Just the idea that film music has the same place in the concert hall as the best music in the canon is a mistaken notion, I think
I actually completely agree with Williams completely here. I’ve never liked concerts that feature music outside of its intended context. I don’t like when a single movement of a symphony is performed absent the whole symphony. I don’t like a mish-mash of arias from different operas. And I don’t care for film music concerts.
But that does not, in my opinion, make film music an inferior art form. It just makes it different. A single track from the soundtrack of a film score is not great art, but a film, in its totality, can be great art, and the contribution a soundtrack plays to that art cannot be overstated. It can uplift the film from the merely great to the sublime. And no living composer even comes close to the quality of John Williams.
I have to disagree. I went to see HIM in the early 2000s, with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. He played all music from his various film features. I loved it, along with those I went with. I guess he didn’t! 😂
Agreed. In a film, the music is supportive but in a concert hall it is appreciated alone. In the early 80s I was a big Star Wars fan, but at a concert when the orchestra played the main theme it just felt out of place.
Dang, TIL Wojciech Kilar died in 2013. Anyway, Hans Zimmer and Danny Elfman give Williams some good competition.
One thing that flips this on its head in a great way is films in concert. Where they screen the whole film on a projector, with a live orchestra playing the soundtrack. I’ve seen Lord of the Rings and Star Wars in concert this way, and it’s a pretty great experience.
Except that they used the pre-recorded soundtrack for the Mos Eisley cantina music, which was a little disappointing. Understandable from a logistics perspective, but a little disappointing.
Hans Zimmer is, IMO, not as bad per se as his detractors make him out to be, but he is responsible for kicking off or at least popularising the style that has ruined film music over the last two decades. Producing, rather than composing a score, using samples rather than sheet music and real musicians (even if those samples later get converted into sheet music for real musicians to imitate). That, plus the ouroboros nature where today’s films use temp tracks of other film music (in contrast with Star Wars, which had temp tracks of the likes of Holst and Stravinsky), has led to the Zimmer-esque style of tremolo strings, brass chords, and big percussive hits, with comparatively little of the great thematic development and transformation that made Williams’ scores so great. I think the fact that recent films have done callbacks to Elfman’s Batman theme and Williams’ Superman theme are very fun nostalgia-bait, but are disappointing musically.
I actually completely agree with Williams completely here. I’ve never liked concerts that feature music outside of its intended context. I don’t like when a single movement of a symphony is performed absent the whole symphony. I don’t like a mish-mash of arias from different operas. And I don’t care for film music concerts.
But that does not, in my opinion, make film music an inferior art form. It just makes it different. A single track from the soundtrack of a film score is not great art, but a film, in its totality, can be great art, and the contribution a soundtrack plays to that art cannot be overstated. It can uplift the film from the merely great to the sublime. And no living composer even comes close to the quality of John Williams.
I have to disagree. I went to see HIM in the early 2000s, with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. He played all music from his various film features. I loved it, along with those I went with. I guess he didn’t! 😂
HIM, the Finnish rock band?
Ha no. Him as in John Williams himself. Lol
Agreed. In a film, the music is supportive but in a concert hall it is appreciated alone. In the early 80s I was a big Star Wars fan, but at a concert when the orchestra played the main theme it just felt out of place.
Dang, TIL Wojciech Kilar died in 2013. Anyway, Hans Zimmer and Danny Elfman give Williams some good competition.
One thing that flips this on its head in a great way is films in concert. Where they screen the whole film on a projector, with a live orchestra playing the soundtrack. I’ve seen Lord of the Rings and Star Wars in concert this way, and it’s a pretty great experience.
Except that they used the pre-recorded soundtrack for the Mos Eisley cantina music, which was a little disappointing. Understandable from a logistics perspective, but a little disappointing.
Hans Zimmer is, IMO, not as bad per se as his detractors make him out to be, but he is responsible for kicking off or at least popularising the style that has ruined film music over the last two decades. Producing, rather than composing a score, using samples rather than sheet music and real musicians (even if those samples later get converted into sheet music for real musicians to imitate). That, plus the ouroboros nature where today’s films use temp tracks of other film music (in contrast with Star Wars, which had temp tracks of the likes of Holst and Stravinsky), has led to the Zimmer-esque style of tremolo strings, brass chords, and big percussive hits, with comparatively little of the great thematic development and transformation that made Williams’ scores so great. I think the fact that recent films have done callbacks to Elfman’s Batman theme and Williams’ Superman theme are very fun nostalgia-bait, but are disappointing musically.