John Williams: Statements on album programs?

[Sebastian David Schwittay 19]

Hi fellow Williams fans, 

 

I'm currently writing my master's thesis about autonomous presentation of film music on disc and I'm collecting interview material and statements of composers about that subject. Are you aware of any statements by Williams on his album programs or on the subject of album compilation in general? Has he ever commented on this?

I would be very interested, because he always structures his album programs very consciously (with concert arrangements as Track 2 or 3, or edited versions of tracks... I know there's some disagreement among fans about the latter, but I find it very interesting nonetheless  ). 

 

Thank you!

 

Greetings, Sebastian

[GerateWohl 4,373]

Hi Sebastian, 

I think, initial thought would be to study the liner notes of the expansions of Williams' scores. Sometimes you find there quotes or statements of the structuring of the original album. But I don't have an example at hand. 

Good luck with your thesis. 

[bollemanneke 3,352]

You can quote Thor.

[ConorPower 148]

Hi Sebastian,

I'm afraid I can't answer your question specifically. However, here's a good resource I've used throughout my own thesis to get all the details on Williams's albums (including the liner notes — which have always been a great help): https://musicbrainz.org/artist/53b106e7-0cc6-42cc-ac95-ed8d30a3a98e?page=1

[enderdrag64 624]

2 hours ago, Sebastian David Schwittay said:

Hi fellow Williams fans, 

 

I'm currently writing my master's thesis about autonomous presentation of film music on disc and I'm collecting interview material and statements of composers about that subject. Are you aware of any statements by Williams on his album programs or on the subject of album compilation in general? Has he ever commented on this?

I would be very interested, because he always structures his album programs very consciously (with concert arrangements as Track 2 or 3, or edited versions of tracks... I know there's some disagreement among fans about the latter, but I find it very interesting nonetheless  ). 

 

Thank you!

 

Greetings, Sebastian

 

[Thor 7,520]

Can't help you with the album programme issue, but I do have a couple of quotes by composers where they talk about their preferred album arrangements. Thankfully on "my side" (rearranged for listening). Rosza, Goldenthal, a few others. Don't know if that makes a difference.

[rough cut 1,714]

@Sebastian David Schwittay You have all JW’s liner notes collected here, but I cannot recall any one being on the subject of either album arrangements nor album programming.

 

Good luck!

 

https://www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?/topic/34321-jws-liner-notes/

[Sebastian David Schwittay 19]

5 hours ago, ConorPower said:

Hi Sebastian,

I'm afraid I can't answer your question specifically. However, here's a good resource I've used throughout my own thesis to get all the details on Williams's albums (including the liner notes — which have always been a great help): https://musicbrainz.org/artist/53b106e7-0cc6-42cc-ac95-ed8d30a3a98e?page=1

 

Good resource indeed, thank you!

 

5 hours ago, enderdrag64 said:

 

 

I remember watching that featurette years ago, but totally forgot it... Thanks!  

 

2 hours ago, Thor said:

Can't help you with the album programme issue, but I do have a couple of quotes by composers where they talk about their preferred album arrangements. Thankfully on "my side" (rearranged for listening). Rosza, Goldenthal, a few others. Don't know if that makes a difference.

 

That would be helpful, thank you! I've already collected some of Elliot Goldenthal's statements from a 1994 Film Score Monthly Interview where he touches the topic a few times. I would be really interested in other statements!  

[Brónach 1,302]

On 02/09/2023 at 7:33 PM, Thor said:

 Thankfully on "my side" (rearranged for listening). Rosza, Goldenthal, a few others. Don't know if that makes a difference.

 

Rearranged (rewritten) or reordered?

[Jurassic Shark 12,090]

On 02/09/2023 at 9:33 PM, Thor said:

Can't help you with the album programme issue, but I do have a couple of quotes by composers where they talk about their preferred album arrangements. Thankfully on "my side" (rearranged for listening). Rosza, Goldenthal, a few others. Don't know if that makes a difference.

 

What's the Rozsa quote?

[Thor 7,520]

11 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

 

What's the Rozsa quote?

 

From the Royal S. Brown interview published in OVERTONES AND UNDERTONES:

 

Quote

RSB: How do you regard the recording of film music separately from the film? For instance, the album with the music from SPELLBOUND, conducted by Ray Heindorf: that doesn't particularly resemble what you hear in the film. What do you think a film music recording should be? Should it be all of the cues....should it be rearranged?

MR: It should be rearranged. It should be rearranged for listening. Without seeing something, it's a different experience.

RSB: Do you prefer a concert suite, or do you prefer simply arranging the cues as they were written in a different order?

MR: It could be both.

 

 

Bless ol' Miki!

[Jurassic Shark 12,090]

57 minutes ago, Thor said:

It should be rearranged. It should be rearranged for listening. Without seeing something, it's a different experience.

 

Correct answer.

[29944 20]

On 02/09/2023 at 3:17 PM, Sebastian David Schwittay said:

I would be really interested in other statements!

Here's one from Joel McNeely:

Quote

I know soundtrack collectors would argue with this but I don’t enjoy “complete” soundtrack albums because not all cues are created equal. Some of the soundtrack cues, the less significant ones, don’t make a good listen apart from the movie. They’re so tied to what’s going on or what isn’t going on in the film that they don’t stand on their own. So I like a well constructed soundtrack album that has a beginning, middle and an end and has a duration that has a good listen on its own apart from the movie. Once you get past 45 minutes I start to get bored *laughs* and it becomes too much of a good thing.

I had a release of my first Tinkerbell score and Entrada was kind enough to do a release of it. It’s a score I deeply love and I’m really proud of it. There was too much music on the record for my tastes and there’s a point where it all starts to become one thing. I regret now that I didn’t cull down the music to make everything more concise and to give it a more defined impact.

Seth and I have gone back and forth on this; he likes to hear complete soundtracks but for me it’s more about something that you listen to all at once from beginning to end. You’re making a statement that has its own integrity in terms of form.

 

[Thor 7,520]

Good man, that Joel!

[Brónach 1,302]

MR appears to agree with me

 

so does McNeely to some extent: not all scores all created equal. of some you need two hours if they existed... of others the movie is more than enough.

 

i don't bother much with making mediocre scores appear better with hacking away at them.

[bollemanneke 3,352]

8 hours ago, Thor said:

 

From the Royal S. Brown interview published in OVERTONES AND UNDERTONES:

 

 

 

Bless ol' Miki!

Without seeing something, it might be a different experience if the score sucks. Plenty of scores are so great that I don't need to see the movie to enjoy them in complete form. Listening to HP1 or Home Alone IS a form of seeing the movies.

[Sebastian David Schwittay 19]

9 hours ago, Thor said:

Bless ol' Miki!

 

1 hour ago, Thor said:

Good man, that Joel!

 

I see, we're on the same side here.  

 

Thank you very much! These are some great and useful examples. 

[Brónach 1,302]

1 hour ago, bollemanneke said:

Without seeing something, it might be a different experience if the score sucks. Plenty of scores are so great that I don't need to see the movie to enjoy them in complete form. Listening to HP1 or Home Alone IS a form of seeing the movies.

 

I was thinking on Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Alien.

 

my point has always been that there are good scores that make sense the most like this.

 

(this gets misconstrued as "every score a great score" but that's not the idea).

 

generally, i dislike being presented with after-the-fact editing instead of going back to writing properly (like with Jaws, E.T., and Harry Potter). these two things are not the same. i also won't join the choir of pretending like music that lasts more than forty-five minutes doesn't exist outside movies.

 

i think movies want to use too much music sometimes. and there's always scores that i don't care to hear in isolation, although in that case, i don't care to hear them in the movie either. maybe get a good score first :p

[Thor 7,520]

1 hour ago, Sebastian David Schwittay said:

 

 

I see, we're on the same side here.  

 

Thank you very much! These are some great and useful examples. 

 

No problem. Yes, I'm kinda notorious for this opinion, going back a couple of decades now. Here's an "arch thread", of sorts, that may even include a couple of other composer quotes, I can't remember. The thread was created 23 years ago.

 

I had some trouble finding the Goldenthal quote from one my interviews with him, but that's because I apparently edited it out of the final episode. Fortunately, I found the raw file in my archives, and I've clipped out the pertinent part here:

 

 

[Schilkeman 964]

13 hours ago, 29944 said:

Seth and I have gone back and forth on this; he likes to hear complete soundtracks but for me it’s more about something that you listen to all at once from beginning to end.

I find it somewhat telling that the professional composers writing the music seem to feel this way about how their music is presented, and a lot of the amateurs enjoying it feel differently.
 

Personally, I will almost always come down on the side of the artist, even if I don’t like their art, and their desired presentation. I will say again my opinion that film scores are for the film, and OSTs are for listening, and they achieve different goals. Not that I don't enjoy occasionally listening to a complete score, but for me, it's kind of like watching deleted scenes for a movie, more interesting than satisfying.
 

What I wish for most of all is an increase in the number of isolated score tracks on home video releases. And for live-to-projection concerts getting treated as serious concert-going experiences.

[Holko 9,531]

The artist is not the best judge of their own art. It it completely irrelevant to me that they dismiss a cue because it was particularly hard to come up with/record, I can listen to it all for myself and judge it, it might be my favourite one that affects me the most. It's like claiming that complete ballet/opera recordings don't matter, only the Suites that have maybe 6 pieces from them. Some of this definitely has the air of the old "film music is not real music" to me, that only by listening to hacked up programs misrepresenting the score and having a lot worse structure and ignoring half the written score including colossal highlights and pretending that it's something it was never intended to be does one escape that lowliness and join the snooty pantheon of "real music" listeners. Forget all those imaginary restraints and just take it all in as what it is! And then modify it to your heart's content to make it perfect for you.

[Schilkeman 964]

The ballet vs film comparison really doesn't work for me because film is more of a multi-media art than dance. There are a lot of competing elements vying for the attention of the story and the person watching it, and sometimes (as the composers quoted have mentioned) the needs of the film music are to be secondary, or even tertiary, to some other element of the film, and this (sometimes, not always) can lead to less-than-engaging music. They often recognize this, and cut accordingly, while other times they leave off engaging cues that otherwise don't fit the flow of the music as they hear it.

 

It's why we don't get two slow movements in the middle of a symphony, and why JW did not start the OST of Minority Report with the opening 6 minutes of underscore present in the film. Treating film music as absolute music is always going to be a compromise, which is why I feel the best (not "only") ways to experience it are with the film itself, real-time or isolated, or in edited form on an OST.

[Brónach 1,302]

9 hours ago, Schilkeman said:

I will say again my opinion that film scores are for the film

 

well many film editors disagree!

 

which artist opinion do we have to listen to: the editor or the composer? I did mention Alien for a reason.

 

5 hours ago, Schilkeman said:

It's why we don't get two slow movements in the middle of a symphony, and why JW did not start the OST of Minority Report with the opening 6 minutes of underscore present in the film.

 

and is why we get the two bad songs for commercial purposes on the OST for A.I. of all things. Strange, with all the Glass/Ligeti/Reach playlist.

[Schilkeman 964]

20 minutes ago, Brónach said:

 

well many film editors disagree!

 

which artist opinion do we have to listen to: the editor or the composer? I did mention Alien for a reason.

 

 

and is why we get the two bad songs for commercial purposes on the OST for A.I. of all things. Strange, with all the Glass/Ligeti/Reach playlist.

In cases where the score has been compromised by the editing (in a way proving my point for me) such as Alien and the Star Wars prequels, it is all the more necessary to me to craft a whole listening experience in the form of an OST, which is why I listed it as one of my two preferred ways of experiencing a score.

 

In instances like A.I. and Apollo 13, where commercial entities or directors are imposing requirements for music to be included, I consider them compromised and usually defer to the expanded release, or create my own program. Luckily for Apollo 13, we got the originally planned program on the expansion.

[Brónach 1,302]

6 hours ago, Holko said:

Some of this definitely has the air of the old "film music is not real music" to me, that only by listening to hacked up programs misrepresenting the score and having a lot worse structure and ignoring half the written score including colossal highlights and pretending that it's something it was never intended to be does one escape that lowliness and join the snooty pantheon of "real music" listeners.

 

oh but that's what's going on. i always thought it was because i grew up listening to classical music that it was counterintuitive to pretend it was something else. it may or it may not be a coincidence that some people allude to "concept albums" as their example guide. my CD's weren't such, they had several things on them because it fit, and the CD was a technology for distribution and not a fetish object. ( even then, there were edge cases of "pretending it's something else" with any perfomance not historically informed, although i admit that adds layers of complication. ) I do like JW's real "albums" (suites?) made from film music and i wish he's written more of them (it begs the question, have the OSTs for E.T. and Jaws ever been played in concert? and have his "album assemblies"?)

[Richard Penna 3,695]

I've had this quandry with Fellowship where I want a listenable album to play in the car, but with the complete score available, I disagree with a few of Shore's choices.

 

I found the answer was to keep the general structure of his album, but just shift a few things here and there, and I explicitly kept some cues off because it didn't feel like they fit in a compact experience.

[Brónach 1,302]

18 minutes ago, Schilkeman said:

In cases where the score has been compromised by the editing (in a way proving my point for me) such as Alien and the Star Wars prequels, it is all the more necessary to me to craft a whole listening experience in the form of an OST, which is why I listed it as one of my two preferred ways of experiencing a score.

 

it would seem Alien is proving both our points at the same time.

 

8 minutes ago, Richard Penna said:

I've had this quandry with Fellowship where I want a listenable album to play in the car, but with the complete score available, I disagree with some of Shore's choices.

 

it never shows up in conversation that many of those choices are made early and many alternates can be written later. although i don't think this happens anymore in movies from the USA?

 

the music in that OST is great, but i don't think it's made great by the missing material. a single cue could be really good, just... contextless.

 

I don't think The Matrix is only made great ONLY by cutting it down to 29 minutes, and if it didn't have Switched for Life or Switched at Birth or Unable to Speak it'd be outrageous.

[Richard Penna 3,695]

I've been working on alternative FotR and RotK albums actually, to try to rectify a few issues while maintaining the curation mindset.

 

And yes, I've come across a problem where adding a single cue doesn't actually work much of the time.

 

I think it's fuel for the idea that you should allow for two mindsets: a tight, curated experience focused entirely on flow, and another playlist that focuses on completion. I'm realising for the former that lots of editing is usually needed.

[Brónach 1,302]

RotK is a mess, like the movie. That was Don Davis' year lol.

 

 

[GerateWohl 4,373]

My view is, that probably neither just curated rearranged OST nor a C&C score is the golden way.

If we look for a prominent example, the complete score album of The Empire Strikes back. That is neither just the OST with its selected edited tracks nor the actual soundtrack of the movie. It contains in certain places alternates that have been replaced in the movie and particularly unedited cues where they have been edited in the movie or even cues that have been cut out in the movie completely.

So, what seems to appear as a C&C presentation of the score is rather a dedicated well curated presentation of the score as something, that is actually made for a stand alone listening experience. 

[Brónach 1,302]

1 hour ago, GerateWohl said:

and particularly unedited cues where they have been edited in the movie or even cues that have been cut out in the movie completely.

 

because "jumping forward" in the music may actually be weird

 

now, i'll be honest, i care more about reasonable comprehensiveness than chronology, but that's highly contextual and if you put Close Encounters out of order I will start twitching. (that's also why i loathe the new universal logo in movie context in the reedited E.T.)

[GerateWohl 4,373]

1 hour ago, Brónach said:

 I do like JW's real "albums" (suites?) made from film music and i wish he's written more of them (it begs the question, have the OSTs for E.T. and Jaws ever been played in concert? and have his "album assemblies"?

That's another interesting point. Obviously Williams makes a difference between musicfor albums and music for the concert hall, as the concert hall versions of the scores are even shorter. Probably that is a matter of the target audience. Probably Williams thinks, that the OST versions of the score are not understandable by the average concert audience. And they don't go to a concert to listen to ET (unless it is LTP), but to a collection of bestof snippets from his scores.

[enderdrag64 624]

3 hours ago, Richard Penna said:

I've had this quandry with Fellowship where I want a listenable album to play in the car, but with the complete score available, I disagree with a few of Shore's choices.

 

I found the answer was to keep the general structure of his album, but just shift a few things here and there, and I explicitly kept some cues off because it didn't feel like they fit in a compact experience.

Yeah I agree with this. I can understand the appeal of a curated album in certain situations, but I very often find that I dislike OST presentations, especially of Williams' scores. I'd much rather listen to my own selection of highlights.

 

Honestly I think the thing that bothers me the most about Williams' albums isn't even the missing highlights or the out of order music, it's the really obvious microedits. I don't understand how someone can seriously argue that an edit like this improves the listening experience:

To me, edits like this are extremely un-musical, and are just as bad or in some cases worse than film edits you might find on an isolated score.

[Brónach 1,302]

perhaps someone has to put two slow parts in a symphony to make me happy

[Richard Penna 3,695]

1 hour ago, enderdrag64 said:

 I don't understand how someone can seriously argue that an edit like this improves the listening experience

 

I suppose the argument is that you're moving onto the next creative idea sooner instead of lingering on a moment that perhaps means less outside the film, and with huge scores you do have to do that in order to represent the full canvas on one CD.

 

Shore does it everywhere in LotR and most of the time I agree with his decisions. There are just a few occasions where I don't, and that's where the CRs come in to allow tweaking.

[Holko 9,531]

12 minutes ago, Richard Penna said:

I suppose the argument is that you're moving onto the next creative idea sooner instead of lingering on a moment that perhaps means less outside the film, and with huge scores you do have to do that in order to represent the full canvas on one CD.

But why do shit sounding edits

[Richard Penna 3,695]

Yeah, my suggestion only applies when the edits are done well and don't represent a crappy shift in tone like that one.

[Bayesian 1,364]

5 hours ago, enderdrag64 said:

Yeah I agree with this. I can understand the appeal of a curated album in certain situations, but I very often find that I dislike OST presentations, especially of Williams' scores. I'd much rather listen to my own selection of highlights.

 

Honestly I think the thing that bothers me the most about Williams' albums isn't even the missing highlights or the out of order music, it's the really obvious microedits. I don't understand how someone can seriously argue that an edit like this improves the listening experience:

To me, edits like this are extremely un-musical, and are just as bad or in some cases worse than film edits you might find on an isolated score.

Going by the number of likes, it seems a lot of folks are inclined to agree that this is a bad edit... but I don't really see (hear) that. The tonal shift is strong, but not worse to my ear than what we often hear in the prequels. And the edit at 1:48 - 1:49 is seamless to my ear, as if it was actually recorded that way. But that's just me.

 

I've actually always wondered what makes a transition or edit like the one above a "microedit." What's micro about it??

[Jay 37,373]

Microedit is a forum term that nobody in the industry actually uses.

 

Originally it referred to when a cue had a very short section edited out for the listening experience of the original album. Like The Desert Chase or The Streets of Shanghai. 

 

Eventually people started using it when talking about any edit on any album regardless of length or reason....

 

Meanwhile the people who work on expanded releases never use that term. An edit is an edit. 

[Jilal 569]

The abusive use of that term is becoming a pet peeve of mine

[Schilkeman 964]

5 hours ago, Bayesian said:

Going by the number of likes, it seems a lot of folks are inclined to agree that this is a bad edit... but I don't really see (hear) that.

They don’t bother me either, and I listen with very nice headphones in high resolution.

 

Just my theory, but I think the dislike might stem from knowing that it’s two separate cues being smushed together and the cognitive disconnect that comes from being jerked around the narrative of the film so quickly.
 

I don’t think of the film when listening to the soundtrack, so it doesn’t bother me, but I could see how it could be a problem for someone.

[Sebastian David Schwittay 19]

On 04/09/2023 at 8:57 PM, Thor said:

I had some trouble finding the Goldenthal quote from one my interviews with him, but that's because I apparently edited it out of the final episode. Fortunately, I found the raw file in my archives, and I've clipped out the pertinent part here:

 

 

 

Is there a possibility of quoting that part properly (with your name and date)? I would love to include it in the thesis. 

[Andy 4,141]

On 5/9/2023 at 4:15 PM, Jay said:

Microedit is a   term that nobody   uses.

 

Originally it referred to    a very short section edited for the listening experience. 

 

People started using it when talking about any edit on any album regardless of length or reason....

 

The people who work on   releases never use that term.  An edit is an edit is an edit is an edit...... 

 

[Thor 7,520]

11 hours ago, Sebastian David Schwittay said:

 

Is there a possibility of quoting that part properly (with your name and date)? I would love to include it in the thesis. 

 

Sure. As I said, I removed the clip from the final podcast episode (published May 13, 2014), which was assembled from the two interviews (because it didn't have any particular relevance to the films and topics being discussed). But the date of the interview in question was May 26th, 2012.