Ran across this on YouTube. Composer Jason Frederick looks at the first four chords of John Barry's "On Her Majesty's Secret Service", and how Barry creates three different pieces of music that feel linked.
I remember when I first saw OHMSS, the audience was floored so much by the "The other feller" line that it wasn't until the end of the second chord that the audience settled down into the theme tune proper. I think that Barry was deliberately shocking the audience with that opening based on the "the other feller" line.
I also remember an interview with him when he said that scoring King Kong was very difficult as De Laurentiis made his movies in scene order. Barry said he ideally needed to know where the movie ended up.
In OHMSS, I like how he used the beach fight music again -briefly - in the bobsleigh chase. Which, to my cloth ears, sounded like a slightly tortured string section as it was, perversely, Blofeld in peril, rather than Bond.
Anyway, I can only estimate at the genius of John Barry. A true maestro.
You know it's great while you're listening to it, but knowing what went into it, the structure and so forth, makes it only the more amazing.
Didn't Lukas once say that, in the opening vamp of "Diamonds are Forever" (the song), the written notes took on an angular formation suggestive of diamonds? I thought that came up once.
