Petr Potter 40 Posted April 6, 2022 Share Posted April 6, 2022 Hello, for my thesis i am looking for some informations about how was HP 1st movie music made. Do you know some book or article where is written something about this proces? For example, if they were picking from different composers, where music was recorded and some more info and details about it. How long it tooked, just anything that could help me describe the genesis of the music for HP 1st movie. THX a lot ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bollemanneke 3,348 Posted April 6, 2022 Share Posted April 6, 2022 Liner notes of the LLL box set. BB-8 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay 37,364 Posted April 6, 2022 Share Posted April 6, 2022 If you buy this box set: https://lalalandrecords.com/harry-potter-the-john-williams-soundtrack-collection-limited-edition-7-cd-box-set/ You will find there is a lengthy article about the creation of the music inside it. BB-8 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Petr Potter 40 Posted April 7, 2022 Author Share Posted April 7, 2022 Hey there is there anyone who has this?https://lalalandrecords.com/harry-potter-the-john-williams-soundtrack-collection-limited-edition-7-cd-box-set/ i am in big need of the booklet to it, i only need info about creating that music. Would be big help for my thesis! THX! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Petr Potter 40 Posted April 7, 2022 Author Share Posted April 7, 2022 Anyone could scan this for me pls? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bollemanneke 3,348 Posted April 7, 2022 Share Posted April 7, 2022 We all have this album and we can't publcily share scans. BB-8 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post BB-8 3,478 Posted April 7, 2022 Popular Post Share Posted April 7, 2022 It's back in stock. Consider investing into your thesis AND into the future of specialist record labels which make this music accesible to the public! Bespin, Marian Schedenig, Falstaft and 1 other 3 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Skelly 261 Posted April 7, 2022 Popular Post Share Posted April 7, 2022 https://musicbrainz.org/release/b127c472-2053-4e0c-9f96-b4db2f1d8c57/cover-art THE WIZARD OF FILM SCORING TACKLES 'HARRY POTTER' Article by Richard Dyer published May 18, 2001 in the Boston Globe Quote Recently John Williams had an experience the rest of us will have to wait until Nov. 16 to share. In London, Williams met with film director Christopher Columbus to look at the rough cut for “Harry Potter” and “spot” the film – that is, decide which parts of the movie need music. Williams will composer the score at home in Los Angeles and at Tanglewood, Mass. this summer, before returning to London in August to record the music. Over tea last week, the genial composer talked about the “Harry Potter” project and the “Evening at Pops” television program that he taped earlier last week.“I’ve actually seen a little of the film already,” Williams said. “A couple of months ago I saw the first trailer, which is 110 seconds long, and I wrote and recorded some music for it.” The trailer is now on the Web (harrypotter.com), where it has been minutely analyzed and hotly discussed. In it we see the Hogwarts Express depart from Platform 9-¾ at King’s Cross Station and catch glimpses of some of the key characters – Harry, of course (Daniel Radcliffe), his nemesis Draco Malfoy, his best friends Hermione and Ron, Hagrid the giant, and the Dursleys, his awful muggle family. We also see Alan Rickman as Snape, Dame Maggie Smith as Professor McGonagall, and Hedwig the bird. There is little dialogue; what carries the trailer along is a darkly alluring orchestral waltz by Williams. “I developed a theme for Hedwig,” Williams says. “Everyone seemed to like it, so I will probably use that music as one thread in the tapestry.” Williams does not yet know the score’s length, but he says, “I imagine there will be a lot of music in the film, and Chris Columbus has told me that the film is long and he needs to whittle it down. That’s a very hard and heartbreaking process for a director, and it’s very difficult for a composer, too. Sometimes I have written as much as 20 minutes of music for a film that was never used. I am a composer who likes to develop and combine themes, and it is awkward to develop themes that have never been properly introduced because the scenes they were written for have been cut from the film.”One of Williams’s long-standing rules is not to read books or plays on which the films he scores have been based. “It is more valuable to me to be a tabula rasa – most of the audience doesn’t know what’s coming, and it’s important to place myself in that same position. I want the film to make the first impression, and it is also the film itself that has to give me the right sense of pace and timing.” Williams did break this rule this time; he has read the first “Harry Potter” book. “I liked it very much, and it made me want to read on, especially now that people have told me that each book gets better than the one before.”Experience has made Williams wary of prominent parts for children. “It is very hard to predict on the basis of auditions just what you are going to get from a young performer; but sometimes you get lucky. I have to say that everyone from Warner Brothers who has seen the film is very excited about it, including the hard-bitten professionals.” THEY SHOOT, HE SCORES Article by Geoffrey McNab published September 24, 2001 at The Times Quote John Williams is the man Hollywood calls on for widescreen musical magic, so who else would you expect to do “Harry Potter”? John Williams does not act the part of the maestro. A sagacious, owl-like man with a white beard and glasses, soft-voiced and courteous, the 71-year-old composer has garnered more Academy Award nominations than anyone else alive (a staggering 39), but he won’t boast about it or speculate whether his latest scores, for Steven Spielberg’s “A.I.” and “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”, will add a sixth Oscar to the mantelpiece. Williams’s work is often described as quintessentially American. He writes big music for big studio movies. He has been called “the king of grandiosity”. If dinosaurs are on the rampage (as in “Jurassic Park”), a great white shark has sniffed Robert Shaw’s blood, Luke Skywalker is tussling with Darth Vader or Superman is soaring through the sky, he’s the one the studios send for. The New York Times recently suggested that when social historians look back on the late 20th century, “no music will better capture the swollen ego and solipsistic ambition of the bipedal animals that stalked the Earth and stuck gum under movie theatre seats than the compositions of John Williams”. On the morning I meet him, he has just finished recording the “Harry Potter” score. What attracted this Hollywood titan to the very British world of Harry, Professor McGonagall and the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry? His enthusiasm for J. K. Rowling is the main reason. “I have grandchildren who read them (the ‘Harry Potter’ books) and love them. I have children who read them and love them. In my family, there are three generations of American people enjoying Rowling.”The upbeat, mischievous “Potter” score is in stark contrast to “A.I.”, which features some of the most sombre, mournful music Williams has written. “‘A.I.’ is dark. It was about time, ecology and death. In a fanciful, Spielbergian way, it touched on some very serious subjects,” he says. No, it doesn’t throw him having to compose two such different scores in rapid succession. “The job of writing film music is to try to find a sound, a timbre, a texture, whether vocal or choral, that fits the narrative. We’re required to be very chameleon-like.” Williams does much more than crank out movie scores. He spent 13 years as conductor of the Boston Pops. Every summer, he gives a concert with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, where he performs music from some of the most popular of his 80 or so music scores. He has written symphonies and concertos and is soon – film commitments permitting – to collaborate with Placido Domingo on a new opera. CDs of his work sell in millions. Even so, he is still a hired hand. That is the paradox about film composers. They are virtuosos who play second fiddle to the directors who hire them. The test of a good score, Williams suggests, is that you hardly even notice it. “It’s like a good tailor. You don’t want to know how he sewed it, you just want to know that it holds.” Not that he complains about the (relative) anonymity. “Working in music is the greatest privilege.” It’s a matter of professional pride that he finishes any given job, whether a hyperkinetic conspiracy thriller such as Oliver Stone’s “JFK”, a sci-fi pic such as “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” or something as emotive as “Schindler’s List”, within the very tight deadlines that the studios set. “It’s a difficult craft,” he sighs. “I have that feeling all the time of ‘how am I going to deal with this? How am I to find a musical thread?’ Anybody who’s ever put music to a home video will know how the same film will change completely if you use different music.” Film music is still treated with some snobbery by the classical music world. The fact that Williams made his name with his score for “Valley of the Dolls” and that his original “Star Wars” album sold so well is regarded as grounds for suspicion. “I’m not worried by that,” he smiles ruefully. Attitudes, he believes, are changing and the old hierarchies are crumbling. “When I began, any serious composer wouldn’t have any truck with film music because it was so commercial. That’s not true any more.” He cites his friend Peter Maxwell Davies as the perfect example of a composer “cutting through the snobbery”, writing music for film, theatre and even kids. “And it’s all valid. Someone playing on a little tin fife is spiritually in the same place as someone composing something for chorus and orchestra.” Perhaps because he’s in London and works so frequently with the LSO, Williams seems eager to talk up the merits of British composers. In the mid-1970s, when he scored Hitchcock’s Family Plot, he and Hitch discovered a shared enthusiasm for Arthur Bliss and Elgar. Over the years, Williams has worked with mavericks from Billy Wilder and Frank Sinatra to Spielberg (“a close friend”), Oliver Stone (“a volatile man but a brilliant film-maker and a fascinating character”) and Alan Parker. And, no, he has no horror stories about bullying directors trying to lord it over him. The “old myth of the megaphone-tilting tyrant” no longer has much currency. It’s more than 60 years since Williams’s father, a New York-based musician who had just got a job working for the 20th Century Fox Orchestra, first took him out west. Back then, LA was a very different town. The Williams lived in Culver City, where they had a view of the ocean. Williams’s older sister used to go to Shirley Temple’s birthday parties. “I can remember feeling that it was all very beautiful and that the Fox Studio was a magical place,” he says, reflecting on the innocence of America in those long-gone prewar years, when kids like him had never heard of Mr. Hitler, before Pearl Harbor or the Holocaust, and when ordinary Americans “could go for a dime into the movie theatres and see Ginger Rogers dancing on an aeroplane wing or Shirley Temple singing her little songs and be carried away from the grimness of the Depression for an hour or two by these simple little movies”. Williams is as busy now as he has ever been. With “Harry Potter” and “A.I.” done, he has already booked the LSO to record the music for the next Star Wars movie. After that comes Spielberg’s “Minority Report” and there are countless other commitments too. Despite the workload, the enraptured awe he felt about Hollywood as a kid has never quite dissipated. That’s why he’s the perfect choice to score “Harry Potter”. The music, he explains, is meant to be “magical, theatrical” and to capture a child’s sense of wonder in the world. WILLIAMS CASTS SPELL FOR 'POTTER' SCORE Article by Richard Dyer published November 11, 2001 in The Boston Globe Quote LONDON – Air Lyndhurst may be a recording studio, but from the outside, this converted church in Hampstead could be taken for the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, especially when its stone turrets, stained-glass windows, and high Gothic arches are lit up at night. Inside is a state-of-the-art facility. For a week and a half in September, the studio sounded just like Hogwarts because John Williams was in residence, recording the score he composed for the film of the first of J.K. Rowling's books about Harry Potter, the child wizard who must master his craft in order to fulfill his destiny. "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" is a modest volume of just over 200 pages. The movie is a big movie, and Williams has written music for all but about 10 minutes of it – 142 minutes of music in all, more than 4,000 bars. This is longer than many operas – only about half of it made it onto the "first edition" soundtrack album that has now arrived in stores. Some of Williams' melodies are already familiar from their use in the trailers; before long, every child and most adults in the Western world will know them, and hearing them will summon up visual memories. And if the film is as successful as many expect it to be, the music will enter the permanent soundtrack playing in our heads. MUSIC TELLS THE STORY The process of scoring the film began back in the United States, when Williams and director Chris Columbus "spotted" the film. That is, they watched the first cut together, and decided what parts needed music. Then Williams went to work in his office/studio in Los Angeles, and over the course of four months composed all the dozens of cues he and Columbus had settled on – from "The Arrival of Baby Harry" all the way up to the end, "The Face of Voldemort" and "Leaving Hogwarts." Williams composes with videos of the film at his side, and also with the movie as it is set down in two large volumes bound in black leather, like a book in the Hogwarts library, "From Egg to Inferno: A Dragon-Keeper's Guide." These are the music breakdown books, kept in the care of Ken Wannberg, Williams' music editor for 40 years. The books divide the film into every reel and shot, with exact timing. A bit of one page, describing the sequence where Harry finally sees the sorcerer's stone, looks like this: 4:56:06 The stone as the camera moves in 4:58:40 Harry looking down at the stone 5:02:64 Camera holds on stone; we see a fire flickering out of it 5:04:14 Harry's hand comes in to pick up stone. It is Williams' job not just to mirror these movements and images in music, but to give them a precise emotional coloration. The music tells the story of the film, using its own language, adding its own meanings and implications, sounding its own resonances. EIGHT THEMES The basis of Williams' work, his raw material, is a series of principal themes – eight in this film. There is a longing theme for the idea of family. A lopsided-grin waltz theme, sprinkled with the magic dust of celesta and fluttering strings, heralds the appearance of Hedwig the Great White Owl and the transition between our world, the magicless world of the Muggles, and the world of enchanters and enchantment. There's a theme for Harry, of course, and a theme for his nemesis, the evil Voldemort, music that turns and twists in on itself. These melodies are individually memorable and susceptible to a variety of orchestral colorations and formal developments; they can combine and contrast with each other, even morph into each other in a vast storytelling Wagnerian tapestry, although the glistening sound world is closer to that of Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker." Williams said he didn't start out with a table of themes. Often he works against expectation, avoiding cliché. During a scene of celebration where another composer might bring on the trumpets and drums, for example, Williams unfurls Harry's theme in a noble Elgarian setting that suggests the cost of victory and the depth of the emotional issues involved. The composer has been quick to seize on the potential of this material for furthering the cause of musical education. During the days before the recording sessions, he organized themes from the score into an eight-movement suite that shows off the various instruments and sections of the orchestra; connected with a narration, it will serve the same purpose as Benjamin Britten's "Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra." Williams deliberately "hoarded" time at the end of each session to record this suite based on the "Harry Potter" themes. He knows this music will have an afterlife and take on its own identity independent of the film. During months of work, the score moved from Williams' imagination onto the page. About 30 people have been involved in the process – computer experts, music editors, copyists, proofreaders, librarians. After all of this, recording the score took only nine days. Fourteen boxes of music – 415 pounds of it – were shipped to London, where a group of the city's best freelance musicians gathered every day in Air Lyndhurst, the studio built by Beatles producer George Martin. Director Columbus was around most of the time, eager to hear what Williams had come up with. In the studio Williams worked on a music stand that has been padded to make it noiseless. The score is not recorded in sequence, and the short film cues aren't easy to follow if you don't already know the story – they're out of order, there is no dialogue, and many of the 500 or so special effects are not yet in place. Far from it. You can see how some things were actually filmed – harnesses aid flying and stairs move on casters the public will never see. In its way, this feels no less magical than the final result. Williams is totally professional and focused. He creates a pleasant working atmosphere but does not let anything get past him; he may address people as "angel" or "baby" or even "angel baby," but they jump when he asks for something. In this business, time is money, big money. Like every musician, Williams concerns himself with countless details of intonation, phrasing, dynamics, articulation, rhythm and balance. THE DARK SIDE Sometimes he turns to metaphor. During some slithering, chromatic Voldemort music he says, "Nasty, isn't it? Spidery. It should feel as if a spider is crawling all over you, and you can't get him off you." ("I love it when John crosses over to the Dark Side," exclaims Wannberg.) The recording studio phase of the work is not a place for improvisation. But Williams delights in spontaneous impulse. This time he's concerned about a brief scene in which three ghosts sing a Christmas carol. This has been set up to "Deck the Halls," but Williams is not happy with this choice, even though it is a secular carol chosen to avoid giving offense to any religious group. "Why should there be anything from the Muggles world at Hogwarts?" he asked. So at night, he wrote a little tune for a new carol, and then he amused himself by producing the lyrics too. Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, ring the Hogwart bell, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, cast a Christmas spell . . . Find a broomstick in your stocking, see the magic on display. Join the owls' joyous flocking on this merry Christmas day. Later he was delighted to learn that his lines would need to be translated into six languages. At one point Williams looks around and tries to put things into perspective by making a joke. "All this work – and it's only a movie." Of all people, he knows better. DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS DISCOVERED THE RIGHT COMPOSER FOR 'HARRY POTTER' Article by Richard Dyer published November 11, 2001 in the Boston Globe Quote LONDON–Chris Columbus and John Williams formed a mutual admiration society in 1990, when the director, then only 32, approached the 58-year-old composer about writing the score for a little movie called "Home Alone." "This picture was so small and insignificant that it was not even mentioned in the fall preview issues of the film magazines," Columbus recalls during a short break in the "Harry Potter" recording sessions. "I never thought a composer of his stature would be interested in a picture like ‘Home Alone’; it wasn't conceived of as a big picture. But I thought he would be perfect, and he was. He captured something in that score that was warm, unsentimental, and all-American." Williams remembers his decision to write the score. "I saw this movie, and I just went dippy for it," he said in Hollywood in 1990. Later Williams composed the scores for Columbus's "Home Alone 2" and "Stepmom"; there could be no other first choice for "Harry Potter." "This is a complex, rich score, and I think it represents some of the best work John has ever done," Columbus says. "I went to visit him at Tanglewood last summer when he was composing it, and I could see by his own excitement how very special this project was for him, as it was for me. This is the fourth film we've done together, and I've never seen this kind of intensity and excitement in him." Until the recording sessions, Columbus had heard only the 3 1/2 minutes of music that appears in the trailers. "Every day when I get here, I am stunned at how wonderful the music is. It feels immediately familiar, but also wondrous and strange. I had taken out some shots because I felt they were slowing down the action, but when I heard the music, I put them back because John's work helped those scenes, improved them, and solved the problems." Columbus's work, on the evidence of the brief sequences shown during the recording sessions, is faithful not only to the charm and humor of Rowling's book but to its darker side. He combines the virtues of a people film and a special effects film; the special effects are fun, but what you care about are the people. "This film has put me back in touch with the darker, edgier, quirkier side of my own personality," Columbus says. "'Harry Potter' is a text that everybody loves, and to be faithful to it, I never pulled back from the darker images. I explored these dimensions of myself when I was writing screenplays, but until now I haven't done it as a director." Expanding on this theme, Columbus says, "This is a story about a child in an abusive relationship; his relatives make him live in a cupboard under the stairs. He has no idea of who his real parents are, of what happened to them, or of who he is himself. This part of the story is very Dickensian, and before the first volume is over, he comes face to face with the person who murdered his parents. "This is strong stuff, and adults and kids relate to it for the same reasons–all the great literature for children deals with darkness and loss. Children understand this already, and as we get older we understand it better." Columbus is famous for drawing great performances from young actors. He knows a lot about children – he has four, one of whom, Eleanor, a devoted reader of Harry Potter, kept up a running commentary about what her father could, and could not, do. So far, Columbus has not committed himself to directing anything beyond the second film. "The four books Jo Rowling has written so far get progressively darker, and from my point of view, more interesting. I am not sure we can keep up the pace of doing one movie a year, which is what we would have to do. I can't bear to think about letting these kids go when they get too old." Columbus says he "can't imagine" working on film adaptations of the later “Harry Potter” books without Williams. "When I show him a film, we seem to be in synch immediately. He doesn't have to play the music to me on the piano because I know it will be right. He understands the heart of the film." WILLIAMS BRINGS MUSICAL MAGIC TO 'HARRY POTTER' Article by Andy Seiler published November 13, 2001 in USA Todayhttps://web.archive.org/web/20160802130006/http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/movies/2001-11-13-john-williams.htm Quote When it came to “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone”, John Williams had to break his own rules. As the top movie composer whose celebrated scores include those for the “Star Wars” and Indiana Jones films, Williams always approaches a movie with a fresh outlook. He never reads the script before seeing the film, and, if the movie is based on a book, he doesn't read that, either. "I don't want to have formed images when I see the movie," he says. "I live with the film every day. I have the film in my offices and listen assiduously." But with his latest score, “Harry Potter”, opening Friday, Williams was caught off guard. "In this case, because my kids were all reading the books, I read the first ‘Harry Potter’ book," he says. "I never even imagined I would be writing a score for the film. I didn't even know they were planning to make a film when I was reading it." Fortunately, the movie version was almost "religiously faithful" to the book, so Williams did not have to worry about his early impressions. He just had to express them through music. "So much of successful film scoring relies on a gratifying melodic identification for the characters," Williams says. "I try to draw on something that marries very well with what I'm seeing." Williams concurrently composed an alternate version of the score, eight short pieces, for eight of the film's characters, to be performed at children's concerts. "Fluffy (the three-headed guard dog) is distinguished by the contrabassoon. You can almost see the snoozing dog." And Williams predicts that fans of the book will be pleased at the verisimilitude of other parts of the film. "We had a group of 8-year-olds to one of our recording sessions," Williams says. "Though they could see the film and hear the music, they couldn't hear any dialogue. But they were able to identify all the characters. The costumes fit their preconception, and the settings fit their preconception. They knew what they were seeing without being told what they were." There was one word that Williams kept in his head while writing what he calls the "voluminous" score for the 2-hour, 33-minute “Harry Potter” – "magic." "I wanted to capture the world of weightlessness and flight and sleight of hand and happy surprise. This caused the music to be a little more theatrical than most film scores would be. It sounds like music that you would hear in the theater rather than the film." And Williams even has a favorite scene: the mail delivery by Hedwig the owl. "The first great mail delivery," Williams says. "It starts with one envelope and ends with a thousand envelopes on the living room floor. I just love that scene. I've never seen anything quite like it in a film." And yes, Hedwig gets her own theme, too. COMPOSER JOHN WILLIAMS TRIED TO MAKE MAGIC WITH 'HARRY POTTER' SCORE Article by Matt Wolf published November 15, 2001https://web.archive.org/web/20210703192947/https://www.deseret.com/2001/11/19/19617515/williams-works-his-wizardry Quote Special-effects artists aren't the only wizards responsible for bringing an element of magic to “Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone”. When the veteran composer John Williams was drafted to work on the film, he found himself saying the m-word, too. "I kept using the word 'magic,'" says the soft-spoken composer, 69. "There's a wonderfully childish aspect to ‘Harry Potter’, so I just thought the orchestral music should be coloured in that way." Williams, who has been nominated for 39 Academy Awards over 44 years, has won five times: for “Fiddler on the Roof” (1971), “Jaws” (1975), “Star Wars” (1977), “E.T.” (1982) and “Schindler's List” (1993). One recent day found him in action at north London's Air Studios, thoughtfully scratching his grey beard and swigging a bottle of water. Williams' task that day was to lead a crackerjack ad hoc orchestra in applying some of the final musical touches to the season's most anticipated movie. One minute they worked on a fanciful theme known as “The Friendly Reptile”, the next on the more wistful and plaintive “Dumbledore's Advice”. Steve Kloves, author of the Harry Potter screenplay, particularly responded to Williams' theme for Hedwig, the owl. "It had that thing," says Kloves, said from Los Angeles, "that I always thought Harry should have, which was an element of darkness and a haunted quality; it was beautifully rendered, that piece, to show Harry's interior life. " The movie's director, Chris Columbus, had worked with Williams three times before, on the two “Home Alone” movies and “Stepmom”. In employing Williams once again, Columbus hoped the composer would "create a realistic world in Hogwarts" – the wizards' school where Harry is a student – "but, at the same time, have it be a little quirky, a little edgy." "Things aren't exactly perfect" at Hogwarts, Columbus says, "and John captured that perfectly." The owl music–scored principally for celeste and strings–kicks off a nine-movement Harry Potter orchestral suite made up of eight miniatures and a grand finale, “Harry's Wondrous World”. The sequences include a French horn section introducing music associated with Hogwarts, woodwinds for the magical broomstick, a duet for harp and contra-bassoon, and a dramatically percussive penultimate movement describing Diagon Alley. The shimmering flavour of the score exists in marked contrast to some of Williams' best-known works, notably the rousing anthems and fanfares of the “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones” films. Heroism has been an apparent musical constant for him, whether on screen for the “Superman” movies or in his various commissions over the years for Olympics celebrations. Does he ever worry about being typecast? "It is true, you do get typecast in Hollywood," Williams says. "In the 1960s, I did a series of comedies, and people think all you can do is comedy." In the '70s, disaster movies took pride of place–he scored “The Poseidon Adventure”, for instance, and “The Towering Inferno”. The '80s included “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “E.T.” Williams wants to keep moving forward. "I've always felt that if you did a big heroic piece for orchestra," he says, "your next assignment should be a trio for strings." This year, he preceded “Harry Potter” with another eagerly awaited film, Steven Spielberg's “A.I.”, his latest collaboration with the director. "Steven is unique" as a director, says Williams, "in that he's the closest to me as a musician personally. He reads music, he listens to music, he knows the difference between Rachmaninoff and Corelli." "Many directors don't," he adds. "Their culture can be deep and their education vast, but few of them are actually concert-goers, so we're dealing with a very varied group." With his 70th birthday approaching in February, Williams – a genial conversationalist with grandchildren ranging in age from five to 18 – might be expected to slow down. Instead, he is juggling film work with conducting and with writing a horn concerto on commission for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, for a likely premiere in spring 2003. Among his upcoming films are the next “Star Wars” instalment and Spielberg's “Minority Report”, starring Tom Cruise. "The thing about music is that you don't ever retire from it," says Williams. "It's like literature; you're always discovering new things. "I might retire from film. I might retire from concerts. But I won't retire from music." HARRY POTTER - CHILDREN'S SUITE FOR ORCHESTRA Quote When I wrote the full orchestral score for “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone”, I hadn't planned to write the eight miniatures presented here. The film's score did not require them, and our production schedule, usually very difficult in the film world, made no provision for their arrival. However, if I can be permitted to put it a bit colorfully, each piece seemed to insist on being "hatched" out of the larger body of the full score. I began writing Hedwig's little piece, and each of the others followed quickly as they seemed to arrive all clamoring for their individual identities. I selected a combination of instruments that suited each theme, and this suite of pieces is the result. Hedwig, the beautiful owl who magically and mysteriously delivers mail to Harry Potter at Hogwarts School, is musically portrayed in the first miniature by the celesta, a luminous little instrument which is capable of producing pearly, crystalline tones at dazzling speeds. The celesta begins its flight alone, but quickly is joined by the violins, possibly the only other instrument capable of attaining the dizzying pace needed to defy gravity and achieve flight. Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, that august institution that has trained and taught young wizards for centuries, is probably best described by the french horn section of the orchestra. No other instrument seems so perfectly suited to capturing the scholarly atmosphere of Hogwarts than the noble and stately french horn. In the third miniature we meet Harry Potter's arch enemy, the evil Lord Voldemort, who is portrayed here by a trio of bassoons sounding their mysteriously deep and sonorous tones. The Nimbus 2000 is Harry Potter's own personal broomstick. To musically depict this ingenious mode of transportation we have the woodwind section, with its flutes, oboes, clarinets, and bassoons, all capable of extraordinary leaps and astonishing agility, forming a perfect match for the nimble Nimbus 2000. On the third floor of Hogwarts School we find Fluffy, the huge three-headed guard dog. Fluffy is a music lover who can only be made to fall asleep to the sound of music. Here the contra bassoon represents the snoozing Fluffy, while his music is provided by the beautiful...and in this case...soporific harp. In the Harry Potter books, Quidditch is a form of intramural competition that's played on flying broomsticks. The games are conducted every year at the Hogwarts School with great pageantry, featuring colorful flags and cheering crowds. In the sixth miniature, the pomp and ceremony of these Quidditch games is best represented by the blazing brass section of the orchestra, with its tuba, french horns, trombones, and heraldic trumpets. In the seventh miniature, "Family Portrait," the clarinet introduces the themes that relate to the disparate parts of Harry Potter's emotional life, and here it is accompanied by the cello section of the orchestra, which produces a wonderfully warm and beautiful sound. Diagon Alley is a sort of shopping mall of the wizard world. Along with the wondrous things to be seen in the Alley, we're also transported by the sounds of antique recorders, hand drums, and percussion instruments of all kinds. There is even an elaborate solo part for the violin, cast in the role of the witch's fiddle. With all of the miniatures presented, the suite concludes with the entire orchestra as it explores many of the themes heard throughout "Harry's Wondrous World." My fondest hope is that instrumentalists and listeners alike might share in some of the joy that I have felt in writing music for this delightful story. John Williams GerateWohl, pete, BB-8 and 2 others 4 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BB-8 3,478 Posted April 7, 2022 Share Posted April 7, 2022 With a Bleistift, ja, ja... bollemanneke 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Archive Collection 214 Posted April 8, 2022 Share Posted April 8, 2022 21 hours ago, Pierre said: Hey there is there anyone who has this?https://lalalandrecords.com/harry-potter-the-john-williams-soundtrack-collection-limited-edition-7-cd-box-set/ i am in big need of the booklet to it, i only need info about creating that music. Would be big help for my thesis! THX! Check out Musicbrainz. They have scans of everything! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Naïve Old Fart 9,533 Posted April 8, 2022 Share Posted April 8, 2022 The answer to your question, is: "no". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Disco Stu 15,495 Posted April 8, 2022 Share Posted April 8, 2022 The link at Musicbrainz: https://musicbrainz.org/release/b127c472-2053-4e0c-9f96-b4db2f1d8c57/cover-art Petr Potter 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Petr Potter 40 Posted April 8, 2022 Author Share Posted April 8, 2022 thx a lot Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benjamin Rice 0 Posted April 12, 2022 Share Posted April 12, 2022 Hello everyone, to piggyback off this topic, was wondering if anyone has a list of the orchestra personnel for HP 1? I’ve read freelancers and LSO from different sources. Also read on wiki that James Horner was originally asked to do the score. Can anyone corroborate this? Thank you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Manakin Skywalker 4,894 Posted April 12, 2022 Share Posted April 12, 2022 13 hours ago, Benjamin Rice said: to piggyback off this topic, was wondering if anyone has a list of the orchestra personnel for HP 1? I’ve read freelancers and LSO from different sources. HP2 was the only one of the first three films to be performed by the "LSO proper", HP1 and 3 were done by "freelancers" primarily made up of LSO and London Philharmonic players I believe. So both is true. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michael_grig 472 Posted April 12, 2022 Share Posted April 12, 2022 On 06/04/2022 at 1:36 PM, Pierre said: Hello, for my thesis i am looking for some informations about how was HP 1st movie music made. Do you know some book or article where is written something about this proces? For example, if they were picking from different composers, where music was recorded and some more info and details about it. How long it tooked, just anything that could help me describe the genesis of the music for HP 1st movie. THX a lot ! Does the document help you in any way? It is quite a lot, I have not yet worked through it myself. I picked it up somewhere, but I can't remember where... Harry Potter Analysis.pdf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay 37,364 Posted April 12, 2022 Share Posted April 12, 2022 That comes from here: https://www.filmscorerundowns.net/ michael_grig 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
j39m 75 Posted April 12, 2022 Share Posted April 12, 2022 1 hour ago, Manakin Skywalker said: HP1 and 3 were done by "freelancers" primarily made up of LSO and London Philharmonic players I believe. Somewhere along the line (probably random brain fart from Star Wars overdose) I got it into my head that the LSO was solely responsible for HP1. Many years later, I re-examined the album notes and was dismayed to find that I was wrong. To this day, I have a habit of insisting on crediting an ensemble in the "artist" field (in addition to JW) even if there's none explicitly named (think "Hollywood Studio Symphony"). I'll make up stupid names if I have to. For my tagging of the LLL expansion, HP1 was performed by Kierkegaard's Masons and HP3 by the Bentham Reformists. Manakin Skywalker 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Manakin Skywalker 4,894 Posted April 12, 2022 Share Posted April 12, 2022 I always just say the LSO did HP1-3, even if it's not technically true, it's like 95% LSO members. Same with the Hollywood Studio Symphony doing the Star Wars ST; there were some freelancers thrown in here and there, but it was almost completely HSS players. Even the HSS Wiki page itself lists the Star Wars sequels: Hollywood Studio Symphony - Wikipedia Docteur Qui 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
j39m 75 Posted April 13, 2022 Share Posted April 13, 2022 2 hours ago, Manakin Skywalker said: Even the HSS Wiki page itself lists the Star Wars sequels: I am unsure of what to make of that — that page is tagged with a "few-to-no citations" warning, and the HSS's admittedly sparse homepage makes no mention of the SW sequels (though Star Trek is there). In particular I remember Into Darkness bearing the ensemble name in the booklet (and that's what I wrote into my tags), but I don't recall any such credit for the sequel trilogy liner notes. This release from PR Newswire about the TFA score avoids mentioning any ensemble name and the TFA end credits don't give anything away. (Even JKMS gets a shout-out there.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Manakin Skywalker 4,894 Posted April 13, 2022 Share Posted April 13, 2022 40 minutes ago, j39m said: I am unsure of what to make of that — that page is tagged with a "few-to-no citations" warning, and the HSS's admittedly sparse homepage makes no mention of the SW sequels (though Star Trek is there). In particular I remember Into Darkness bearing the ensemble name in the booklet (and that's what I wrote into my tags), but I don't recall any such credit for the sequel trilogy liner notes. This release from PR Newswire about the TFA score avoids mentioning any ensemble name and the TFA end credits don't give anything away. (Even JKMS gets a shout-out there.) Right, my point wasn't that the HSS did the sequels, but that even the Wiki editor/s assumed they did due to the musicians credited on them that are members of the HSS. j39m 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay 37,364 Posted April 13, 2022 Share Posted April 13, 2022 From my understanding, the Hollywood Studio Symphony is the name used for any film score recorded in LA with AFM musicians. MM recently shared (mirrored here) that the AFM has recently begun mandating that any LA-recorded scores post-1960 will now have to say "performed by the Hollywood Studio Symphony" on either the front or back cover. This even applies to re-issues of OOP titles that get a new catalog number but no other art changes bollemanneke and Manakin Skywalker 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
j39m 75 Posted April 13, 2022 Share Posted April 13, 2022 15 minutes ago, Jay said: From my understanding, the Hollywood Studio Symphony is the name used for any film scores recorded in LA with AFM musicians. Interesting. The personnel page of my TLJ booklet (hastily captured with a phone camera) shows the AFM logo atop the mark of SAG-AFTRA, but I really don't recall seeing "Hollywood Studio Symphony" in there. I wonder if this was decided on a per-score basis prior. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay 37,364 Posted April 13, 2022 Share Posted April 13, 2022 If you're referring to Mike's post, it's a brand new mandate, like within the last year or less Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Manakin Skywalker 4,894 Posted April 13, 2022 Share Posted April 13, 2022 So then technically the Hollywood Studio Symphony "proper" would have been responsible for the sequel trilogy (and Rogue One) I take it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay 37,364 Posted April 14, 2022 Share Posted April 14, 2022 If I understand correctly, yes Manakin Skywalker 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Docteur Qui 1,544 Posted April 14, 2022 Share Posted April 14, 2022 On 13/04/2022 at 8:40 AM, Manakin Skywalker said: I always just say the LSO did HP1-3, even if it's not technically true, it's like 95% LSO members. Yeah I mean effectively it's just the LSO anyway. An institution is made up of people, and if the majority of those people are present then it's basically the institution but without the name. Manakin Skywalker 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chewy 2,391 Posted April 16, 2022 Share Posted April 16, 2022 On 13/04/2022 at 10:28 PM, Jay said: MM recently shared (mirrored here) that the AFM has recently begun mandating that any LA-recorded scores post-1960 will now have to say "performed by the Hollywood Studio Symphony" on either the front or back cover. This even applies to re-issues of OOP titles that get a new catalog number but no other art changes That might explain why the non-final cover for the LLL Always release had this label. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay 37,364 Posted April 16, 2022 Share Posted April 16, 2022 Ooh yea that makes sense Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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