# John Williams' The Fury score



## dcoscina (Aug 17, 2011)

Just got into this score- blows me away how good this guy is. Consider this score written in the vein of Bernard Herrmann the same year he also composed Superman The Movie as well as Jaws 2 (regarded by many as better than the original). The command of harmony that Williams had especially in the '70s scores just amazes. I cannot think of another composer from that era that was able to span the limits of tonality in film scores. No one writes at the level of Williams in his heyday currently. Not even close IMO. 

Here's a couple examples of this amazing score:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2luYef8oCk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNPidX0NKdk


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## mverta (Aug 17, 2011)

...and the more you know the better it gets.


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## David Story (Aug 17, 2011)

The Fury is great, underrated thanks to the films performance at the box office. You might like The Eiger Sanction, Dracula, The Accidental Tourist. They show his range as a film composer and storyteller supreme.

But let's give props to the incomparable Jerry Goldsmith:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYondMo40nA

He has a different brand of tonality.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAU8OOKD ... re=related


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## david robinson (Aug 18, 2011)

dcoscina @ Wed Aug 17 said:


> Just got into this score- blows me away how good this guy is. Consider this score written in the vein of Bernard Herrmann the same year he also composed Superman The Movie as well as Jaws 2 (regarded by many as better than the original). The command of harmony that Williams had especially in the '70s scores just amazes. I cannot think of another composer from that era that was able to span the limits of tonality in film scores. No one writes at the level of Williams in his heyday currently. Not even close IMO.
> 
> Here's a couple examples of this amazing score:
> 
> ...



been studying him.
you'd be right about this guys talent.
absolute master of the medium.
j.


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## nradisch (Aug 18, 2011)

Where can you order the score?


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## dcoscina (Aug 19, 2011)

David Story @ Wed Aug 17 said:


> The Fury is great, underrated thanks to the films performance at the box office. You might like The Eiger Sanction, Dracula, The Accidental Tourist. They show his range as a film composer and storyteller supreme.




Thanks David but I'm a rabid Williams fan since I was 9 years old (1977) and have everything he ever wrote practically. Accidental Tourist is one of my fave scores of his from the late '80s. Dracula deserves a re-release as I have the Varese original recording and would love to hear the extra music that didn't make it on that CD. Eiger Sanction I own but cannot really get into. Some of Fury reminds me of Poseidon Adventure and Towering Inferno, at least harmonically. 

As for Goldsmith, I love his music tons but I think as far as over-all technique, Williams really has it in spades, moreso than any other composer I can think of in film score history. Coming from his jazz background allowed him a very unique compositional voice- his chord voicings and harmonic extensions sometimes betray that background whereas Goldsmith I find was more at home in the avant garde realm using 20th century techniques. His ability to write tunes was deft but not as harmonically elaborate on average as Williams- ST:TMP being an exception. It's like tonality was his nemesis at times whereas I always found Williams' use of dissonance and atonalism to be rather contrived and unnatural. But he was fine with using harmonic instability as a means of contrast in his themes- and his ability of penning themes that shifted chromatically through various key centres but still somehow sounding all fine is very rare.

Don't get me wrong- I love Goldsmith's First Blood, Papillon, Planet of the Apes, Poltergeist, The Edge, etc. etc. but as far as over all compositional abilities, Williams is a freak of nature in that he's a throwback to the consummate composer of yesteryear. He stands with the Mozarts, Beethovens and Stravinsky's of Western Music history in my books.

I think Mike V will back me up on this one.


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## David Story (Aug 20, 2011)

Sure, we're both great fans of Williams!

It only enhances his stature to recognize the greatness of his contemporaries. I've talked with him several times, and he truly respects Jerry and plays his music in concert.

Goldsmith uses more techniques, but John is often greater in the mastery of what he does use, eg motivic tonal melodies and impressionistic orchestration.

The popular Williams is a culmination of romantic, impressionist, 20th century Russian, jazz and broadway sounds. The great confluence of Golden Hollywood. 

But The Fury has cool electronic cues, and CEOTTK has dark atonal sections. He's more than broadway on steroids, or a new Wagner, he is the the great musical storyteller. From kid comedies to searing drama.

And all that tonal writing is thanks to the films he works on, where that kind of music fits. He didn't have to take Jaws or Star Wars, you know. 

I think the lesser known scores actually tell a lot about how he composes. Thanks for the post.


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## mverta (Aug 21, 2011)

Indulge me for a second, boys...

So, what happened was, I was 5, heard Star Wars, decided I wanted to write film music for a living, and immediately began studying classical piano. 6 years of being slapped on the knuckles for changing the music later, I went and studied jazz piano instead where they encouraged improvisation, and my first compositions in junior high and high school were big band charts in that 20's/30's/40's style. 

Despite knowing his music intimately, I knew next to nothing about Williams himself until I got to college, and the day I found out he'd been a jazz session pianist, about 1000 lights turned on in my head and what is my style to this day gelled.


Williams takes "the Russians," and "the French," and everyone else he likes, and filters them through that jazz harmonic vibe. If you study jazz piano, you can actually feel/see it in his voicings on the keys - jazz has a particular sort of contorted, dirty feel to it under the fingers. Jazz loves to turn dissonance into tonality; use it almost like a consonance, which frees up the structure for wild modulations that suddenly seem comfortable and natural. It's the heart of his sound. And, to this day, I don't know if I was drawn to jazz because I sensed that, or if I write the way I do because I like filtering everything through the same filter. 

Either way, it absolutely sets up the dichotomy mentioned here - he at once seems utterly comfortable in this sort of dissonance-as-tonality mode, but when recruiting the more definitive atonality, they come across as perfectly well-executed "effects," but there's not the heart in it. It's a "thing," but it ain't his thing. 


Now, Goldsmith's harmonic language is very different. It wouldn't be unfair to say simpler in some regards, more complex in others, but at it's core is an approachable simplicity which Williams rarely employs. Moreso than even the orchestrational differences between them (Jerry uses much simpler, more pure colors), this is the principle difference between their sounds.


Where they meet on common ground is that they both, structurally, know how to develop motifs or themes in a long-form style. That comes from lots and lots of symphonic training. But approach-wise, Jazz is about "getting it,"; the vibe, the "out," whatever. Being able to adapt and adopt on the fly is a core skill, and it's part of why jazz players are often good at writing in tons of different styles. Taking on the character of the soloist who's suddenly gone in another direction is a huge part of combo or ensemble playing. That skill translates to composing in obvious ways, evident in Williams' writing.

Goldsmith didn't come from that place. He came from a much different direction, and in many ways, is the more "pure" in his symphonic writing.

In the end, both are effective, but fundamentally different. Williams' heart is in his tonal, melodic music, no matter how much he apologizes for it. 


_Mike


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## mikebarry (Aug 21, 2011)

It is why Williams is Williams.

I've been hitting Nixon also - simply remarkable.


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## David Story (Aug 21, 2011)

mverta @ Sun Aug 21 said:


> Indulge me for a second, boys...
> 
> So, what happened was, I was 5, heard Star Wars, decided I wanted to write film music for a living, and immediately began studying classical piano. 6 years of being slapped on the knuckles for changing the music later, I went and studied jazz piano instead where they encouraged improvisation, and my first compositions in junior high and high school were big band charts in that 20's/30's/40's style.
> 
> ...



+1

I started in jazz charts too. Great way to learn.
The jazz filter is a keen observation, it just feels like jazz when you play, especially towards climaxes and softer themes. A lightbulb moment for me was the broadway connection. John was MD on big hollywood musicals, and accompanied pop singers in his pianist days. That's why his tunes sing, imho. Working with Mancini helps too.






The one tiny difference is in Goldsmith's orchestration. He blends timbres better than anyone, just look at the manuscripts. Soft, subtle accents from electronics, percussion, divisi, wws in every bar. Simple it's not. I'm tempted to post something, but this is a JW thread.

The thing that bears repeating is "Williams' heart is in his tonal, melodic music". That's his greatest gift. His love of people communicated through music. Not technique, love.
That's something to strive for.


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## dcoscina (Aug 21, 2011)

The voicings is key for sure. I love the way Williams uses maj7th 2nd inversion voicings for his seminal ;'70s horn parts. I don't know of another composer that exploited this as much as Williams and I would dare say this is a staple of his style. ANyone who apes it basically is tipping their hat to Williams. 

Goldsmith did use expansive harmonies for his more daring scores. Alien (Bartok), Planet of the Apes (Varese), Secret of NIMH (Debussy/Ravel), Legend (Ravel). But I will reiterate that his main themes that had to be tonal weren't quite as harmonically daring as Williams who can channel Elgar, Strauss, Prokofiev (who himself had a whacked out sense of harmony), Rachmaninoff, Korngold, etc.

I found it odd though that Oliver Stone found Williams' NIXON to be very Mahlerian. That is one composer whom Williams doesn't really evoke in his music. At least to my ears and I'm a Mahler nut


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## David Story (Aug 21, 2011)

This is big band voicing, though the rest of the orchestra is more open. I love the mix of techniques.
http://www.box.net/shared/ebe9mdqja5kcdjozv088

David, is it possible there's more than one effective approach to tonality and harmony? I'm just asking how you feel. Is there one right way?

Williams is my favorite. But there are other people who write tonal melodies that are brilliant. Mozart, Copland and Prokofiev, for example. They sound different from Williams, to me. They have a lot in common but are not the same. And all have daring harmonic moments.

I don't like Goldsmith tunes as much, because his heart is in the dark, unpredictable realm of 20th century dissonance. He's channeling Stravinsky, Bartok and Penderecki. And I feel that's just as valid and daring as Copland and Rachmaninoff. And Jerry is more tonal than those experimental guys. It's his brand of tonality. If Alien had a JW score, it wouldn't be as scary - or as imitated. 

You're right, John is the King of tonal themes. 

Nixon has a huge dark feel, maybe OS thinks that's Mahler. John can sound bigger than Gustav, with a smaller orchestra. If 90 piece is small


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## dcoscina (Aug 21, 2011)

I think Goldsmith's orchestration is also a little more streamlined. In an interview, Goldsmith himself said that he thought very linearly- writing one line and adding to it at a time. Williams' jazz sensibilities almost dictate that he thinks vertically, but then again, his flair for melody would dismiss that theory. Either that or he's got such a refined and evolved sense of composition that he's thinking both horizontally and vertically at once. Like I said, the guy is a freak of nature- he lives, breaths and eats music. 
In every interview Goldsmith gave, I never got the sense that he really loved it the way Williams does. It seemed more like a job to him and a painful one at that depending on the project he was on. He was a more cerebral composer and liked to score films with that approach whereas Williams scores movies as a viewer- his music is his response to the film and perhaps that makes his scores more appealing at the end of the day. 

All I know is that I can lift a lot of Goldsmith (full orchestrations) by ear whereas I just cannot do that with Williams as his orchestrations are just too dense....


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## Justus (Aug 21, 2011)

Never heard of this film not to mention the score.
(In german it is called "Teufelskreis Alpha" WTF???)

Every day I re-discover JW and this one is another gem!


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## sherief83 (Aug 21, 2011)

Speaking of Maestro Williams...Apparently he is in Haydn Land lately. Hopefully something will come out of it.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/ ... him-along/


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## RyBen (Aug 22, 2011)

Not to imply that anyone is on JW's level, but I don't think most directors would even permit this sort of music nowadays even if someone WERE on that level. They'd want it a bit more emotionally generalized like today's music. It takes a kind of special director (Spielberg), IMO to allow such a musical presence. Look at Jaws for example. I believe at one point JW wrote some sort of fugue for some part. What modern director in their right mind would allow that?  .. putting into consideration it was a fairly "modern" movie.


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## dcoscina (Aug 22, 2011)

I think animated movies allow composers more creative latitude. How To Train Your Dragon for example.


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## RyBen (Aug 22, 2011)

Huh? That's odd, no hostily toward my comment.. Probably because I meant to say that most directors WOULDN'T permit that sort of music in their movie.


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