Someone saying they don't like Williams because he uses an orchestra like classical music is deceiving because that person really doesn't like ANY music played by an orchestra.
Claiming the discovery of elements of pre-existing music sprinkled throughout Williams' work as plagiarism is dismissing the obvious continuum of human history which has existed in all creative arts since their beginning. Everything is built upon the past in some fashion - the present moment is simply another step in the same collective stride, and education proves out that point by its very nature of being built upon what has come before.
One has to be smarter in these critiques.
The point of a musical education is to learn from what has been done previously. Williams' has learned the basic building blocks of music from studying the absolute best and employs these techniques in his orchestration. That's not plagiarism, that's competent musical writing. Where Williams' transcends competent writing to become a master is where he combines his own voice, which is jazz. His own modern twist on classical romantic orchestral writing is a demonstration of his level of brilliance.
Much of the claims of outright plagiarism of melodies are equally not smart and unspecific. Williams' music will occasionally follow the general contour or texture of a part of an existing song, such as "King's Row" for "Star Wars". But again, that's just competent musical writing and Williams again transcends his education by not just making melodies his own but taking inspiration from the contour of a particular section and building it out into his own creative construct.
It's also a misleading argument because the Star Wars scores were meant to evoke some of the feelings of classic film music and classical music in general. Williams is VERY open about this.
The reason why Horner received more criticism is because he didn't always put in the work to make the inspiration his own. In quite a few cases, Horner would entirely mimic a preexisting piece and present it as-is.
In the case of Zimmer, he's barely able to even understand musically what he's mimicking, and in the classic case of Gladiator's ripoff of "Mars, Bringer of War" that inability led to him being unable to shift the contour of the piece or even the melody for EXTENDED sections that completely replicated the original.
In contrast, Williams clearly had moments of inspiration from "Mars, Bringer of War" in "Star Wars" but his education comes through in HOW he implements it. He is clearly well-studied and is able to draw inspiration from PIECES of that song, such as its staggered rhythm and some of its orchestration, all while making it his own.
Goldsmith was the same. Shostakovich's 11th Symphony is a treasure trove of inspiration for some of Williams' Star Wars prequels writing and Goldsmith's action writing, particularly Total Recall. But Goldsmith is equally educated and implements PIECES of these inspirational pieces and makes them his own.
To cap this off, both Goldsmith and Williams are very open about the musical inspirations that are running through their minds on a given project. That's very professional and very demonstrative of their musical education.
I've seen less interviews of Horner so I can't comment on him, but when it comes to Zimmer he is very defensive when talking about inspiration from other composers. The only time he discusses other composers is when he's talking about his overall career, he'll name-drop German composers like Bach, Beethoven and Brahms to draw a connection to him also being a "German" or "European" composer in an attempt to claim their prestige via place-of-birth.
Back to Williams, if you find Williams' music to be overpowering in a film, that pretty much speaks for the majority of film music in general and there definitely are scores where Williams' music plays a much more subtle role.
But beyond that it's really difficult to critique Wiliams' work because musically it is 200% sound. From a musicological perspective, his melodies and orchestrations are all rock-solid, he has experimented with instrumentation throughout his career, he has a varied creative implementation of jazz, aleatoric, and atonal writing mixed throughout his pieces.
Otherwise, if you just don't like music played by orchestras, then you just don't like music played by orchestras.
Someone saying they don't like Williams because he uses an orchestra like classical music is deceiving because that person really doesn't like ANY music played by an orchestra.
Claiming the discovery of elements of pre-existing music sprinkled throughout Williams' work as plagiarism is dismissing the obvious continuum of human history which has existed in all creative arts since their beginning. Everything is built upon the past in some fashion - the present moment is simply another step in the same collective stride, and education proves out that point by its very nature of being built upon what has come before.
One has to be smarter in these critiques.
The point of a musical education is to learn from what has been done previously. Williams' has learned the basic building blocks of music from studying the absolute best and employs these techniques in his orchestration. That's not plagiarism, that's competent musical writing. Where Williams' transcends competent writing to become a master is where he combines his own voice, which is jazz. His own modern twist on classical romantic orchestral writing is a demonstration of his level of brilliance.
Much of the claims of outright plagiarism of melodies are equally not smart and unspecific. Williams' music will occasionally follow the general contour or texture of a part of an existing song, such as "King's Row" for "Star Wars". But again, that's just competent musical writing and Williams again transcends his education by not just making melodies his own but taking inspiration from the contour of a particular section and building it out into his own creative construct.
It's also a misleading argument because the Star Wars scores were meant to evoke some of the feelings of classic film music and classical music in general. Williams is VERY open about this.
The reason why Horner received more criticism is because he didn't always put in the work to make the inspiration his own. In quite a few cases, Horner would entirely mimic a preexisting piece and present it as-is.
In the case of Zimmer, he's barely able to even understand musically what he's mimicking, and in the classic case of Gladiator's ripoff of "Mars, Bringer of War" that inability led to him being unable to shift the contour of the piece or even the melody for EXTENDED sections that completely replicated the original.
In contrast, Williams clearly had moments of inspiration from "Mars, Bringer of War" in "Star Wars" but his education comes through in HOW he implements it. He is clearly well-studied and is able to draw inspiration from PIECES of that song, such as its staggered rhythm and some of its orchestration, all while making it his own.
Goldsmith was the same. Shostakovich's 11th Symphony is a treasure trove of inspiration for some of Williams' Star Wars prequels writing and Goldsmith's action writing, particularly Total Recall. But Goldsmith is equally educated and implements PIECES of these inspirational pieces and makes them his own.
To cap this off, both Goldsmith and Williams are very open about the musical inspirations that are running through their minds on a given project. That's very professional and very demonstrative of their musical education.
I've seen less interviews of Horner so I can't comment on him, but when it comes to Zimmer he is very defensive when talking about inspiration from other composers. The only time he discusses other composers is when he's talking about his overall career, he'll name-drop German composers like Bach, Beethoven and Brahms to draw a connection to him also being a "German" or "European" composer in an attempt to claim their prestige via place-of-birth.
Back to Williams, if you find Williams' music to be overpowering in a film, that pretty much speaks for the majority of film music in general and there definitely are scores where Williams' music plays a much more subtle role.
But beyond that it's really difficult to critique Wiliams' work because musically it is 200% sound. From a musicological perspective, his melodies and orchestrations are all rock-solid, he has experimented with instrumentation throughout his career, he has a varied creative implementation of jazz, aleatoric, and atonal writing mixed throughout his pieces.
Otherwise, if you just don't like music played by orchestras, then you just don't like music played by orchestras.
I love both Jerry Goldsmith's and John Williams' work. I have over 200 Goldsmith CDs and less than 50 Williams' CDs in my collection. I collect more Goldsmith purely because of his variation in style and sound throughout the years, and I have bought CDs of the highlights of Williams' career. I find I can listen to different Goldsmith scores depending what mood I'm in. They are all different. If I had to choose who of them was my favourite composer, I would pick Goldsmith because of his volume of work and eclecticism.
But even after saying all that and, even though both of them were in the running to score it, I'm glad that John Williams got to score Superman the Movie.
Someone saying they don't like Williams because he uses an orchestra like classical music is deceiving because that person really doesn't like ANY music played by an orchestra.
Claiming the discovery of elements of pre-existing music sprinkled throughout Williams' work as plagiarism is dismissing the obvious continuum of human history which has existed in all creative arts since their beginning. Everything is built upon the past in some fashion - the present moment is simply another step in the same collective stride, and education proves out that point by its very nature of being built upon what has come before.
One has to be smarter in these critiques.
The point of a musical education is to learn from what has been done previously. Williams' has learned the basic building blocks of music from studying the absolute best and employs these techniques in his orchestration. That's not plagiarism, that's competent musical writing. Where Williams' transcends competent writing to become a master is where he combines his own voice, which is jazz. His own modern twist on classical romantic orchestral writing is a demonstration of his level of brilliance.
Much of the claims of outright plagiarism of melodies are equally not smart and unspecific. Williams' music will occasionally follow the general contour or texture of a part of an existing song, such as "King's Row" for "Star Wars". But again, that's just competent musical writing and Williams again transcends his education by not just making melodies his own but taking inspiration from the contour of a particular section and building it out into his own creative construct.
It's also a misleading argument because the Star Wars scores were meant to evoke some of the feelings of classic film music and classical music in general. Williams is VERY open about this.
The reason why Horner received more criticism is because he didn't always put in the work to make the inspiration his own. In quite a few cases, Horner would entirely mimic a preexisting piece and present it as-is.
In the case of Zimmer, he's barely able to even understand musically what he's mimicking, and in the classic case of Gladiator's ripoff of "Mars, Bringer of War" that inability led to him being unable to shift the contour of the piece or even the melody for EXTENDED sections that completely replicated the original.
In contrast, Williams clearly had moments of inspiration from "Mars, Bringer of War" in "Star Wars" but his education comes through in HOW he implements it. He is clearly well-studied and is able to draw inspiration from PIECES of that song, such as its staggered rhythm and some of its orchestration, all while making it his own.
Goldsmith was the same. Shostakovich's 11th Symphony is a treasure trove of inspiration for some of Williams' Star Wars prequels writing and Goldsmith's action writing, particularly Total Recall. But Goldsmith is equally educated and implements PIECES of these inspirational pieces and makes them his own.
To cap this off, both Goldsmith and Williams are very open about the musical inspirations that are running through their minds on a given project. That's very professional and very demonstrative of their musical education.
I've seen less interviews of Horner so I can't comment on him, but when it comes to Zimmer he is very defensive when talking about inspiration from other composers. The only time he discusses other composers is when he's talking about his overall career, he'll name-drop German composers like Bach, Beethoven and Brahms to draw a connection to him also being a "German" or "European" composer in an attempt to claim their prestige via place-of-birth.
Back to Williams, if you find Williams' music to be overpowering in a film, that pretty much speaks for the majority of film music in general and there definitely are scores where Williams' music plays a much more subtle role.
But beyond that it's really difficult to critique Wiliams' work because musically it is 200% sound. From a musicological perspective, his melodies and orchestrations are all rock-solid, he has experimented with instrumentation throughout his career, he has a varied creative implementation of jazz, aleatoric, and atonal writing mixed throughout his pieces.
Otherwise, if you just don't like music played by orchestras, then you just don't like music played by orchestras.
Whatever.
If I have to listen to an orchestral score, I seem to enjoy how a composer like James Newton Howard does it, with incorporating rock instruments like guitar, bass, drums, keyboards and sax into the soundscape. Giving it a contemporary groove, so to say.
I love a lot of Williams' scores, but when one fails to connect with me it's usually because it's a restrained, reverent score for an 'important' movie. A lot of other composers are guilty of this as well, seemingly fearing overshadowing anything, but it means that I wind up with precious little to grab onto in a lot of Williams' post-2000 scores since there's a lot of prestige pics and very few fun genre movies (with him delegating those, even with Spielberg, to other composers).
I'm sure Williams' restrained, drama scores are well-constructed musically, but there's nothing that grabs me about them. Schindler's List is an important movie, but I'd listen to Jurassic Park over it every day of the week and twice on Sundays.
Someone saying they don't like Williams because he uses an orchestra like classical music is deceiving because that person really doesn't like ANY music played by an orchestra.
Claiming the discovery of elements of pre-existing music sprinkled throughout Williams' work as plagiarism is dismissing the obvious continuum of human history which has existed in all creative arts since their beginning. Everything is built upon the past in some fashion - the present moment is simply another step in the same collective stride, and education proves out that point by its very nature of being built upon what has come before.
One has to be smarter in these critiques.
The point of a musical education is to learn from what has been done previously. Williams' has learned the basic building blocks of music from studying the absolute best and employs these techniques in his orchestration. That's not plagiarism, that's competent musical writing. Where Williams' transcends competent writing to become a master is where he combines his own voice, which is jazz. His own modern twist on classical romantic orchestral writing is a demonstration of his level of brilliance.
Much of the claims of outright plagiarism of melodies are equally not smart and unspecific. Williams' music will occasionally follow the general contour or texture of a part of an existing song, such as "King's Row" for "Star Wars". But again, that's just competent musical writing and Williams again transcends his education by not just making melodies his own but taking inspiration from the contour of a particular section and building it out into his own creative construct.
It's also a misleading argument because the Star Wars scores were meant to evoke some of the feelings of classic film music and classical music in general. Williams is VERY open about this.
The reason why Horner received more criticism is because he didn't always put in the work to make the inspiration his own. In quite a few cases, Horner would entirely mimic a preexisting piece and present it as-is.
In the case of Zimmer, he's barely able to even understand musically what he's mimicking, and in the classic case of Gladiator's ripoff of "Mars, Bringer of War" that inability led to him being unable to shift the contour of the piece or even the melody for EXTENDED sections that completely replicated the original.
In contrast, Williams clearly had moments of inspiration from "Mars, Bringer of War" in "Star Wars" but his education comes through in HOW he implements it. He is clearly well-studied and is able to draw inspiration from PIECES of that song, such as its staggered rhythm and some of its orchestration, all while making it his own.
Goldsmith was the same. Shostakovich's 11th Symphony is a treasure trove of inspiration for some of Williams' Star Wars prequels writing and Goldsmith's action writing, particularly Total Recall. But Goldsmith is equally educated and implements PIECES of these inspirational pieces and makes them his own.
To cap this off, both Goldsmith and Williams are very open about the musical inspirations that are running through their minds on a given project. That's very professional and very demonstrative of their musical education.
I've seen less interviews of Horner so I can't comment on him, but when it comes to Zimmer he is very defensive when talking about inspiration from other composers. The only time he discusses other composers is when he's talking about his overall career, he'll name-drop German composers like Bach, Beethoven and Brahms to draw a connection to him also being a "German" or "European" composer in an attempt to claim their prestige via place-of-birth.
Back to Williams, if you find Williams' music to be overpowering in a film, that pretty much speaks for the majority of film music in general and there definitely are scores where Williams' music plays a much more subtle role.
But beyond that it's really difficult to critique Wiliams' work because musically it is 200% sound. From a musicological perspective, his melodies and orchestrations are all rock-solid, he has experimented with instrumentation throughout his career, he has a varied creative implementation of jazz, aleatoric, and atonal writing mixed throughout his pieces.
Otherwise, if you just don't like music played by orchestras, then you just don't like music played by orchestras.
Whatever.
If I have to listen to an orchestral score, I seem to enjoy how a composer like James Newton Howard does it, with incorporating rock instruments like guitar, bass, drums, keyboards and sax into the soundscape. Giving it a contemporary groove, so to say.
You lost me at "into the soundscape." Everyone likes what they like. You clearly do not like orchestral scores if you like when rock elements are added. I don't understand that, but then again, I don't have to.
I find this thread extremely amusing from all perspectives.
I love John Williams. I think he's brilliant. Does that mean I love EVERY score he's written just because he's John Williams? Nope. I don't like a the Geisha score, I don't like The River, I don't like the Harry Potter scores and some of his later stuff. But most of it I like very much. And yet, Williams lovers will find justification for ALL his scores being great.
I love Jerry Goldsmith and yet there are many Goldsmith scores that I cannot abide at all, and that's mostly (MOSTLY) everything from 1990 on, but also includes some scores from his greatest period, which for me is from around 1963 to the early 1980s. And yet, Goldsmith lovers will find justification for ALL his scores being great.
John Williams is the Julia Child of film scoring. Stolid, dependable, a consummate professional who knows how to set a table to impress. Perfectly suitable for those either possessing a timid palette or inclined to bougie affectation, if not both.
