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Here is what other composers are saying about John Williams


Lewya

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  • 1 month later...
14 minutes ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

Aren't we forgetting that THE CHINA SYNDROME did have a score, that was removed, and that it has a song?

 

The main title music doesn't count. I did forget that it had a score written for it (I haven't heard it), but that doesn't change the fact that it ended up being a music without a score. And it's not boring.

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31 minutes ago, Marian Schedenig said:

 

tumblr_ocn11a3ZPy1r1ult6o1_400.gif

 

Men who think they are chickens... Loved Monty Python's flying circus. They  were so off the wall. - Album on Imgur

 

25 minutes ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

Aren't we forgetting that THE CHINA SYNDROME did have a score, that was removed, and that it has a song?

 

There's a film about the China virus already?

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It's me again with a new quote :)

 

 

Quote

The difficulty is not so much composing. It is not that difficult to have ideas. On the other hand, orchestration requires real engineering. So, of course, I'm an admirer of great orchestrators. Williams orchestrates himself ; not everyone does. You can be at school your whole life just by having John Williams Sheets of Music in your drawer. He is a born orchestrator, he is a genius of orchestration.

 

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8 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Regarding orchesration: it would be absolutely fantastic if JW could orchestrate some music by one of the classical greats - like a Beethoven quartet or piano sonata.

 

Bach not good enough for you?

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In this interview we learn that Astier was impressed with the OST for AOTC. Also, he talks a bit about Catch me if you can.

 

it’s funny cause I didn’t know Astier was such a huge John Williams fan but now it seems pretty clear 🙂

 

 

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17 hours ago, toothless said:

In this interview we learn that Astier was impressed with the OST for AOTC. Also, he talks a bit about Catch me if you can.

 

it’s funny cause I didn’t know Astier was such a huge John Williams fan but now it seems pretty clear 🙂

 

 

Is there a translation or English captions?

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  • 4 months later...

So, I'm not a Tom Holkenborg fan but nor am I a Tom holkenborg hater. I happen to like some of his scores. :) However on this instance, when he talks about the relationship between composers and sound designers, I think he is wrong in saying that a "John Williams style" composer can just do his thing and the sound designer will fill the gap. I remember seing an interview where JW says he would explicitly work in tandem with sound design to get around it and compliment it.

 

Any thought? 

 

 

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On 12/21/2020 at 7:18 PM, toothless said:

In this interview we learn that Astier was impressed with the OST for AOTC. Also, he talks a bit about Catch me if you can.

 

it’s funny cause I didn’t know Astier was such a huge John Williams fan but now it seems pretty clear 🙂

 

 

 

I'm quite surprised that he singles out Attack of the Clones as one of the film scores he was most impressed with. Surely he hears things there that I don't. 

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  • 1 month later...

Lovely quote. In what interview or situation did Arnold say this?

 

Edit: never mind, I see you started a new thread on it 👍🏻

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A few words on JW by sheet music arranger Jeffrey Sultanof:

 

https://jeffreysultanof.substack.com/p/john-williams-aka-johnny-john-t-john?s=r

 

It's funny that JW made an album experimenting with the then new stereo format. It's like he's always been around.

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  • 1 month later...
1 hour ago, Marian Schedenig said:

Damn, that was a good article, even touching and a bit heartbreaking about the death of his mom.  When asked about the key to success, Joseph said his dad's advice is "just discipline and a little bit of talent."

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  • 1 month later...

Robert Greenberg, professor and composer who became one of my heroes because of all his great courses (no pun intended), claims in lecture 20 of The Symphony that JW 'gracelessly ripped off' a composer I can't even recall now in his ET Bicycle Chase. My imbalanced emotions cannot cope with this opinion as the spell is now broken, either Greenberg or JW just became imperfect. I'll choose JW for now.

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29 minutes ago, bollemanneke said:

Robert Greenberg, professor and composer who became one of my heroes because of all his great courses (no pun intended), claims in lecture 20 of The Symphony that JW 'gracelessly ripped off' a composer I can't even recall now in his ET Bicycle Chase. My imbalanced emotions cannot cope with this opinion as the spell is now broken, either Greenberg or JW just became imperfect. I'll choose JW for now.

Howard Hanson.  There are some similiarities with the flute motif and such.  Nothing more than some of Mozart sounding like Haydn, etc. 

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59 minutes ago, bollemanneke said:

Robert Greenberg, professor and composer who became one of my heroes because of all his great courses (no pun intended), claims in lecture 20 of The Symphony that JW 'gracelessly ripped off' a composer I can't even recall now in his ET Bicycle Chase. My imbalanced emotions cannot cope with this opinion as the spell is now broken, either Greenberg or JW just became imperfect. I'll choose JW for now.

 

 

Both are great!  And really after the opening similarity, ET goes in a vastly different direction.  I would certainly not describe it as "graceless," a rather judgey adjective to choose.

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Oh Greenberg. I sure hope you made it a point in your course to point out all the instances when the classical greats lifted, quoted, or mimicked their peers and forbears and didn’t just pick on JW because he’s an easy target. 

It’s not just Greenberg though. I googled just now for composers lifting from other composers and basically every hit came back JW. Maybe that’s just my phone knowing I was on JWFan a moment before and trying to feed me supposedly relevant links, but if not, what a ridiculous burden JW is forced to endure among the uninformed masses.

 

The so-called tall poppy syndrome—what an invidious and corrosive thing for successful people to have to deal with. People can be so petty. It’s sickening. I’m just glad the cognoscenti are above it and rightly shower JW with the volume of love no other film composer is likely to ever receive again. 


I have nothing more to say about the glee with which so many people attempt to slander JW (for now at least), except to offer this link to a Quora post where Curtis Lindsay offers an answer that sets the record straight in an evenhanded way. @bollemanneke, read it and restore your faith in JW. 
 

https://www.quora.com/Why-does-a-talented-composer-like-John-Williams-seem-to-rip-off-pieces-from-classical-music

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The bicycle music wasn't the only passage from E. T.'s tearful goodbye sequence that takes its cue from Hanson.

 

And while it's inevitable that such mentions arouse fan wrath, i always get a chuckle when that dreaded sentence appears 'JW did it better'...yeah sure, when your point of reference is a heart tugging movie from your formative years, sure, beats Hanson. But it's also true that such opinions are 99.99% held by guys who never listen to anything but film music and/or have little knowledge of the classical repertoire.

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To me it's less relevant that Williams did something "better" than that he did it differently. The Hanson in Adventures on Earth is what I would call a pretty substantial lift but it's not Adventures on Earth and it's not what I admire and enjoy most about Adventures on Earth as a composition. The Dvorak as the precedent for the ET theme is in that category, I guess, too. The Dvorak melody is gorgeous and elusive, ET makes it more direct, a simple lullaby, and then continues extending it and varying it into something else. It's not necessarily "better." Maybe better for ET, better for a memorable film score theme and a melody that can stick in your brain, better as the anchor to a major work of transcendent popular art, certainly that all counts for something but none of these were Dvorak's intention when it pops up at the end of his Dumky trio. In any case it's definitely not just a straight ripoff considering the whole of that melody in Williams's score.

 

On the other hand, like, Mars in Star Wars, I could pretty much dismiss that riff as straight plagiarism in the first score. But it's not the best of John Williams' Star Wars or even close to representing what I appreciate about the totality of that score. That's kind of the whole problem with YouTube videos or tweets that will sample these clips, the laziest implication being "I rest my case, you can find equal parallels in every moment of a Williams score, I just don't have time to search for them all." I mean, King's Row is barely even a challenge, the similarities to the Star Wars fanfare are so fleeting and generic.

 

As far as nostalgia goes, it's definitely part of it but it's not everything. I mean, I always loved Honey I Shrunk the Kids and James Horner's "Ant Rodeo" was a scene I loved watching for the score. But then, you know, I became aware of Dave Grusin's "Fratelli Chase" (which I can't assume is the most original piece in the first place) and Copland's "Hoedown", not to mention other pretty shameless and uncreative lifts in that score like Raymond Scott and Nino Rota, so it's not like it survived my childhood to rate as a great piece of music. It's not like I'm incapable of thinking critically when it comes down to it. But at the same time I didn't stop enjoying it either. It's a hack job but it's my hack job. 

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