1977 Spielberg interview (talks about his soundtrack collection and JW)

[TownerFan 4,983]

Here's an interview with Steven Spielberg from 1977 where he talks, among other things, about his soundtrack collection and his collaboration with JW:

 

http://www.interviewmagazine.com/film/new-again-steven-spielberg#_

 

Quote

INTERVIEW: We were a little dismayed that you were at the new house, because you are Mr. Nice Guy, and we don't have any dish on you, so we wanted to snoop around your place, check out what's on the walls and your record collection.

SPIELBERG: I'll tell you what's in my record collection. Topping the list of records, I have about 760—it changes every week—soundtrack recordings.

INTERVIEW: Stock soundtracks?

SPIELBERG: Three quarters of the records are stock, and the rest are collectors items.

INTERVIEW: Do your soundtracks go back into the '20s or what?

SPIELBERG: You can't go back into the '20s. They didn't begin putting them out until...

INTERVIEW: I mean the talkies.

SPIELBERG: But those are bad reproductions. All the albums I'm interested in getting are the albums that begin in about 1950 when soundtracks became popular.

INTERVIEW: They're so popular now.

SPIELBERG: And they're so rare. I mean certain records—like The Horse Soldiers. I just got a copy of The Horse Soldiers which is a very rare piece of acetate.

INTERVIEW: Are you a John Ford fan?

SPIELBERG: Ah, yes. A major John Ford fan. The score that I want more than anything else—I will trade an original Touch of Evil, one Horse Soldiers, one King of Kings and any early Tiomkin for The Searchers. But I don't think The Searchers was even an album. I think The Searchers is sheet music somewhere in the Warner Bros. Library and you're gonna have to get Elmer Bernstein's Record club or Charles Gerhardt with the London Symphony Orchestra to record this.

INTERVIEW: I should have gotten To Kill a Mockingbird. That's the most beautiful.

SPIELBERG: Oh, I have that! I just got that today, because my secretary knows Elmer Bernstein, and she just came over this morning with a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. Pretty, isn't it? You know another very pretty thing is Jenny Goldsmith's A Patch of Blue. Max Steiner was probably the best composer for film ever to have lived. The one classical composer who was born to score movies and never did [Bela] Bartok.

INTERVIEW: Well, they weren't around.

SPIELBERG: He was around. Bartok's Symphony for String, Percussion and Cellist was commissioned in 1936. See, [Erich Wolfgang] Korngold could also have become a Bartok or a [Jean] Sibelius, but he went to movies, and he brought a lot of classical music to film. Just like [Sergei] Prokofiev, who scored a number of Russian movies. [Sergei] Eisenstein used Prokofiev.

INTERVIEW: Do you really work closely with your composer?

SPIELBERG: Very closely... I have a great relationship with John Williams.

INTERVIEW: I really liked the Jaws music, sort that "Down to the Sea in Ships" type of thing.

SPIELBERG: Well, John and I sat together and listened to a lot of Vaughn Williams and [Igor] Stravinsky, and then he went off and composed on the piano. Before he orchestrates he asks me to come over. I sit with him, and he plays the entire score on the piano, and I'm able to make comments, changes or whatever right there, which is really a luxury. John called me over to his house very excited. He sat at the piano and said, "Here's the theme from Jaws." He began playing this very primordial, repetition on the lower notes. I thought he was fooling around. I mean "da da Dah da Dah da." I began to laugh, and John said, "Oh, no, this is serious. I mean it. This is Jaws." And I listened to it again and it grew on me. It wasn't something that exploded as a correct choice. At first I thought it was too primitive. I wanted something a little more melodic for the shark, and then Johnny said, "What you don't hear is the L-Shaped Room... You have made yourself a popcorn movie." And he was absolutely right.

 

[Naïve Old Fart 9,526]

This is good. His love of OSTs really comes over, and he knows his stuff.

[nightscape94 965]

Funny about them bringing up "To Kill a Mockingbird".

[Will 2,215]

Quote

he plays the entire score on the piano

 

Spielberg just means the main themes, right? It sounds almost like he's saying that Williams literally plays every cue. 

[Jilal 569]

He probably did go through every cue, playing tidbits here and there.

 

@Sharkus Malarkus @karelm @nightscape94 What Vaughan Williams music would they have listened to?

[karelm 2,913]

1 hour ago, Jilal said:

He probably did go through every cue, playing tidbits here and there.

 

@Sharkus Malarkus @karelm @nightscape94 What Vaughan Williams music would they have listened to?

 

Well if they were working on Jaws, it most likely was Vaughan Williams's Sea Symphony (No. 1) which is full of lush oceanic moments.

[Loert 2,511]

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The one classical composer who was born to score movies and never did [Bela] Bartok.

YES!!!!

[Nick1Ø66 4,714]

Interesting, given Spielberg's unabashed love of film music, that he'd choose to pretty much work with only one composer for his entire career, even if it is arguably the best composer of film music in history.

[Sharkissimo 1,973]

Can't say I hear much of a similarity to anything in the Sea Symphony, but I do see a possible well of inspiration in the opening movement of the Second Symphony (Out to Sea, Ben Gardner's Boat, End Titles etc.). Give it a listen, @Jilal

 

 

 

[Marian Schedenig 8,193]

I wonder if Spielberg still spends the occasional evening on his sofa, eagerly listening to his latest batch of Intrada and La-La Land CDs.

[Will 2,215]

5 hours ago, Sharkus Malarkus said:

Can't say I hear much of a similarity to anything in the Sea Symphony, but I do see a possible well of inspiration in the opening movement of the Second Symphony (Out to Sea, Ben Gardner's Boat, End Titles etc.). Give it a listen, @Jilal

 

 

 

 

Oh yes, I only listened to the first couple minutes but already I had spotted an enormous similarity to...

 

 

I could mistake one for the other they're so similar! 

@Jilal

 

Quote

He probably did go through every cue, playing tidbits here and there.

 

Wow. I'd always thought he'd just play a couple themes early in the process and would then work independently until the sessions. 

 

Was it often that Williams would play many/every cue(s) for the director? 

 

Also, Spielberg says in the interview, "Before he orchestrates he asks me to come over." So at the time of "piano demoing," even if every cue is written, the score isn't really orchestrated? 

 

@karelm or @loert, would you also be able to shed some light on this? 

[Naïve Old Fart 9,526]

11 hours ago, Sharkus Malarkus said:

Can't say I hear much of a similarity to anything in the Sea Symphony, but I do see a possible well of inspiration in the opening movement of the Second Symphony (Out to Sea, Ben Gardner's Boat, End Titles etc.). Give it a listen, @Jilal

 

 

 

 

Yes! The "LONDON" is my fave RVW ever, and a clear blueprint for JAWS (not that that's a bad thing, mind).

Curiously, where he imagines Embankment, I imagine Strand. Ho hum. 

The "time passes, England passes" section where he "looks" down the Thames, is heartbreaking, and is something that can only be truly "felt" by a Londoner. In that regard, its a bit like WATERLOO SUNSET.

[Loert 2,511]

10 hours ago, Richard said:

Yes! The "LONDON" is my fave RVW ever, and a clear blueprint for JAWS (not that that's a bad thing, mind).

Curiously, where he imagines Embankment, I imagine Strand. Ho hum. 

The "time passes, England passes" section where he "looks" down the Thames, is heartbreaking, and is something that can only be truly "felt" by a Londoner. In that regard, its a bit like WATERLOO SUNSET.

 

2nd movement is definitely my favourite, although the opening chords don't remind me of "Bloomsbury Square on a November afternoon" so much as they remind me of exploring the London alleyways at night-time. However, when the repeated chords in the strings and lone trumpet appear, I can definitely imagine a garden setting.

 

16 hours ago, Will said:

Wow. I'd always thought he'd just play a couple themes early in the process and would then work independently until the sessions. 

 

Was it often that Williams would play many/every cue(s) for the director? 

 

Also, Spielberg says in the interview, "Before he orchestrates he asks me to come over." So at the time of "piano demoing," even if every cue is written, the score isn't really orchestrated?

 

These videos might shed some light on the process:

 

 

 

(if we assume that they weren't put on just for the camera )

 

I imagine it goes something like this: First there's the spotting session, where Williams and the directors/producers decide where music should go, and what kind of music it has to be. Now, I guess it's after this that Williams begins to write the themes (although sometimes Williams might get started before he sees the film, as was the case with Hook for example). He'll then play the themes to the director, to check that they "fit the bill", so to speak. After this, I would guess that Williams roughly "lays out" the music for the score, by thinking about what theme goes where, in what key and with what style, as well as coming up with secondary themes for the more under-scorish parts. Then the director comes along again and Williams basically plays through this plan at the piano (like in the second video). He doesn't play through the entire score note for note (I mean the main notes only, not including all the padding in the orchestration), and I don't think he has it composed note for note at this point anyway (after all, can you imagine him playing something like this? By the end there'd be blood on the keyboard!) So essentially, he has another spotting session with the director, although judging from the video and what directors say about the process (including J.J. Abrams, who also mentioned the fact that Williams played through the score at the piano), this time Williams has done his homework beforehand and can give a basic indication of what he plans to finally write, subject to change.

 

So, for example, for this track, he'd probably present it by saying something like "At the beginning we'll have this spooky brass in the bass [plays notes on piano], then at 48 seconds we'll have a menacing ostinato [plays ostinato] which goes till 1:38, with a crescendo here..." and so on, but he wouldn't necessarily play all the string "padding" on top. 

 

And I think it's after this point that Williams gets the go-ahead to orchestrate the actual score. But in this case, orchestrating means composing as well, because while he may have a good outline of which theme goes where, he still has to connect it all and add layers on top. Classical composers like Strauss and Wagner would've created a piano version of their entire score first (i.e. on two/three staves), then elaborated it for the orchestra. However, in most cases at least, I just think that there wouldn't be enough time for Williams to compose the entire score on two staves then elaborate it for orchestra. I'm pretty sure he directly composes onto eight/sixteen staves, ergo he "orchestrates" it. 

 

Of course, this process varies from film to film, from director to director, from cue to cue even, but I would presume that what I outlined above is typical of how Williams goes about scoring a film (though a lot of it is speculatory of course...). This is probably why Williams never goes into too much detail about the scoring process, because it's always different and it's unrealistic to think that there's only one way in which he goes about scoring a film. But anyway, the point to take away from this is that when directors say that Williams plays the score for them at the piano, it's more of a walkthrough of the entire score and Williams only plays the main segments...I think!

[karelm 2,913]

I agree with loert's description of the process.  I would also add that there is time at the front dedicated to creating the concept and deciding how many themes there are.  This is actually not always evident at the start of a film.  For example, why isn't there a Han Solo theme?  There is a Han and the Princess theme but that usually accompanies the two of them.  At the start of a film, the composer might opt for too many themes and start eliminating unessential themes that muddy the story by their adding an unneeded perspective.    One example of a score concept is from Jaws where JW saw the film as more of a sea adventure rather than a horror flick so the score is mostly adventure music in the second half.  With JW, I don't know if I've heard of a story where there was a disagreement over the concept but other examples would be Torn Curtain with the famous Hitchcock/Herrmann feud which ended their long standing partnership (Hitch wanted a more contemporary pop score and Herrmann wanted a dramatic orchestral score).  I think with JW, the play through is like we see in that ET clip, where he is playing back his ideas and refining them based on feedback.  This is how the Indiana Jones theme was born through JW playing several options of the theme and Spielberg liked both so they were merged together.

[Will 2,215]

@loert @karelm Thanks for your detailed description! I had always thought that after the main themes were demoed JW wouldn't reconvene with the director until the sessions, but now I know there's another stage where JW goes into more detail about his vision. 

 

The one thing I'm curious about: What, if anything, does Williams write down before creating the "formal" sketches? When he demoes themes and, later, his "plan," on the piano, does he have sheet music (two or eight/sixteen staves?) for various excerpts, or even completed sketches for some cues? Or does he just store everything in his head up until when he's given the go-ahead to complete the score? 

 

Do we even know the answers to these questions?

[karelm 2,913]

1 hour ago, Will said:

@loert @karelm Thanks for your detailed description! I had always thought that after the main themes were demoed JW wouldn't reconvene with the director until the sessions, but now I know there's another stage where JW goes into more detail about his vision. 

 

The one thing I'm curious about: What, if anything, does Williams write down before creating the "formal" sketches? When he demoes themes and, later, his "plan," on the piano, does he have sheet music (two or eight/sixteen staves?) for various excerpts, or even completed sketches for some cues? Or does he just store everything in his head up until when he's given the go-ahead to complete the score? 

 

Do we even know the answers to these questions?

 

He definitely has sheet music of the themes before he starts scoring to picture.  He has to nail down the music to know what the themes are.  Then those themes would get approved BEFORE scoring.  For example he said there were hundreds of variations of the Close Encounter theme until they agreed on one.  He has the sheet music for all of them as sketch form.  I alluded to two giant egos belonging to amazingly talented men - Herrmann and Hitchcock.  One must remember that film scoring is a collaborative process.  The director is generally (not always because they can be fired by producers) the ultimate authority on the creative vision and it is the job of the film composer to serve that vision rather than their own personal tastes.  BUT, a wise director will listen to the creative opinions of the talent around them.  Spielberg could have said, "No John, this is a horror film and I need you to make it sound like Images" but he wisely listened to the JW's creative advise because it was in service to the film and the directors vision.  Another fine example, remember that JW was brought on to arrange Holst and Stravinsky for Star Wars but he convinced Lucas that an original score would be more appropriate.  In my experience, directors LOVE opinions and thoughtful feedback of things they hadn't considered.  BUT, they are the ultimate decider and the composer must be professional, flexible, and eager to accommodate. 

[Loert 2,511]

@Will Well, we know for sure that Williams did some preliminary sketches for Superman... Here is a portion of them, the themes/motifs which were used for the "Theme":

 

 

 

Four separate ideas. The first stave holds the very opening notes. The last stave is the underpinning rhythm of the whole thing (DA tada DA tada.....ta ta ta ta ta DA tada DA tada...). The middle two staves form the thematic core - they're the bridge section and "chorus", respectively.

 

This is very much the kind of thing you'd expect to see inside any composer's sketchbook. It's the sort of thing they will write down when they first begin to conceptualise a work. And I guess Williams would do sketches like this for any musical work he composes, be it a soundtrack or a concert piece. We know Williams does this usually anyway, because he refers to it as the most difficult part of the process; coming up with good themes. In this particular case, those four ideas notated above form the "meat" of the Superman theme (not forgetting the "Flying theme", which is also notated on another stave in the preliminary sketches), and whether or not they in themselves are interesting plays a major role in determining whether the final piece of music is interesting and will fit the public's expectations (EDIT: and the director's expectations, as karelm's post above has reminded me!) At least this is the case for Williams, because all of his most popular music is very thematically driven.

 

So anyway, to return to the main question here...Williams surely has the main ideas notated somewhere before getting to work on the actual "second-by-second" music of the score, and the ideas are probably laid out in a similar way to what you can see above. And he probably doesn't get them right the first time, far from it. He confesses that he can spend weeks trying to get these most basic musical ideas right, so there's probably a lot of behind-the-scenes scribbling! But that's what really sets apart the best composers; they're the ones who can spend days of hard work trying to get a four-bar melody sounding just "right". Because anybody could come up with a melody within five minutes, it's not exactly rocket science. You just put one note in front of the other. But to be able to write a melody with the foresight of whether or not it will work, how it can be eventually developed and orchestrated, whether or not it will click with the listener, whether it will fit in context with all the other themes...that's very tricky to do well. And Williams can do that well, luckily.

 

As for the "plan"...I honestly have no idea, I don't even know how the "plan" works exactly, or if it exists! I guess Williams might keep (written) notes somewhere, of what theme goes where, because in the second video in my previous post you can see a pencil in his hand! But I guess he doesn't have to do that kind of planning for the entire thing. In general though, I think film composers can go straight from four-bar themes to writing entire tracks. It really depends...Somebody could ask Williams that, and in an interview where Williams can finally assume that the audience is at least basically musically literate...

[Will 2,215]

On 9/11/2016 at 5:26 AM, loert said:

after all, can you imagine him playing something like this? By the end there'd be blood on the keyboard!

 

Oof, yeah! 

On 9/11/2016 at 10:47 AM, karelm said:

At the start of a film, the composer might opt for too many themes and start eliminating unessential themes that muddy the story by their adding an unneeded perspective.    

 

Woah. Does that mean that for many JW scores there are possibly some themes he wrote that we'll never know of (or, at most, we'll get in sketch form)? I'd never thought too much about this before. I wonder though whether "discarded" themes would generally be heard in the score in one way or another, as one-off melodies. 

 

@loert That sketch is cool, thanks! 

 

So the plan remains shrouded in mystery. "The plan"... That sounds rather mysterious. 

[BrotherSound 2,242]

On 9/12/2016 at 4:34 PM, Loert said:

@Will Well, we know for sure that Williams did some preliminary sketches for Superman... Here is a portion of them, the themes/motifs which were used for the "Theme":

 

 

 

@Loert

That's what I thought, too, but I realized recently this was actually Sandy Courage. The giveaways are the distinctive treble clef and the unusual way he tends to write capital 'N', with the right side going much higher than the left. Probably done in preparation for Superman IV?

 

One of the things I'm most curious to see at the future John Williams collection at Juilliard is if there are pages where he was working out melodies and ideas like that. Wouldn't you love to know what was on those pages on his desk here?

 

[Thor 7,504]

On 9/10/2016 at 5:19 PM, nightscape94 said:

Funny about them bringing up "To Kill a Mockingbird".

 

It was indeed. Would have been a great opportunity for Spielberg to say that John Williams played piano on that. Providing he knew, of course.

 

Nice little interview excerpt, by the way. We all know about Spielberg's soundtrack interest, of course, but he rarely gets the chance to expound upon the topic very much.

[publicist 4,643]

I find his knowledge and interest in post-1900 classical composers even more remarkable. Here's a guy who actively listens to Bartok e al. - sadly a dying breed among directors.

[TownerFan 4,983]

Spielberg's mother was an amateur classical pianist, so classical music was part of his everyday family life. Back in the 1950s, it wasn't very uncommon for middle-class families to have a piano at home and also listening to classical music.  Now it's definitely a dying breed, especially among American directors.

[Thor 7,504]

The guy even plays clarinet, for Chrissakes!  AND composed his own score to FIRELIGHT!