Score

My favourite one will always be Schin-dler, Schin-dler, Schin-dler, Schin-dler, Schin-dler, Schin-dler's list; Schin-dler, Schin-dler, Schin-dler, Schin-dler, Schin-dler, Schin-dler, Schin-dler, Schin-dler, Schin-dler, Schin-dler, Schin-dler, Schin-dler's list; that's Schin-dler, Schin-dler, Schin-dler, Schin-dler's li--ist, Schin-dler, Schin-dler, Schin-dler, Schin-dler's list. Someone suggested it some time ago, I don't remember where and who... I don't want to take undue credits for this masterpiece!

It's actually RE-MI-DO-DO-SOL

??? I wasn't doubting what you said. I said I didn't know that the modification of the timpani part was done on Don's suggestion. There was no sarcasm involved. Since that modification appeared already in the suite (which was published before the recording of ESB, and whose score was used for the recordings of the SW chapters coming after episode IV), I just wanted to say that Don's suggestions were implemented already in the suite, and then entered ESB, ROTJ and the prequels.

As far as I know, there was an intermediate step, namely, the orchestral suite that was published for concert performance after the release of SW (several movements of which, including the Main Title, were later incorporated in the Hal Leonard published suites). After that publication, the recordings of the Main Title for ESB, ROTJ and the prequels used that score. There are various differences between the SW recording of the Main Titles and the suite score, a notable one being the simplification of the timpani part. I didn't know that this was based on Don Williams's input!

Same key and almost same tempo! Next challenge: find a sequence from the SW movies - or any other movie - for which this combined cue would be an appropriate soundtrack.

I'm surely in the "all of them" camp, meaning that every sequence of connected cues that JW conceived should be presented as such, even if he broke it into cues for recording purposes. One of the infinitely many examples is The Rescue - The Bike Chase from E.T. . The mood set by the first cue is absolutely necessary to "get" the second cue!

And his ears, too! I find that even more stunning. I know / have known people in their 90s in good health, and the most common trait is a very noticeable decline in their hearing abilities. That someone in his 90s can conduct an orchestra and supervise recording sessions (whatever kind of help he might receive from younger people) is something I would never have believed (not that conducting live concerts is less amazing).

Although I know a large part of Herrmann's works (not just for film), the movies scored by him, which I have seen, are just: Citizen Kane, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Vertigo, Psycho, Fahrenheit 451, Sisters, and Taxi Driver. I think I can recommend all of them, if you want to sample his works together with the movies they were written for, although some of them have aged better than the others. In my opinion, among the movies that I've mentioned, Vertigo and Psycho both are the best movies and have the best scores.

1 - John Williams 2 - Jerry Goldsmith 3 - Ennio Morricone 4 - Bernard Herrmann 5 - Erich Wolfgang Korngold 6 - Max Steiner 7 - Miklós Rózsa 8 - Don Davis 9 - Howard Shore 10 - Elliot Goldenthal

It's not about being programmatic or not. There is a difference between the role played by music in a movie and the role played by music in an opera, which has an obvious impact on how the composer works and on the final product (specifically, on the structure). You will find plenty of classical music critics who are enthusiastic about, say, Adès's opera The Tempest, but do not care about film music because "it doesn't stand on its own feet". It's clearly not my opinion, I'm just reporting what I often hear / read. Anyway, the original question of this thread was about how film music should be played in a concert in a way that would be convincing for the "classical elite". A LTP performance is equivalent to just showing the whole movie with its music, so it doesn't solve the problem. If someone didn't care for the music as it was in the movie, the LTP will not change their mind. Right, I remember now!

Yes, but the LTPs are not going to convince those classical critics who look down on film music. If this is the objective, the way of achieving it is to compile something which has a structure and works independently of the film, and displays interesting and non-trivial features. The final act of CEO3K mentioned above is a great example - it probably ranks among the very best music composed in the second half of the 20th century. There are plenty of scores which would be amenable to this treatment (A.I., the Potters, E.T., Star Wars...). I didn't know about this. When was it performed?

I haven't heard the Matrix Symphony. As far as the LOTR Symphony is concerned, yes, I like it and I think it's a great way to present the LOTR music in a live concert. That's precisely what I wish JW would do for his best works. It's not a new idea at all, of course: Prokofiev felt the need to re-arrange and re-assemble his Alexander Nevsky score into the well-known cantata, and the "Classical Elite" apparently never had problems with that, even if it is essentially film music. For some critics there might be a sort of authority principle at work, by virtue of which primarily "classical" authors are considered good in whatever they did, even if they occasionally went into film music territory. But I think that for more independent thinkers and listeners, the fact of giving a structure to the music, and allowing enough space for the maturation of the themes, is highly appreciated.

I don't exactly like the use of the term "Classical Music Elite" here. There are plenty of "elite" figures in the field of classical music who have embraced film music as a natural continuation of that tradition. I don't think anyone should be excessively impressed by the lonely tweets of some old-school music critics or musicologists. Still, as I have already expressed in the past, I wish I could hear more structured pieces performed in JW's concerts. A perfect example would be the final act of Close Encounters, that @Michael Grigorowitsch used in his reply to the musicologist above - played exactly like that in its 21-minute splendor, as it is. Analogous sequences could be realized for many of JW's scores, and I think many classically-oriented musicians (me included) would prefer to get a concert made of pieces like this, rather than compilations of Main Titles, End Titles, and 3-minute theme arrangements. In other words, it takes time to tell a good story in music (as JW knows very well) and I wish we could get more full stories in his concerts. I'm sure that this would increase his popularity with musicians who might be knowledgeable about classical music, but maybe never bothered to listen to a film score in its entirety outside the movie theater.

"Oh. If I had realized that, I would have scored it differently!"

Nah, I don't believe this is a troll job. No one (*) would go at such lengths, just for a troll job - just think at the amount of time that he must have spent to do his "researches" and reply here... it wouldn't be a reasonable investment of time. In Mattris's posts, I've seen a greater amount of logical fallacies than I would have been able to conceive if I had tried. So, either he's someone who is doing a sociological research on whether people on the internet are able to detect logical fallacies and/or for how long they are going to reply to these (so, he knows them and he's producing them on purpose to study people's responses), or such fallacies are just part of his way of approaching reality, and he truly believes in what he's saying. I think these are the most likely possible explanations. (*)... admittedly, based on the people that I know in real life, which might not be a representative sample of the whole population of the internet!