John Williams

How much of an integral parts did John Williams music play in Star Wars. This Guy says A LOT

 

A lot is a piece of real estate.

 

By far the best music ever. It is by far better then the crap we call music today. John Williams Superman theme is probably the greatest classical song I've ever heard besides Beethoven's duh duh duh.(I can't remember the name of the song by him.)

 

Dillon, you're probably thinking of the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

And I agree that the theme from Superman is great.

However, neither of these is a song. Songs have words. Just ask Uncle halibut. There's a least one very old thread around here debating whether a track like "Duel Of The Fates" constitutes a song due to the fact that it has a chorus singing words (albeit Sandskrit).

And for the record, John William's score represents 48.327 % of all Star Wars awesomeness.


p.s. I highly recommend listening to all of Beethoven's Fifth as the other three movements are really great too. After that, try out his Third, Seventh and Ninth Symphonies, which are rated even better by many.

 

I knew this would happen when I stepped down

Barriss, get some discipline in here!

EDIT: And gotta agree with the above. 4th Movement of Beethoven's fifth is wonderful. The Ninth symphony is sublime throughout, and his Seventh is stunning.

And for completeness sake, let's stick the Egmont Overture in that list

 

Yeah, Egmont is a tasty little Overture.

And damn, I forgot to list Beethoven's Sixth Symphony as well. These days, I probably listen to that one (Bruno Walter conducting the Columbia Symphony Orchestra) more than the rest, except perhaps the second movement of the Seventh Symphony.

Apologies for continuing off topic.

Let's see...

Let's pick a sublime little cue called "Yoda And The Force". It's the one from the "Try not. Do or do not." scene on Dagobah where Yoda lifts Luke's X-wing out of the swamp. How powerful would that scene be minus the cue? At least 48.327 % less so.

Can you imagine the chase through "The Asteroid Field" without its accompanying cue? And good grief, "Binary Sunset" makes that scene on Tatooine one of the greatest of all time. I think you can see where I am heading with this....

 

I feel like I've got to stick up here for Beethoven's seriously underrated 8th symphony. Not as flashy as most of its brethren, perhaps, but no less a masterpiece.

Good choices, both; personally I'd nominate "TIE Fighter Attack" for the "scene that would be suffer the most if the accompanying music were changed" award.

 

Now you're just being mean to his first 2 symphonies

 

I think if you replaced it with this it wouldn't suffer at all. Although I can't promise you'll ever view the scene the same way again.

 

John Williams' music IS Star Wars to me. Whenever I hear the music, I can picture the scenes in my head.

That said, I have been listening to the credits theme from The Last Crusade all afternoon (on repeat), and I have to say that, as much as I love Star Wars, this is his single best piece.

 

It is good. But honestly Liszt, Prokofiev and Tschaikowsky impress me more. There's just so much repetition in Williams works and some of his pieces are piecemeal, multiple themes that don't fit so well thrown together.

 

I love Williams's music, but I agree it often gets repetitious. And some of it has the tendency to get a little too cutesy/happy-go-lucky, but that might just be a pet peeve of mine. And of course, I can't blame him for doing the scores of movies that tend to be for younger audiences.

EDIT: Speak of the devil -- just saw this link on TFN's main page.

 

If you like Williams you probably like romantic music (especially the later stuff) too. It does have many similarities. Strong emotions, big orchestras and the use of music as a storytelling device.

 

SWT would not be what they are without JW's fantastic scores.

 

I think the work that John Williams did from 1975 (Jaws) through 1982 (ET) was so prolific, creative and original.. that by 1983 and Jedi, he was running out of steam. I still think Jedi's score is awesome (particularly given the fact that Lucas changed the cut of the film so many times, that Williams had to, for time reasons, rely on repeating himself), but clearly his material from this point on was lacking from his scores before this period. But then... how many composers could even hope to accomplish THAT MANY classic scores in a 7 year period??? So, we can allow him a drop in quality, I think.
As to his themes on the Saga...
"Princess Leia's Theme" is one of the most beautiful peices ever written. When I heard it used in ROTS, I got chills.
" The Force Theme" used for the Binary Sunset cue.
"Imperial March" .. what can be said..?
" Han Solo and the Princess" should have gotten it's own track as a theme on the soundtrack, NOT just the cue from the movie.
" The Battle of Yavin".. formerly "The Last Battle"... hands down.. my favorite film musci. I still can recall every note by heart!
I could go on and on...

 

John williams is the mozart or beethoven of the 20th/21st century/modern times.

 

Yep and anybody who doesn't think so knows nothing of music composition orchestration. Hans Zimmer could spend the rest of his life studying orchestration and he could never match the kind of power that John Williams has over an orchestra. I've heard some musicians who have played under him say that he's kind of a [Disallowed word] conductor, but that's really hard to believe when you consider that the original score to A New Hope was deemed by experts as some of the most well conducted music ever recorded in history. Then when you take into account that Johnny did all of the arrangements and placing of the music himself without really the help of anyone (Remember, George is a [Disallowed word] director) there's no way anybody could mock him without being totally ignorant.


PK EDIT: Language

 

Let's just say, without the music it's nothing.