# So I found something interesting about Film Music...



## jojoju2000 (Jan 5, 2021)

Remember my first post here about John Williams ? So I found this; " Interview " with the Composers Phillip Glass and John Corigliano about how their work in Film Music relates to their more broader classical music sensibilities. PLEASE PLEASE READ THE ENTIRE INTERVIEW IN FULL. It is quite short for a interview so it's easy to read. But I would just like to quote two interesting parts that made me rethink some previous thoughts I had.



> Phillip Glass: " Not that many of them have the opportunity. People who are exclusively film composers usually don't get concert hall commissions. "
> 
> John Corigliano: "I think there's a prejudice that creeps into this matter. When someone primarily is a film composer, and then composes for the concert hall, certain critics will point out how that composer is limited in what he or she can do. But when a classical composer comes into a film, we tend to be treated very well."
> 
> Phillip Glass " It's a lot easier to make your reputation in the straight music world first, and then walk into the entertainment business if you can. But there's another side to that. It took years before people in the film world (I'm talking about mainstream, commercial films) were convinced that I could actually write film scores, long after I had been writing them. For example, a couple of composers who had been hired to do The Hours were fired for some reason. The producer was going around Hollywood asking, 'can anyone around write music like Philip Glass?' And someone said, 'well why don't you call him up?' Which he did, eventually. But it doesn't occur to these people to go to the source!"





> JD "That just proves how elements of your style have permeated the 'Hollywood' sound today, just as Rachmaninov did in movies of the '30s and '40s."
> 
> PG "Actually, my harmonic language usually is more adventurous in my film scores than in my concert music. It's much more dissonant. I'm more liable to sound like other people who write modern music."
> 
> ...


https://www.gramophone.co.uk/features/article/debate-when-is-film-music-classical


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

JD "In fact, many people nowadays first experience orchestral music not through Beethoven, not through Mozart, but John Williams…"

This is completely true. Although "John Williams" could be a placeholder for many orchestral composers of film music, but the point is on target. And this helps orchestras validate the endless pops concerts that they give nowadays with so much of Williams' music. Does it help to bring the audience to the classics? Alas, no.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Better John Williams than with John cage, where everyone whom first listens to Williams' music say it is good. That encourages them to want more, not less.


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## jojoju2000 (Jan 5, 2021)

ArtMusic said:


> Better John Williams than with John cage, where everyone whom first listens to Williams' music say it is good. That encourages them to want more, not less.


Do people tend to forget that when we talk about him ? Or is it because of his status as a film composer ?


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Williams is a composer recognized by many schools of music awarding him Honorary Doctorate of Music. People talk about Williams simply because they love his music. Pure and simple.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

> PG "Actually, my harmonic language usually is more adventurous in my film scores than in my concert music. It's much more dissonant. I'm more liable to sound like other people who write modern music."
> JD "Is that because most people accept dissonance more readily in a cinematic context? Listeners who couldn't sit through Schoenberg's Second Chamber Symphony in concert wouldn't have trouble if it was the soundtrack to Attack of the Killer Tone Rows?"
> PG "Absolutely. After all, wasn't it John Williams who made Stravinsky a popular idiom?"


I think composers of the past were also daring in this regard.
I've called Mozart's ballet music from Thamos, king of Egypt K.345 essentially a sturm-und-drang symphony in 4 movements, but it sounds more dissonant to me than his symphonies at the time (ie. symphony in D K.297, sinfonia concertante K.364), anticipating his own Idomeneo:




this stand-alone dramatic aria from 1777 is also interesting. I can't recall any secular instrumental works of his from this period that's as dissonant (except missae breves, K.257, K.275):


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