"Yet the music, with its tonal range and depth of expression, enthralled me as completely as Dvorak or Stravinsky or Bach."
Perhaps it's true for the author, but William's music is foremost functional, and can best be compared to the lighter late Romantic repertoire. It usually makes me think of opera. It serves to underscore a few emotions, mainly "danger" and "excitement". It is very well done, and sometimes downright beautiful, but it doesn't have the development of Beethoven and Brahms, nor the contrapuntal and harmonic depths of Bach, nor the innovations and quirkiness of Stravinsky, nor the subtlety of Ravel. It doesn't follow its own path, but the flow of the movie (although Mickey Mousing is too strong for his better known works). It's also written 100 years too late.
I greatly admire Williams, but if I had to, I'd gladly exchange his oeuvre for Bach's 18 great chorale preludes, Schubert's string quintet, Beethoven's Große Fuge or Finzi's Eclogue.
I don't really know. Amadeus is my absolute favorite movie of all time, but it has been set around the music. Tous les Matins du Monde is another fond memory, but it's a biopic of Marin Marais, a composer. In Diva, the excerpt from La Wally works well. The Ride of the Valkyries (sp?) is of course famous, but not so impressive. Let's not forget 2001, a Space Oddyssey.
My favorite moment is literary. In one of Douglas Adams' books (Dirk Gently), someone hears fantastic music from some alien space station that he has to "destroy" in the past or something, altering the timeline of the universe, and thus losing the music. But then when he comes back, his girlfriend plays that same music on the cello. I copied this from the book:
His face was so amazed that she stopped playing the instant she saw him.
"What's wrong?" she said, alarmed.
"Where did you get that music?" said Richard in a whisper.
She shrugged. "Well, from the music shop," she said, puzzled. She wasn't being facetious, she simply didn't understand the question.
"What is it?"
"It's from this cantata I'm playing in in a couple of week," she said, "Bach, number six."
"Who wrote it?"
"Well, Bach I expect. If you think about it."
"Who?"
"Watch my lips. Bach. B-A-C-H. Johannes Sebastian. Remember?"
"No, never heard of him. Who is he? Did he write anything else?"
Susan put down her bow, propped up her cello, stood up and came over to him.
"Are you allright?" she said.
... [bit later, Richard calls his friend] ...
"Reg, the music -"
"Ah yes, I thought you'd be pleased. Took a bit of work, I can tell you. I saved only the tiniest scrap, of course, but even so I cheated. It was rather more than one man could actually do in a lifetime, but I don't suppose anybody will look at that too seriously."
My favorite use of The Blue Danube is actually at the end of The Wages of Fear (1953). I've read the Dirk Gently books but it's been a long time and I don't remember that passage. I wonder if that's where the movie Yesterday got its idea from?
BTW, you've seen Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense, yes? I know it's not classical obviously but as far as films set to music, it's hard to top.
It’s commercial art, equivalent to the work that, say, accompanies an ad, or a newspaper article. Nobody would sit down and listen to the musical score of Star Wars without the film playing at the same time.
He may have written other, more interesting work but I’ve never heard any.
That's funny, I was at a 4th of July gathering this week where tens of thousands of people listened to an orchestra play "Across the Stars Suite" from Star Wars before a fireworks show.
I actually enjoy film music. Well, sometimes. I've got some Williams, Korngold, Morricone, (Elmer) Bernstein, etc. discs with suites from movies. Then again, I also dabbled a bit in writing film music, so I come at it from another angle. It's an art, but indeed an applied one.
But Williams' music works well in isolation if you listen to it as people listen to e.g. Lehar or the Johann Strausses.
