Mail Bag Friday

Everyone's on vacation, so here are some more offerings from the "Harry Potter Mail Bag" from recent weeks.

Interestingly, Lord of the Rings has maintained a lead over Harry Potter in our current poll of which new fantasy score listeners prefer. I saw Lord of the Rings on Christmas (movies and Chinese food -- that's a Jewish Christmas!) and thought it was a marvelous fantasy film, with a wonderful score by Howard Shore that sets a new level of achievement for him.

I also saw Ocean's Eleven and loved the David Holmes score combined with existing tracks -- particularly Debussy's "Claire de Lune" for the ending. It made me nostalgic for the time when film composers had the chops to write new music in the style of the masters like Debussy. I also noticed "A Summer Place" playing in the background as muzak for one of the casino dialogue scenes.

John Williams' soundtrack for Harry Potter and its apparent popularity (at least in the UK) reminds me of the general state of film-making in the US: go for the lowest common denominator and avoid subtlety. This music was the same music, in affect and in tone, as the music John Williams has done for all of the 'epic' motion pictures he has composed (maybe the resemblance between the Harry Potter score and the Star Wars saga scores is no coincidence since its a rehash of the same story). It's popular, bankable music that reminds me of the old 'paint-by-number' artist kits.

Although I will avoid films generally with John Williams scores, I'm not a total Williams naysayer - I enjoyed 'The Reivers' 'E.T.' and particularly liked his score for 'Pete N Tillie'. The latter had a psychological complexity that nicely matched the mood of the film.

It's difficult to want to pick out individual themes in Harry Potter and comment on the merits or demerits of them. None stood out watching the film.

To say that Williams has lost his magic is absurd and preposterous. Yes, Harry Potter score sounds a little derivative, but close listenings will show you that there is much originality to it as well. Anyone who could write that kind of sophisticated music as often as Williams does should be in no way considered a slouch. Williams can do anything musically and I haven't heard a score from him I didn't like. I was very satisfied with Harry Potter, not as fantastic as Hook, but wonderful all the same. It brought back that magical feeling I had with the early Star Wars films. Actually, the best aspect of the score was that it worked so wonderfully in the film. The man knows how to paint cinema. Incidentally, let's not forget A.I. which is not as derivative as other William's scores and is in my opinion, the best score of the year. Williams does it again. And I tell ya, he's an awful nice guy.

I have been reading the many replies regarding the previous article about whether John Williams has lost his magic.

Many intersting points-of-view have come up. I agree that composers have had to change their styles in order to change with the times, especially when the styles of storytelling have changed.

Several of your readers have noted that Williams has not produced the memorable works of the mid-70's or 80's. Sure, those of us who grew up watching these films are able to listen to the scores and evoke our childhood memories. As a result we recall great movies and very simplistic storytelling.

How much more simplistic can the storytelling of Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, or E.T. get. They are good versus evil with memorable characters and performances. The scenes in these movies we lengthy novel-like passages that illustrated the story, the characters, and their situations very clearly. This enabled a composer to develop their musical passages the same way.

For example: The "flying sequence" in Superman, the final battle in Star Wars, the climax in E.T., etc. Even Spielberg has gone on record saying that he edited the final sequence in E.T. to fit the music.

Somewhere around Return of the Jedi, film making styles changed, special effects began to take over, and the style of storytelling became very erratic. I site Return of the Jedi due to its choppy cutting of major storylines in the last 20+ minutes of film. Two minutes are with Luke, Vader, and the Emporer, next we're in the Falcon with Lando for another minute or so, and so on...

With this quick-jumping editing style, how does a composer get the chance to develop thematic material? They have no other opportunity than to compose "ear candy" to add on to the chaos of the visual and audio effects. Things haven't let up in the last 15 years. To further illustrate how much more confusing things have become look at Episoe I! Even Lucas couldn't make up his mind on the best sequence to show the last 30 minutes of film.

As films continue to evolve in this new tradition of film making, scores (and their composers) will have to contend with re-inventing themselves or at least finding their own place in the bowls of the film soundtrack. And now with the evolution of DVD and the advances of home theater, I think more movies are going to focus less on how much of the score comes through and more on how well we can impress the home theater owner.

With this in mind, it makes perfect sense that John Williams, the artist (and other composers) have strayed away from the bombastic adventure films scores. At least with films like Angela's Ashes, Stepmom, Seven Years In Tibet, and The Accidental Tourist, Mr. Williams can demonstrate he can compose thematic material that is meaningful to the film.

So fans, don't fault the man for not always composing what you want to hear. But look at the creative genius that can compose for any medium. Afterall, who wants to be typecast?

I admire John Williams for the his mastery of the modern score, and his importance in the peculiar popularization of orchestral film scores. It is reasonable to say that Williams and Goldsmith were the single formidable forces in creating the terms of scoring the "modern film" in thier unique approaches to modern stories and film advances. Along with the sheer advances in the potentials of what could be filmed I think us "scoregeeks" can make good arguments that these composers and the modern movie scores compelled a huge push towards advancing recording technology to accomodate the immense challenges of dynamic orchestral scoring.

Williams will be a cultural icon because the Star Wars score, or the Superman score probably has outsold almost any pressing of Beethoven or the classics, and because the sounds and feel of the late - great blockbuster era are undecypherable from Williams trademark sounds, this applies to Goldsmith too. (and yes i think the sweet blockbuster era of the 70's through the 80's is over - with the bad special effects and all - that is another discussion)

I do not think even us score geeks realize how priviledged we have been, espically those of us in late 20's or early - mid 30's - we have grown up immersed in the creation and refinement of modern scoring. We have taken for granted pretty much that this was cool but normal perhaps -- this was an amazing era of invention, intensity, creation.

I will be sentimental and say that I am very partial to less recent stuff too, I think because the fire has largely left films, and the inspiration has largely left scoring. Anyway, the point of this - for me I fell in love with Goldsmith when his stunningly otherwordly silken Star Trek The Motion Picture took me to some alternate layer of reality, and it actually makes the film good with all it's flaws. From the day I saw ST TMP and the Goldsmith score peeled back my mind I could not get enough - and I think it is because we taste the greatness of these artists breathing in the works themselves. For all of us "score collectors" Goldsmith or Williams -whatever, we have been giddy - blessed with the richness of these artist in literally defining at least a quarter century of film, music,advertising etc, and by the transportive powers of compositions.

All around I think we should give Williams and Goldsmith all the space they want, to compose how they want in these later years - sentimentality can be a virtue, and the journey has been very good.

Some comments on the two most highly ballyhooed blockbuster scores of the year: I am quite surprised at the nitpicking quibbles over Harry Potter. It seems to me that this is another case of the unreasonable expectations generated by every Williams score being impossible to meet. I wonder if Beethoven could meet this level of anticipation. Is this level of anticipation a by product of the dearth of good orchestral scores? At any rate, Harry Potter is an extremely good score. Sure, there is little that is new. But Williams has been composing for forty years! His style is established, and it is extremely broad and far-reaching. That's what Williams sounds like! Either you like it or you don't. At this point in his career, there simply aren't going to be many "new" sounding scores. Beethoven's 8th Symphony sounds a good bit like his 2nd Symphony, but it is still a masterpiece. The folks who attack Harry Potter for containing nothing new seem to ignore that his previous score for A.I. (the best score of the year by a considerable margin) does go in an entirely new direction and still contains his most beautiful lyrical theme since "E.T. and Me." Harry Potter is not one of Williams's great scores, but it is still a brilliant piece of pure orchestral writing, mercifully free of pan flutes, excessive undisciplined use of the chorus, ethnic cliches, popular songs, and whining New Ageisms. There is not another film composer alive who could write for the orchestra on this level, and it isn't even one of his great scores.

After reading some advanced reports on Lord of the Rings, I expected nothing less than one of the greatest dramatic orchestral scores ever written. It IS a good score, but the anticipation led to a let down for me. These comments are obviously based on how the score holds up as a pure listening experience, and are irrelevant as to how it works for the film. The cynic could say that the chorus is overdone, the dense glutinous orchestration doesn't wear well on repeated hearings, the principal themes are adequate but not outstanding, and then there is the shameful marketing of the score by Reprise. Oh, Enya will probably win it an Oscar, but all the vocalizing and marketing sort of deflate it as serious music. Having said that, there are a couple glorious cues: the gorgeous orchestration, Wagnerian chord progressions and melodic fecundity of "Many Meetings" is like a shaft of light (and note the similarity to the "largo" from Dvorak's "New World" Symphony), and the aggressive exposed brass in " Amon Hen" really cuts through the dense orchestral fabric. One must also consider that LOTR is one of the greatest vehicles for dramatic music in the history of the cinema. This dense and murky score also cries out for audiophile sound. The engineers have let Howard Shore down. The high end is dry, the low end lacks impact, and there is little sense of the texture of the various instruments. How I would have love to hear this score engineered by Shawn Murphy.

MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com