The music of John Williams

Since it's Oscar week, I suppose it's as good a time as any to talk about the musical contributions made by composer John Williams through the years. It's hard to overstate his influence (for better or worse) on music and movies alike.

My personal favorite is the Raiders of the Lost Ark soundtrack.

Any thoughts/memories/recommendations?

 

I recommend the Close Encounters soundtrack on Varese

 

A staggering talent. Thumbs up to one of his more recent works, the Saving Private Ryan score.



Dan

 

I see there's a few variations of this soundtrack. Is there only one version of this on Varese?

 

As far as I know there's only one Varese. It has the Close Encounters Theme single tacked on as a bonus track. I learned about it from this thread

edit - forgot to attach cover

 

If I'm reading Steve's list correctly, since 1971 Williams has received at least one Academy award nomination for the last 35 years except 1976, 1979, 1985, 1986, 1992, 1994 and 2003. 1994 was a self imposed year off from scoring, perhaps 1985 was too. If so, that leaves an amazing 30 out of 35 years that he was nominated for work created. Mac

 

On DCC naturally.

I too love my DCC Raiders soundtrack, but my favorite John Williams score will always be The Empire Strikes Back. The Imperial March is one of the greatest pieces of music ever scored.

Honorable mention for Jurassic Park as well. Loved the music in that one!

 

I'll keep an eye out for that one, thanks!

 

"Raiders" is my oldest DCC. At the time, I was just happy it was in print (and with bonus tracks, even!).

 

I'm pretty sure that's what brought me here. Wanted info on the Raiders soundtrack only to find out it wasn't in print. At that time, you could still score the DCC for $25 or so. Don't know how much it goes for now or if it's back in print on another label.

 

ET, The Empire Strikes Back, Superman, Close Encounters, Raiders...man, what great work.

Regarding TESB, last week my brother and I were talking about the cue for the scene where the snowspeeders are searching for Han and Luke on Hoth, which (as far as I know) has never been released anywhere in the form in which it appears in the film. It's actually an edit of several different pieces of music available on the various soundtrack albums.

It was a slow night -- and let's face it, I'm a world-class music nerd -- so I fired up Sound Forge and we got the CDs out, listened to the DVD and went searching for the sections that needed to be edited together. We used the 1997 2 disc set; the track names I use here refer to that release.

Nearly all of the cue comes from a track listed as "Snowspeeders Take Flight," but that track needs extensive re-editing to match what's in the film. Toward the end, a piece from "City in the Clouds" (the more romantic, sweeping part) is edited in, and then cuts in the last few seconds (where Luke is in the big tank) to a small piece from "Luke's Nocturnal Visitor." It took about two hours for us to figure out what was going on and to get all the pieces to fit right, but it was a very educational exercise. I'm almost certain there are other parts of the CDs that would need this kind of work to be faithful to the score in the film, but this was the most noticeable one to me all these years. It also gives me some small appreciation for what music editors do when preparing the recorded score for the movie. Fascinating stuff. I'll try to put up a sample of the finished product and post a link if anyone's interested.

Jason

 

My Top 5 Favorite Star Wars themes:

Duel of the Fates (from The Phantom Menace)
Across the Stars - Love Theme (from Attack of the Clones)
Binary Sunset - force theme (from Star Wars)
Yoda's theme (from Empire Strikes Back)
Throne room/awards presentation (from Star Wars)

Honorable mentions - the Imperial March and the Luke and Leia themes.

 

Star Wars and Raiders are great, and very well known.
Schindlers List was fantastic, GREAT & very emotional solo violin work from Perlman.
But I think the hidden jewel here is his music for "Seven Years In Tibet" love the orchestrations, and another great soloist given work to sink his chops into: YoYo Ma

 

Perlman's violin work on Schindler's List is top notch.

I haven't heard Seven Years in Tibet, though (didn't know until now that he was involved with it).

The sci-fi ones seem to be the most widely remembered, but looking at the list he's done a ton of non-sci-fi stuff as well.

 

ESB is my favourite Williams score. Sweeping romanticism, gorgeous orchestration, pulse-pounding action cues, moments of tension and suspense. It is brimming with themes and motifs -- many familiar from the first film, many new. It is a rich and rewarding listening experience away from the film as well. A breathtaking work just as the film itself is.

Williams' original cues for the first 20 minutes of the film were cut and tracked significantly. The "Imperial Probe" music was rescored later during the recording sessions. The music that underscored much of Han's return to the Hoth base up to him leaving to look for Luke was dialed out. Many music edits during the early parts of the film and fun to recreate. The snowspeeder search is largely tracked with "Hyperspace".

Why was much of this music dialed out or tracked? Perhaps because the film holds a lot of music as is. There are very few moments without score and personally these scenes play better without score. Only the director and Williams would know the definitive answer.

The sound of the 1997 CDs -- well, that's another topic!

 

Steve,

The stars next to some titles mean what?

 

The SYT has some fantastic work by Yo Yo Ma on it, it also has the uniformly excellent sound quality of Shawn Murphy behind it. Good stuff...

 

Rating. Good, bad, indifferent.

From the Filmtracks site I think:
http://www.filmtracks.com/composers/williams.shtml

 

I'm a big fan of THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST as well.

Some of the very best monothematic scoring you'll hear in film. Quite antipodean to the big brassy STAR WARS sound.

 

My favorite John Williams is the soundtrack to Born on the Fourth of July. Unfortuneatly, there are less than 30 minutes of actual score music, but it is all very, very good. There are some haunting trumpet solos by Tim Morrison, who had been the lead trumpet player for the Boston Pops when John Williams was its conductor. I highly recommend this soundtrack. FWIW, Tim Morrison is also featured in JFK and Saving Private Ryan.

 

John Williams is the best film composer of all time. This man is AWESOME.

 

Although I love many of his soundtracks, I really wouldn't go that far. IMHO, labeling him as "the best" is a slap in the face of those from whom he pulled much of his inspiration (Korngold, Rosza). In many cases, Henry Mancini's music was probably much more original (and he wrote at least as many different scores).

Arne

 

Oh I just KNEW it. Now I'm going to have to go through the score and edit everything together.

And yeah, those 1997 CD sound compressed all to hell. My 1980 vinyl sound infinitely better, I just haven't bothered to do a needle drop yet.

Jason

 

Jason

Much of the content on the 1997 EMPIRE CDs was also re-mixed from the 24-track session multis. The remixes are in no way faithful to the original film or album mixes -- they have poor stereo imaging, illogical panning and lack depth. To make matters worse, all tracks were limited during mastering -- although not as badly as on the 1997 JEDI set.

If you're going to assemble the score as heard in the film please note two points:

1.) The current "version" of the film has some alterations from the 1980 incarnation. The short Imperial fleet transitions have their original compositions rather than bars from the concert arrangement of "The Imperial March". The "End Credits" have been extended by looping "The Imperial March" section, although it appears to come from a slightly different take. The rhythm of "Hyperspace" as a scene and composition has been ruined by the addition of footage of Vader arriving back on The Executor. There are other minor trims and loops here and there throughout the film

2.) If you are purist you will use the film mixes from the 1993 4CD set -- although some of these tracks come from the original album. The extra cues needed to make up the balance of the score will have to come from the 1997 CDs however these cues are the original film mixes! One piece, the establishing shot of Hoth with Luke on his Tantaun must be taken from the 1997 set but this cue was remixed

I'd love to hear the original film mixes mastered by Steve. RAIDERS has an astonishing quality and I know Steve could make the original STAR WARS trilogy sound awesome. Steve once said he didn't need to do too much to tame the sound on RAIDERS. If this is the case then the pooch must have been royally screwed on the other scores. We're talking the same composer, same orchestra, same engineer and same studio (for RAIDERS and JEDI).

Who do I protest / phone / write to? This is upsetting.

I'm going to needle drop my 2LP Japanese EMPIRE at some stage too. Just haven't got to it yet.

As you can see, I'm pretty anal about all this stuff. No hiding that. You can read more here, if you have not done so already:
http://www.users.on.net/~jennychris/starwars.htm

Sorry for hijacking the thread!! My top 5 favourite Williams scores are:

1.) THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK -- glorious
2.) RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK -- packed with great action - "The Desert Chase" anyone?
3.) THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST -- excellent monothematic scoring
4.) JAWS -- the original MCA album re-recording is delightful
5.) A.I. -- hauntingly beautiful cues, organic/mechanic sounds, even techno in one cue

This list probably changes with mood though.