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Cheers @Marian Schedenig for being the rationalist of this thread. Saves some of us time.
 
Glass' comments aren't so much derogatory as they are an honest reflection on his own priorities. Many artists are driven by questioning form, and convention. Asking oneself "why". And there's rarely ever space, time or money to ask such questions in a film studio.
 
His own music came from a period that rejected the establishment and conventions of music-making. So it makes sense that the idea of challenging normative expectations is his priority and preference (even if his own music hasn't done that in years...which is also okay). And in the concert world, or even pop, you're creating autonomous music for music's sake, so you have more freedom in developing or pushing forward a language or a school of thought. In film music, you're serving a picture and a genre first. So, if you work hard and train well, you become a master technician like Williams, and become virtuosically adept at dipping into multiple traditions of music-making to serve the needs of the story at hand. And like Glass says, that's not to say there aren't "innovators" in these forms, but for the most part, Williams isn't one. And that's okay. That's all Glass' comments are really pointing to.
 
Anything else is just a projection of Williams fanboy bias.

That is true. The recent TALES FROM THE LOOP score is, in fact, an example of Glass approximating Max Richter's approximation of Glass. But the interview is from 2002, he was more cutting edge then. It's in circumstances like the above that someone should just put IMAGES on the table for him to behold.
 
That being said, there is definitely a need for innovation and invention, but that's only one criterion by which to judge music, and sometimes not even the most important one. Many times, it's just as important to play around with conventions to create an emotional response based on expectations. We would have an incredibly stale musical landscape if invention was always the only legitimate criterion.

These are both fantastic.  I'll take cello arrangements over violin arrangements any day of the week.  Someone really needs to do a proper album of Williams pieces for cello [shoots a dirty look at Yo-Yo Ma].

Okay, I'll bite. I would actually be curious (morbidly?) to hear a Giacchino Indy score. His MOH stuff was Indy-lite and still had some of his best-developed themes and one-off action motifs. It's not so much that I think he could recapture that—his voice has departed so much from that—but I would be interested to see if and how he might revisit or engage with that style from his early material.

...to be honest, while it's not interesting on its own - Hildur's score is extremely effective in the film.  As well as her work on Chernobyl.  She did the job, and did it well.  So please don't make excuses for her win.

I don't know how any sane person could put Johnson's treatment of JW's Last Jedi in the same category as Abrams' two hatchet jobs.

Was the soundtrack in the Joker strikingly effective though? I know The Social Network was similarly  controversial, yet that score also has its vocal supporters.

"They Will Come" and the end of "Reunion" were two other moments that stuck out to me where I imagined they could have been really great in the film when listening to the soundtrack, but they're just kinda there even though they're among the more prominent cues. It's not that exciting watching them to go into battle, it's not that moving watching those three hug at the end.
 
And I agree that beyond lacking anything emotionally, very little sticks out technically either in terms of highlighted sync points or score against memorable shot sequencing. Lando's fleet is one of those things where the timing of the music with the reveal just makes it work (along with familiarity, obviously), even though as a story beat, who cares. I can think of other moments I like such as the low brass when Kylo Ren chucks the lightsaber, the light side Kylo theme when he zips into frame at Exegol. Rey hearing the Jedi voices is elegantly scored. But it's tough when even as a die-hard JWFan I'm grasping for straws.

I love how JW brings back that little Desperation-related action ostinato from TLJ at 1:23 of They Will Come, right before that big statement of the Resistance march. Depending on how you look at it, this could count as the only bit of thematic material original to TLJ that reprises in TROS, no?
 
EDIT: Just checked Frank's list and I see in the footnotes he counts it as an evolution of the Tension motif from TFA.
 
 
 
 

I love how JW brings back that little Desperation-related action ostinato from TLJ at 1:23 of They Will Come, right before that big statement of the Resistance march. Depending on how you look at it, this could count as the only bit of thematic material original to TLJ that reprises in TROS, no?
 
EDIT: Just checked Frank's list and I see in the footnotes he counts it as an evolution of the Tension motif from TFA.
 
 
 
 

My favorite JW imitation comes from Kyle Newmaster's contributions to the Kinect: Star Wars soundtrack. He's not only able to mimic the sound and the mannerisms, but also how JW would develop ideas throughout cues in the OT and PT eras in a far more convincing manner than some of the other imitators.
https://soundcloud.com/gordyhaab/15-cleggs-swan-song?in=gordyhaab/sets/kinect-star-wars-soundtrack
 
 

Entirely fair! I didn't mean to call into question anyone's personal readings of it. In fact, I hardly find it romantic at all.
 
All I meant was, JW's stated intent that it's a literal representation of sex is quite clear to me—complete with the "torrid climax" and post-coital descending triplets. And to be honest, for that reason, it's never roused much emotion in me. I always thought of it as essentially a concert-piece-length dirty joke, completely at odds with Leia as a character—an anachronistic theme that defined her primarily as a sex object. No wonder he says he felt bad about it and was always apologizing to Carrie Fisher for it.

Tbh, the fact that Williams had to write 226 minutes of music for a movie that uses less than a half of it is a little sad. It shows that he and Abrams weren't exactly in the same page about the score, and Abrams made him record lots and lots of alternates and revisions, new versions, etc. - I mean, more than usual. Then, the score got moved around, tracked, parts were discarded, buried beneath sound effects...
 
JJ was so lost with the movie and the score suffered for it. But hey, at least he gave Williams his first cameo, something neither Spielberg or Lucas did.

Finally got to listen to the interview. It was very nice to hear Williams talk about Vienna, about his brother, about Ben's Theme. I didn't expect to hear him adress the condescension (of lack thereof, in the case of the Vienna concerts) of the "serious" musical world toward "film" music.
Mainly what I take away from the interview, is that he is not closing the door to future concerts in Europe, or to future oscar nominations! It gives me hope for more good things to come 
 

IndieWire is posting their annual series of anonymous interviews with Oscar voters. The first one (reportedly from the directors branch) is probably representative of where most Academy members are:
 
 

IndieWire is posting their annual series of anonymous interviews with Oscar voters. The first one (reportedly from the directors branch) is probably representative of where most Academy members are:
 
 

IndieWire is posting their annual series of anonymous interviews with Oscar voters. The first one (reportedly from the directors branch) is probably representative of where most Academy members are:
 
 

IndieWire is posting their annual series of anonymous interviews with Oscar voters. The first one (reportedly from the directors branch) is probably representative of where most Academy members are:
 
 

IndieWire is posting their annual series of anonymous interviews with Oscar voters. The first one (reportedly from the directors branch) is probably representative of where most Academy members are:
 
 

In this topic, there has already been some speculation about WP seating on JW concerts and we had a good chat of our own with @Marian Schedenig so I decided to ask my friend who plays double bass in the orchestra (and also played in both JW concerts). He told me the following: I don't know, we always play in this [i.e. American] setup when we're touring and sometimes also in the Musikverein, depends on the programme/project. I think Williams didn't care about the setup we play in.
 
After Saturday's concert (which I attended), he also told me that the orchestra loved this project and working with JW who "was very nice to everybody" and that he - the bass player - rewatched E.T. before this project "to remember it all". He pointed out the unprecedented reaction of the public which, so he said, "we've never experienced before, regardless of either conductor or venue". They had three rehearsals with Johnny before Saturday. During the intermission I also spoke to percussionist Thomas Lechner (he played the timpani in JW concerts) whom I also met some 10 years ago and he told me basically the same thing - couldn't sing enough praise to the project. He told me he totally remembers how he cried at the end of E.T. when he was a kid and that being able to play all this music with the Maestro himself at the helm is (was) for him a huge privilege.

Mine Mission sounds like Powell trying to work with JW's fugue style, not like an actual JW fugue piece. There is a roughness and simplicity in progression that you don't get with a JW fugue piece.

It's a fine list. I had expected more Morricone, given his previous comments about his music.
 
I've actually witnessed Zimmer's enthusiasm for composers like Goldenthal and Moroder "live", during the back stage intermission of his Ghent apparances. The Moroder one was especially fun, as Zimmer bowed reverently for Moroder while greeting him for the first time.

It obviously is.

I liked how the SE's presented them like intermezzos/Ent'racte