JWScores

No, but on that topic, I'm surprised that no one has mentioned "The Humanoid" (1979) so far. It's not just trash, it actually redefines the concept of trash itself. Score by Morricone, of course! Judge by yourself (I only managed to watch the first 10 minutes or so, then I found it impossible to watch further):

Why not? Here is my list, with ratings from 1 to 5 (only those that I've seen, of course): Schindler's List 5/5 A.I. Artificial Intelligence 5/5 Minority Report 5/5 Jurassic Park 5/5 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial 4/5 Munich 4/5 Saving Private Ryan 4/5 Empire of the Sun 4/5 War Horse 4/5 Jaws 4/5 Raiders of the Lost Ark 3/5 Close Encounters of the Third Kind 3/5 War of the Worlds 3/5 The Lost World: Jurassic Park 3/5 The BFG 3/5 The Fabelmans 3/5 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade 3/5 The Adventures of Tintin 2/5 Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom 2/5 Hook 2/5 Catch Me If You Can 2/5 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull 1/5 The Terminal 1/5

I voted for the violin+piano version dedicated to Gil Shaham (whose score is published in the Signature Edition series). I think the piano part is particularly effective and convincing. I also like the Mutter arrangement: actually, it's probably the only one that I enjoyed, at least among those that were played in Vienna. I generally don't like adding virtuosistic violin playing to a pre-existing piece which didn't require it, just for the sake of doing it, but in this particular piece it totally makes sense (Devil + violin is a long-standing association). The only defect is the long false-ending stuff, which is the one recuring feature of many of JW's concert arrangements that I truly cannot stand (I think it started with The Forest Battle...?). So, this is why it gets from me a lower mark than the piano + violin arrangement. The trio arrangement is beautiful and done with great taste, but I think the solo violin works better than flute + cello for this type of piece. So, if I have to pick one, I prefer the violin + piano version. Nice to hear an alternative chamber version, though.

Lincoln, most of the LOTR scores (except for The Fellowship of the Ring), Back to the Future, Dances with Wolves, and surely many more. AI is one of my very favourite scores, certainly in my JW top-10, but I also prefer to listen to it in the form of "suites" compiled by myself, rather than the whole C&C score (I'm very glad I have it, though, so I can choose).

Happy to help! I didn't study the logic in the individual parts for that specific piece, although I believe it's essentially this: 1) the 4 parts combine in such a way that the chords of a standard harmonization are often alluded to, if never (or almost never) exactly realized; 2) the harmonic appoggiaturas should not resolve; e.g., if the parts outline a dominant chord, the VII grade will not move to the tonic in the next chord; it will rather jump to another grade of the scale (I know this is one of Morricone's principles when writing in this style, as he mentioned it in a lecture); 3) in an individual part, for the reasons above, jumps are favoured, as opposed to motion to adjacent grades. I cannot play the sample, but I did read the score excerpt and, indeed, it has a similar floating quality (and the C7+/9 chord in the strings is very "morriconian" as well). Nice work! The stylistic differences are due to the features outlined above.

Yes, there is a systematic thought beyond that. I'll explain with an example. Suppose you have a melodic theme in (say) 4/4, with a clear and regular harmonic and melodic rhythm. The procedure of "suspended strings" consists in letting the 4 upper parts of the strings (violins I, violins II, violas, and cellos) be made of sequences of held notes, each one having the duration of 5/8, and in letting the 4 sequences corresponding to the 4 parts start in different eighths of the first measure. For example: in bar 1, violins I start playing sequences of 5/8 notes starting on the first eighth of the measure; violins II start a different sequence of 5/8 notes on the fourth eighth; violas start another sequence on the third eighth, and cellos start another sequence on the second eighth. In this way, no two parts are ever going to attack any note simultaneously, therefore chords become kind of "blurry" and, indeed, harmonies are "suspended". This generates sequences of very short chords that are extremely strange but preserve a reminiscence of the original harmony, and a sense of motion due to the fact that, basically, at every eighth the harmony changes in one voice. If you can read music, you may want to see it written down, for example in this publicly visible perusal score: https://www.wisemusicclassical.com/work/63469/The-Legend-of-1900-Suite--Ennio-Morricone/ You will find two examples of this kind of writing, starting at page 5 and at page 22. The one starting at page 5 is probably the first version of "The Crisis", which I was mentioning in an earlier post. There are also plenty of examples of this technique in Morricone's commercially available concert pieces.

One of my favourite examples, considering how it works in the film, is this (starting at 0:50): The terminology "suspended strings" is how Morricone himself called the technique in a book written with Tornatore. There, they mention and discuss that the cue "The Crisis" from "The Legend of 1900" had initially been written in this way. However, Tornatore found it not fitting for the scene, so Morricone revised the strings parts to eliminate the suspensions, and so it became the film version we are familiar with. I believe that the choral part in the first and last sections of the main title of "Secret of the Sahara" is written in the same way (on a static chord that involves the notes C - D - F- G - A ), although it is difficult to say for sure without seeing the score: In my opinion, the longest version is the way to go because it gives a completely different perspective on the main characters, especially concerning the actions of one of them; it even changes the meaning of the finale, where Totò watches the collage of cut sequences from the old movies made by Alfredo. And it's much more thought-provoking, it's almost another movie. I watched it not long ago with some other people who were all previously familiar (like me) with the short version, and we all agreed that the 174 min. one was much better. As Sergio Leone once said (about his own "Once Upon a Time in America"): "Sometimes, when you cut a film you actually make it longer". I think it applies to this case

It's also one of my very favourite films. Morricone's son (Andrea) composed the melody and the harmony of the love theme (except maybe for small corrections); it is not known beyond doubt how much of the various arrangements and orchestrations of that theme were done by him, or by Ennio. For example, the first 1:20 of this track, features a particular compositional technique ("suspended strings") which is typical of Ennio. I believe he invented it, and you can hear it in several of his non-film pieces as well as in many of his other film scores: there is almost always at least one theme presented in this fashion. So, this arrangement was done either by Ennio, or by his son but with a clear intention to follow that style. We cannot be sure about who did what in the other (more "standard") arrangements featured in the film score. I have to disagree with this. If possible, I strongly recommend to only watch the full director's cut (174 minutes), and nothing else. The final part of the movie, which was largely removed or shortened in previous cut releases, is absolutely essential to understand the story and its meaning. The lose threads are resolved in the full director's cut. Go for it!

Sorry for the finger-wagging, I didn't mean that, it was just an instinctive reaction because Stravinsky is one of my all-time musical heroes Stravinsky did indeed compose mostly at the piano because (as he once said) he needed to be in direct contact with a sound-producing instrument to get better ideas, or even to get started. There are examples, in the Rite of Spring, of chords and sequences that were evidently conceived at the piano. This is quite true also for John Williams, and probably for most composers who are/were also good pianists, because they could test or even get their ideas in a sufficiently complete form while playing. Instead, composers like e.g. Morricone (who had studied trumpet and was not a good pianist at all) preferred to write everything at the desk, conceiving the music completely in their mind.

No no no, Stravinsky was of course extremely capable of writing musical notation, and he wrote all of his scores. I don't know where you got this from, but maybe the source misinterpreted a statement by Stravinsky himself, where he said he had had some difficulties in finding the best way to notate a section (I believe the final one - going from memory) of the Rite of Spring. He came up with it at the piano and it was a nightmare of rhythmic irregularities, and more than one solution was possible, in terms of notation - and maybe, none of them was completely satisfactory. So, it was a difficulty in finding the best solution to express a very complicated musical idea originating from improvisation, not a difficulty related to notation in itself.

Congratulations, @Falstaft ! Looking forward to it.

Morricone has probably written a couple dozens scores for each of these genres.

Williams occasionally did the orchestrations himself, when time and other circumstances allowed him to do it. The revised version of the first cue from E.T. is one such example: it was indeed orchestrated by Wiliams (in the revised part of the cue), so you are right about this. The rest of the score was mostly orchestrated (in the sense mentioned above by others, i.e., orchestrator = glorified copyist) by Spencer, and one cue was orchestrated by Morley.

So it begins... the great battle of our time.

The Chicake.