JW' film music that should be played by Classical Music Elite

[Bespin 8,650]

I had the idea of creating this thread by reading an article I saw on the web, titled "Why isn't John Williams treated like Igor Stravinsky?". Why won't the Classical Music Elite play film music?

 

In the specific case of John Williams, which suites from a movie could be played in a classical music concert, like if it was a consistent Symphony or a Concerto?

 

Is it possible some movies simply lack of a Suite, preventing them to be programmed in a classical music concert?

[bollemanneke 3,529]

I'd want the BPO to perform/record the Harry Potter and Star Wars suites as published. Conductor suggestions: Simon Rattle, Riccardo Muti, Benjamin Zander, Dirk Brossé.

 

Also, can Adam Fischer and the Danish Chamber Orchestra perform HP1-3 in their entirety?

[Disco Stu 15,501]

For context, here's the article Bespin is referencing, by John Mauceri.  This is pretty much all material covered in Mauceri's 2022 book The War on Music, which I read and enjoyed last Summer.

 

https://airmail.news/issues/2023-1-21/the-view-from-here

Quote

During the last weeks of 2022, two events gave us hope for a breakthrough in upending the tragedy of 20th-century classical music. The tragedy is that such music has been solely defined in terms of “modernism,” specifically the explosive experiments of Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky in the years surrounding World War I.

 

The events that gave us hope were, first, John Williams, at the age of 90, making his Italian conducting debut with the orchestra of La Scala. He preceded the glittering sold-out gala with debut concerts with the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics. Arguably, these institutions constitute the trifecta of Europe’s greatest and most conservative classical institutions—which have long ignored “Hollywood composers.”

 

Second, the Berlin Philharmonic toured the United States with its newly appointed principal conductor, Kirill Petrenko, in a repertory that included Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s rarely performed Symphony in F sharp. The Sunday Times followed this performance with an interview in which the world’s greatest tenor, Jonas Kaufmann, is quoted as saying, “Korngold was a genius and this opera [Die Tote Stadt (The Dead City)] should be much more in the limelight. People think it sounds like film music, but that’s because Korngold was one of the inventors of the film music style which we still enjoy today.”

 

Could this be a sign that a much-needed redefinition of what constitutes contemporary classical music might be at hand?

 

We should see the music of American 20th-century composers such as Williams and Korngold as lost cultural heritage. There are organizations devoted to restoring lost heritage, such as the Monuments Men and Women Foundation, which seeks to find works of art stolen in the Second World War. Unfortunately it does not deal with music.

 

Music can’t be stolen, but it can be suppressed. Those European musicians who survived the war in America and composed music as American citizens, such as Paul Hindemith, Miklós Rózsa, and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, have been tacitly banned from performance in Europe’s grandest venues for 75 years. The Germans and Italians may have lost the war, but they still claim a cultural superiority when it comes to defining classical music.

 

That is why the arrival of the Berlin Philharmonic last November with the monumental Korngold symphony created general chaos among American classical-music critics. These critics have, almost without exception, followed the European postwar critical assessment that the classical music largely composed by Jewish refugees, which did not adhere to the doctrine of the new atonal avant-garde, was kitsch.

 

One important American newspaper previewed the Korngold concert—the first time the symphony had been played in New York in 45 years—by describing it as “weary, burdened, at times even angry to be fighting its battles once again … remarkably hollow.”

The reviewer seemed to imagine an aging and exhausted Korngold fighting against the triumph of modernism. He was not. Like the vast majority of 20th-century composers, he was writing music in his unique voice—a voice that had been hailed by Mahler, Puccini, and Strauss. That he was uninterested in the endless experiments that have so alienated audiences for more than 100 years is a testament to his profound sense of security in who he was and how he wanted to express himself.

 

This brings us to John Williams, whose music, like that of all his Hollywood colleagues, has been snubbed by “serious” classical institutions for decades. No one better deserves his place in the hearts and souls of a grateful world for his immense achievements.

 

A musician who went to La Scala to hear Williams’s recent concert told me he was astonished by the crowd’s reaction to it. “The frenzy surrounding John’s presence was just insane. As he left the building in a taxi, people were singing “The Raiders March” [the theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark] to him. I wonder when the last time was that La Scala experienced this kind of atmosphere.”

 

There are two questions this raises. Fifteen years ago, Williams turned 75. There were no birthday concerts in Vienna, Berlin, and Milan then. Why now? Secondly, where did John Williams’s music come from? It was not just Williams who made his debut: his music made its debut with those institutions. We are always describing classical music in terms of its inspiration, its history, and its continuity. Let us do the same for him.

 

The answer to the first question comes, I think, from the musicians themselves. The greatest classical instrumentalists and opera singers have grown up in a post–Star Wars world in which John’s music is the soundtrack of their lives. His music is symphonic and complex, with eight horns, harps, ethereal strings, magnificent marches, and memorable themes that develop and morph. Before many of these players heard Beethoven, Verdi, and Mahler, they heard Williams, and they continue to hear him. He is, after all, a living composer of contemporary music.

 

The answer to the second question is clear. John Williams’s music is the product of the inspiration of those first refugee geniuses—trained in Europe’s greatest conservatories—whose lives were saved in the United States. We can hear the DNA of Korngold’s Kings Row in the Star Wars opening theme; the murderous Romans putting down the Jews in Miklós Rózsa’s 1959 score to Ben-Hur in John Williams’s “Imperial March” theme for Darth Vader; and the prototype of the rhythmic two-note ostinato that is called Jaws in Franz Waxman’s murder motif in his Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

 

This gets us to the issue of the Monuments Men and Women Foundation, because in talking about Williams’s precursors we are dealing with a suppressed cultural heritage. The German Nazis, the Italian Fascists, and the Soviet Communists all had strict control over what music could be played and composed. For differing reasons, it was easy to ban non-tonal “experimental” music since few people embraced it. After the war, the United States supported this same music because it was decreed anti-Nazi, anti-Fascist, and anti-Communist.

 

The damaged young European composers are not to blame for creating this non-tonal music. They grew up in the ghastly rubble of a war they hardly understood and expressed their understandable attitude toward the impossibility of beauty in their music. But here we are today, 75 years later, regurgitating the old politically inspired aesthetics and its post-traumatic expression.

 

One American critic recently described the unabashedly beautiful opera The Hours, by Kevin Puts, as being “achingly — almost painfully — pretty,” and that “the tear-jerking gets tiring.” Perhaps someone might point out that a principal reason people go to the opera is to cry—to cry at its beauty and for the stories it tells. Consider La Bohème, Madama Butterfly, and La Traviata.

 

The most recent Italian opera performed in the current classical repertory is Puccini’s Turandot, which was left incomplete in 1924. A hundred years of Italian opera has been banned from our stages because the composers either lived in Italy—and tacitly accepted the regime—or abandoned their homeland, either to save their lives or express their revulsion with Mussolini. There are hundreds of works that cry out for re-discovery, even if this means Italy must finally come to terms with a deeply embarrassing episode in its grand musical history.

 

Perhaps Korngold’s current “re-discovery” will finally open the gates to the hundreds of symphonic composers who were forced to flee Europe during the war, and then were thoroughly humiliated by the postwar European and American cultural elite.

 

John Williams’s genius lies in his willingness to continue developing the traditions brought to America by the Europeans who wrote for Hollywood. They were not writing movie music. They were in fact writing music that naturally embraced the cultural lineage of Richard Strauss—who was alive at the time—Mahler, Wagner, and Puccini. Williams is one of the second generation of America-trained geniuses, a generation that includes Bernard Herrmann, Alex North, Jerry Goldsmith, and Elmer Bernstein. Their music has been heard and appreciated by hundreds of millions of people throughout the world on soundtracks, but rarely, if ever, in the great concert halls.

 

And so, Maestro Kirill Petrenko and Jonas Kaufmann are Monuments Men for our time, saving our lost cultural heritage. Where are the others? If the Korngold violin concerto has finally been accepted as “classical,” where are the celebrated soloists to give us the Rózsa concerto and Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Concerto No. 2, both inspired by Jascha Heifetz? Is there an opera house to stage Korngold’s Das Wunder der Heliane? An orchestra to explore the great Hindemith symphonies composed in New Haven, Connecticut? If Scala, Berlin, and Vienna slip back to their standard artistic policies and the United States continues to follow their lead, then this moment will have been lost—and we shall all continue to be the losers.

There is so much glorious music from the last century. Yes, return the art. But also play the music!

 

[Bespin 8,650]

If we start from the "Official" published (or recorded at least) Suites and Selections, we have "this", do I miss some?

 

Do any of these suites need to be updated?... Are they all programmable for a Concert... that's the question!

 

Suite from Star Wars
I - Main Title from Star Wars
II - Princess Leia's Theme
III - The Imperial March
IV - Yoda's Theme
V - Throne Room / Finale

 

Selections from Home Alone
I - Somewhere in My Memory
II - Holiday Flight
III - The House
IV - Star of Bethlehem
V - We Wish You a Merry Christmas / End Titles

 

Three Holidays Songs from Home Alone
I - Somewhere In My Memory
II - Star of Bethlehem
III - Merry Christmas, Merry Christimas

 

3 Pieces from Schindler's List
I - Theme
II - Jewish Town (Krakow Ghetto, Winter '41)
III - Remembrance

 

Selections from the BFG
I - Overture
II - To Giant Country
III - Building Trust
IV - Frolic
V - Blowing Dreams
VI - There was a Boy
VII - Snorting and Sniffing
VIII - Sophie's Future

 

Selections from The Post
I - Two Martini Lunch
II - Setting the Type
III - The Presses Roll
IV - The Oak Room, 1971
V - Mother and Daughter
VI - Deciding to Publish
VII - The Court's Decision

 

Selections from War Horse
I - Dartmoor, 1912
II - The Auction
III - Bringing Joey Home, and Bonding
IV - Learning the Call
V - Plowing
VI - Seeding, and Horse vs Car
VII - The Death of Topthorn
VIII - Remembering Emily
IX - The Homecoming

 

Suite from The Phantom Menace
I - The Flag Parade
II - Anakin's Theme
III - The Adventures of Jar Jar
IV - Duel of the Fates

 

Selections from Attack of the Clones
I - Accross the Stars
II - The Meadow Picnic
III - Return to Tatooine
IV - Love Pledge and The Arena
V - Confrontation with Count Dooku and Finale

 

Selections from Revenge of the Sith
I - Battle of Heroes
II - Padmé's Ruminations
III - Anakin's Betrayal
IV - Anakin's Dark Deeds
V - Anakin vs. Obi-Wan
VI - The Birth of the Twins and Padmé's Destiny
VII - A New Hope and End Credits

 

Selections from Lincoln
I - The People's House
II - The American Process
III - Getting Out the Vote
IV - Blue and Grey
V - The Southern Delegation and The Dream
VI - Elegy
VII - Appomattox, April 9, 1865
VIII - "With Malice Toward None"

 

Suite from The Force Awakens
I - March of the Resistance
II - Rey's Theme
III - Scherzo for X-Wings
IV - The Jedi Steps
V - Finale

 

Selections from The Last Jedi
I - The Rebellion is Reborn
II - Finale

 

Suite from The Rise of Skywalker
I - The Rise of Skywalker
II - Reunion
III - Finale

 

Children's Suite for Orchestra from Harry Potter

I - Prologue (Hedwig’s Flight)
II - Hogwarts Forever
III - Voldemort
IV - Nimbus 2000
V - Fluffy’s Harp
VI - Quidditch
VII - Family Portrait
VIII - Diagon Alley
IX - Harry’s Wondrous World

 

3 Selections from Harry Potter
I - Hedwig's Theme
II - Nimbus 2000
III- Harry's Wondrous World

 

Suite from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
I - Fawkes the Phoenix
II - Dobby The House Elf
III - Gilderoy Lockhart
IV - The Chamber of Secrets

 

Suite from Harry Potter and The Prisonner of Azkaban
I - Witches, Wands and Wizards
II - Aunt Marge's Waltz
III - The Knight Bus
IV - A Window to the Past
V - Double Trouble

 

Selections from the Book Thief
I - The Book Thief 
II - Max and Liesel
III - The Snow Fight
IV - Learning to Read
V - The Departure of Max
VI - The Visitor at Himmel Street
VII - Finale

 

3 Selections from Memoirs of a Geisha
I - Sayuri's Theme
II - A Dream Discarded
III - Going to School

 

Suite for Cello and Orchestra from Memoirs of a Geisha

I - Sayuri's Theme

II - Going To School

III - The Chairman's Waltz

IV - Brush On Silk

V - Chiyo's Prayer

VI - Becoming A Geisha

 

Suite from Superman
I - Theme from Superman
II - The Planet Krypton
III - The March of the Villains
IV - Finale and End Tittles

 

Selections from Jurassic Park
I - Journey to the Island
II - Theme from Jurassic Park
III - My Friend, the Brachiosaurus
IV - Remembering Petticoat Lane
V - A Tree for My Bed
VI - Welcome to Jurassic Park

 

Suite from Far and Away
I - County Galway, June 1892
II - The Fighting Donellys
III - Joseph and Shannon
IV - Blowing Off Steam
V - End Credits

 

Suite from JFK
I - Theme from JFK
II - The Motorcade
III - Arlington

 

Suite from Jaws
I - Title Theme
II - Out to Sea / The Shark Cage Fugue

 

Suite from Jane Eyre
I - At Lowood
II - To Thornfield
III - The Return

 

Suite from Born on the Fourth of July

I - Theme

II - Cua Viet River, Vietnam 1968

III - Massapequa...The Early Days

 

Escapades For Alto Saxophone And Orchestra from Catch me If You Can

I - Closing In

II - Reflections

III - Joy Ride

[mrbellamy 6,634]

Suite from JFK should be revived 

[Jurassic Shark 12,801]

No. 1 is the Gerhardt CE3K suite.

[Tom 4,956]

Seven Years in Tibet and Elegy

[BrotherSound 2,289]

5 hours ago, Bespin said:

If we start from the "Official" published (or recorded at least) Suites and Selections, we have "this", do I miss some?

There was an official concert arrangement of Leaving Home from Superman performed at the Oscars a couple years ago. The Force Awakens also has an Adagio concert arrangement (based on ‘The Starkiller’), and The Rise of Skywalker has (still not published!) concert arrangements of Psalm of the Sith, Rey and Ben, and The Speeder Chase.

[Bespin 8,650]

I think some Complete Classic OSTs should be considered for concerts too, eg:

• Jaws OST (35 minutes)
• E.T. OST (40 min)
• Earthquake OST (32 minutes)
• The Fury OST (44 minutes)

[Schilkeman 1,239]

For a more discerning classical audience, the kind that does not go to pops concerts, I think these are the most musically interesting of the bunch, and would be great to hear from a first tier orchestra:

Close Encounters Suite (the full one from 1980)
Princess Leia's Theme
Jewish Town (Krakow Ghetto, Winter '41)
Blowing Dreams
Dartmoor, 1912
Anakin's Theme
Anakin's Dark Deeds
Children's Suite for Orchestra
Witches, Wands and Wizards
The Planet Krypton
Journey to the Island
Arlington

Minority Report

Escape From Earth

 

There are a number of straight up excerpts that would be nice to hear, too, but Williams isn't fond of doing that.

 

The entirety of the Chase through Coruscant

The Battle of Hoth

Everybody Runs

The Intersection Scene

The Fortress of Solitude

The end battle of Star Wars

The Map Room

Carol of the Bells/Setting the Trap

The Land Race

E.T. is Alive/The Rescue and Bike Chase/The Departure

Main Title and Storm Sequence

 

And probably a few others I can't think of right now.

 

 

 

[Gurkensalat 346]

Images :-)

[Jurassic Shark 12,801]

Main Titles.

[Bespin 8,650]

One piece I'm very tired that John Williams keeps playing in his concert his the Throne Room and Finale, I think it could be replaced from time to time with "Han Solo and the Princess (the new arragement)" followed by the Finale from Empire Strikes Back (without the intro, the version Gerhardt recorded).

 

Hearing the finale in a Live to Movie Concert should be WONDERFUL.

 

Why can't we have a recording of that???

[GerateWohl 4,926]

The suite for cello and orchestra from Memoirs of a Geisha has actually six movements and not just three. And I miss the suite from Catch Me if You Can in the listing.

 

I guess, a reason why such suites are not played more often are the costs. 

But I would love to hear a suite from The Witches of Eastwick in concert with

 

• The Township of Eastwick
• The Tennis Game
• Seduction of Suki and the Ballroom Scene
• Dance of the Witches 

[Jurassic Shark 12,801]

22 minutes ago, GerateWohl said:

I guess, a reason why such suites are not played more often are the costs. 

 

Yeah, they'd need to hire an orchestra.

[GerateWohl 4,926]

44 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Yeah, they'd need to hire an orchestra.

Yes, that was my point.

 

No, I thought, it might be quite expensive to rent and license sheet music that is under copyright for a whole orchestra. Beethoven might be cheaper, isn't that the case?

[Jurassic Shark 12,801]

40 minutes ago, GerateWohl said:

No, I thought, it might be quite expensive to rent and license sheet music that is under copyright for a whole orchestra. Beethoven might be cheaper, isn't that the case?

 

That's a good question. If new music is so expensive to perform, why perform it? Perhaps someone here could shed light on the fees for performing non-public domain music.

[Marian Schedenig 8,802]

48 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

That's a good question. If new music is so expensive to perform, why perform it? Perhaps someone here could shed light on the fees for performing non-public domain music.

 

You have to pay licencing fees *at least*. I'm not familiar with how these things work for orchestras, but I do know a bit about the amateur choir perspective. In many cases, if you want to perform a modern day work, you're required to buy or rent (they're not always for sale) the original parts from the only company producing them, which should give you a hint about how competitive the pricing is. For public domain stuff, where at most the printed form of the scores may be protected, you can often get the whole material much cheaper, or even for free on the internet (and usually nobody cares if an amateur ensemble uses photocopies).

[aviazn 273]

On 21/1/2023 at 8:11 AM, Disco Stu said:

Secondly, where did John Williams’s music come from? …

 

The answer … is clear. John Williams’s music is the product of the inspiration of those first refugee geniuses—trained in Europe’s greatest conservatories—whose lives were saved in the United States. We can hear the DNA of Korngold’s Kings Row in the Star Wars opening theme; the murderous Romans putting down the Jews in Miklós Rózsa’s 1959 score to Ben-Hur in John Williams’s “Imperial March” theme for Darth Vader; and the prototype of the rhythmic two-note ostinato that is called Jaws in Franz Waxman’s murder motif in his Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

 

The lack of recognition of the influence of jazz on Williams' voice always rankles me. This recent critical reappraisal of his work is great, as are his appearances with the great European orchestras. But seeking to place him in the pantheon of the European classical tradition while ignoring his jazz background only gets you half the story. It's the jazz imprint on his harmonic and rhythmic language and how he brought that into an orchestral idiom that sets him apart from his peers.

 

Maybe this is a bit grandiose, but I think of Williams as a historic, generational figure at the intersection of two musical traditions from across the world that were brought together in the US through an array of global political and socioeconomic forces — emigration, capitalism, colonialism, slavery, Nazism, abolitionism, etc. Of course, these musical traditions were intermixing for many decades before Williams, but he played no small part in how they combined to create today's modern musical landscape. That, I think, is a much more interesting and significant legacy than simply inheriting the pop mantle of Korngold and Wagner. But obviously, jazz remains a blind spot of classical music critics. You can find a lot more about Williams' jazz roots from music theory geeks on YouTube than classical critics at prestige publications.

[rough cut 1,739]

Regarding licensing fees, if I interpret this correctly, it means that between the years 2070 and 2072 Jaws, A New Hope and Close Encounters (and everything published before 1975) will enter public domain.

 

If that happens, that should at least open up for orchestras to perform the early works by JW (and let’s be honest, at least three of his most important contributions to film music) without having to pay royalty fees.

 

Quote

All works published in the United States before 1924 are in the public domain. Works published after 1923, but before 1978 are protected for 95 years from the date of publication. If the work was created, but not published, before 1978, the copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years.

 

https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/faqs/copyright-basics/

 

[michael_grig 472]

 

Ugh. 

 

It is really shocking that the (academic) music world still has such thoughts. 

[Marian Schedenig 8,802]

30 minutes ago, rough cut said:

Regarding licensing fees, if I interpret this correctly, it means that between the years 2070 and 2072 Jaws, A New Hope and Close Encounters (and everything published before 1975) enters public domain.

 

If that happens, that should at least open up for orchestras to perform the early works by JW (and let’s be honest, at least three of his most important contributions to film music) without having to pay royalty fees.

 

I'm never quite sure how copyright, and especially its expiration, works if the work in question was contracted by a company. Does it still (according to current laws) depend solely on the lifetime of the creator, or is it instead bound to the company itself?

[rough cut 1,739]

I’m not sure either. And laws are also subject to change.

[filmmusic 2,133]

On 27/01/2023 at 1:24 PM, Gurkensalat said:

Images :-)

I think at least the atonal parts of Images will be very difficult to recreate live.

[Jurassic Shark 12,801]

I volunteer to do the shouting!

[Edmilson 8,518]

11 hours ago, Michael Grigorowitsch said:

 

Ugh. 

 

It is really shocking that the (academic) music world still has such thoughts. 

The saddest part is not even the ridiculous tweet itself but rather that 249 other idiots agreed with him.

[Schilkeman 1,239]

On 27/1/2023 at 11:07 PM, aviazn said:

The lack of recognition of the influence of jazz on Williams' voice always rankles me.

Yes, so much of his thematic development sounds like improvisation. The way he uses syncopation to generate energy, or whenever he goes off on those long string passages in scores like War Horse and The Terminal I can hear him improvising. The voicing are even those of a jazz pianist, even if the harmonies are not. Being literate in jazz is vital to understanding JW.

[Disco Stu 15,501]

23 hours ago, Michael Grigorowitsch said:

Ugh. 

 

It is really shocking that the (academic) music world still has such thoughts. 

It’s kinda funny for him to group Stravinsky in with Schoenberg there considering that Stravinsky, while his music can be challenging, is vastly more popular and widely performed. There’s a difference between music that’s challenging and worth the effort and music that… isn’t.

[Tom 4,956]

As I think about this question more, I am going to contend that the best answer is none of it.  Why bow to the stupidity and snobbery of the elite? Williams's music is performed regularly--probably as much as any other composer, living or dead.  The "elite" in this case are dying off.  30 years from now this will be a moot point.  

[Score 772]

I don't exactly like the use of the term "Classical Music Elite" here. There are plenty of "elite" figures in the field of classical music who have embraced film music as a natural continuation of that tradition. I don't think anyone should be excessively impressed by the lonely tweets of some old-school music critics or musicologists.

 

Still, as I have already expressed in the past, I wish I could hear more structured pieces performed in JW's concerts. A perfect example would be the final act of Close Encounters, that @Michael Grigorowitsch used in his reply to the musicologist above - played exactly like that in its 21-minute splendor, as it is. Analogous sequences could be realized for many of JW's scores, and I think many classically-oriented musicians (me included) would prefer to get a concert made of pieces like this, rather than compilations of Main Titles, End Titles, and 3-minute theme arrangements. In other words, it takes time to tell a good story in music (as JW knows very well) and I wish we could get more full stories in his concerts. I'm sure that this would increase his popularity with musicians who might be knowledgeable about classical music, but maybe never bothered to listen to a film score in its entirety outside the movie theater.    

[Schilkeman 1,239]

On 29/01/2023 at 12:00 PM, Score said:

played exactly like that in its 21-minute splendor, as it is.

Yeah, I feel like JW has not done himself any favors in this regard with all of the concert arrangements he's done. Not to say I don't enjoy them, or that they don't have musical value, but the real genius of Williams is how he uses the themes, not just the the themes themselves. His counterpoint, orchestration, and harmonic and rhythmic complexity are on par with the wildest of 20th century composers, but you really have to hear the scores in long enough chunks for all of that to come through.

[Bespin 8,650]

What do you think of composers who rearranged their movie compositions to be "more suitable" for the concert form?

 

Do you like that?

 

[Score 772]

4 hours ago, Bespin said:

What do you think of composers who rearranged their movie compositions to be "more suitable" for the concert form?

 

Do you like that?

 

I haven't heard the Matrix Symphony. As far as the LOTR Symphony is concerned, yes, I like it and I think it's a great way to present the LOTR music in a live concert. That's precisely what I wish JW would do for his best works. It's not a new idea at all, of course: Prokofiev felt the need to re-arrange and re-assemble his Alexander Nevsky score into the well-known cantata, and the "Classical Elite" apparently never had problems with that, even if it is essentially film music. For some critics there might be a sort of authority principle at work, by virtue of which primarily "classical" authors are considered good in whatever they did, even if they occasionally went into film music territory. But I think that for more independent thinkers and listeners, the fact of giving a structure to the music, and allowing enough space for the maturation of the themes, is highly appreciated.

 

 

 

 

[Chen G. 4,405]

I think Williams has done a great job arranging some of his music for the concert hall: he has a lot of suites and concert arrangement of nearly every one of his major film compositions.

 

But, I think the real testament would be to do live-to-projection cycles of the likes of Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Potter, Indy and so forth, with the full forces as originally orchestrated.

[Tom 4,956]

4 hours ago, Bespin said:

What do you think of composers who rearranged their movie compositions to be "more suitable" for the concert form?

 

Williams sort of did this with ET, with the 3 long movement suite, but he has not released it as such and has not performed it as such in like 10 years. 

[Marian Schedenig 8,802]

4 hours ago, Bespin said:

What do you think of composers who rearranged their movie compositions to be "more suitable" for the concert form?

 

I haven't heard the Matrix symphony.

 

The LOTR "symphony" is misnamed, and as far as I remember was arranged not by Shore himself but, at least in part I believe, by John Mauceri? I think it's a poor arrangement, because it mostly cuts & pastes highlights and meandering underscore that doesn't hold up all that well in concert. It's certainly the right approach for these scores, because standalone themes would need entirely new arrangements to be presentable in concert. But I find the execution lacking.

[Score 772]

8 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

I think Williams has done a great job arranging some of his music for the concert hall: he has a lot of suites and concert arrangement of nearly every one of his major film compositions.

 

But, I think the real testament would be to do live-to-projection cycles of the likes of Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Potter, Indy and so forth, with the full forces as originally orchestrated.

 

Yes, but the LTPs are not going to convince those classical critics who look down on film music. If this is the objective, the way of achieving it is to compile something which has a structure and works independently of the film, and displays interesting and non-trivial features. The final act of CEO3K mentioned above is a great example - it probably ranks among the very best music composed in the second half of the 20th century. There are plenty of scores which would be amenable to this treatment (A.I., the Potters, E.T., Star Wars...).

 

19 minutes ago, Tom said:

Williams sort of did this with ET, with the 3 long movement suite, but he has not released it as such and has not performed it as such in like 10 years. 

 

I didn't know about this. When was it performed?

   

 

[Chen G. 4,405]

8 minutes ago, Score said:

If this is the objective, the way of achieving it is to compile something which has a structure and works independently of the film

 

Maybe its my Weimar showing, but I don't think programmatic music is anything to be ashamed of and I think it would be preposterous even for one of the Leipzig crowd to say that music which is programmatic ought to be ashamed its programmatic nature and seek to conceal it.

 

I've seen such silly productions of so many operas, I don't see what a film like The Last Crusade or The Empire Strikes or certainly The Return of the King have to be shied away from.

 

9 minutes ago, Marian Schedenig said:

The LOTR "symphony" is misnamed, and as far as I remember was arranged not by Shore himself but, at least in part I believe, by John Mauceri?

 

Shore arranged it with Mauceri. Its not the greatest presentation, but it works.

[Jurassic Shark 12,801]

8 minutes ago, Marian Schedenig said:

 

I haven't heard the Matrix symphony.

 

The LOTR "symphony" is misnamed, and as far as I remember was arranged not by Shore himself but, at least in part I believe, by John Mauceri? I think it's a poor arrangement, because it mostly cuts & pastes highlights and meandering underscore that doesn't hold up all that well in concert. It's certainly the right approach for these scores, because standalone themes would need entirely new arrangements to be presentable in concert. But I find the execution lacking.

 

Didn't Pope work on the LotR "symphony"?

[Chen G. 4,405]

No.

[Marian Schedenig 8,802]

45 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

But, I think the real testament would be to do live-to-projection cycles of the likes of Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Potter, Indy and so forth, with the full forces as originally orchestrated.

 

To really do the music justice, those would have to present the originally intended, unedited scores - which would require a lot of tinkering with film edits as well. Unlikely to happen, unfortunately. Also, while I do enjoy a good LtP concert, it's not necessarily an ideal presentation of the music. Unless the composer is involved with mixing (which is practically never the case), you can't expect the mix to be fair to the music, or reflect the composer's intentions.

 

And finally, it very much depends on the spotting how well a LtP score can hold up as *music*. With an opera or ballet, even if the story is lame and you're only there for the music, you can usually rely on it being scored throughout. But wall to wall scores are rarer these days, and good wall to wall scores are almost extinct. If you're only there for the music, a sparsely spotted 2 hour film with a total of 40 minutes of music isn't necessarily enjoyable in LtP form.

[Chen G. 4,405]

That's true. Its a complex issue. But I think to subject the music entirely to the needs of the concert stage would be to take something from it, and purely in the name of the supposed superiority of "absolute" music.

[Tom 4,956]

1 hour ago, Score said:

 

I didn't know about this. When was it performed?

   

 

It looks like 2009: it was 3 million light years from home/stargazers/adventures on earth.

 

 

[Score 772]

1 hour ago, Chen G. said:

 

Maybe its my Weimar showing, but I don't think programmatic music is anything to be ashamed of and I think it would be preposterous even for one of the Leipzig crowd to say that music which is programmatic ought to be ashamed its programmatic nature and seek to conceal it.

 

 

It's not about being programmatic or not. There is a difference between the role played by music in a movie and the role played by music in an opera, which has an obvious impact on how the composer works and on the final product (specifically, on the structure). You will find plenty of classical music critics who are enthusiastic about, say, Adès's opera The Tempest, but do not care about film music because "it doesn't stand on its own feet". It's clearly not my opinion, I'm just reporting what I often hear / read. 

 

Anyway, the original question of this thread was about how film music should be played in a concert in a way that would be convincing for the "classical elite". A LTP performance is equivalent to just showing the whole movie with its music, so it doesn't solve the problem. If someone didn't care for the music as it was in the movie, the LTP will not change their mind.   

 

 

 

21 minutes ago, Tom said:

It looks like 2009: it was 3 million light years from home/stargazers/adventures on earth.

 

 

 

Right, I remember now!

[Chen G. 4,405]

29 minutes ago, Score said:

do not care about film music because "it doesn't stand on its own feet".

 

Programmatic music is not supposed to stand on its own feet.

[Thor 8,101]

On 28/01/2023 at 5:58 PM, filmmusic said:

I think at least the atonal parts of Images will be very difficult to recreate live.

 

Yes, would be practically impossible. While Stomu Yamashta is still around at 75 and doing the odd concert here and there, it would be extremely difficult to recreate the mostly improvised percussion elements. Rather like a Vangelis score, in fact. However, I wouldn't be opposed to it if someone gave it a shot.

[Marian Schedenig 8,802]

3 hours ago, Chen G. said:

That's true. Its a complex issue. But I think to subject the music entirely to the needs of the concert stage would be to take something from it, and purely in the name of the supposed superiority of "absolute" music.

 

I think both kinds have their justification, and not just for film music. Stage music has traditionally survived mostly in the form of concert suites. Think of Grieg's Peer Gynt, Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream, or some of Beethoven's overtures. That's still how they usually get performed, because it's much easier to program them, and sometimes these condensed versions are also the nicer listen at a particular moment (not unlike the whole OST album/C&C score discussion). But it's good that the full original versions are also being performed at least once in a while these days.

 

Incidentally (pun not intended), stage music suffers from similar problems as film music when it comes to being performed in full on its own. Or at least some people view them as problems. There's usually much deliberation which bits and pieces to leave out because they're thought to be inconsequential or not able to stand on their own, and whether or not and where to include narration. Unlike operas, where the music is generally supposed to be at least of similar importance as the story, incidental stage music really is Gebrauchsmusik first in that it's generally written to support the main event (the stage play) without a particular need to have musical significance of its own (even if the composer's approach differs). This can result in parts of (or the whole) score being "pure" underscore that isn't particularly interesting in itself, or in lots of fragmentation into small cues that really wouldn't hold up well if they're performed one after the other without at least editing them into longer cues (think the Home Alone expansions).

[Schilkeman 1,239]

Vaughan-Williams repurposed his score to Scott of the Antarctic for his 7th symphony, and probably some other I'm not aware of. I think most film music does not stand well on it's own, but JW's does. I still think live to projection is the ideal way to experience his film scores. But it needs to move beyond being a gimmick and be championed by some of the big heavyweight orchestras to become more mainstream. A real "discovery and defense of the new," to rival something like ballet or opera, in a visual/music medium. They go together.

[aviazn 273]

3 hours ago, Schilkeman said:

But it needs to move beyond being a gimmick and be championed by some of the big heavyweight orchestras to become more mainstream. A real "discovery and defense of the new," to rival something like ballet or opera, in a visual/music medium. They go together.

 

Ha, the irony though is that LTP is already mainstream, in the conventional sense of the word. They’re done by every major orchestra in the US and are some of their most popular and lucrative concerts. By any measure, they’re surely the most mainstream form of classical music around — certainly more mainstream than ballet or opera! It’s not like film music is some modernist atonal idiom that needs defending. LTP is embraced by the paying masses, by the musicians, and by the artistic directors in charge of programming. The critics may come around to it…or may not, but it almost doesn’t matter.

 

To answer the original question of which JW suites could be programmed in a “traditional” classical concert, I think that most of the listed suites don’t work well in that kind of setting. I think in the ones with the most prominent material (Star Wars, HP) the individual pieces are short and too disparate, more like orchestral pop songs. For me, the MoaG cello suite and the unpublished E.T. suite hit a suite spot of variety and development of material with a consistency of tone and mood that plays well in a concert setting. I’d love to hear that RotS suite, too.

 

If I’m being honest, I think the biggest contributing factor to JW’s suites being more widely played in traditional classical concerts will be after he dies. Hate to think about it, but that’s when he will pass into “the canon,” and programming a suite by him will carry a different meaning than programming him as a living composer. You don’t program the suite from Swan Lake because you’ve built a two-hour concert around it, you program it because you’ve got a 20-minute hole to fill and audiences will go, oh Tchaikovsky, how nice.

 

Which leads me to think that ultimately, I don’t think I want JW to be programmed more frequently in traditional classical concerts. People go to those types of concerts to seek out musical experiences they don’t get from more mainstream, pop culture sources. When orchestras start programming Star Wars and Harry Potter in classical concerts, that means that those scores and John Williams will have fallen out of the public consciousness.

[Schilkeman 1,239]

59 minutes ago, aviazn said:

They’re done by every major orchestra in the US and are some of their most popular and lucrative concerts

This is true, but my point is that they are treated as pops concerts and a bit of a novelty. Berlin couldn't even get the principals to play when it was actual John Williams conducting. I think that will fade with time, and I agree that it doesn't really matter what critics think, but the thread brought up the topic of the "Classical Elite," and I think maybe they have not fully embraced it at the top of the top levels in classical music.