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Posted: |
Oct 8, 2015 - 11:19 AM
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By: |
Graham Watt
(Member)
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I urge everyone to really spend time reading the whole interview and watching the videos. It's absolutely jam-packed with gems. Brilliant conversation. The thing is, it's covering so much ground in a chatty way that some topics are going to get short shrift. But there's a great Bartók story, the "fuck off" to Ernst Toch is hilarious, and he mentions Basie, Gillespie, J.J. Johnson, Charlie Parker, Ornette Coleman, Elliott Carter, Richard Straus, Beethoven... loads of stuff just in the passing. It's not an interview about film music.
So I honestly wouldn't get too riled about his stories. The conversation sounds like an encyclopedia condensed right down to the man-in-the-pub minimum. Regarding the Elmer Bernstein comment for example ("It's all watered-down Copland"), I'm sure he didn't mean that literally, but there's a kind of shorthand that people use and understand in all circles. We might be a bit too sensitive to things like that in our own little microcosm, but we all do it I'm sure. Wasn't it Lukas K himself who said something like "all film music is pastiche anyway"(?) Nobody should get offended and point out where film music is NOT pastiche. We knew what he meant.
A little bit of perspective is a wise thing.
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Posted: |
Oct 10, 2015 - 11:36 AM
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By: |
Graham Watt
(Member)
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Could someone please enlighten me as to the relationship between Previn and John Williams? I'm not so much talking about their friendship, but more about what I detect as a kind of symbiotic connection in their music, at least in part. Is it coincidental? Are they both just leaning on similar devices from "earlier classical music" which I haven't been able to pinpoint yet? I'll try not to bang on too much about this. You tell me.
Somebody once said (maybe it was me?) that DEAD RINGER is the greatest John Williams score which John Williams never wrote. It is very Williamsish throughout, but I'm particularly intrigued by the strong horn motif which opens the score...
DEAD RINGER (André Previn) - Right at the start...
https//www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0374gUBlgQ
It's something Previn used frequently in counterpoint, for example in his FOUR HORSEMEN score. And it's quite strikingly similar to what John Williams did more than once in the '60s. NONE BUT THE BRAVE comes to mind, a kind of musical "answer to a question". You'll hear it throughout the Main Title, first at 00:22 then at 00:35. And don't skip the Previnesque opening horns!
NONE BUT THE BRAVE (John Williams) - Right at the start/ 00:22/ 00:35 etc.
https//www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEn0uhDB96Q
And what about Previn's Harp Concerto from 2007? I like it very much, and isn't there (or is there?) a Williams touch throughout, particulary in the strings and flute writing? If you don't want to listen to it all (philistines!), just go to about 09:40 and 24:00...
Harp Concerto (André Previn) - 09:40/ 24:00
https//www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM6DDoTjXXw
Bye bye!
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I'm bumping this, not because I want you to tell me how brilliant I am, but because maybe some John Williams fans (a multitude) will this time see the previous post and find it interesting. It's possible that there are those out there who think "Previn - snob" and won't look at the thread at all, but it might catch one or two more people. Oh, and I really am interested in what I perceive as a Previn-Williams shared musical language.
I always think LatB sounds totally Previn. It has to do with a certain sort of Americana style that was early Williams, before the Straussian thing took over.
It's almost as though Previn represented a sort of watershed between Romantic and more dissonant post- impressionistic styles. The Goldsmiths and Norths went one way, and Williams the other as the river split.
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William, what's LatB?
Sorry: should've been NbtB. Probably some sort of typo or 'helpful' phone keyboard spellguesser intervention.
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Ah! I never even considered the possibility that it might have been a typo, and instead went through all of John Williams' filmography in search of something that matched. But now I see that it was N but the B all along. Seems strange though that you (W DMC C) are the only one to agree on the similarity to some of Previn's scores. It's either too obvious to everybody to be worth commenting on once more, or people don't hear it, or people hear it but think "so what?"
I know .... I can be evil. But actually, I meant NbtB but my digits typed 'Lonely Are the Brave'......
It's so close I first assumed it was Andre. I suppose it's pure sacrilege to wonder if they helped each other out with sketches...
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