As for the harmony thing, I think that's not necessarily a trained musician thing more than it's a jazz background thing (I did my first year in jazz theory and performance before moving to Orchestral composing).
Getting back on track here, I think that's what I love so much about Williams style and why I have a harder time when composers take over franchise ps he's started. Williams' harmonic vocabulary and acumen is as much derived from jazz as it is from classical and the way he voices his chords at times betrays that (which I totally dig). If I had to pinpoint one area in Gia's style that doesn't engage me it's his use of harmony which seems a lot more streamlined. Yes, he's done scores that employ jazz but it's that Hollywood jazz from the 30s/40s or else its pop Barry/Mancini jazz. Williams seemed to embrace bebop and post bop harmonic structures with attention to 9ths, sharp 11ths, 13ths etc which really fill out the music in a way that few other contemporary composers are able to. Also, his choice of modulations also move well beyond the classical and pop chord progressions so it perks up the ear and captivates the listener especially when supporting a catchy melody.
Anyhow, the jazz background in Williams is definitely a big part of why he's such an exciting, enduring film composer. IMO
So what you're saying David is that I'm a jazz lover who didn't even know it
As for the harmony thing, I think that's not necessarily a trained musician thing more than it's a jazz background thing (I did my first year in jazz theory and performance before moving to Orchestral composing).
Getting back on track here, I think that's what I love so much about Williams style and why I have a harder time when composers take over franchise ps he's started. Williams' harmonic vocabulary and acumen is as much derived from jazz as it is from classical and the way he voices his chords at times betrays that (which I totally dig). If I had to pinpoint one area in Gia's style that doesn't engage me it's his use of harmony which seems a lot more streamlined. Yes, he's done scores that employ jazz but it's that Hollywood jazz from the 30s/40s or else its pop Barry/Mancini jazz. Williams seemed to embrace bebop and post bop harmonic structures with attention to 9ths, sharp 11ths, 13ths etc which really fill out the music in a way that few other contemporary composers are able to. Also, his choice of modulations also move well beyond the classical and pop chord progressions so it perks up the ear and captivates the listener especially when supporting a catchy melody.
Anyhow, the jazz background in Williams is definitely a big part of why he's such an exciting, enduring film composer. IMO
So what you're saying David is that I'm a jazz lover who didn't even know it
Indeed! Seriously though, it is a big reason why Williams stuff sounds so full and rich. Then again, Mahler, Berg and Schoenberg all took harmony in a direction that forecast what was to come in jazz. And likewise, jazzers were influenced by French Impressionism.
Ever since the late-Nineteeth Century, post - Wagner, advances in Western music has centered almost exclusively on the development of harmony and tonality; as opposed to form and orchestration. Your comments reflect that emphasis. When I studied music we had the Liszt, Wagner, Mahler, Strauss, Schoenberg, Berg chain also.
I have never quite listened to and studied music with that aesthetic bias. Maybe that's because my first love is vernacular music! I wish my ears and training were more attuned to instrumental harmony. when I played piano, my father -an accomplished jazz musician- was always urging me to be more bold. I tended to stay in the safe zone of diatonic, 3 note chords.
"Williams seemed to embrace bebop and post bop harmonic structures with attention to 9ths, sharp 11ths, 13ths etc which really fill out the music in a way that few other contemporary composers are able to. Also, his choice of modulations also move well beyond the classical and pop chord progressions so it perks up the ear and captivates the listener especially when supporting a catchy melody. "
I can hear the footsteps of all the FSMers running over to the 'other' JWFK thread!
"Williams seemed to embrace bebop and post bop harmonic structures with attention to 9ths, sharp 11ths, 13ths etc which really fill out the music in a way that few other contemporary composers are able to. Also, his choice of modulations also move well beyond the classical and pop chord progressions so it perks up the ear and captivates the listener especially when supporting a catchy melody. "
I can hear the footsteps of all the FSMers running over to the 'other' JWFK thread!
LOL!!!!!! brm
I can bring them back with a well delivered blow to Giacchino’s pun- and/or music-writing abilities.
Gotta say this Giacchino-bashing fest has evolved into a very intelligent and articulate thread on the nature of orchestral writing in the 20th century and beyond. Kudos to those who have contributed.
I'd like to add one other point that will help bridge the topic back toward the requisite Giacchino-bashing.
Someone previously mentioned jazz and the influence of impressionism upon it (and vice versa, Ravel was a known jazz enthusiast who liked to drawn on its harmonic language in his own music), and I think it's worth commenting that a lot of the film composers we really love and have seen demonstrate an extreme aptitude for harmonic and orchestrational virtuosity often had heavy jazz training or backgrounds while some of the "spark notes" composers like Giacchino seem to have outright skipped this step.
My two favorite "Johns", Williams and Scott, perfectly exemplify this - maybe even more so maestro Scott, a true virtuosic jazzer from Britian's Golden Age whose own impressionistic harmonic language and extreme contrapuntal creativity that would flourish throughout his film career (see his COUSTEAU scores, GREYSTOKE, ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, etc.) really sounds like it could only have been born of an extreme aptitude fr jazz structures and timbers.
People trained in "just the classics" simply don't compose with the degree of creativity heard in things like the below - a piece that, to my ear, wears its jazz influence on its sleeve while still remaining unabashedly "symphonic":
Other guys who were best known for writing jazz (or "pop") scores in their days - like Mancini, Legrand, Schifrin or Budd - could also pull off some INCREDIBLE symphonic fireworks that left many of their peers in the dust, when they were presented the opportunity to do so - LIFE FORCE, ICE STATION ZEBRA, AMITYVILLE HORROR and THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA comprise, respectively, a quartet extremely accomplished orchestral works from those respective composers not typically known for this 'kind' of music.
ICE STATION ZEBRA is a standout score in Legrand's filmography and a superb work. . I can't say I ever was that impressed by Mancini's straight orchestral scores.. Brm
I can't say for sure, and while I'm all but certain I'll get lots of tomatoes in the face for saying this, I also wouldn't claim him to be as *harmonically and melodically* inventive/satisfying as, say, Williams or Scott, more serial influenced and "academic" with an emphasis skewing toward tone and complexity.
That's not to say he didn't write some highly melodically-satisfying stuff, he absolutely did, but the road to arrive at that sound always struck me as being achieved along a very different path and not as effortlessly for him as it were for those guys... Though as far as orchestration goes (outside the already-acknowledged Bartok and Stravinsky) there was still plenty of Debussy and Ravel in his music at times (see ALIEN's romantic title theme, the air drop sequence from CONGO or his entire score for LEGEND as good off-hand examples), and at several points in his career he coped the opening orchestration from Respighi's PINES OF ROME very transparently (off hand, the most obvious instance of this is the climactic moments of "In the West" from NIGHT CROSSING - all the flight-associated music in that film is highly impressionistic in nature).
Being fair though, none of these observations are mutually exclusive; Williams and Scott have also written plenty of scores themselves using extensive avant garde or serial techniques as well. Any time we're talking about composers of the caliber that Williams, Scott, Goldsmith (or Horner and a few others) work at, there's inevitably going to be a very deep musical well of knowledge from which inspiration can be mined, often drawing on many diverse techniques within the same scores (Horner's KRULL, as an example, has influences from Ligeti, Strauss, Holst, Humperdinck and Korngold to name a few, but it's all packaged in Horner's own fresh, distinct style from that era).
"Indeed! Seriously though, it is a big reason why Williams stuff sounds so full and rich. Then again, Mahler, Berg and Schoenberg all took harmony in a direction that forecast what was to come in jazz. And likewise, jazzers were influenced by French Impressionism.. " There are a couple of Liszt HUNGARIAN RHAPSODIES that could serve as precursors to jazz!
Dont really agree with Bobb about Jerry. That's cool. But....Are you sure you didn't confuse Williams with Goldsmith?.THE PLANET KRYPTON is very close to Z PINES!
Goldsmith is an innovator; Stravinsky Williams is a traditionalist ; Tchaikovsky
Dont really agree with Bobb about Jerry. That's cool. But....Are you sure you didn't confuse Williams with Goldsmith?.THE PLANET KRYPTON is very close to Z PINES!
Is it? My recollection in that the Krypton motif is very "Straussian"!
Dont really agree with Bobb about Jerry. That's cool. But....Are you sure you didn't confuse Williams with Goldsmith?.THE PLANET KRYPTON is very close to Z PINES!
Is it? My recollection in that the Krypton motif is very "Straussian"!
Ha! Okay, fair enough. I went back and revisited, I can now hear BOTH Respighi's fanfare from the final movement of PINES as well as Strauss' ZARATHUSTRA (sp?). Fair enough.
Ha! Okay, fair enough. I went back and revisited, I can now hear BOTH Respighi's fanfare from the final movement of PINES as well as Strauss' ZARATHUSTRA (sp?). Fair enough.
Like i said: BOTH!
Someone wrote in FSM that the difference between Horner and Williams' "borrowings" is Johnny is much better at disguising his . Lotta truth in that observation. Brm
Someone wrote in FSM that the difference between Horner and Williams' "borrowings" is Johnny is much better at disguising his . Lotta truth in that observation. Brm
I'll agree with that. Both are brilliant musicians but Williams always took an extra step that Horner, at least in post-1985 or so, never bothered with. Fella got "comfortable" in his career a little too early on in my book... That said, I'll put KRULL right up on the same pedestal as Williams' very best work (as well as Rozsa's, Herrmann's and anyone else's really...)
