John Williams and why he isnt a great composer.

[Meilthorn]

i Know ,fallotjack, thats who those who love him, we feel offended and dont see the point. Boredom?

 

[Meilthorn]

another thign i dont get is u try to compare em saying all that john does is to play soem drums etc. are u kidding me? what does brahms do?? it has nothing so slight orchestration. which is .. understandable cause he wants the babyto sleep. But still i dont get ur reasoning. Williams is making a symphonic work! with way more than bass drum. Dont u see it?

 

[Gildan Bladeborn]

Ennio Morricone would be an example of this. John Williams though, it's just the same style over and over and over. It's effective as hell the first time you hear it, but if you watch a lot of movies like I do, it sounds far too samey.

He's got a good ear for what's catchy and what isn't, but he's just not diverse enough for me to consider him a brilliant composer.

So essentially, I agree.

Another composer with that problem (to an extent) is Hans Zimmer - someone will be playing the Gladiator soundtrack and for the life of me I'll think I'm hearing the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack until I really pay attention.

Ennio Morricone though... let's just say I was a very happy person when an album of Yo-Yo Ma playing his compositions came into my possession (I could seriously listen to his themes from The Mission all freaking day). An absolutely brilliant composer.

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

I've clearly been wallowing in ignorance, thinking that musical-goodness was a relative term...

You pick music that speaks to you, that's what's great...not what is complex, or what uses less favoured chords or timings.

Alot of people love his stuff, and I know it despite not having seen these films.


I'll leave you with definitive evidence that simple can equal great.

 

[Plurralbles]

"unimaginative and quite boring."

because opinions can be taken to be facts and be measured like volume...

"I'm a music major"

well, I'm a computer programming major. You're using your computer wrong. Get off it now and burn it.

 

[nspaas]

Holst and Tchaikovsky are the original templates for basically all dramatic orchestral film score.

I always found Star Wars to borrow more from Tchaikovsky (Sixth Symphony especially) than Holst....






.....I used to be a music major......

 

[Rorschach II]

snip

did you know that the indiana jones theme is merely the starwars theme but in reverse, seriously.

Hmm. I think I see what you mean. But theres got to be some kind of variation on it. Otherwise it would be TOO obvious.

 

[meticadpa]

Wait wait, are you saying that something has to be more complex for it to be really great?
John Williams is a great composer, and he is great because of his simplicity.

He certainly isn't he greatest composer, but he is very excellent.
Your 'education' has opened your eyes to things that 90% of everyone else wouldn't notice or even care about. That doesn't mean it's bad, it just means you can see area for improvement where other people just are quite happy with it.

I work as a radio producer, making commercials and promos for a radio station. I listen to other radio station imaging and commercials, and I'll complain about audio quality, poor scripts, bad reads, poor transitions, piss-poor promos and imaging, bad choice of imaging voice, etc. Do you know who else hears that? Other producers, and that's it. My wife has no idea what I'm complaining about, because she has no idea.

It doesn't make those other commercials terrible, just terrible to me because I know better. Everyone just shrugs. How can they complain about something they don't know much about?

Likewise, you might be paying attention to the bass-line or percussion of Indiana Jones, and everyone else is just humming the melody.

So what is your response? Make a pointless thread on the internet trying to get everyone to agree with your opinion of a well-received composer because you took some classes and think you know better then a guy who has been doing this for decades?

Or just let people enjoy what they enjoy! Heaven forbid we allow people to have differing opinions on something as subjective as music.

Geez.

You're the bauss.

 

[Carlston]

So he's not good because his music found a popular medium to be heard more often that the other examples?


So it's more jealously of marketing that his talent?

Just sounds like more talented composers need better agents.

 

[mikecoulter]

But... But... But Star Wars, dude. Star Wars.

Yeah, this is exactly what I thought.

Maybe, just maybe he's let his work on Star Wars carry him and allow him to become slightly lazy with his other work? But otherwise, Star Wars...

 

[badgersprite]

Of course he's not necessarily technically great. He doesn't need to be. He's writing the orchestral equivalent to pop music; it's about writing something short, simple, memorable, and evoking a feeling. Soundtracks to movies don't necessarily need to "go anywhere" because you're only going to hear thirty second snippets of most of the songs. Soundtracks don't have to work as "real music".

 

[Rusty Bucket]

How did you manage to major in anything when you can't understand the basic concepts of punctuation or the English language?

 

[SimuLord]

Speaking as a HUGE fan of classical music, albeit one whose training in music theory is limited to MUS121 ("Music Appreciation") as a fine arts requirement for a business major, I love Williams' music because it does exactly what it's supposed to do---provide a sweeping-yet-catchy score for a Hollywood movie.

Saying (and this is essentially what you're saying) that Williams "isn't a great composer" because he's not as deep and layered as, say, Beethoven or Mozart is disingenuous.

You might as well slag on Johann Strauss Jr. because "he only wrote light dance music, he wasn't talented enough to write a symphony" (which you could argue, but light libretto, waltz, and march was his stock in trade and he did it well.) He was a sort of 19th-century John Williams in a lot of ways, and yet for my money he's the best composer I've ever listened to.

 

[CarpathianMuffin]

He composes music with bombast. It has energy and fits with what's going on in whatever medium he composes it for at the time. It may not be particularly excellent, but it adds the extra punch needed to make movies truly great. If Star Wars didn't have the appropriate music, it most likely wouldn't be anywhere near as good. So yeah. I like the work that he's done, but I don't think he's THAT great.