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Williams's sketches? ?Angela Morley and Conrad Pope


JW Fan

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35 minutes ago, JW Fan said:

Why did Pope stop working with Williams? I know that he did one arrangement for the new album with Mutter but beyond that I don't think that he has had any involvement with his scores. 

I mentioned what I know.  For someone like JW, orchestrators are there to assist the composer in their work flow process and/or save time.  JW didn't really need the services of orchestrators around the time he stopped working with Conrad.  He slowed down his output and sent the sketches straight to JAKMS for typesetting. 

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30 minutes ago, JW Fan said:

Why did Pope stop working with Williams? I know that he did one arrangement for the new album with Mutter but beyond that I don't think that he has had any involvement with his scores. 

 

This interview doesn't say exactly why, but it does give some insight into the shift: https://www.finalemusic.com/blog/may-the-fourth-spotlight-on-joann-kane-music/

 

If I had to hazard a guess...Williams was doing sketches that had even more detail than before, perhaps because he was taking on fewer films, plus Mark Graham and the folks at JoAnn Kane had built such a comfortable relationship that they realized orchestrators simply weren't necessary for him anymore. Which makes sense, because Williams' sketches have always been very detailed and complete; they don't look like a finished professional score, but they contain all the information that makes the music what it is.

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Bill Ross takes on bigger tasks, sometimes actually penning a revised cue or adaptation or whatnot - with Williams' input, changes, and ultimate approval, of course. He's also done a lot of conducting in cases where Williams couldn't.

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7 hours ago, JW Fan said:

On another thread, it would be interesting to know how orchestrators are being paid. According to the AFM, it is by the page (four bars of music) which for a major motion picture wouldn't account for much in compensation. I wonder if they have a price or package payment set up as I don't think that many of them would just work for the standard union scale.


Those AFM rates are just minimums. I certainly would hope anyone experienced enough to be working on a JW score would be paid far more!

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14 hours ago, JW Fan said:

Why does he continue to use William Ross then as an orchestrator? If he was used to how Pope worked wouldn't it be easier to just stay with him. I see that Ross has been with him ever since Pope departed.

 

Conrad worked with JW for many years, but he wasn't the only one assisting him for orchestration work. Eddie Karam also assisted in several scores. As other said above, it's a matter of workflow and trust, but also scale of the projects. He talked about some of those details in the interview I did with him last year: https://thelegacyofjohnwilliams.com/2019/04/26/conrad-pope-interview/

 

On 9/6/2020 at 1:48 AM, JW Fan said:

How long did he also use the services of Angela Morley? 

 

Morley did some orchestration work on some of the bigger scores of the late 70s and early 80s, namely Star Wars, Superman, The Empire Strikes Back, E.T., she did a few cues on all of those. Back in those years she was working mostly in television doing show such as Dallas, Dynasty, The Colbys and the Carringtons, Falcon Crest, etc. She came around working for JW through her friendship with Herb Spencer.

 

In the following years, she also did arranging work on source music cues in Home Alone 1 and 2 and Schindler's List. Williams also asked her to contribute arrangements for some of his Boston Pops concerts over the years. Morley also contributed gorgeous arrangements for violin and orchestra for Itzhak Perlman on both Cinema Serenade albums.

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On 9/6/2020 at 9:55 AM, karelm said:

I believe the first score Conrad Pope orchestrated of JW's was Jurassic Park especially the more aggressive T-Rex, Raptor sequences.  I believe the last thing he did with Williams was an Oscar arrangement around 2008

 

Pope orchestrated Tintin as well

 

image.png

 

From War Horse forward there are no more handwritten orchestrated sheets, just JKMS-made typeset ones.

 

As for when their collaboration started, it does seem to be with Jurassic Park;  He co-orchestrated 9M1 The Falling Car and 12M2 Hungry Raptor with John Neufeld (who orchestrated the rest of the score himself, apart from 3 cues orchestrated by Alexander Courage - 9M2 The T-Rex Chase11M2 Preparing to Meet the Monster, and 13M3/14M1 T-Rex to the Rescue)

 

IMDB says Pope did uncredited orchestration for Shindler's List too, but all the sheet music that leaked is either in Neufeld or Morley's handwriting

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9 minutes ago, JW Fan said:

Why did their working relationship stop or end? I see that JW still uses Ross as an orchestrator. It seems odd if he did so many in the 90's and then he stopped working for Williams. 

 

I'm not aware of any explicit public statement about why the shift happened; I don't think you'll find much more information it there than the replies we've already given.

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5 hours ago, Jay said:

From War Horse forward there are no more handwritten orchestrated sheets, just JKMS-made computerized ones.


War Horse was Eddie Karam’s last credit orchestrating for Williams, which would still have been handwritten, though there may have been a mix of handwritten and typeset, as with Tintin. I believe the switchover to 100% digitally typeset scores happened the following year with Lincoln.

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1 hour ago, Jay said:

Interesting! I didn't know handwritten sheets for War Horse were out there! 


I’ve only ever seen the handwritten end credits, but I’m sure there must be more:


image.png

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I would love to see a book with color hi-res scans of Williams' sketches from a variety of scores. It goes beyond the content of the music to seeing the markings Williams makes, the yellowed/aged paper, little notes or whatever there might be. 

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9 hours ago, JW Fan said:

Why did their working relationship stop or end? I see that JW still uses Ross as an orchestrator. It seems odd if he did so many in the 90's and then he stopped working for Williams. 

 

Maybe should be reiterated he only used Ross on the Star Wars films, while continuing to fly solo on BFG and The Post in between. He stopped working with Pope because he stopped needing anyone outside of the heavier workload with Star Wars.

 

Who knows why he went with Ross to help out instead of Pope or Karam or you or me. Maybe Ross was better qualified in more areas. Maybe Ross has incriminating photographs.

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