[Nico responds: Oh no, girl, it’s a totally different thing. I mean, it’s tacky and big and crazy, but I think it’s very brave. Can you imagine the “sci-fi” score, or the score with too much emotional investment in that dippy story? It’s a Big American Operatic score, and I think it works great. Now, that said, the last 3 are a nightmare. But the first three I think work very very well WITH THE FILM. I’m not about to sit down and listen. So maybe we’re both right. Or something. Nico]

[Nico responds: I know. Did anybody say that it had been?]

But is it “kiddie” enough for a Harry Potter movie? (Need music for a Harry Potter movie be “kiddie”?)

[Nico responds: you know who loves Lost is violists. That whole thing is built on weird viola sul ponticello effects. I like that music, inasmuch as I like that show. It does a good job making me continue to like it and doesn’t get in the way.]

Do the soundtracks to Empire of the Sun, JFK, Munich and Catch Me If You Can sound like “budget-” or “pop-Wagner”? I can understand people saying that for some of his scores, and I’d wager that even he’d admit that he phones some of them in. But what do you expect? Given the amount of time he’s likely given to produce a score for a feature-length film and the expectations, there’s likely to be some cribbing, both from himself and from others.

[You know, I really didn’t mean “Budget Wagner” in a pejorative sense. Obviously, a film score is a thing that gets turned around in about six weeks and is not usually the intellectual or emotional centerpiece of its composer’s life’s work. So, I’m not accusing anybody of anything bad. I like those Williams scores. I am more interested in thinking about the tradition of it, at least here…]

Considering that Wagner took nearly 30 years from conception to completion of the Ring cycle, it seems only natural that it’s going to be more refined than any film score out there. Williams and his colleagues don’t have the luxury to take a six year break from writing out a film score like Wagner did for Siegfried (or Boulez from Anthemes to Anthemes II, for that matter).

[Good point! Ha. He did take that little breather, didn’t he.]

I for one see no problem with a film like Hook, Harry Potter, or Star Wars having a quasi-late-Romantic sound (although in my mind he cribs more from Sibelius, Korngold, Szymanowski and early Stravinsky than from Wagner), since the subject matters of the films are basically watered-down Northern European fantasy storytelling intended to be “popular”. When the subject matter goes beyond that, Williams usually delivers and does so quite well. Similarly, in films that deal with fantasy or sci-fi in a more original way, the composers typically produce corresponding scores (Pan’s Labyrinth and Gattaca come immediately to mind).

[Yeah, you’re right about Sibelius. And I’m not sure how what I originally posted turned into “let’s be mean to John Williams” or “let’s defend John Williams” because that really was not my intention, so, I’m sorry to have been oblique. I really like the John Williams scores to the first few H.P. movies, and I guess what I’m trying to say is that this new film sounds like budget Wagner because dude has to write it using JW themes but without what I would imagine to be JW’s technical facility and never-failing sense of what is appropriate in film music. His music is like the band at a great wedding; they’re there, you can listen or not, and their tuxedos are appropriate and not ratty and they never let you catch them smoking pot in the back by the dumpster, if you know what I mean. Appropriate, fun. So, there you go. I love that Gattaca and haven’t seen Pan’s Labyrinth. I remember seeing Gattaca in the theaters in front of somebody who actually said, at one point, “Dag, Uma,” which should slap a date on that right quick.

Also, thank you for your point about the Northern European Fantastic. While I agree that the Wagnerian model is “appropriate” in that sense of the word, these stories are meant to be happening now, so I don’t see any reason why other anxious musics of northern europe shouldn’t have crept into that framework. I could imagine a fully spectral score for that movie, too: anxious and ravishing. Film music is a site where you can do basically whatever you want, at least in terms of budget, so if what you want is a really over-amplified harp, that’s great, wonderful, take that shit to the bank. Or, for instance, if you want to get out of a temporal reference point, music can be a great way to do it, for instance, the first chord of Star Wars says that we are not, in point of fact, in Hi-Tech Space. If they had hired Wendy Carlos, that would have been great for other reasons, but it would not have transported the films to the Epic Place. Those weird, brief, creepy moments in HP always seem a little bit throw-away in the score in a way that they are not in the production design, which is taking advantage of all the fanciest technology in the world to make things that reference the tradition but also expand the boundaries into the modern age in which those films are set.

In any case, thank you for your comments; I will try to be more clear if I start having other composers’ names in my mouth! And I’ve been enjoying your blog, too; that concert in the Basel Gare du Nord sounds amazing!]

[Nico repsonds: Dear Richard, Yeah, I liked that Birth. Also the movie was pretty great and weird. And her husband totally ate it right where I used to run all the time. And I may have mis-spoken or -typed; I do like those John Williams scores because he knows his way around the orchestra, and he knows his way around character development through music. My objection to the score to this one was just that I felt like I was taking a bath in 98.6° water. As for the Englishness/Americanness of these movies, I cannot speak to it…]

It’s not as funny when you leave a comment logged in as “admin.”

“Her prose style, heavy on cliche, makes no demands upon her readers. In an arbitrarily chosen single page–page 4–of the first Harry Potter book, I count seven cliches, all of the “stretch his legs” variety. Can more than 35 million book buyers, and their offspring, be wrong? yes, they have been, and will continue to be for as long as they persevere with Potter.”

Ain’t he funny? As for John Williams, Mr. Bloom has politely declined to comment.

(Also it is not clear that anyone in HP world reads a novel. This is perplexing to me. But perhaps I am forgetting? And do they listen to music?!? Not very much, eh? They certainly don’t seem to do music or art at school. They seem to have newspapers, various interactive media including photographs and sports-figure cards and comic-type stuff…)

Nico responds: True, there is no art class or no music class. It’s a vocational school, I guess? Juilliard was like that too; there was this class called “Humanities.” There does appear to be a choir, though, conducted by that dwarf. Too bad; Magic Orchestra would be much preferable to those endless قدج matches. So-spelled because one time, in Arabic class, I had to write about a movie I had recently seen and was forced to describe how I found the “Qidj” match a little bit long. Anyway, yes.

We all get excited when we recognize some more sophisticated references in Rowlings, but let’s not kid ourselves that this is sophisticated stuff.

You and I might not think Boulez’s music it’s too high falutin’ but as Alex Ross wrote in a recent New Yorker essay on Sibelius, “Emerging from the process [of composition] is an art work in code, which other musicians must be persuaded to unravel.”

Film–for all it’s strengths–isn’t a Gesamktkunstwerk, music plays a largely supporting role and, even if the aesthetic of the score of the latest offering allowed the insertion of these musical suggestions, it would probably leave most viewers irritated and Boulez’s code is too difficult for them.

I’m happy that many unsuspecting viewers will find themselves watching a film of a much darker genre–especially politically–than before.

I’m gay myself and despite Marc’s (gay-friendly) comments, I hardly recognize any of the characters as gay. A bit of ying-yang sexual tension between Ron and Draco would have hit to spot.

Nico comments: Hi Fergús: I’m pretty sure that all those great Hitchcock movies were aimed at a “middle-brow” audience, too, and the scores for those have lots of secret nuggets and good stuff up-in. Thinking about North by Northwest in particular… and I guess my main objection is less highbrow/lowbrow than “modern notion of tension and anxiety” versus “19th century notion of tension and anxiety.” Thanks for your comments!

[Nico responds: Tótally. Movies with scores by John Williams are always satisfying; it’s always just interesting enough that you don’t want to kill yourself and always splashy enough that you feel like you are In the Movies. So, that’s fun. I think he’s the only person who can even come close to doing an okay job of ytt.]