Jump to content

Harry Potter 7CD Collection - MUSIC discussion


Jay

Recommended Posts

All 3 HP OSTs reduce their material to a random bunch of loosely connected setpieces. Bleh.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, The Original said:

We had a decent OST with all the necessary tracks. It might have even had too much music.

 

The absence of Sirius' escape, Wormtail's theme, the werewolf chase all disagree with you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, The Original said:

We had a decent OST with all the necessary tracks. It might have even had too much music.

 

Have you been talking to Thor? ;)

 

PoA is a reasonably well constructed OST but misses off too much good stuff. PS has too much 'inspired by' material from the Children's Suite to feel like a good representation of the score and CoS doesn't feel like it has the 'missing highlights' problem but does suffer from some chronology problems. For those reasons I don't feel the required nostalgic for any of them to keep the original albums.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm guessing the excess of shorter cues proved a headache for him once he actually finished recording and had to start assembling tracks.

 

Basically every cue longer than 2 minutes made the OST intact, while a selection of the score's more unique shorter cues were turned into composite tracks to fill out the assembly. Makes the omission of Confrontation in the Shrieking Shack a mild head-scratcher, but clearly a lengthy film cue didn't fit with his mindset for that release (more of a textural representation of the score than one concerned with any semblance of chronology).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 minutes ago, The Original said:

How can people call themselves fans of John Williams if they 100% go along with him slanting and trashing his own hard work building up dense and satisfying musical storytelling narratives with leitmotif development and all by excluding more than half of it and switching the order around arbitrarily, even preferring this butchery above the actual original score, sometimes even completely ignoring or writing off some of his best work just because it didn't happen to make it onto the initial limited album and the complete score which does have it doesn't exactly fit their own subjective and arbitrary idea of length and "lustenung expirianc"?

 

Agreed. The nerve of some people here!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, Richard Penna said:

Being a fan of his music, and being a fan of his album arrangements, are not the same thing.

 

They're one and the same. He edits his scores to make them more musical.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, The Original said:

 

They're one and the same. He edits his scores to make them more musical.

 

Yes, he does edit his scores to make them more musical (or whatever other interpretation he feels he wants).

 

But we still still prefer a complete presentation. The idea that just because you're a fan of his music that you should love his arrangements too is stupid.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, Richard Penna said:

 

Yes, he does edit his scores to make them more musical (or whatever other interpretation he feels he wants).

 

But we still still prefer a complete presentation. The idea that just because you're a fan of his music that you should love his arrangements too is stupid.

 

Think of the missing bits as deleted scenes. All they do is interrupt the flow of the musical narrative.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

We need the originally intended OST!

 

It leaked years ago now

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 minutes ago, Holko said:

Fuck no.

Literally all the OST edits do is interrupt the actual flow of the actual score.

 

You wouldn't know about all that missing music if you hadn't let the movie ruin it for you. But the soundtrack album isn't the movie. Often, a lot of music needs to be axed to create a better 40-70 minute flow that represents a concert-like experience.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The truth is sometimes Williams makes awesome, spectacular, well-thought out decisions about how to take a long score and craft a great musical album out of it.... and sometimes he doesn't.

 

Anyone who emphatically claims "All Williams OSTs are better than their expanded releases" is equally as nuts as anyone who emphatically claims "All expanded Williams releases are better than their OST albums!"

 

It all depends on the score / album.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And why would I want to do that if I could listen to the real thing? Oh wait, because only the concept bullshit gets released while the actual score rots for decades, that's why.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, Holko said:

And why would I want to do that if I could listen to the real thing?

 

As opposed to the fake thing? Why such disrespect for the composer's preferred arrangement of the music when it's separated from the film?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, Holko said:

Why disrespect the composer by pretending half his score and all the work he put into the musical narrative just outright doesn't exist?

 

That other half of the score was meant for the film and obviously the composer felt it wasn't appropriate for his isolated presentation of the music.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Whatever. Just to be transparent: I really like the Dracula, Schindler and Superman OSTs (also Alien and STTMP for that matter) as an alternate, a nice bonus to the actual scores themselves. For Dracula, even though the complete score has so much more texture and all in it, I may even like the two equally. With Superman I may even slightly prefer it over the complere score and I listened to it a lot to decide whether I want the score or not.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

 

Perhaps it was recorded too late to be included on the OST.

At one point it was going to be included along with a different version of the night bus.

 

Never mind... Jay already said this.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, bollemanneke said:

How CAN people claim the POA OST is an accurate representation of the score?! The most unique and brilliant cues are missing: Honeydukes music box, A Winter's Spell, the pub music, brief snow scene, etc, etc. No, let's repeat the useless end credits suite instead.

 

Also, I just don't understand why people keep going on about 'the composer's album intentions'. ET lasts 40 minutes and HP1 over 70 because the studio allowed him that luxury. So what makes anyone think that JW would never ever want a complete album to be released? Williams doesn't use some magic formula to completely transform a score for the OST and give us a transcedental 'listening experience'/concept album, he just does what he can with the time they allow him to use!

 

The ET OST is a much more satisfying overall listening experience to the full score. The first one of that I owned was the 2002 edition and I couldn't get into it. But I bought the OST a decade later and fell in love with it. Even Williams knows his full scores don't necessarily work as separate, independent entities - instead, they need some further work so they're better digestible as their own musical works and not some byproduct of another medium.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I speak the truth. Expandeds tend to run too long, can be a bit intimidating and impractical to listen to in one sitting, feature redundant tracks and other tracks that interrupt the flow of the composer's preferred musical narrative. But an OST is under no obligation to conform to the film's constraints, so the composer can edit and rearrange it to reflect how he feels it should be presented. And I like the concept album approach, it makes the score it's own thing on album.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Is it at all possible that you just can't be arsed to be intellectually engaged by great scores to discover their structure and narrative devices, and just want some quick shit to put on?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Guidelines.