![]() ![]() I’m perhaps too pessimistic, but I don’t think Williams’s ‘neoclassicism’ will get back any time soon. Add to this the preference for music that you ‘feel’ instead than music that you ‘listen to’. And the intricate sound design leaves little room for old-fashioned music. His style is not feasible because the fluid digital work-flow of today’s film production, where films are constantly edited until the very last moment before release, does not allow composers to precisely design their music in more complex fashions. But when it comes to the style of today’s film music, I don’t think that Williams really has had a strong impact. – His impact has been enormous as to the increase in consideration for film music as an art and also for the rediscovery of ‘classical Hollywood film music’. What impact has Williams had for the film music industry? He has a knack for writing memorable melodies that are easily hummable – think of the Indiana Jones theme, the E.T. The second characteristic, besides being extremely well-written and orchestrally complex music, is that his music is also very accessible. Every film score by Williams has a considerable number of cues that can be entirely enjoyed in isolation, can even be played in concert without sounding superficial or boring. This is not something that any film music succeeds in doing. – The first reason is that it is music that can stand on its own, even outside of the film. That is why I call Williams’s film music ‘neoclassical’, because its principal characteristic is that of having brought back in a modernized style the music of the classical Hollywood period, says Emilio. – What Williams did was bringing back to life that old style that had disappeared from the cinemas. Symphonic film music and the use of acoustic big orchestras were replaced by more popular, smaller and more up-to-date ensembles – jazz combos, rock bands, theme songs, synthesizers. At the end of the decade it appeared to be dead and buried. This style, the grand-symphonic idiom and the tight musico-visual synchronism, became outdated in the 1960s. This is called ‘ Mickey-Mousing’, named after the use of music in the early Walt Disney cartoons, where you would see the mouse tiptoeing and you would hear corresponding notes of the violins to punctuate each step. It was also a style that consisted in a close coordination of the music and the visuals, a tight synchronism in which music would imitate the visual gestures with corresponding musical gestures. ![]() It was a grand-symphonic style, played by big orchestras, that descended from the late-Romantic 19th century operas and tone poems by composers like Wagner, Strauss and Puccini. So, what is the characteristic of John Williams's music? Emilio explains that Williams has had the merit of reviving the style of the ‘classical’ Hollywood music, that is the music that one would hear in films during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Williams rediscovered 'classical' Hollywood music John Williams and Emilio Audissino, after Williams concert in Vienna with the Wiener Philharmoniker on 18 January 2020. ![]()
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