is unique" as a director, says Williams, "in that he's the closest to me as a musician personally. He reads music, he listens to music, he knows the difference between Rachmaninoff and Corelli."
"Many directors don't," he adds. "Their culture can be deep and their education vast, but few of them are actually concert-goers, so we're dealing with a very varied group."
With his 70th birthday approaching in February, Williams – a genial conversationalist with grandchildren ranging in age from five to 18 – might be expected to slow down. Instead, he is juggling film work with conducting and with writing a horn concerto on commission for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, for a likely premiere in spring 2003.
Among his upcoming films are the next “Star Wars” instalment and Spielberg's “Minority Report”, starring Tom Cruise.
"The thing about music is that you don't ever retire from it," says Williams. "It's like literature; you're always discovering new things.
"I might retire from film. I might retire from concerts. But I won't retire from music."
HARRY POTTER - CHILDREN'S SUITE FOR ORCHESTRA
QuoteWhen I wrote the full orchestral score for “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone”, I hadn't planned to write the eight miniatures presented here. The film's score did not require them, and our production schedule, usually very difficult in the film world, made no provision for their arrival.
However, if I can be permitted to put it a bit colorfully, each piece seemed to insist on being "hatched" out of the larger body of the full score.
I began writing Hedwig's little piece, and each of the others followed quickly as they seemed to arrive all clamoring for their individual identities. I selected a combination of instruments that suited each theme, and this suite of pieces is the result.
Hedwig, the beautiful owl who magically and mysteriously delivers mail to Harry Potter at Hogwarts School, is musically portrayed in the first miniature by the celesta, a luminous little instrument which is capable of producing pearly, crystalline tones at dazzling speeds. The celesta begins its flight alone, but quickly is joined by the violins, possibly the only other instrument capable of attaining the dizzying pace needed to defy gravity and achieve flight.
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, that august institution that has trained and taught young wizards for centuries, is probably best described by the french horn section of the orchestra. No other instrument seems so perfectly suited to capturing the scholarly atmosphere of Hogwarts than the noble and stately french horn.
In the third miniature we meet Harry Potter's arch enemy, the evil Lord Voldemort, who is portrayed here by a trio of bassoons sounding their mysteriously deep and sonorous tones.
The Nimbus 2000 is Harry Potter's own personal broomstick. To musically depict this ingenious mode of transportation we have the woodwind section, with its flutes, oboes, clarinets, and bassoons, all capable of extraordinary leaps and astonishing agility, forming a perfect match for the nimble Nimbus 2000.
On the third floor of Hogwarts School we find Fluffy, the huge three-headed guard dog. Fluffy is a music lover who can only be made to fall asleep to the sound of music. Here the contra bassoon represents the snoozing Fluffy, while his music is provided by the beautiful...and in this case...soporific harp.
In the Harry Potter books, Quidditch is a form of intramural competition that's played on flying broomsticks. The games are conducted every year at the Hogwarts School with great pageantry, featuring colorful flags and cheering crowds. In the sixth miniature, the pomp and ceremony of these Quidditch games is best represented by the blazing brass section of the orchestra, with its tuba, french horns, trombones, and heraldic trumpets.
In the seventh miniature, "Family Portrait," the clarinet introduces the themes that relate to the disparate parts of Harry Potter's emotional life, and here it is accompanied by the cello section of the orchestra, which produces a wonderfully warm and beautiful sound.
Diagon Alley is a sort of shopping mall of the wizard world. Along with the wondrous things to be seen in the Alley, we're also transported by the sounds of antique recorders, hand drums, and percussion instruments of all kinds. There is even an elaborate solo part for the violin, cast in the role of the witch's fiddle.
With all of the miniatures presented, the suite concludes with the entire orchestra as it explores many of the themes heard throughout "Harry's Wondrous World."
My fondest hope is that instrumentalists and listeners alike might share in some of the joy that I have felt in writing music for this delightful story.
John Williams
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Here's a story Conrad Pope told several years ago:
QuoteJust a quick story John Williams's music editor. This was over a decade ago [around 2000]. I was sitting there and I was in a very bad mood about, I guess maybe my own career, and I was bitching. I said, Oh, you know, music these days, it's no good, blah blah blah blah. And Ken said, "Hey Conrad! I think we're in the golden age of film music." "What are you saying?" He said, "Look, I started out with Bernard Herrmann on 'Journey to the Center of the Earth'. But Bernard Herrmann, he could make mistakes." I forget what it is, 'Sisters' or one of those Brian de Palma films, that [Wannberg] said very just overshot the mark. I mean, the thing is just unlistenable when you look at it to the film. He said, "No one makes those mistakes today thanks to the computers. We have all these sort of mock-ups, we see what it's going to sound like, it's all predetermined." He said, "This is the great era of film music." And I said, "Yeah, but the music itself...!" He said, "Ah, I didn't say this is the golden era of music for film; I said it's the golden era of film music." And he said, "Never have there been so many tools for composers to find out what will not really take people out of the film." And he said, "But [it's not] an era in which there's music that will draw you into it either." I thought, "Geez, that's even more bitter than I was!"
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In 1990 a John Williams Society was founded in France by Yann Merluzeau, and he published a newsletter called "Cantina Band" (journal de la société John Williams). Over the years Merluzeau interviewed big names like Kamen, Delerue, and Williams himself, and published them in his mag.
I did a search and apparently this newsletter has never been mentioned on JW Fan before, which surprised me. Does anyone have any information about this?
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On 15/10/2021 at 12:16 PM, thx99 said:
I'm an AES member and am thoroughly bummed by just learning about this Special Event!! I've put out some feelers...
Any luck?
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5 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:
Pope is still available, isn't he?
Yeah; these days he works a lot with Alexandre Desplat -- and Junkie XL, of all people. But Williams's orchestrations have gotten so lean in the past decade that he doesn't really need to send it to a middleman before the copyists get it.
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Woah, slow down, guys! Are people still quick to call Horner a hack after all these decades? The movie Karam was probably talking about is "Troy", which Horner had only a few weeks to do from start to finish (Karam got orchestration credit). That's a very good reason to hire ghostwriters.
What Karam seems to be miffed about is that this wasn't a crappy movie-of-the-week he was ghosting on, but a real Hollywood picture with an A-list composer. On a project of that caliber he probably would have liked some real cue sheet credit.
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42 minutes ago, blondheim said:I'd love to hear his Horner comments. These are great.
SpoilerI noticed in your credits, wedged between all the John Williams films, you worked for James Horner as well. I just wondered how his work process might differ from John's.
His scores were blank. He wanted me to fill them in. So I would get --
[laughing] They were what?
Is that news? That...? I would get the notes, and a copy of the tape, and I would look at it, and then just sit down and write it.
Did he differentiate with you in terms of theme and, like, texture? Or at least give you like an idea of what he wants?
No, because he would do it individually. Like, I wasn't the only one. There was an emergency case to do one picture that he wanted to do it in a week. So there was a lot of writing to do in one week, so there were four of us. I don't think what he was doing was trying to plot thematic material, but in my case, he didn't plot anything. He just told me, You got the notes you got the picture, you start here, and you quit here. Okay. And so he went -- oh! He told me one thing. He said, 'This right here, in one spot, it's building up to something and I want to start with brass; with, like, trumpets and French horns alternating, but do it individually so that it sounds like it's all overlapping and it sounds like it's coming from different parts of the battlefield. So they do that. We can do it by the way we mic it.' And there was one picture in specific that he said, 'If you play it like [humming] and then just have that keep repeating but in different keys. So I said, "I'm not sure what you mean, because overlapping like that -- having it all separate keys, you don't change the harmony. Leave it the same and just let me dot and dash with the trumpets and the french horns alternating." We had eight French horns, so it was great; I could use them in couples with the trumpets. I think there were four or five, I'm not sure, I can't remember -- oh no, they were eight! I'm sorry. Eight trumpets and eight French horns. I couldn't figure out which picture that was on... that came together and it worked fine, but he wanted -- insisted on changing harmony.
Eddie, so at that point, it really becomes more ghost writing than orchestrating.
Yes.
From a business standpoint, how to you deal with that?
We were told that they were going to pay us double.
But you wouldn't ask for an additional 'Music by...' credit or something in a situation like that?
Well, we were hoping we might get that, but we were called orchestrators.
Yeah. You could call a cat a dog; it's still a cat.
I did that -- there were a couple of times with him I had to do that. And I did it because John released me to do it, because I turned it down. I said, you know, it's not fair. And I thought everybody that was involved should have been paid a fee and should have gotten some kind of credit other than, you know, a side credit. But he doesn't like sharing credit. Most people don't. Most composers don't. John never did -- John Mandel. And he is a brilliant writer by himself. But it's something that you have to, when you're dealing with a producer, you want to make sure that he doesn't get the idea that you're hiring somebody who's going to shuttle it off with other people.
Now you didn't do a mini version to get approved; they just handed it to you and you just did it?
He didn't know what he was going to get until he gave the downbeat. Takes a lot of guts.
(If anyone would like to hear the whole video, he can send me a Pm.)
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2 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:
I didn't know he signed for three pictures at once. I guess that made it easier to "get rid of him" for the fourth installment.
I didn't take that part literally; I thought Karam was just emphasizing how suddenly he earned Williams's trust on big projects. But you could be right; JW might have been attached to all three from the start.
1 hour ago, Jurassic Shark said:Then he got fired and wasn't able to work ever again?
Karam's last movie with Williams was in 2011; he was 82 at the time. He was no doubt ready to retire then! Since then, Williams has just sent his sketches straight to the copyists.
I know he sounds sardonic up in the OP, but Karam made it clear in other parts that despite the crazy expectations and demands, working with the best in Hollywood has been a great experience.
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Hi! Some of you may know that Eddie Karam was Williams's trusty orchestrator for a long time. Karam gave a talk in 2013 for The Academy of Scoring Arts where he discussed his life in music, his work with various composers (Williams, Mandel, Horner, etc.), and gave some very funny anecdotes. I don't think a thread about this video has been made before, so here are the comments he made regarding Williams.
Meeting John Williams:
SpoilerJohn Williams called me up and said -- this is very strange, because I'd never even met him, and this was like 12 or 13 years ago. And he said, "I have a project that I think you might be interested in." And I said, "Oh, uh, sure. Do you want me to help to you?" So we met. I'm sitting in his office and he starts -- he's playing a television version that was edited, I think, in Boston. And then it's a tribute to Busby Berkeley. If you don't know who Busby Berkeley is, he was a producer in the '30s who adored women, so he would put at least a hundred women in every picture he did. What his method was having a hundred girls in it or women is beyond me, but it was always very glamorous. "So we're doing a tribute to this man... there is no music, because all of that music has been destroyed; they usually burn the music right after they do a picture in the '30s, because there's no place to keep it. They don't want to store it somewhere... Also, the Nicholas brothers, two brothers that were sensational tap dancers, I'm going to do a tribute to them too." So I said, "You got two projects?" And he said yes. I said, "Now, I have to lift everything?" He said, "Yes, and I need it for the Boston Pops." "Okay, I'll try and see how it works out." He said, "If you need help, get help." So I said, "I might have to!"
I tried laying the whole score up for the main one which was the longest... it was 500 and some bars. Some of the editing was terrible, so I had to write three-two bars, or three-four bars, or sometimes I couldn't figure it out, so I said, John will work it out. Mind you, he didn't know what the hell I was going to turn in, but he said, "You've got 10 days to do it." So I said, "Ten days to do both?" And he said, "Yes, if you can." So I said, 'I'll take a shot at it." So I sat, the first day I sat up all night and got into it, at least got started with the opening number... And I got to one spot where the picture was a hundred women in a straight line, in a wiggly straight line all sitting at pianos dressed in white gowns, black hair -- they're all matched. And there was a hundred women... A hundred pianos. But they're all false; they're just the the body of the piano, not the inside. So they're carrying on; there are three girls singing all in the soprano range, and I said, God, this is awful, but I've gotta write it. So I wrote it and the piano part was, like, a monster piano part. And I called a friend of mine, and I said, "I want you to do me a favor." And I think he was the one who recommended me for the project. And I said, "Do me a favor; you lift the piano part for me, and, you know, send it to me." And he said, "You do it; it's about time you learned!" And I said, "But I've been writing your parts forever!"
I got all of it done. Just to shorten this thing, got it all done... He called from Boston and I said, "Yes, how did it go?" He said, "Well, it was okay. We got through it okay." And I went, "What?!" And he said, "No, I'm only kidding! It was absolutely phenomenal." And my wife was standing there ready to pick me up. And following that, he said, "You know, by the way, while I have you on the phone, I just got signed to do three 'Harry Potters', and I'd like you to come and join me to help me with with those." And I said, Yes, I would be pleased to.
And, meantime, I've been an admirer of his since I was a kid, since I was like 16 or so. I heard something he had written for a jazz band, which just knocked me out. It was a 12/8 thing, and I asked him about it; he couldn't even remember it. Anyway, I said, yes, I'd be very happy to work with you, even though he didn't know I had already ghosted on a couple of pictures with other orchestrators. So that was the beginning of my career with John. One disadvantage was that I stopped doing my own writing, because I was very involved with him. I was writing a lot of extra stuff for him on the side. He wanted me to take something that he had written for 100 pieces and condense it down to 13. And I said, Well, I can edit, but boy, that takes an editing job. And I would do that, and he'd give me some arrangements to do, or things that he didn't want to spend the time doing because he was working on a major piece to open the Disney hall. It was a grand opening and he was conducting it. I think I wrote something for that -- I can't remember all of it. Anyway, it was an interesting proposition, and we got together and we worked up to a point where I couldn't write anymore because he had ruined my hand.
Orchestrating Williams's music:
Spoiler[One thing I have to do is] finish his themes when he's forgotten. Sometimes he's, you know, as you're writing a sketch, you go so far to the end of the page, Then you turn the page over. And then you have other details you've got to do. Sometimes he'd forget to finish his theme, so I finished the theme and crossed my fingers, hoping that he meant that. But there's just no way he would go so far into the theme and stop. So it was obvious I had to do that, and he told me in the very beginning, he said, "You know, you're doing more than just copying my stuff. You have to understand more. You have to go beyond that; you have to think through with me what my plan was." And it was very easy to do that because the way he writes, it's very clear, it's very clean, it's very controlled, and he wants it just to be like that. So all I'm doing is aping everything he's done.
Does he give you the picture to look at too?
No.
Dividing work between himself and Conrad Pope:
SpoilerI'm curious how you've worked with John Williams and Conrad Pope. How do you guys decide on distributing?
John does.
Is there any particular reason...?
John will get two things written and send one to here [points right arm], and one out to here [points left arm]. And then next week it goes like this [flips directions]. It depends on how involved it is. If it gets really involved, he'd sent it to Conrad.
For any stylistic reasons at all, or just...?
I guess he's sharing the workload. Because sometimes when he sends something to Conrad, it's thick, and monstrously thick. And I'm so happy that I didn't get it! Then I might get something that's reasonably light, but still something you really have to think with that. And I've had it come the other way around... The end credits sometimes were blithering, and they weren't just pieces put together. They were a score laid out, but it just went on and on and on and on forever. I think they were 14 minutes long. Now John had to do that, which, I give him the credit for it.
"Crystal Skull" story
SpoilerI ruined my hand doing one picture with him. I did the whole picture by myself. I was surprised that I was all by myself. I was expecting Conrad, but Conrad went to Europe to do a picture, so he gave me the shot at it. So he didn't tell me; he just said, you know, "There's three coming next Monday."
Three? Usually it's just one. "So there are three cues that I have for you, and they're all long and busy." The picture was "Crystal Skull". Indiana Jones. There's an ending cue near the end, and it was all ants. In fact the cue was titled "Ants!", and they're monster-sized ants who eat people. So they were all scurrying around -- well, you can imagine scurrying around, what that would be from John... His opening page, it was four bars, and I spent the whole day just on those four bars, because the woodwinds were doing this, and the trumpets were doing this, and the trombones were doing this; everything was doing something different, so it was, like, maniacal. And it took me the whole day just to do that one page.
I had to finish that and get it all done, because Spielberg wanted to hear it before he left in New York. And it was on a Saturday that he had the full orchestra come in to perform it. But I got it on Tuesday, and I had to get it in to copyists so that they can, you know, stick it in their computers and make copies. And I got to the last day, and I'm right near the end, and I said, I gotta keep going, I gotta keep going, I gotta keep going, and my hand is freezing up! And I locked -- my hand locked, and it was all... I couldn't feel it when I put my hand down in the pad, and I just... "I'm gonna finish this even if I die!"
Spielberg listened to it. They went through it once; he hired the whole orchestra to be in on Saturday, which is above scale, just to hear it so he could get to the airport and fly to New York. And I said, "Take my hand with you!"
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I'm sorry I missed this! Is there a recording available?
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Also, "Soundtrack!" magazine did an interview with him when The Phantom Menace came out. (But ignore his response to the Municipal Band/Emperor question -- I think he and Ford were talking past each other.)
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58 minutes ago, karelm said:
Elfman isn't a great example because he requires an extensive team of producers and talented orchestrators. Scott Smalley showed the before and after of what he got on Mission Impossible 1 and what he produced.
Is that something you can see online or was it from one of the seminars Smalley sometimes does?
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With the AFM it's a chicken-or-the-egg situation. For 25 years film score fans have been complaining about how prohibitive the AFM's new use fees are, but over that same period of time those royalties have been becoming more and more precious to the musicians. In 1999 Local 47 wages totaled almost $50 million and by 2013 that total had sunk to barely $15 million. For most musicians that's not livable, and so they get their most important paychecks through residuals. If even that isn't enough to make ends meet, you have little choice but to be a "scab" and hope the only people who hear about it are sympathetic.
Obviously the musicians don't like this whole development. And they don't like the AFM's leaders who are doing little/nothing to stay competitive with London, where most of the work is moving. LA is the only place asking for these high backend payments. Their justification is that they're some of the best musicians in the world, but that's not a realistic appeal to a producer who only sees music as the thing which goes behind the dialogue/sfx. Why not save some cash and do it abroad?
Local 47 has tried in the past to experiment with a London-type "buyout" plan -- having much higher upfront wages in place of new use royalties -- but once the AFM caught wind of that they shut it down. The musicians are very split about it and the leadership of the AFM (who have been winning elections unopposed for a decade now) only wants to keep the status quo.
Since all work shut down overnight in March that annual residuals check became so critical that AFM members got theirs a full month early. I'm sure at least a few people who thought a buyout clause was the best way forward are now thinking twice about removing new use entirely, because otherwise a lot of them would have been totally financially stranded.
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I did an "isolated score" for Azkaban a while ago (all three actually) to get a better look at how the movie was scored dramatically compared to the first two. Editorially I don't remember anything very interesting dropped out, mostly it just seemed like fat was trimmed from busy fx sequences. According to one anecdote Williams got an outdated cut of the movie to begin with.
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4 hours ago, Holko said:
Now this is strange: a lot of it is the expected microedits (even if I have no clue what all could've gone in many of the empty places) but I had to make a significant cut between the face reveal and the fire, both being obvious sync points - I guess he monologued less originally?
The 180-degree turn at 2:02 was evidently added in later, since Wannberg or whoever looped music specifically for the duration of that shot. I guess Williams scored a cut where Voldemort didn't explain the unicorn blood.
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6 hours ago, Holko said:
Well... my best guess here is there was originally another couple Hogwarts establishing shots which were deemed unnecessary, and the cue went out with them.
I'm not sure about that since this movie doesn't use establishing shots very often just to pass time (there are two, maybe three instances; the sequel has plenty though). Usually it's the way it's cut now where even if the shot starts static, the action rolls in quickly. This was my approximation. But I'm a little doubtful that I got it right since the flutes obviously collide with Hermione.
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2 hours ago, Holko said:
(yes I know not all of it syncs up greatly but it's a vastly different approach anyway, who knows how the scene was originally, and the end is funny)
I wonder if that cue was inspired by a different ending to the mirror scene where Harry asks what Dumbledore sees in the mirror, and he says a new pair of socks.
It's a shame that so much music was dialed out in the last scene you posted, because it shows Williams's knack for scoring dialogue. But by that point there'd already been so much music and I think they wanted to avoid underscoring muggle scenes. Plus it makes the Dursleys more comically evil than was maybe intended.
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Yeah, I got it working again just as those last few minutes were playing. :/ Keep an eye on his label's YouTube channel I guess, they post random performances there. Maybe October Light will show up one day.
The Jerry Goldsmith Companion - Celebrating a Musical Legend by Jeff Bond
in General Discussion
Posted
They have $40,000 extra dollars at their disposal so I think they will be fine.