SeekUYoda
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Posts posted by SeekUYoda
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Holst...on many people's list' date=' but Lebretch calls him a one hit
wonder...can anyone name a piece that he wrote other than the
planets?[/quote']
Yes - the two suites for wind band (No. 1 in E-flat, No. 2 in F) and Hammersmith - one of my favorite pieces ever!
And whoever mentioned William Walton, I've loved him for a while, ever since I read through "Crown Imperial" in my high school's band. I just heard a piece of his on the radio this morning, "Spitfire Prelude and Fugue," that was very nice.
Pixie, I agree - Brahms' chamber music is a little bit much to chew on at first - but if you can see some of it performed live (especially the piano quintet, which is probably the most sublime piano quintet ever), I promise it'll change your outlook. The horn trio is also a masterpiece, as are the clarinet/viola and violin sonatas. (And the violin concerto!!!) It's all wonderful - I've never heard or played anything of his that I didn't like after a couple times through.
Brahms....always lived in Beethoven's shadow' date=' wrote his 4 symponies very late in life because of it..the first is considered the Beethoven 10th... [/quote']Yes, poor guy. :cry: It worked out for him eventually, though, even though he always felt he was in Beethoven's shadow. I think he surpassed Beethoven - as much as I love Beethoven's symphonies (favorite of the moment is 6), I continue to find more depth in Brahms. And better horn parts - guess having more/better valves helped that. But the more I listen to or play Brahms, the more he amazes and intrigues me and makes me want more. I know he spent years working and re-working his first symphony because he felt there was nothing left to say once Beethoven had finished, but I think he found something to say and got out of his shadow. The first may be Beethoven X, but I really think 2-4 are very different and all his own.
And wow - Ives! He's completely in his own world. I've never felt smart enough to really dive in and try to figure him out. What a genius!
This a great thread!
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You know, I'm really surprised that no one besides me favors Brahms. His music is SO much like Williams' - it's all really thick and intricate and often very melody/theme based, and very difficult to arrange or transcribe properly because all the layers are so critical - that I figured all the Williams fans here would be Brahms fans too. Weird. And they both write so well and so frequently for horn....
I guess I'm a little biased... A pity Brahms never wrote a horn concerto. -
Brahms - absolutely my favorite!
Williams, of course
Haydn, Chopin, Hindemith, and Skryabin are also brilliant.
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Kaitlin, I look forward to reading your thoughts about the concerto. Did you have a chance to study with Mr. Clevenger? I really enjoyed the second half of the talk when Mr. Clevenger played snippets from the concerto, explaining what he was doing as he went along, and I thought his students must thank their lucky stars every day to have such a gifted man as their instructor.
No, I didn't have a chance to take a lesson. But my teacher studied with him, so I've gotten some of his widsom vicariously and it's all been wonderful. And a friend of mine moved to Chicago a couple years ago to be around all the amazing horn playing that goes on there and she's taken many many lessons from him, so I've heard amazing things about him from her. I got to talk to him for a few minutes after the concert and he was very kind and gracious, but he was more interested in going to party with Mr. Williams, I think. :-) I'll get the rest of my thoughts up soon, I promise!
One of the things that went through my mind as I was listening was how difficult it would be to represent the magnificent orchestral parts in a dinky little piano reduction... I wonder who the pianist was during that first read-through. I would have thought it might be Mr. Williams, just playing from memory. But if there's a reduction out there... wow. Any ideas on how we can get our collective hands on it?
DarthHornPlayer, it really is a good day for horn players! (There seem to be quite a few of us running around on this site -woohoo!).
If I may ask, who do you play with? K.M., I'm not sure which is worse - to not have heard it or to have heard it and be forgetting it. I sure wish I could hear it again - I still remember the theme from the Pastorale and some bits of the Nocturne but the rest is gone and that's horribly depressing. There were several microphones above the stage... does anyone know how to find out if they were on and if a recording was made even for secret archival purposes?
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Star Wars, of course!
Honorable mention to Hook
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The critics have mentioned that this is not a virtuoso showcase for Mr. Clevenger. JW and Dale Clevenger have both said that it is more like a tone poem or a suite and is an exploration of the different colors or moods that the horn can evoke, which I would argue, is another way of showing mastery of an instrument. Mr. Clevenger also said that when he first saw the full score, he thought it was too difficult and that he wouldn't be able to play it. He has mastered it so well and played it so beautifully, that perhaps the true difficulty can't be judged by anyone not an expert.
Kathy, you couldn't have said it better. That review was full of prunes. If ever I have heard a virtuoso showcase for the horn, this was it! (What else could you even expect from him!) And Mr. Clevenger said "I got a couple movements in the mail. And they were very nice. Then I got another movement in the mail. And it was very hard." Anything he says is hard has to be virtuosic! The poor guy has been trying to retire for years and they keep having auditions but they can't find anyone good enough to replace him. There's a (true, because I know the guy) story about a horn player who went to audition for a commercial jingle gig, and the whole audition was just a pianiss-iss-issimo entrance on a high C. That's it. They figure (correctly), that if you have such a command of the instrument that you can make that treacherous an entrance while under that much pressure, you can do anything Mr. Williams wrote one of those entrances in the concerto - two, almost, if you count the B-flat entrance the previous bar. I was totally amazed by the concerto and I hope its published soon - it made me want to go home and play it right that minute!
I will have to post my thoughts on the concerto later because I'm not at home where my notes are. But I do remember that I loved what Mr. Clevenger said during the Saturday pre-concert talk... "Live music isn't perfect.... it's wonderful."
More later.
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And the Orlando Pops is what comes to mind when i think of bad Williams recordings
K.M.
I think I have a recording by Atlanta, or somebody else in the southeast there, of the Star Wars theme that is not so excellent. I'll have to look when I get home.Hey, that's who I was thinking of! Thanks!
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That's cool, I play horn too, and I also really love playing those themes. Most of them of course feature horn solos in the films or concert arrangements, so it's natural that they'd be so great for the instrument. Out of curiosity, are you playing them from the Star Wars horn books, or do you have some other source?
Ray Barnsbury
I'm playing them from an arrangement I did myself, as my senior thesis. I really wanted to perform those themes myself and didn't think I'd get the chance with an orchestra or anything, so I wrote this arrangement to play on my recitals. :-)
Which Star Wars horn books are you referring to?
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Glory and Prokofiev's Ivan the Terrible score share that slow lyrical theme in C major... could that be it?
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Movie Music: the Film Reader edited by Kay Dickinson (Routledge Press, 2003, ISBN 0-415-28160-1)
There's no Williams interview, but they cover the whole spectrum of film music - this could be useful for background information, etc
The Composer in Hollywood, by Christopher Palmer (1990, Marion Boyars Publishers). Talks extensively about Newman and less so about how Williams was affected by him. You could at least cite this and draw your own conclusions on the ifnluences.
Music and Cinema, edited by James Buhler, Caryl Flinn, and David Neumeyer (University Press of New England, 2000, ISBN 0-8195-6411-7). One section is called "Leitmotifs and Musical Reference in the Classical Film Score", and another that deals largely with Star Wars' is "Star Wars, Music, and Myth." This an excellent resource!
Musique Fantastique: A Survey of Film Mysic in the Fantastic Cinema, by Randall D. Larson (The Scarecrow Press, 1985, ISBN 0-8108-1728-4) Has a chapter on Williams that is both biographical and analytical.
Listening to Movies: The Film Lover's Guide to Film Music, by Fred Karlin (Schirmer Books, 1994, ISBN 0-02-87335-0) There's not an in-depth article or review or interview, but he is mentioned throughout the book on a variety of topics. Also a good resource and an interesting read. Lots of Williams' own comments.
I work in a music library, so I found all these by parking myself in front of the"film music" section and browsing through the indexes of all those books. They are all available through Interlibrary Loan if you don't want to buy them. I also read the interview in Film Score: The Art & Craft of Movie Music. It's worth a read, at least.
Scholarly articles are harder to come by because it seems that very few of the musical scholars who write those things and manage to get them published are interested in film music. Even the Star Wars Insider feature on him a while ago wasn't too informative. So, I think the answer is to do the analyses yourself and post them here. We'd love to read them! (At least I would!) If you find some good articles, will you post thsoe too? Which clips are you going to play to demonstrate styles?
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I like the Skywalker SO performances, I find them quiet good.
In most cases I believe epople get too attached to the original soundtrrack recordings, and are not open minded enought for a slightly diferent aproach -- i.e. performance.
No, technically they're very good. I think it's a matter of my being attached to the first recording I heard (over and over) - which was Utah, actually - and wanting it to sound like that because that's what I was expecting, at first. However, having now heard several recordings of the Asteriod Field, I still don't like the Skywalker recording. Just my totally subjective and biased opinion. :oops:
You're absolutely right about the "attachment," though. Whatever you hear first or most often (usually an original soundtrack), that's The Way (you think) That Piece Should Be Played. It's hard to operate with an open mind to avoid that sort of bias.
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I know! This interview is almost a preview of the pre-concert conversation, but the program notes should be posted on Thursday and they are pretty in-depth.
Thursday, today, Thursday?
Well, when I attended the concerts in Washington D.C. in January one of the questions in the post-concert conversation was that very subject. A person asked if the horn was his favorite instrument to write for since he composes such wonderful music for it and his answer was yes. Unfortunately, he then became a bit technical, and, since I don't play any instruments, I don't remember the rest of his answer.I've always wanted to ask him that... cool! He writes like he's played the instrument all his life
I can hardly wait! Which concerts are you attending?Just the Saturday night performance. I wish we could stay for more, but, alas, time and money are short.
9 more days!
Kaitlin
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Bad orchestrrations and bad condcuting/performance are diferent things' date=' you know? What QuestionMarkMan and Melange are talking about are poor performances, not about orchestrations.
quote']
Right. Orchestration is more like instrumentation - which instruments get which themes, etc.
Speaking of substandard performances, though, there's a couple tracks on the Skywalker Symphony SW recording that just don't do it for me. But it's JW conducting, which means my "taste" must be off. The Asteriod Field, I think, is the one. After hearing the Utah recording which is so fast and brilliant and the soundtrack recording (that makes you feel like you're there! I can hear 3PO screaming in my mind whenever I listen), the Skywalker Symphony version sounds sluggish and not as intense or exciting.
I think I have a recording by Atlanta, or somebody else in the southeast there, of the Star Wars theme that is not so excellent. I'll have to look when I get home.
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Thanks for the tip, Mari!
I was hoping he might say a bit more about the concerto - what the style will be, etc. I guess we'll just have to wait until they post the program notes.
This is going to be an amazing concerto. I can't wait to hear it! I really hope the theme for the second movement is like one of his film-score horn solo themes - like Princess Leia or Luke and Leia. JW is like Brahms in the way he writes for the horn: his music just flows out of the instrument. I've always thought JW's favorite orchestral instrument is the horn - although it could be glockenspiel, I guess; he sure uses it a lot.
Anyway... I digressed. Only 10 more days until the premiere!!
I'm really looking forward to this, and I hope it's melodic too. Williams' music, and film music in general, was a large factor in my switching from trumpet to horn, and I'm so glad that I did. Hearing a piece by him centered on the instrument should be really great.Ray Barnsbury
Another horn player - woohoo! You chose wisely!
Kaitlin
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Oh no! His music was wonderful - and especially meaningful to me. In middle school, it wasn't until we played a (rather silly) watered-down version of Robin Hood that I really fell for the (French) horn and realized that's what I really wanted to do. :-(
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Star Wars (all) - Main Title
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace ? Arrival at Tatooine and Flag Parade
Star Wars: Attack of the Clones ? Confrontation with Count Dooku and Finale
Star Wars: A New Hope ? Hologram/Binary Sunset
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back ? The Asteroid Field
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back ? Han Solo and the Princess
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back ? Rescue from Cloud City/Hyperspace
Star Wars: Return of the Jedi ? Leia?s news/Light of the Force
Star Wars: Return of the Jedi ? Brother and Sister/Father and Son? etc.
Hook ? Smee?s Plan
Raiders of the Lost Ark ? The Basket Chase
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade ? Scherzo for Motorcycle and Orchestra
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (Kamen) ? Overture and a Prisoner of the Crusades
The Man in the Iron Mask ? no particular track, actually. But it needed to be represented.
Ivan the Terrible ? Ivan?s sickness and finale
Star Trek: First Contact ? Red Alert
Goldeneye ? Tank scene (not on the soundtrack though!)
E.T. ? Magic of Halloween
The Pink Panther Strikes Again ? The Pink Panther Theme
Far and Away ? End Credits
Well, you can certainly tell who my favorite film composer is... and what my favorite scores are!
There's just no one that compares.Kaitlin
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Yes, I'm considering it, but I'm not in Chicago for very long so there's a good chance I'll miss it. :cry:
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But the cue that really got me obsessed with JW was hearing the Force Theme play during Binary Sunset, and it remains to this day my favorite Williams theme of all.
-Frank
That was it for me too - that fantastic horn solo, and the way he set it up so it wasn't intrusive, but just perfect for the moment and the suns and the wind in Luke's hair. It was perfect, and as a horn player I've realized how difficult it is to play but how simple it sounds once you've gotten it right. I've practiced that solo (and all the others - Luke & Leia, Han Solo & the Princess, etc.) for hours and hours and it's still my favorite Williams theme.
Talked to Williams last night/HP3 Trailer Scoop!
in General Discussion
Posted
As someone who's met him... I was incredibly nervous and had no idea what to say when the time came. He was working his way through the line and got to me and I froze. It took me about two seconds (which is a long time to stand there, silently, feeling foolish) to get over the fact that I was actually TALKING to John Williams in person and begin speaking. I'd planned out what I was going to say, but that went out the window. He signed an original ANH LP soundtrack for me (in gold ink) and we had a nice little chat about the concert and how he used to have a house near where I live. He was really nice - but I felt like a complete dork and unworthy of his time!