This impressive 20-CD set, lavishly packaged, contains an excellently curated overview of John Williams' 60+ year career as a composer for film, television, and the concert hall.
One of Williams’ most beautiful soundtracks is for the film ‘Seven Years In Tibet.’ The way he has woven western orchestral themes with Asian flavours is incredible. Also, ‘Munich’ is among his most underrated scores. What an absolute genius his is. God bless him.
I was born in the early 80s, I grew up with his music and the movies he pushed from great to absolute eternal essentials (Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Jaws, Jurassic Park). I'm getting this.
What I love about John Williams is that he’s not just great at coming up with themes and memorable main titles, but he’ll also really put a lot of effort into what might normally be considered “filler” tracks in his scores. Everybody knows the main Jaws theme but I’m also drawn to the haunting strings and woodwinds when Quint gives his Indianapolis monologue or the somber but resolute end credits. He’s also an underrated scorer of action cues.
Exactly, that's probably what always impressed me the most from Williams. I don't think I have ever listened to "filler" music that is so good and interesting, the same goes for action cues which I imagine is particularly hard to make interesting. It is so good that when watching the movies, I feel frustrated about how his complex music is barely noticeable because of all the noise and dialogue, especially in action scenes.
How to Steal a Million is a delightful film with a delightful score. He also wrote the score for Hitchcock’s last film, Family Plot. I couldn’t believe it when I learned that he did. It is so different than what he wrote for Spielberg and Lucas, practically concurrently.
I enjoy many of his scores, and he was sneakily active in early stereo recordings on the piano like Mancini's "Peter Gunn" from 1958 and the Fox 3-track stereo recording of the 20th Century-Fox fanfare with the CinemaScope extension in 1954...also on piano.
You made my comment for me: more of the TV stuff, especially the Irwin Allen shows. I was surprised that this set isn't all that terribly expensive, at least on Amazon.
I believe the Heidi score was from the tv movie that interrupted the Jets-Raiders football game in 1968, which came to be infamously known as “the Heidi game”.
If I'm not mistaken, his score for Altman's Images is a rare William's excursion into atonal music. I also have a funny story about the film Towering Inferno and how it's indirectly connected in my mind to Beethoven's Violin Concerto. I first saw Towering Inferno when I was in France staying with a friend of my family. After the treat of the film, knowing I was interested in classical music my hosts bought me a copy of the Menuhin/Furtwängler Philharmonia Beethoven Violin Concerto. I still have that treasured lp.
I'm a soundtrack collector of about 3,000 soundtracks. I specialize in John Williams. Although I doubt there's anything in this collection that I don't already have (perhaps if there is an exclusive interview then I might not have that) it still sounds interesting regardless. I've never heard of it before.
Williams's music is good, no question. In conducting his own music it's fun to watch as he emotes and gestures with all the gravitas as if it were any of the ninth symphonies of Beethoven, Bruckner, or Mahler.
It's always heart-warming to see someone so accomplished being recognised and celebrated while he's still alive to enjoy it! By the way, does anybody know why "The Sugarland Express" seems to be impossible to find, both as a movie and a soundtrack? Just idly curious.
If I remember correctly (and I may not), I seem to recall hearing murmurs about Sugarland Express that Williams himself is unwilling to have that score out. What that reason may be I don't know, but Williams has at times shown some weird hang-ups when it comes to some of his own music, so that wouldn't come as a surprise if he was just boicoting the score for some personal reason. That or another possibility that the score is simply lost as does sometimes happen and since there's no OST of it, that would be it barring a rerecording. A quick Amazon search, though, says the movie is pretty easy to come by, certainly no piece of lost media.
Very nice. It is expensive at the few places I find selling it so it may have to wait. I hope Howard Shore, my personal favorite contemporary film score composer, gets something similar issued for his work. It’s definitely not as instantly catchy like the work of Williams so I think he tends to fly under the radar for that reason.
I remember suggesting a review & comparison of JW’s Berlin & Vienna concerts and you said something like, ‘why would I do that.’’ Can’t remember the exact reply but it wasn’t enthusiastic. After that, I assumed (wrongly) that Williams was not your cup of tea. So, I’m curious. You seem to love him as much as the rest of us. Do you dislike these particular concerts? I’m not a great fan of Berlin but the Vienna concert - those horns! It’s beautiful and certainly is played with more verve than Berlin, IMHO.
Dave gave passing mention to Theodorakis in one of his "Overflow Room" videos a few months ago. I like his music, too, much of which is quite energetic and uplifting.
Thanks for addressing the flogging term. I had always known it to mean whipping. Your use of it was the first time I heard it to mean sell. Dictionary says it’s British usage(I’m American). I just look up the etymology and there seems to be a general confusion of how the word for whipping (that etymology is straight forward deriving from Latin) turned into selling. Still is a mystery to me.
I don't care if people don't like John Williams. I love & appreciate his music. In his own way, Williams has done more than anyone (except for Bernstein) to promote "orchestral music" and he is an American Treasure 👍
Few know this, but Williams also contributed some incidental music for the early six or seven episodes of Gilligan's Island. Also, a shame they didn't include his early recording of arrangements of show standards for big band called Rhythm in Motion. If you haven't heard it, you're in for a treat.
French media producers make incredible boxed sets of American artists and film auteurs, but are extremely lax at releasing their own national content (or if doing so, keeping it alive). You can find all sorts of wonders like this in the stacks at FNAC and co, but search forever to find a disc of a French movie/soundtrack released in the last twenty years.
One of the main reasons is this: lots of French Golden Age Film Music recordings don't exist anymore because they have not been perserved over the years. Another reason is that it wouldn't sell enough units to break even. The French boutique label Music Box Records is the only company that really delves into the French film music repertoire, and they mainly focus on stuff from the 1970s onwards.
@@sehnsuchtshafen It's not just "Golden Age" material. Finding films and music from the last 25years is a struggle. I don't think a lot of it gets released since VHS and CD died off. I was finally able to take Borsalino (original, not sequel) off my list due to an American BluRay release in 2023. More units would get sold if the French could get over their distaste for adding English subtitles (that almost certainly exist already from cinema distribution).
We should be glad that a film composer can be so celebrated. Williams ain't for me, but I can appreciate. There's Elmer Bernstein, Ennio Morricone, Joe Hisaishi, Thomas Newman, Nino Rota, Alex North. So many!
I'm curious to know what you think about composers who don't do their own orchestrations. It seems like orchestration is a key component of, well, composing for the orchestra. It appears to be a very widespread practice in film industry for composers not to do their own orchestrations. I doubt many people have any idea that John Williams doesn't orchestrate his scores (I don't know whether he orchestrates his concert works). I'm not taking anything away from him. His music is incredible & important. But what we call "John Williams" (or any of the other big film composers) is a team effort.
For what it's worth, in much of his golden era, Williams was one of the few film composers who still did multi-staff orchestration to outline details for his team. Like 4-5 staves. It's one reason his scores have so many recognizable elements.
It's true that many film composers do not do their own orchestrations--often they work on such a tight schedule that they need help--but many (Bernard Herrmann, famously) did do their own, and even where composer's don't do it, they almost invariably include cues as to which instruments play key musical lines. Some people think that the composer simply writes "the tune" and then tells an assistant to orchestrate it. That's not how it works. Any professional composer will write a "short score" containing the complete musical texture--harmony, melody, counterpoint, etc--complete with instrumental cues. In short, he or she will give the orchestrator all the information necessary to create the score the composer had in mind, and if the orchestrator has lots of experience working with the composer in question, then we can accept the finished product with a great deal of confidence. Also, the composer usually has the final word, making corrections and edits as necessary. Lots of classical composers farmed our the work of orchestration, most notably Debussy and Prokofiev, without sacrificing any of their individuality or characteristic sound.
@@DavesClassicalGuide And that makes sense. I don't expect a film composer hands the team a piano score & says, "Here, you figure it out." In classical music, we expect that, by & large, if it says "Respighi," it was all Respighi. And we revere Respighi in large part because of his orchestration. But that assumption simply can't be present in the world of film music. If it says "John Williams," expect that one or two other people are in part responsible for the sound of the music. Again, I'm not throwing any shade. I love John Williams (& "John Williams"). It's just interesting to me that it seems to be the norm in film music, & the norm is for the orchestrator to be known only to people who pay attention to all the ending credits. If the studios had been willing to hire additional composers, maybe the ones they did hire wouldn't be so stretched & need technicians to help them (but that's a different subject).
Williams practically does orchestrate his own music. It is well-established from interviews plus his own manuscripts that his “orchestrators” are essentially copyists. Williams gives them an outline (usually 8 staves, but I saw a report that more recently he has even used up to 16 staves) and writes/tells them which instruments he wants to play or double what, and then they handle creating the clean full-score copy and parts, from his instructions. Very little of the actual orchestration is left up to them. It gets confusing because a lot of Hollywood composers *do* work exactly as you described, with it being more of a team effort where the term “orchestrator” involves an assistant doing much more of the heavy lifting. But that is not the case with Williams, not nearly to the extent of 99% of other Hollywood composers working today.
Always laugh at the naysayers who pontificate that Williams borrowed from other composers. One they always seem to mention is the similarity between Holst: Mars and Williams: Star Wars music. Funny how we never question that there are glimpses of Mozart and Haydn in the music of Beethoven.
@@thebruckler3707One that comes to my mind is a passage from Mozarts 36th Linz symphony and Beethoven's 2nd Symphony, both from the first movements...45 seconds or so in the Mozart there is a descending 6 note figure that starts in the bassoon and is passed to the oboes, etc...a minute and 35 seconds or so in the Beethoven we hear a descending 4 note figure that starts in the flutes and is passed to the bassoon then oboe...the harmony is basically identical and the melodic gesture is uncannybin this way...whether an homage or a subconscious lift, idk but it's there if you listen
I notice that his Essay for string ensemble and his flute concerto are not in there, or not mentioned. Maybe for a good reason. Absolutely dreadful pieces, that my orchestra just played this week. It does nothing for the flute, except make it sound out of tune, when the strings play quarter tone stuff. And the Essay is just not going anywhere. I’d be curious if you could tell me that I’m wrong and why. Rant over!
