Harry Potter 7CD Collection - MUSIC discussion

[Jay 42,392]

Sorry if I wasn't clear.  Of course the entire Chase Through Coruscant track (or even more complete version with video game rips) is superior to the entire COS Quidditch track for a variety of reasons.  I just meant that I'd seen specific praise for the PERFORMANCE of the small section of that long track that was repurposed into the COS track, and had never seen specific praise for the original performance OF THAT SPECIFIC SECTION over it.  That's all.

[Skelly 273]

@bollemanneke

I looked at your edits and a lot of them work really well.  "The Werewolf Scene" going into "Knight Bus" for instance is a very clever one.  Almost all of them are seamless and make instrumental sense, so I am impressed!  Your "Reading the Map / Befriending the Hippogriff" is a great combination which should have been on the OST.

I sometimes make my own edits like that, though my personal preference is closer to 30-40 minute runtimes as opposed to your 80 min.

[bollemanneke 4,010]

Thanks! I'm honestly still not sure about opening with the end credits, but the musical journey was paramount. I approached it from a classical POV rather than a score POV and I just couldn't find a good way to end the album with the end credits. Once the overture concept was in place, it felt really natural.

[Edmilson 10,482]

17 hours ago, Datameister said:

 

Those COS passages still feel like really excellent knockoffs to me. I'm truly grateful to be able to enjoy them, but I also can't help hearing them as derivative.

You aren't exactly a huge James Horner fan, are you?

[bored 564]

The thing is, both AOTC and COS came out the same year, so I don't even know if you can definitively say either score's a knockoff of the other, unless there's information I'm not privy to that states that Williams thought of the AOTC versions first. Might have just been ideas Williams wanted to use for both films.

 

If anything, Lucius' theme feels like Williams' initial formation of the Dooku/conspiracy theme, and the Bludger chase cue feels like a further development/variation of the AOTC chase idea. 

[Director of Poltergeist 8,100]

Most people logically assume that Clones was probably composed first since it came out earlier in the year, and Potter came out at the end. The similar ideas bleed into all the 2002 scores, such as The Tusken Camp and Leo Crowe, Love Theme from AOTC and Catch Me If You Can. They're distinct scores with samey music, but COS is easily the most derivative and lazy as it recycles the first movie score and the 2002 scores. It's still competently put together and performed, to the credit of William Ross since JW was MIA, and it has great sound.

[Edmilson 10,482]

1 hour ago, bored said:

The thing is, both AOTC and COS came out the same year, so I don't even know if you can definitively say either score's a knockoff of the other, unless there's information I'm not privy to that states that Williams thought of the AOTC versions first. Might have just been ideas Williams wanted to use for both films.

 

If anything, Lucius' theme feels like Williams' initial formation of the Dooku/conspiracy theme, and the Bludger chase cue feels like a further development/variation of the AOTC chase idea. 

Exactly. 

 

Williams had little time to write CoS, much less to actually develop it into a fully fledged score, so he just decided to take a shortcut and re-use ideas from previous scores. Wasn't the first time that happened nor the last, even with Williams.

 

I still love Chamber though. AOTC copy or not, Chasing the Snitch is among the best action cues of Williams's post-XXI century career.

22 minutes ago, Brock Lovett said:

but COS is easily the most derivative and lazy as it recycles the first movie score and the 2002 scores

Really? You're saying John Williams, a guy who was 70 years old during that year and still had to write a lot of music for nothing less than 4 high profile movies, is lazy just because he didn't create a completely original theme for Lucius Malfoy and original material for the Quidditch scene out of thin air?

 

I don't see why that Quidditch cue is so controversial. He brought back an idea from a previous score because he had no time to write something completely new and yet he thought the entirety of the Quidditch scene in HP2 shouldn't just be re-used material from the HP1 Quidditch.

 

In fact, given Ross's comments about the "pen police" or whatever, I think the amount of re-used stuff from the previous movie was actually bothering him, which is why he decided to score a few key scenes (Flying Car, Escaping the Spiders, Harry vs Basilisk).

[Director of Poltergeist 8,100]

Really. I'm a realist, you're an apologist. Yes, it was lazy. You've made the argument for me.

[bored 564]

I don't think CoS is anywhere near as derivative as Home Alone 2 though. I remember literally nothing new from the score of Home Alone 2 because it doesn't stand out. I think there's one new hymn or something?

 

Whereas CoS even outside of the concert suites I always noticed the Chamber theme, Fawkes, and The Flying Car as prominent new ideas that stood out and were great on their own. Plus I always remembered the Wondrous World/Friendship theme's appearances in the second film far more than in the first score, where it seems kind of thrown in into an already busy score by comparison in Philosopher's. 

 

I look at it more as a slightly flawed sequel score rather than a lazy hodge podge. Are some parts kind of lazy? Sure, but I don't think it's as much of a hack-job as it's being made out to be. 

[Director of Poltergeist 8,100]

You don't remember the Plaza Hotel music?

[Lady Dimitrescu 9,858]

 Christmas Star is a good piece.

[bored 564]

Yeah, I had a vague recollection of Christmas Star, not even the Plaza Hotel stuff though, no. 

[Lady Dimitrescu 9,858]

Guests of Ding, Dang, Dong stay at the world-renowned Plaza Hotel: New York's most exciting hotel experience. For reservations, call toll-free, 1-800-759-3000.

[oierem 200]

7 hours ago, bored said:

The thing is, both AOTC and COS came out the same year, so I don't even know if you can definitively say either score's a knockoff of the other, unless there's information I'm not privy to that states that Williams thought of the AOTC versions first. Might have just been ideas Williams wanted to use for both films.

 

 

Obviously, AOTC was composed months earlier (October 2001-January 2002). The film had already been released by the time Williams started composing for COS.

 

The "same year" thing is really arbitrary IMO. Clones was composed much closer to the first Harry Potter film, rather than the second, for example. 

[bollemanneke 4,010]

7 hours ago, Brock Lovett said:

Most people logically assume that Clones was probably composed first since it came out earlier in the year, and Potter came out at the end. The similar ideas bleed into all the 2002 scores, such as The Tusken Camp and Leo Crowe, Love Theme from AOTC and Catch Me If You Can. They're distinct scores with samey music, but COS is easily the most derivative and lazy as it recycles the first movie score and the 2002 scores. It's still competently put together and performed, to the credit of William Ross since JW was MIA, and it has great sound.

Yeah I have to say, HP2's performance easily surpasses 1. So vibrant and alive.

[Richard P 4,763]

8 hours ago, Edmilson said:

In fact, given Ross's comments about the "pen police" or whatever, I think the amount of re-used stuff from the previous movie was actually bothering him, which is why he decided to score a few key scenes (Flying Car, Escaping the Spiders, Harry vs Basilisk).

 

Those sequences are the primary areas I focused on when making my alternative OST. Together with some other (mostly) original material such as Duelling Club, a few emotional cues and some petrifying material, and of course all the concert pieces, you can make a very satisfying CD's worth.

 

---

 

As for the question of laziness, I'd go the opposite way - JW was doing CMIYC at the same time and most peope would've fully understood if he had composed the themes/suites and passed the baton to Ross to compose the score, using some prior material for inspiration. Instead, Williams composed a large handful of sequences and I'd say exceeded what would reasonably be expected of him.

 

I'd still make the case that the former circumstance would have been more ideal - to have a score actually 80% composed by Ross, with themes by Williams and perhaps a few set pieces by him as well. What you lose in going from Williams to Ross, you gain in having an original score. Of course, his biggest fanboys have to accept something in this scenario: Williams was too busy in 2002 and given that CMIYC has a full score and CoS does not, he clearly chose to prioritise the former. Hence really someone else needed to write CoS.

 

For those curious, I've boiled CoS and PoA down to these. They follow JW's cue combos in many places. I'll also mention one non-creative change to the first score - I replaced the Dark Forest string section with the boot, because I think the synth element on LLL's set overwhelms it.

 

Spoiler

01 - Prologue
02 - Vernon Gathers Family
03 - The Escape From The Dursleys
04 - Knockturn Alley
05 - The Train Station And The Flying Car
06 - The Boys Receive Detention
07 - Gilderoy Lockhart
08 - Cornish Pixies
09 - Hermione And Hagrid
11 - Quidditch, Second Year
12 - Moaning Myrtle (OST track rebuilt from LLL set)
13 - The Dueling Club
14 - Petrified Justin
16 - Christmas Break (short version)
17 - Meeting Tom Riddle
18 - The Spiders Attack (a few edits to remove some of the derivative material early on, and trim the chase sequence a tiny bit - I'm not 100% happy with this yet, but the OST is along the right lines editing out the rather messy and directionless bit just before the spiders start chasing the car)
19 - It's A Basilisk (combines this cue with a section of Transformation Class and the end of Ginny Gets Snatched)
21 - Dueling The Basilisk
22 - Fawkes Heals Harry
24 - Dobby Is Freed
25 - Reunion Of Friends
26 - Fawkes The Phoenix
27 - Dobby The House Elf
28 - The Chamber Of Secrets

 

Spoiler

01 - Teaser
02 - Lumos!
03 - Aunt Marge's Waltz (this is actually the alternate - I prefer its opening to the OST/film version)
04 - Discussing Black (features 'The Newspaper' edited in before the final section)
05 - Trouble Takes Many Forms
06 - Sir Cadogan And The Hippogriff (The same construction as the OST's 'Hagrid The Professor', followed by 'Befriending The Hippogriff')
07 - Buckbeak's Flight
08 - On The Bridge
09 - The Portrait Gallery
10 - Secure The Castle (The Big Doors and Great Hall Ceiling, then the bird cue - essentially 'Secrets Of The Castle' with the lockdown cue before it)
11 - Quidditch, Third Year
12 - A Walk In The Woods
13 - The Wizards' Consort
14 - The Three Broomsticks (Fades in after a minute or so, as the first section is just a repeat of the invisiblity cloak material that I don't find that interest on its own)
15 - Summoning The Patronus
16 - The Marauder's Map
17 - The Whomping Willow
18 - Confrontation In The Shrieking Shack
19 - Sirius And Harry
20 - Lupin's Transformation
21 - The Werewolf Scene
22 - The Dementors Converge
23 - Watching The Past
24 - The Rescue Of Sirius
25 - Sirius Says Goodbye
26 - Lupin's Departure
27 - The Firebolt And End Credits Suite
28 - Lupin's Transformation (Alternate)

 

[Edmilson 10,482]

13 hours ago, Brock Lovett said:

Really. I'm a realist, you're an apologist. Yes, it was lazy. You've made the argument for me.

Again, you are saying that a 70 year old man is lazy because he took a shortcut when dealing with a huge amount of work. Laziness implies that he didn't work enough on Chamber of Secrets because he preferred spending his time scratching his balls. And everyone knows that isn't the case: he had another completely different high profile movie to work and just didn't have enough time to craft a proper unique score for HP2 like he had for HP3.

 

And yet he was also able to write completely new themes and cues for CoS to prevent that score from being just a HP1 rehash. Who cares if he took a shortcut? It wasn't the first nor the last time that happened. Even if we admit that he prioritized CMIYC, he still didn't completely abandoned HP2 to have just HP1 music.

 

I am the one being the realist here because I am taking into account the conditions he had to work with at the time. And you are the apologist here, in this case with your precious prequels. I love the score to AOTC and still I was never bothered by Williams reusing the Separatist theme and the Chase Through Coruscant. If he did better on COS or AOTC depends on your taste.

 

But calling a 70 year old man lazy because he didn't have time to write over 2 hours of 100% original music for a blockbuster is not realistic. Is just bitterness because most JW fans prefer the way those bits were used in HP2 than in SW2.

[Lady Dimitrescu 9,858]

Fans to JW:

 

[Director of Poltergeist 8,100]

21 minutes ago, Edmilson said:

Laziness implies that he didn't work enough on Chamber of Secrets because he preferred spending his time scratching his balls.

 

[bollemanneke 4,010]

I mean, listen to Setting the Trap from HA2 and tell me that isn't lazy. Or parts of Harry and Dumbledore.

[HunterTech 1,506]

You know, Lorne Balfe does 3 scores in one year, and everyone agrees he and his cronies are putting out purely derivative work for the sake of fulfilling his jobs.

 

JW does essentially two and half scores in roughly the same amount of time two decades prior, and suddenly there's a whole discussion over if he's being reasonable in the amount of stuff he's having to recycle because of the rather tight schedule, despite this being at the exact point he's beginning to slow down in his overall output.

 

I'm starting to think modern film scoring has really poisoned our perceptions of how the process actually works.

[Director of Poltergeist 8,100]

These observations have been made on this forum since 2002, and people were far less kind about it at the time. The difference is there are now biased HP fans who were children at the time who are just now reading this and pushing back. 

[HunterTech 1,506]

And I'm saying that you better start pointing out what parts of CMIYC CoS rips off if 40% repeated is enough to accuse the damn then 70 year old of only cutting corners for every project since

 

Man, now I wish Ross did ghostwrite most of it

[bollemanneke 4,010]

He had Ross to avoid cut-and-pasting and he didn't. And that's lazy.

[Director of Poltergeist 8,100]

I like all of the scores from that year, but he was stretched pretty thin and we got screwed out of a lot more original music presumably because of the scheduling. His age really didn't make any difference at the time, by the way, so I'm not sure why you guys keep bringing it up.

 

COS ended up temped with music from the first movie and adapted by someone else similar to Superman II and AOTC was also massively temped and missing significant portions of original music in favor of music from TPM. Both were unfortunate situations. 

[oierem 200]

53 minutes ago, bollemanneke said:

He had Ross to avoid cut-and-pasting and he didn't. And that's lazy.

It's not lazy. It's rushed-up. It's misguided. It's poor. Whatever you want. But not lazy. Lazy means that Williams wasted the time he had to write the score doing other non-work-related things. And that's not what happened.

 

It was a combination of lack of time, wanting too much control over the score (not allowing Ross to actually compose) and the misguided idea that the score needed to be very heavily based on the previous score.

[bored 564]

1 hour ago, Brock Lovett said:

These observations have been made on this forum since 2002, and people were far less kind about it at the time. The difference is there are now biased HP fans who were children at the time who are just now reading this and pushing back. 

 

I'll have you know, sir I'm an UNbiased HP fan! And yeah, I always knew about the HP1 temps/re-use. Again, there's just so much great original material for me in comparison to a Home Alone 2 that I don't really care.

 

We haven't even talked about the entire section of the movie from "Hagrid's Arrest" through "The Second Message" that is almost exclusively new arrangements of old material and completely original music.

[Director of Poltergeist 8,100]

51 minutes ago, oierem said:

It's not lazy. It's rushed-up. It's misguided. It's poor. Whatever you want. But not lazy. Lazy means that Williams wasted the time he had to write the score doing other non-work-related things. And that's not what happened.

 

It's lazy to depend on the previous score to that extent. 

[Lady Dimitrescu 9,858]

Should've just got Ken Thorne instead.

[HunterTech 1,506]

Who totally didn't need to get past one whole glorified re-recording to make anything considerably original in his second Superman entry.

[Docteur Qui 1,580]

I mean, in a way the cut-and-paste work on CoS feels appropriate because the film itself is fairly uninspired and relies heavily on the groundwork laid by the first film. There’s very little to the film that feels fresh; if you’d told me they were filmed back-to-back I wouldn’t be surprised (and I suppose they pretty much were, considering the very tight turnaround). The plot structure and set pieces are almost identical: Privet Drive -> Diagon Alley -> Hogwarts -> Quidditch -> Forbidden Forest -> Secret Chamber -> Great Hall finale.  
 

Going completely fresh for the third film makes perfect sense from an aesthetic perspective. The childlike, rich whimsy of the first two films is completely absent in PoA, which gives way to more absurdity, weirdness, darkness, longing, tragedy etc. Sure, Williams could have thrown in more established themes, but it’s obvious that PoA genuinely inspired and pushed him, and it shows.

 

Knowing how close he was to returning for the final film really gets my imagination going. I’d have loved to hear what he would’ve done.

[Edmilson 10,482]

52 minutes ago, Docteur Qui said:

I mean, in a way the cut-and-paste work on CoS feels appropriate because the film itself is fairly uninspired and relies heavily on the groundwork laid by the first film. There’s very little to the film that feels fresh; if you’d told me they were filmed back-to-back I wouldn’t be surprised (and I suppose they pretty much were, considering the very tight turnaround). The plot structure and set pieces are almost identical: Privet Drive -> Diagon Alley -> Hogwarts -> Quidditch -> Forbidden Forest -> Secret Chamber -> Great Hall finale.  

Perhaps, but I still really like that movie. Maybe it's just childhood nostalgia for it but I do think it's kinda underrated. I like the (slightly) darker atmosphere compared to the first one, the action scenes and visual effects are better, the cast is more comfortable in their roles.

 

I certainly like it more than any of the Yates movies.

[bored 564]

1 hour ago, Docteur Qui said:

I mean, in a way the cut-and-paste work on CoS feels appropriate because the film itself is fairly uninspired and relies heavily on the groundwork laid by the first film.

 

To be fair, the second film is also practically a one-to-one recreation of the book minus a Death Day party or two. So if you think the movie's uninspired you might have to point to the book for that.

 

I actually think it's one of the best Harry Potter movies. I think the acting from the trio is better than most of the later movies, the movie aesthetically is just beautiful, gorgeous sets (not all of them recycled), puppets, coloring, greatly improved CGI, all of the music, re-used or not is great.

 

It's also a more interesting mystery to me as there's practically no mention of Voldemort so the reveal is genuinely surprising in comparison to most of the other movies (obviously with the exception of Prisoner), where Voldemort is constantly mentioned and it's somehow a surprise that he's behind it, with the only real surprise being who works for him. 

 

Chamber of Secrets to me is like what Half-Blood Prince wishes it could be. Some more fun school stuff and levity balanced out with a darker, more dire tone. The difference is there's effort put into the filmmaking and they didn't just resort to making the film coloring ugly as sin to let you know the film is dark in tone too.

[Director of Poltergeist 8,100]

COS is the only one I ever read, after I saw the first movie and I remember thinking the movie was like a complete adaptation of the book. I couldn't even figure out what's going on a lot of the time in the later movies and they look like John Badham's Dracula on home video.

[Edmilson 10,482]

18 minutes ago, Brock Lovett said:

I couldn't even figure out what's going on a lot of the time in the later movies

This is something I feared it would happen with all the later movies.

 

Even as a teenager, I was like "Well, I already know all of this because I read the books but what about those that didn't read them? Surely a huge chunk of the audience only knows the story through the movies, so are the adaptations doing a good work of making the story understandable for those who only see them? I'm afraid not, unfortunately".

 

I remember watching a deleted scene when I bought the OotP DVD that had a crucial bit of dialogue between Dumbledore and Harry. I was pissed they deleted that because it was very important for the later movies.

[Director of Poltergeist 8,100]

I still don't even know what's going on in the Gringott's ride at Universal Studios and I've probably been on it between 10 and 20 times.

[bored 564]

Well y'know we couldn't have Voldemort and the Horcruxes' backstories because we need time for Ron and Hermione to bicker and Bellatrix to burn down the burrow so it can be immediately rebuilt in the next movie without comment or consequence. 

[Edmilson 10,482]

37 minutes ago, bored said:

Bellatrix to burn down the burrow so it can be immediately rebuilt in the next movie without comment or consequence. 

You can almost see the producers and the studio saying "the movie is too tedious and uneventful so far! Quick, we need an action scene in the middle part or the audience will be bored!".

 

Of course, that dullness could've been solved with more Voldy backstory and a flashier invasion on Hogwarts at the end... But what do I know. Either way, Half Blood Prince is perhaps the trickiest book from the series to adapt into a movie.

[Schilkeman 1,457]

Lazy: unwilling to work or use energy.

 

Indeed, how lazy of John Williams to not find 28 hours in a day. 
 

“Lazy,” “objectively,” and “relatable,” are three of the most common, and commonly insipid, criticisms on the internet, and a sure fire way for me to ignore anything you have to say.

 

The truth is, Williams was asked by three close collaborators to work on four films in one year. He wasn’t going to pass on Star Wars, and his history with Spielberg was too great. Something had to give. Not even the relative lightness of CMIYC was enough to offset the density of the other three scores.
 

Maybe he should have passed on CoS, or maybe he underestimated the amount of work required. I doubt it; he’d been doing this too long not to know. I think he wanted to keep the door open for future HP films, and felt this was the best arrangement to maintain creative control of the music. I don’t know when the series decided to director-hop, but if Columbus had stayed on, I’m sure he would have done the rest of them. I think that was his intent. It definitely wasn’t to do the least amount of work required to fulfill an obligation.

[enderdrag64 1,431]

7 minutes ago, Schilkeman said:

“Lazy,” “objectively,” and “relatable,” are three of the most common, and commonly insipid, criticisms on the internet, and a sure fire way for me to ignore anything you have to say.f them. I think that was his intent. It definitely wasn’t to do the least amount of work required to fulfill an obligation.

The other two don't really bother me but it is incredibly annoying when people label their opinions as "objective"

[Lady Dimitrescu 9,858]

2 hours ago, Edmilson said:

This is something I feared it would happen with all the later movies.

 

Even as a teenager, I was like "Well, I already know all of this because I read the books but what about those that didn't read them? Surely a huge chunk of the audience only knows the story through the movies, so are the adaptations doing a good work of making the story understandable for those who only see them? I'm afraid not, unfortunately".

 

I remember watching a deleted scene when I bought the OotP DVD that had a crucial bit of dialogue between Dumbledore and Harry. I was pissed they deleted that because it was very important for the later movies.

 

The HP dogma was so smug and arrogant in the 2000s, fanatics thought there was no way that anyone watching these movies could have possibly skipped reading the books, as if HP was so damn cool, you just weren't with it if you weren't some bookworm fanatic like themselves. The movies were made by these sorts of people, and they made them for their own nerdy ilk at CoS Forums, which is now dead anyway. So they thought they could get away with overlooking key details and starting plot threads and leaving them unfinished.

[Edmilson 10,482]

22 minutes ago, Unlucky Bastard said:

 

The HP dogma was so smug and arrogant in the 2000s, fanatics thought there was no way that anyone watching these movies could have possibly skipped reading the books, as if HP was so damn cool, you just weren't with it if you weren't some bookworm fanatic like themselves. The movies were made by these sorts of people, and they made them for their own nerdy ilk at CoS Forums, which is now dead anyway. So they thought they could get away with overlooking key details and starting plot threads and leaving them unfinished.

That wasn't what I said. I wasn't being arrogant or anything, I just thought (and still do) later HP movies did a poor job adapting the books. If you managed to understand the story just by seeing the movies, without having read them, then great, I'll be happy to be proven wrong.

 

And what the heck are these forums? During the height of my Potterhead phase I didn't even had access to the internet and even if I did being from Brazil it's more likely I'd hang out on Orkut than on gringo forums. 

[Lady Dimitrescu 9,858]

You misread my post. I was agreeing with you!

[mstrox 7,211]

Ultimately, his laziness in Chamber of Secrets was a real wake up call for John Williams.  He eventually got his shit together and wrote his first good Harry Potter score for PoA.

[Edmilson 10,482]

13 minutes ago, Unlucky Bastard said:

You misread my post. I was agreeing with you!

Whoops, sorry about that 

 

The last part is true though. I don't think I've ever been that much active in HP forums. When I started going to them more regularly I was more into Lost and science fiction TV shows than HP.

[bored 564]

1 hour ago, mstrox said:

He eventually got his shit together and wrote his first good Harry Potter score for PoA.

 

I-

AH-

WELL, I NEVER!!

 

[Lady Dimitrescu 9,858]

Yeah the first two are garbage.

[Luke Skywalker 2,187]

Maybe COS score is as it is because that's how chris columbus likes his sequel scores....

 

 

[bollemanneke 4,010]

8 hours ago, Edmilson said:

This is something I feared it would happen with all the later movies.

 

Even as a teenager, I was like "Well, I already know all of this because I read the books but what about those that didn't read them? Surely a huge chunk of the audience only knows the story through the movies, so are the adaptations doing a good work of making the story understandable for those who only see them? I'm afraid not, unfortunately".

 

I remember watching a deleted scene when I bought the OotP DVD that had a crucial bit of dialogue between Dumbledore and Harry. I was pissed they deleted that because it was very important for the later movies.

I want to watch the movies with someone who hasn't read the books one day. It would be really interesting to see where they get lost.

[Richard P 4,763]

6 hours ago, Schilkeman said:

Maybe he should have passed on CoS, or maybe he underestimated the amount of work required. I doubt it; he’d been doing this too long not to know. I think he wanted to keep the door open for future HP films, and felt this was the best arrangement to maintain creative control of the music. I don’t know when the series decided to director-hop, but if Columbus had stayed on, I’m sure he would have done the rest of them. I think that was his intent. It definitely wasn’t to do the least amount of work required to fulfill an obligation.

 

Knowing what we do now, I think he should've passed CoS to someone else. Of course, had he stopped work on the franchise there we wouldn't have PoA, but you can't go through life lamenting over every project that one's saviour didn't score.

 

In term of laziness... that's just silly talk. Williams was working above and beyond his call to write original cues for CoS whilst scoring CMIYC, and who knows how much time Ross had to arrange the music for the rest of the score. There isn't always someone to blame.