Does classical composer John Adams hate John Williams?

[Drew 590]

Tired of these crybabies in classical music hating on great soundtrack music

[Luke Skywalker 1,795]

In a way…rennaissance composers wereguns for hire for Patrons and compose for them what they asked too…

[Jurassic Shark 12,079]

John Adams is also a gun for hire... but he obviously doesn't accept assignments that involve sissy film music.

[karelm 2,914]

So is OP a bot?  Exact same post from another forum.

 

FSM Board: John Adams talks about film music (filmscoremonthly.com)

[Not Mr. Big 4,639]

2 minutes ago, karelm said:

So is OP a bot?  Exact same post from another forum.

 

FSM Board: John Adams talks about film music (filmscoremonthly.com)

I sometimes copy and paste posts onto other forums.

 

What John Adams is saying is 100 percent correct (even if I disagree with his assessment of Spielberg's taste).  

[KK 3,307]

Yes, Adams is not wrong. Film music, as an industry, is not very conducive to inspired music writing. But the exceptions do prove that it manages to happen despite that every now and then (and the European film market did offer better conditions for this), which Williams himself has proven on several occasions.

 

Somehow I doubt Adams would find much interest in the Dune score.

[Drew 590]

10 hours ago, Bellosh said:

To quote, Jay....

 

Who?

 

The 2nd President of the United States

[Not Mr. Big 4,639]

He's literally one of the most famous and acclaimed composers working today.

[Naïve Old Fart 9,534]

14 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

John Adams is also a gun for hire... but he obviously doesn't accept assignments that involve sissy film music.

THE CABINET OF DR. RAMIREZ

[Jurassic Shark 12,079]

...anymore. 

[Jay 37,369]

20 hours ago, Bellosh said:

To quote, Jay....

 

Who?

 

Oh no, has there been so much turnover on JWFan that nobody left remembers the origin of "Who?"

[Tom 4,660]

10 hours ago, Drew said:

 

The 2nd President of the United States The father of the 6th president of the Unites States. 

 

[Drew 590]

John Adams wrote an opera about president Richard Nixon instead of president John Adams. What a missed opportunity.

[GerateWohl 4,370]

18 hours ago, Edmilson said:

So, according to Adams, Hollywood film music is bad because composers give what their directors want. Using that logic, does he think that French and Italian music are better because their composers... do not give what their directors want? So they go in a completely different direction? 

I understand it that way, that in his view european filmmakers ask their composers for less sentimental music. Or it is a different type of sentimentality that Adams likes better.

 

I would agree that he doesn't criticizes Williams, but critizising the sentimantality of the scores for Spielberg's movies is in about 90% of the cases critizism against Williams' music, isn't it?

[Bellosh 3,419]

2 hours ago, Jay said:

 

Oh no, has there been so much turnover on JWFan that nobody left remembers the origin of "Who?"

 

While I'm not an original member, I took a huge break from this place and have no idea what it's in reference to.

[Jay 37,369]

I wonder if @JoeinAR remembers

[Drew 590]

I'm gonna guess "Who?" refers to the announcement of Nicholas Hooper

[Mephariel 451]

21 hours ago, Edmilson said:

So, according to Adams, Hollywood film music is bad because composers give what their directors want. Using that logic, does he think that French and Italian music are better because their composers... do not give what their directors want? So they go in a completely different direction? 

 

I've seen quite a few French/Italian movies, and that doesn't seem to be truth at all.

 

This is why the concert world shouldn't be critiquing the film music world. They don't understand film music. 

 

This is also my issue with a lot of the older film music traditionists. I always suspect they are concert music fans pretending to be film music fans. 

[Jurassic Shark 12,079]

45 minutes ago, Drew said:

I'm gonna guess "Who?" refers to the announcement of Nicholas Hooper

 

Who?

[JTN 2,030]

18 hours ago, Not Mr. Big said:

He's literally one of the most famous and acclaimed composers working today.

That doesn’t necessarily make him right. It sounds as though he had some bad experiences with directors that made him bitter about film music. If Spielberg asked him to write the score for his film and gave him a big paycheck, he might be praising Spielberg’s good taste right now.

[Marian Schedenig 8,199]

4 hours ago, Mephariel said:

This is why the concert world shouldn't be critiquing the film music world. They don't understand film music. 

 

I think that argument works both ways.

 

4 hours ago, Mephariel said:

This is also my issue with a lot of the older film music traditionists. I always suspect they are concert music fans pretending to be film music fans. 

 

I started out as a film music fan who by quickly also became a concert/classical music fan because of the things that appealed to me in film music. The older I get, the more I think I'm a music fan with a special interest in concert/classical music, and while I'm still a fan of a lot of film music, I've also begun to see how much in the "genre", beyond the great works (of which there are many) is either competent but without much added value compared to the works it builds on (once you know enough of them), or outright pointless, musically speaking. I think the purists are wrong when they say this of all film music, but I believe there's a point to their argument, statistically speaking. It just comes with the territory - with the expectations and demands on the music, with the musical background of the composers, and with the time and freedom they have when writing their scores. Which also explains why much less of the big budget stuff has, I think, significant musical value than it did until roughly two decades ago.