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Posted: |
Sep 15, 2008 - 2:56 PM
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By: |
vwing
(Member)
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Ok, so I've been making it a point to try to listen to at least one non-film score orchestral piece per day for the last couple weeks or so, and it's something I'll try to continue.
One of the things I've listened a little bit to is some John Adams, and while I very clearly see the influences on Davis' Matrix scores, I found something much more interesting. It sounded a lot like modern Williams. In fact, that's the thing I've been trying to place about modern Williams, as to how different he is from older 70s and 80s Williams. All the orchestral flourishes seemed pretty similar, everything had that distinct Williams vibe, it was just, somehow, different. I realize it's because he's really become kind of a minimalist composer.
The thing that really convinced me of this was watching Catch Me if You Can, which happened to be on TV soon after I listened to Adams' "Short Ride in a Fast Machine." I was listening to the "Float" Theme, which is actually very indicative of Williams' modern writing, and it suddenly clicked how minimalist it actually was. There are much fewer of the harmonic progressions that make up so many of his wonderful older music, and much more of those driving, almost ostinati bass with a melody that, rather than being the goal in and of itself, kind of "floats", so to speak, or perhaps flows, through the minimalist progressions of the accompaniment.
Honestly, this may be old news, and I certainly was aware that AI had its minimalist influences, but I find it remarkable how Williams so clearly shifted in all his music, even something so light as Catch me if you Can, from a much more traditional orchestral style to the minimalist style.
I've also been listening to some Copland, and find it interesting just how Coplandesque Williams really is. He's pounded as being Korngoldian or even Wagnerian, but really he seems much more an extension of Copland than Korngold, in my mind anyway. And just to bring it all together, I also feel like there are some very minimalist touches in Copland's work, which evolved into minimalism later. That may be completely wrong, or it may be accepted, I don't know, but it's just something I hear when I listen to him.
So just asking everyone what their thoughts are on this, or maybe I'm just really late to the party.
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I don't think Williams made a conscious decision to become a minimalist composer, but film scores in general have progressed towards minimalist tendencies. The sort of bass-heavy, thumping sound you hear in most action movies that drives the music and provides a ambient backdrop seems to be the standard way to score a film lately. Of course, technology is partly to blame for this since writing repetitive, minimalistic loops is made very easy.
And I wouldn't call Davis's Matrix scores minimalist. They're ostinato-heavy, yes, but its strength is its motives and orchestral colour, not its repetitiveness.
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Posted: |
Sep 15, 2008 - 4:30 PM
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By: |
vwing
(Member)
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I wouldn't call him a minimalist by a long stretch, but I DO agree with you that he has incorporated more of those TECHNIQUES into his post-JURASSIC PARK scores. The ostinati suspense tracks in MINORITY REPORT and WAR OF THE WORLDS are other good examples.
I don't know, I just really see his style as having involved into something that is inherently minimalist, as opposed to him dabbling in minimalism. I'm not saying he is literally a minimalist in the way an Adams or Glass is, but I think that his actual modern style is based as much off the minimalists as any other. In fact I think that's why his Star Wars scores are really so different. It's a much more modern approach to films that are supposed to technically be earlier. I really think that McNeely's romantic blended with modern styles for Shadows of the Empire would have worked better.
Let's take Episode III as an example. Strangely enough, the closest cousin to the score is Matrix Revolutions. The choral piece and "Anakin Vs. Obi-Wan" track (at least the part that isn't a rehash of Empire) all have many elements that are similar in Davis' Neodammerung, including the rhythmic brass hits. Both incorporate a melodic line into this background, cacophonous minimalism.
These are both followed by a slower track, in Episode III "The Immolation Scene" and in Revolutions "Why, Mr. Anderson." Both have very similar progressions, with Williams almost deconstructing the track, changing usually one note at a time to show the transformation and destruction of Anakin. Davis does the same thing but in the opposite way, starting off similarly, but then constructing the piece with simple note changes until it reaches a beautiful ending as Neo finally gets up. This piece is also very similar in structure to "Anakin's Betrayal", which has the same slow change, slow build until it reaches the climax. "Palpatine's Teachings" does the same thing, though that track is much more slow-burning and never really reaches a climax.
Certainly Williams' action writing has become very subject to minimalism, and nowhere is this more evident than Episode III. The Grievous action tracks eschew melody in favor of the little woodwind flourishes and general cacophony of the orchestra, with its rhythmic brass hits and swirling strings. Even a powerhouse track like "Anakin's Dark Deeds", which does have a powerful, dark melody, still sets that melody against those same minimalist ostinati. "Enter Lord Vader" continues this, and even has a very Matrix-y buildup before the playing of the Imperial March.
So despite this being a Star Wars score, which seems the very definition of the Korngoldian influenced film score, almost every track is imbued with minimalism. It's not just a part of it that Williams takes of a bit here and a bit there: it is completely inseparable from Williams' own, still evolving, style.
Again, I am not saying Williams is a true minimalist. But his modern style is as much minimalist as it is anything else.
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Williams in general tries to write stuff that fits the particular context of each film. What else? Could 'Catch Me If You Can', right down to that brilliant title sequence, have been scored any other way? 'Star Wars' for 1960s pastiche animated graphics and a story about a very clever serial conman? I don't think so. Williams' music there is reminiscent of Alex North and Goldsmith, and no doubt a deliberate throwback.
He was often sparser in his arrangements before Spielberg's big adventure efforts, which have a certain collaborative trademark feel.
A composer's style for a particular assignment is a different consideration than his overall 'style'. Many of the former may be included in the latter.
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Posted: |
Sep 16, 2008 - 2:52 PM
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By: |
vwing
(Member)
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Williams in general tries to write stuff that fits the particular context of each film. What else? Could 'Catch Me If You Can', right down to that brilliant title sequence, have been scored any other way? 'Star Wars' for 1960s pastiche animated graphics and a story about a very clever serial conman? I don't think so. Williams' music there is reminiscent of Alex North and Goldsmith, and no doubt a deliberate throwback.
He was often sparser in his arrangments before Spielberg's big aventure efforts, which have a certain collaborative trademark feel.
A composer's style for a particular assignment is a different consideration than his overall 'style'. Many of the former may be included in the latter.
Ah but there's the rub! The whole point I'm trying to make is that I think that the very essence of Williams' changing OVERALL style has much to do with minimalism. That's what I was trying to point out with my Episode III analysis. Episode III is an action/adventure movie with elements of sci-fi, swordplay, tragedy, etc. NONE of that needed to be scored with ANY type of nod to minimalism(just as the originals really weren't), and yet I'd say that almost every track in the score is imbued with at least some aspect of it.
I'll go by your Catch me if you Can example too. You ask if the film could have been scored any other way than it was. The short answer is, well, yeah. And by that I don't mean the jazzy theme at the beginning, which most composers would've tried to do, but let's talk specifically about the "Float" theme I mentioned. If the John Williams of the 70s or 80s had scored that, he would've given a jaunty, semi-comedic but hopefuly melody with a definite harmonic structure, and it would've worked fine, just as similar themes worked well in, say, Superman. The Williams of today decided on a theme that really isn't confined by harmonic structure, and has minimalist accompaniment, not meaning that he's not using the whole orchestra, because he is, but meaning that he has a melody over a repeating da-Dum da-Dum pattern that builds slowly, almost note-by-note, a bit in the style of minimalism.
Other people have talked about earlier themes having echoes of Debussey, etc., and again, I'm not talking about early Williams. They also said I'm forcing John Adams. I'm not. I'm not saying Williams' style is exactly like John Adams. I'm just saying there is an influence there by him and others in Williams' overall style. There is a definite shift in Williams after the early 1990s, where I really do think you can find minimalist ideas and structures in almost ALL of his scores, regardless of subject matter. I see them in Nixon, in Episodes 1-3, in AI, in Catch me if you Can, in Munich, in Memoirs, in the new Indiana Jones.
That does NOT mean the entire score is minimalist. All that means is that one PART of Williams' OVERALL style really owes to minimalism in recent years, and that he is choosing to score scenes today with minimalist touches that he was scoring with much more late-romantic touches earlier in his career.
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Episode III is an action/adventure movie with elements of sci-fi, swordplay, tragedy, etc. NONE of that needed to be scored with ANY type of nod to minimalism(just as the originals really weren't), and yet I'd say that almost every track in the score is imbued with at least some aspect of it.
You're going to have to expand on this thought because that sounds like a real stretch to me. Don't get caught up in the idea that ostinatos and rhythms = minimalism. That's more the Stravinsky effect. Minimalism by its nature suggests that less is more, which is almost the polar opposite of anything Star Wars related. Even John Adams isn't a good example of true minimalism, especially in works like Short Ride, Naive and Sentimental Music, and Chairman Dances.
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Posted: |
Sep 17, 2008 - 1:49 PM
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By: |
Heath
(Member)
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There's a lot of yada yada about "minimalism". It's gone on since the 60s. It was a term coined by journalists, like "kitchen sink drama" and "auteur", as a short-hand way to make their copy read well to a bewildered/indifferent readership. It wasn't so much about defining an era or a style of music as, rather, to make magazine and newspaper editors content that they still had a guiding hand on their readership's taste. Period.
As to Williams' current musical forms - curiously enough, I think that he was always going to be somewhat at home with the Reichian vibe. There were two extremes with JW - the epic/romantic composer of Star Wars and the subdued and lightly textured composer of Missouri Breaks and Presumed Innocent to name but two.
Being an acutely American musical genius, and a consummate commercial composer, Williams was inevitably going to keep a sharp ear open to current tends/forms, and his partial adoption of Steve Reich's language (and NO not John Adams' language - I maintain Adams is a magpie composer, compiled, brazenly but ingeniously, from the parts of Reich, Glass, Takemitsu and Barber) now feels genuinely inevitable.
However what has always struck me was just how deeply Williams drank from the well of Steve Reich in recent years, almost to the subordination of his own musical personality. Anyone who knows Reich's Different Trains and The Desert Music will know what effect those pieces had on, for example, AI and Minority Report.
I am give to wonder why in fact Steve Reich has not been given a major film project of his own.
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see my thread "Did Glass/Reich Sue Williams?"
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T
However what has always struck me was just how deeply Williams drank from the well of Steve Reich in recent years, almost to the subordination of his own musical personality. Anyone who knows Reich's Different Trains and The Desert Music will know what effect those pieces had on, for example, AI and Minority Report.
I am give to wonder why in fact Steve Reich has not been given a major film project of his own.
In a million years, Reich could never write something as hauntingly beautiful as the end titles from MINORITY REPORT.
nO DISRESPECT INTENDED.
BRM
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