I just realized that John Williams is one of the last major figures of the Golden Age of Hollywood.

[jojoju2000 20]

He is six years older than Natalie Wood. 2 years older than Sophia Loren. 19 days older than Elizabeth Taylor. He played with Shirley Temple as a Kid, played the Piano for the Original West Side Story Movie in 1961, He has worked with both Bernsteins, Herrman, Waxman, Mancini, Alfred Newman, and Jerry Goldsmith. His first film score was in 1954.

 

He's also 3 years older than Elvis. 3 years older than Julie Andrews. And around the same age as Rita Moreno. 

 

I just can't imagine; the immense influence JW has had on not just music, but global cultural history. Will we ever have someone like JW in Film Music again ? Who now can have the respect of both film and classical music ? I can't believe there hasn't been a biography written about him. Imagine; the seat JW must have taken being a witness to major cultural events in global history. There aren't many from the Golden age left; in all fields. 

 

Okay yeah sure; JW didn't have his peak until the 1980s with Spielberg and Lucas, and his conducting position for the Boston Pops.  But he is from the time period; and he's the last composer who writes in the Golden Age ethos.

[GerateWohl 4,926]

1 hour ago, jojoju2000 said:

he's the last composer who writes in the Golden Age ethos.

That's correct, but he never was a golden age composer. But he new the guys, yes. Unless there comes some romantic music revival in film, the last remains of this aera really are going to end with him, sadly. 

[BB-8 3,819]

John Williams initiated the revival of the golden Hollywood orchestral style.

 

Hollywood Soundstage Orchestral & Concertos Chandos

[SilverTrumpet 642]

6 hours ago, GerateWohl said:

Unless there comes some romantic music revival in film, the last remains of this aera really are going to end with him, sadly. 

 

It'll come back eventually. It did in the 70s, and it will again one day.

[GerateWohl 4,926]

1 hour ago, SilverTrumpet said:

 

It'll come back eventually. It did in the 70s, and it will again one day.

I am not sure. Even though these scores were out of fashion in the 70s the composers in the business had a skill level in classic composition, orchestration, conducting etc., that contemporary film composers often don't have. So, it was easier to revive that.

[Disco Stu 15,501]

All you need to score any film is a MIDI keyboard, a pedal board, and a DAW!

[BB-8 3,819]

[GerateWohl 4,926]

4 hours ago, Disco Stu said:

All you need to score any film is a MIDI keyboard, a pedal board, and a DAW!

Yes, that is exactly how these scores today sound like.

[Tom 4,956]

4 hours ago, GerateWohl said:

I am not sure. Even though these scores were out of fashion in the 70s the composers in the business had a skill level in classic composition, orchestration, conducting etc., that contemporary film composers often don't have. So, it was easier to revive that.

That is a very good point.  I do think there are plenty of non-film composers well-trained in these areas--they could bring their skillset with such a revival.  However, if would not be as instantaneous as what happened after Star Wars.  

[Bespin 8,650]

You know what, we use J.S. Bach year of death to end the "Baroque" Era in classical music.

 

I say for years that we'll use John Williams year of death to mark the end of the Classical Hollywood Film Music Era... 

 

Yep.

[Disco Stu 15,501]

I think he long outlived the end of that era.

[Damien F 1,763]

I still think it is a little crazy that a person who scored for Hitchcock is still scoring movies today. OK, it was Hitch's final movie, but still JW is definitely unique among composers today in that regard. 

[Cerebral Cortex 3,358]

14 minutes ago, Damien F said:

I still think it is a little crazy that a person who scored for Hitchcock is still scoring movies today. OK, it was Hitch's final movie, but still JW is definitely unique among composers today in that regard. 

 

Dude scored for Hitchcock, scored Frank Sinatra's only directorial effort, and scored a John Wayne picture. That same dude is still working on the biggest films ever made. what the fuck haha

 

I swear some people have to see that John Williams credit in Star Wars Episode 9 and think it's his son or something.

[Marian Schedenig 8,803]

As has been mentioned, he isn't necessarily/exactly a Golden Age composer. But he is probably the last major film composer who learned his art when film music wasn't an established genre. Instead, he was "classically" trained, and applied that training and his instincts to film scoring. As a result, I think there's a lot of art in his work, whereas these days, film music is an established genre that is taught, but much more as a craft than an art form. I suppose that means that a person studying both that and "serious" art music may have a "better"/more fitting education than Williams himself - but someone who just studied film music, unless they also have (like Williams) a massive amount of inherent/autodidactic talent, is almost by definition not in the same league as him. Add to that that neither the contemporary expectations towards film music (at least for most major productions) nor the production schedules are very tempting for composers actually interested in the art of composition, and it becomes clear why it's unlikely that someone of Williams's stature is likely to come along in the foreseeable future.

[Bespin 8,650]

59 minutes ago, Disco Stu said:

I think he long outlived the end of that era.

 

A little respect here.

 

JW is a "bit" responsible of the revival of the modern classical music in movies, at a time were there was only jazz...

 

I'll let the musicologists define this era, that is not the "Golden Age", but it deserve a name... and an ending date.

[Sunshine Reger 3,572]

I've calculated something...

 

Had Williams died at Tchaikovsky's age (54) in 1986, he would still have had 3 Star Wars films, 2 Indy films, CE3K, E.T., Jaws, Superman, Jane Eyre, 45 or so other film scores, the Violin Concerto, 4 Oscars, a honorary PhD, and 6 years at the helm of the Boston Pops to his name.

 

36 years later and he is still going on!

[Manakin Skywalker 5,165]

6 hours ago, Disco Stu said:

All you need to score any film is a MIDI keyboard, a pedal board, and a DAW!

 

And you don't even need a pedal board!

[Disco Stu 15,501]

8 minutes ago, Manakin Skywalker said:

 

And you don't even need a pedal board!

You do if wanna win Oscars!

[TownerFan 4,998]

I reflected on this a lot over the years and even more since I began the Legacy project. Several things mentioned above here are true and I agree with such statements. It’s possible to do a critical evaluation of JW and put him into a definite historical context. In this regard, Williams is very much a fixture of the 20th century, as he grew up, matured and found his success throughout the second half of the 1900s, so he belong to this specific timeframe and absorbed its wide variety of influences, as many of the greats who lived in the same era did. 
 

Anyway, what I understood is that JW is pretty much a unique and irreplaceable figure in the history of film music, but also music in general. The fact he found fortune and glory in the glitzy commercial world of Hollywood (to which he will always be inextricably tied) doesn’t diminish his formidable skills as a composer who has been able to synthesize and revive a musical tradition (i.e. the classical Hollywood scoring style) and let his own voice be also heard loud and clear nonetheless. He has always been popular and sophisticated at the same time, a quality that is really rare to find. I think he’s the musical equivalent of a Charles Dickens or a Mark Twain in this regard. He fuses unbridled Mozartian genius with a Haydn-like balanced sense of sophistication. Hollywood offered him an ideal platform, in which he was able to express his own talent. He was the right person in the right place at the right moment of history, surrounded by talent and creativity since his early days there and part of a generation who also loved jazz and modern music. 
 

There won’t be another John Williams as there never was another Twain, Dickens or Haydn. He will always be a benchmark, a fixture and a role model for many many composers and artists for centuries to come.

[Damien F 1,763]

A lot of recent commentary about the passing of Queen Elizabeth mentioned that she was a constant for so many people, and I think the same can be applied to JW. I remember a time when composers like Michael Giachinno and Alexandre Desplat weren't part of the industry. Older fans will remember the same about Elfman and Zimmer. I remember hearing about the deaths of titans like John Barry, Jerry Goldsmith, and James Horner. But John Williams has been a constant presence in the film scoring world for the living memory of a vast majority of film score fans.

 

There will come a time when future generations will look back at JW in the same way that we look back at composers like Herrmann and Max Steiner. Legendary composers who have long since passed. I'm really glad that I get to experience the era of John Williams and all that entails such as the excitement of a new score and of course being able to see him in concert. 

[karelm 2,945]

1 hour ago, Damien F said:

A lot of recent commentary about the passing of Queen Elizabeth mentioned that she was a constant for so many people, and I think the same can be applied to JW. I remember a time when composers like Michael Giachinno and Alexandre Desplat weren't part of the industry. Older fans will remember the same about Elfman and Zimmer. I remember hearing about the deaths of titans like John Barry, Jerry Goldsmith, and James Horner. But John Williams has been a constant presence in the film scoring world for the living memory of a vast majority of film score fans.

 

There will come a time when future generations will look back at JW in the same way that we look back at composers like Herrmann and Max Steiner. Legendary composers who have long since passed. I'm really glad that I get to experience the era of John Williams and all that entails such as the excitement of a new score and of course being able to see him in concert. 

Wow, you're so right!  I don't remember a time without Johnny.  My earliest memory was seeing Star Wars with my family and definitely the music blew me away along with the strange visuals and fun.  My brothers got to see it before me because I was too young and my mom, now 88, wouldn't let me see such a "scary film full of monsters".  But they were so excited and thrilled they convinced the whole family to see it.  I sat on my mom's lap and I still remember that first experience!  The B flat orchestral blast was so shocking to me!  The music was what I most connected with and Jaws was played again that summer of 1977 where I heard my second JW score and was again blown way by him.  I was 4 or maybe 5 years old and the score was by far the most memorable element to me.  By the time I saw Close Encounters, JW's score was the drawing power.  He's so special and unique in our lives.  He isn't just Walt Disney.  He's like Disney + the Queen + Elvis + Beatles + Michael Jackson in one person.  He's a real treasure and we're lucky to realize that while he's still with us and creating new music!

[GerateWohl 4,926]

5 hours ago, karelm said:

He's like Disney + the Queen + Elvis + Beatles + Michael Jackson in one person. 

You forgot the Stones.

 

The one thing, that I dislike about such threads is, that they become particularly morbid, talking about the time when Williams will be gone and what that is supposed to mean.

They guy has a marvelous history, but he is alive and kicking and I hope he has a vivid future ahead. I am really curious and looking forward, what he will bring us and do throughout this decade.

He is an absolute phenomenon.

And if he decides next week to stop composing and spend the rest of his live growing wine in California or weed in a roof garden in New York, so be it.

[michael_grig 472]

16 minutes ago, GerateWohl said:

And if he decides next week to stop composing and spend the rest of his live growing wine in California or weed in a roof garden in New York, so be it.

I think it's more likely that he'll start a professional golf career if he decides to stop composing!

[Bryant Burnette 681]

I suspect he won't stop composing until he starts decomposing, and hopefully that'll be no time soon.

[BB-8 3,819]

11 hours ago, Damien F said:

I still think it is a little crazy that a person who scored for Hitchcock is still scoring movies today. OK, it was Hitch's final movie, but still JW is definitely unique among composers today in that regard. 

This reminds me of Richard Strauss, whose career spanned different stylistic eras (late romantic to avantgarde) while his output remained more or less committed to his own unique compositional style.

[Loert 2,603]

Quote

I just realized that John Williams is one of the last major figures

 

Fixed.

[BB-8 3,819]

1 hour ago, Loert said:

 

Fixed.

...of the post-Elizabethan era.

[GerateWohl 4,926]

On 28/09/2022 at 6:45 AM, jojoju2000 said:

His first film score was in 1954.

Somebody said it before in another thread. That is the amazing part. This was just 21 years after King Kong which is regarded as the first wall to wall orchestral film score ever. So, he is since about 70 years in a business that is not older than round about 90 years.

[Disco Stu 15,501]

If we're placing the length of JW's career in context, I'll re-up my post from last year on the subject  

 

On 04/12/2021 at 5:36 PM, Disco Stu said:

2021 is exactly as far from Williams' first film score (1958) as that score was from the beginning of motion pictures as a commercial industry (1895, when the Lumiere brothers first showed their films and charged admission).

 

[GerateWohl 4,926]

26 minutes ago, Disco Stu said:

If we're placing the length of JW's career in context, I'll re-up my post from last year on the subject  

Yes, that was the post I was refering to. Thanks.

 

[Disco Stu 15,501]

He's been scoring films for more than half of the medium's history!  It really is mind-boggling.

[stravinsky 211]

Williams also worked for Tiomkin I believe. He orchestrated something or other. Still even the "Silver Age" is now long gone and Williams is the last of that ancient religion. There are no "Composers" any more. You can hear it in the guff that masquerades as film music these days. I've been listening to the extraordinary and rather crazy music of Tiomkin this past week and I ordered the Tadlow/Prometheus re-recording of The Fall of the Roman Empire. Remarkable music that I had never heard before. Comparing the unbelievable complexity and craft of Tiomkin with the crap that is wallpapered all over the mostly garbage movies of today is like comparing night with day. 

[Jurassic Shark 12,801]

On 28/09/2022 at 10:49 AM, BB-8 said:

John Williams initiated the revival of the golden Hollywood orchestral style.

 

Hollywood Soundstage Orchestral & Concertos Chandos

 

That's John Wilson.

[Tom 4,956]

That dude cannot even correctly spell "symphony."  

[Yavar Moradi 2,872]

On 27/9/2022 at 10:45 PM, jojoju2000 said:

His first film score was in 1954.

 

Okay yeah sure; JW didn't have his peak until the 1980s with Spielberg and Lucas

C’mon, his peak at least started in the 70s… Jane Eyre, his first Oscar win for Fiddler on the Roof, The Cowboys, Images, JAWS (and its first sequel), Close Encounters, The Fury for DePalma, Family Plot for Hitchcock, SUPERMAN, a little film called STAR WARS???

 

What’s this 1954 film score you’re referring to? Was it a student film or something he did for the Air Force? Because his first Hollywood film score was Daddy-O in 1958…

 

And while I’ve got my pedantic professor hat on…

 

On 30/9/2022 at 5:50 AM, GerateWohl said:

This was just 21 years after King Kong which is regarded as the first wall to wall orchestral film score ever.

Anyone who regards it as such is being ignorant; anyone who declares it as such is either that or dishonest. King Kong in complete form is a little over 70 minutes long. And it’s not even “wall to wall” because the film has almost half an hour without music. Check out this great podcast episode for interesting commentary on that:

https://www.settlingthescorepodcast.com/14-king-kong/

 

In the previous decade composers such as Gottfried Huppertz (Metropolis, Die Nibelungen) were composing even larger scale and more wall to wall orchestral film scores of much greater sophistication and complexity than what Steiner did for King Kong (or similarly for the same creative team the previous year for The Most Dangerous Game, for that matter!)

 

(2.5 hours!!)

 

(4.5 hours! It was an epic two-part film, but still…)

 

Hell, the very first original orchestral film score by Camille Saint-Saens way back in 1908 was virtually wall to wall itself! (It’s just that the film was only about 20 minutes long.)

 

(Start on Track 5.)

My favorite French film score from the 20s is Salammbo by Florent Schmitt:

(This isn’t even the complete score, but three suites from it cut down for concert performance purposes.)
 

None other that Doug Adams (The Music of the Lord of the Rings Films) is another champion of this one:

https://florentschmitt.com/2014/06/12/film-music-specialist-doug-adams-talks-about-florent-schmitts-salammbo-and-other-music-scores-from-the-silent-film-era/amp/

 

And it’s not just the French and Germans. Dmitri Shostakovich started writing long form film music in Russia during the 1920s. His score to Odna was years before King Kong, was long form, played with diegetic and non-diegetic, and even was the first film score to feature the theremin, many years before Rozsa or Herrmann used it!

(79 minutes long)
 

Then we have Spanish composer Ernesto Halffter (Carmen, 1926):

 

(66 min long)

 

Finnish composer Armas Jarnefelt with the very first original orchestral film score written in Finland (just 11 years after Saint-Saens’s sole film score):

(99 minutes long!)

 

Italian composer Pietro Mascagni’s score for Rapsodia Satanica (he’s best known for the opera Cavalleria Rusticana but he did this one film score in 1917):

 

“But Yavar! Max Steiner was the first person to write full length orchestral scores in HOLLYWOOD!”

 

Nope! None other than La-La Land Records released a restoration of the Zamecnik score to Wings (1927) years ago — 76.5 minutes, longer than King Kong:

https://lalalandrecords.com/wings-limited-edition/

And he’s not the first in the United States either! That might(?) have been for the odious (but historically important) Birth of a Nation (1913), with original orchestral score composed by Joseph Carl Breil:

https://moviemusicuk.us/2022/01/10/the-birth-of-a-nation-joseph-carl-breil/
 

And for Spotify users, we have this new (released earlier this year!) Mark Fitz-Gerald-conducted recording of The Thief of Bagdad — no, not the well remembered 1940 version by Miklos Rozsa, but one by American composer Mortimer Wilson for the 1924 Hollywood version starring Douglas Fairbanks… 74 minutes on album, also more substantial than King Kong which it pre-dated by nine years:

Wilson was something of a film music specialist all through the 1920s in Hollywood, by the way… at least a half dozen film scores starting with 1920’s The Mark of Zorro and going through 1928’s The Good-bye Kiss and The Night Watch.

 

So yeah, while the 1933 film King Kong was the first Hollwood film to achieve *that* level of popularity, and therefore Steiner’s lengthy (but not unprecedentedly so) orchestral score has gotten a lot of press and attention over the years… NO, it wasn’t “first”… by any meaningful metric.

 

Yavar

[Disco Stu 15,501]

Yeah no one should use 1954 as his first film score, that’s ridiculous

[Yavar Moradi 2,872]

I mean, I personally wouldn’t ignore a John Williams-scored student or Air Force film, if it can be uncovered…

 

 

Yavar

[Disco Stu 15,501]

I’m not saying it wouldn’t be worth watching/hearing, just wouldn’t count as his first score.  It’d be like what gets called “juvenilia” for classical composers.

[Thor 8,101]

YOU ARE WELCOME, the 22-minute travelogue film Williams worked on while in the air force, counts as his first experience with music to film (other than attending his dad's film sessions as a kid), but not really his first film score. YOU ARE WELCOME consisted of arrangements of local folk melodies and other existing compositions; there isn't much original music in it. DADDY-O from 1958 remains his first proper film score.

 

In either case, Williams never really worked in the Golden Age of Hollywood. The end of the Golden Age varies a bit according to parameters and sources, but most film historians agree that the late 40s were the beginning of the end (Paramount verdict that effectively ended vertical integration, baby boom/suburbia and the rise of TV were the main contributing factors). One can argue that certain stylistic traits continued well into the 50s, but by the time Williams did DADDY-O, it was a rather different industrial landscape ushered in by the rise of independents alongside the big studio productions.

 

What IS true, however, is that Williams experienced the Golden Age as a kid, and even got to work with some of its legends later on (Newman, Waxman, Tiomkin etc.). So he is kind of a "link" between then and now.

[Jurassic Shark 12,801]

7 hours ago, Yavar Moradi said:

Nope! None other than La-La Land Records released a restoration of the Zamecnik score to Wings (1927) years ago — 76.5 minutes, longer than King Kong:

https://lalalandrecords.com/wings-limited-edition/

 

Who knew they had crappy midi technology in the 1920s!

 

Quality post, btw!

 

7 hours ago, Yavar Moradi said:

So yeah, while the 1933 film King Kong was the first Hollwood film to achieve *that* level of popularity, and therefore Steiner’s lengthy (but not unprecedentedly so) orchestral score has gotten a lot of press and attention over the years… NO, it wasn’t “first”… by any meaningful metric.

 

The score's not even very good...

 

23 minutes ago, Thor said:

YOU ARE WELCOME

 

Thanks!

[GerateWohl 4,926]

8 hours ago, Yavar Moradi said:

 

(2.5 hours!!)

Thanks a lot for that exposition of pre-King Kong film scores! I had actually the pleasure to hear Huppertz's whole Metropolis score live yesterday from the Babylon film orchestra in Babylon cinema Berlin.

[Yavar Moradi 2,872]

On 31/12/2022 at 3:22 AM, GerateWohl said:

Thanks a lot for that exposition of pre-King Kong film scores! I had actually the pleasure to hear Huppertz's whole Metropolis score live yesterday from the Babylon film orchestra in Babylon cinema Berlin.

You’re welcome. So, having had that amazing experience, would you say Steiner’s orchestral score for King Kong invented or was the “first”… anything?

 

Yavar

[GerateWohl 4,926]

12 hours ago, Yavar Moradi said:

You’re welcome. So, having had that amazing experience, would you say Steiner’s orchestral score for King Kong invented or was the “first”… anything?

 

Yavar

I think, I had read this thing about the King Kong score, probably in the liner notes of the re-recording.

And even though I was aware of these wall-to-wall silent movie scores, this was for me in my categorisation something different than these sound movie scores. My understanding of that development was, that filmmakers of Sound movies at first thought, now we don't need music anymore or the didn't know how to justify the music playing in the background when there is no orchestra in that scene. And the sound mixing might be difficult to make everything audible etc. 

But at reading your post I thought, you are right. The function of the music in those silent movies and movies like King Kong is the very Same and Steiner was able to build his score on the very same principles and more or less followed the same technical tradition of film scoring. 

[Yavar Moradi 2,872]

Yeah, people make claims all the time but that doesn’t mean they are true. King Kong wasn’t even Steiner’s first substantial orchestral score. For example, he did The Most Dangerous Game the previous year for the same creative team (it just wasn’t as popular or remembered a movie):

 

But also Odna by Shostakovich which I shared above… started production as a silent film but ultimately ended up being a sound film with almost 80 minutes of score, some of which was diegetic (heard by the characters) and some of which was non-diegetic.

 

Yavar

[GerateWohl 4,926]

15 minutes ago, Yavar Moradi said:

Yeah, people make claims all the time but that doesn’t mean they are true. King Kong wasn’t even Steiner’s first substantial orchestral score. For example, he did The Most Dangerous Game the previous year for the same creative team (it just wasn’t as popular or remembered a movie):

This recording with The Most Dangerous Game and the Kong sequel is a recording that I really like. One of my favourite Steiner recordings.

I just wasn't aware that The Most Dangerous Game was before King Kong.

[Thor 8,101]

As Yavar alludes to in his examples, the function of film music in KING KONG, its style and narrative use, is the same as in the sound films and silents that preceded it. So the notion that KING KONG was the first "proper film score" or whatever, is of course erroneous.

 

Rather, the position that KING KONG holds in film music history has more to do with advances in audience reception (in regards to sound film and music), than film music per se. When it came out, and became the hit that it became, it was also a sign of the natural position that diegetic and non-diegetic music could hold in a sound film without causing confusion. When the full orchestral forces play as the explorers strumble upon the tribal village, the non-diegetic "add-ons" to the diegetic tribal instruments were natural and required no further exposition for the audience. Due to its success, it was one of the earliest and most prominent examples of how far sound film and music had come at this point; basically the template of how we see and listen to films even today.

[Yavar Moradi 2,872]

Precisely. And that had already been illustrated in previous films too; along just helped cement it — it was “a sign” as you said, not the sign as so many people seem determined to believe.

 

Yavar

[Jurassic Shark 12,801]

3 hours ago, GerateWohl said:

I think, I had read this thing about the King Kong score, probably in the liner notes of the re-recording.

 

Were these notes written by Stromberg or Morgan?

[GerateWohl 4,926]

16 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Were these notes written by Stromberg or Morgan?

James D'Arc.

[Jurassic Shark 12,801]

Any relation to Jeanne?