Christopher Smith wrote:
On Dec 30, 2004, at 8:19 PM, Bruce Petherick wrote:
And to add to the John Williams thing: Having worked in/for Hollywood composers orchestrations are his own, in that he did come up with the original sounds in the first place
Not Holst, Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, et al? A master's musicology student I went to school with put together a series of needle drops from famous composers' somewhat derivative. EVERYTHING is derivative in some way, and I never held that against anyone.
Yet, and I'm sorry to say it this way, but commissioning work in a certain style does NOT make you the originator; the person who DOES the work is the originator. As much respect as I have for JW, this info diminishes him in my eyes. It pretty much reduces him to the role of a music editor who can write a melody.
As loathe as I am to defend Mr Williams..... The reality is that a lot of this cribbing has to do with a couple of things. The _main_ reason is that the producer/director will often (as in almost all the time) give you a direction as to how the music should sound eg Tchaikovsish, Mozart ".. just like that tinkly piano thing he wrote", etc etc I can a little private story, with all the names removed for contractual reasons:
I was working on a big film and the well-known director had hired a relatively unknown composer. The direction was "it is a big epic film with a hard edge. I need an orchestral score that sounds like the Planets. Just copy that!". I had been working with this composer for a while teaching orchestration/arranging and I suggested that we should use some Mahler as our object to copy (The composer was very untrained to do this, although their music in other forms is very good). I took some of the middle symphs, and we listened a couple of times through and picked some section that we liked and then copied the basic arrangement (which instrument has the tune, what the voicing was, who played a counter melody etc etc). The score had to do be done fast (what else is new) and I thought it all went quite well. What is mortifying for me now, is that the film score is heavily criticized for copying Holst! I am not too sure if my teaching completely failed, or that some parts of Mahler when played in a certain way......
Just to make clear what I meant before about JW and his orchestrations - what I meant was, no matter from where he originally got his voicings etc, his early scores where orchestrated by him, and it was only then when everyone wanted the Williams sound that he used the shortcuts. [I should state that I have never worked, or even met John Williams, but my information comes from 2 quite reliable sources and was true at least for the late '70s and '80s]
Then she demanded to be credited as arranger on the parts for the musicians! I think she thought this would increase her reputation in the eyes of her musicians, plus she
(similar story for me except the singer was a actress from a well-known Australian soap, and she sang me 5 secs of something that was in her head, which I turned into a 5 minute theatre piece).
for me to be her "ghost writer." I see no difference between that and JW, if indeed this is his usual work method.and this will be true of almost every Hollywood composer - I am not too sure about Randy Newman, as his arrangements are almost always unique.
I wonder then if the photocopied sketches I saw, purportedly in his hand, were actually the work of one of his assistants?
Or perhaps he sketches himself for the important cues?
Without knowing the exact circumstance, I wouldn't know. Perhaps he is trying to build up an archive for history :-)
Bruce Petherick _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
