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Att. Scandinavians: John Williams' unknown sides (article series)


Thor

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For the last few months, I've been writing (mostly about film music) for the Norwegian film magazine http://www.montages.no

The last two articles have been on John Williams' unknown sides - at least unknown to more "regular folks" who only think he wrote marches and fanfares. The first is about his jazz work and scores, the second is about the modernist/experimentalist/avantgarde Williams. I thought this might be of interest to some here, although it is in Norwegian, so it's relevant mostly for Scandinavians. The rest of you can play the videos and music clips and look at the pretty pictures! :cool:

Part 1: The Jazz Man: http://montages.no/2009/12/john-williams-ukjente-sider/

Part 2: The Modernist: http://montages.no/2009/12/john-williams-ukjente-sider-del-2/

Thank you for your attention.

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Nice articles and links Thor. That Guide for the Married Man clip is hysterical! No worries with the language, if anyone has Google Toolbar there's an instant translation button which worked well enough for me.

Thanks for posting these. (Although I'm not sure I'd call The Fortress of Solitude a "modernist" piece...)

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Wow...that flute concerto is weird stuff! I kinda like it! Thanks for posting these links.

I must give it another shot. While I like Williams' concert works, this one has never captured my attention as much as the others. Since my appreciation for contemporary music has grown recently, my reception of JW's flute concerto may be different now.

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I cannot read Norwegian, but I really like the audio samples on the second page. Is the first one from his Flute Concerto? And where is the second one from, it sounds kind of like "Prelude and Fugue"....

You mean the second page of Part 1 (jazz) or second page of Part 2 (modernist)? The music clips on the second page of the modernist part are IMAGES ("In Search of Unicorns" and "The Killing of Marcel") and "Barry's Abduction" from CE3K.

I hope to have these translated to English eventually.

Thanks for the comments! :cool:

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Oh, there are two pages!? Wow, am I an idiot...I revise my statement to say the first page in the modernist section.

Ah, gotcha! Yeah, the last two clips on Page 1 are from LOST IN SPACE, the first is the "Meteor Storm", the second from "A Walk in Space" - both cues from the first episode "The Reluctant Stowaway").

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I thought maybe it was about his guitar work, or his success as a serial killer, or maybe his great character acting roles.

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Wow...that flute concerto is weird stuff! I kinda like it! Thanks for posting these links.

I must give it another shot. While I like Williams' concert works, this one has never captured my attention as much as the others. Since my appreciation for contemporary music has grown recently, my reception of JW's flute concerto may be different now.

When listening to music like this, don't try to search for melodies or other neatly ordered elements. It's not ABBA. Just let the abstract mood and the emotion of the work flow over you like poetry.

Alex

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You're so deep, Alex. I imagine your eyes to be like deep pools into the human soul, as if there is an enormous well behind them, filled up with ages of memory and long, slow, steady thinking; but their surface sparkles with the present: like sun shimmering on the outer leaves of a vast tree, or on the ripples of a very deep lake.

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Wow...that flute concerto is weird stuff! I kinda like it! Thanks for posting these links.

I must give it another shot. While I like Williams' concert works, this one has never captured my attention as much as the others. Since my appreciation for contemporary music has grown recently, my reception of JW's flute concerto may be different now.

When listening to music like this, don't try to search for melodies or other neatly ordered elements. It's not ABBA. Just let the abstract mood and the emotion of the work flow over you like poetry.

Alex

I don't like poetry. I quite like abstract music, though.

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By the way, I just tried the Google translator myself, and was very surprised that it actually became INTELLIGIBLE! Of course, there are some weird sentences, grammar and even faulty translations (and even some words that aren't translated at all), but it came out much better than what I had thought. You definitely get the "gist" of it.

So you can just copy-paste the text and get it translated to English here: http://translate.google.com/#

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You're so deep, Alex. I imagine your eyes to be like deep pools into the human soul, as if there is an enormous well behind them, filled up with ages of memory and long, slow, steady thinking; but their surface sparkles with the present: like sun shimmering on the outer leaves of a vast tree, or on the ripples of a very deep lake.

I meant abstract poetry.

I don't like poetry. I quite like abstract music, though.

Music is always abstract. Anyway, you don't have to like abstract poetry to appreciate Williams' Flute Concerto. I merely wanted to give an example of how to interpret music that isn't about melody (which in a way is comparable to 'story' in literature). Is that deep of me? I don't know, perhaps to some it is.

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