Film Music in Concert

The Boston Pops Orchestra was the first orchestra of its kind in the USA: founded in 1885 from the ranks of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, its remit was to offer concerts of light symphonic music. Over the years, and in particular during the fifty-year tenure of its most famous conductor, Arthur Fiedler, the Pops established itself as the premier US orchestra specialising in bridging the fields of 'art music' and 'popular music'. When the Hollywood composer John Williams was assigned the conductorship of the orchestra in 1980, he energetically advocated for the inclusion of film-music repertoire, changing Fiedler's approach significantly. This Element offers a historical survey of the pioneering agency that the Boston Pops had under Williams's tenure in the legitimisation of film music as a viable repertoire for concert programmes. The case study is complemented with more general discussions on the aesthetic of film music in concert.

Chance Encounters with Literature, Language and Meaning in John Williams' Stoner and Eva Hoffman's Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language

John Williams' Stoner and Eva Hoffman's Lost in Translation: Life in a New Language are discrete texts, but both are accounts of literary lives. These are lives that have been moulded around language and literature, as well as lives that have been moulded into literature. Stoner is a fictional account of an unlikely individual's unexpected encounter with the sphere of literary studies, around which he then shapes the remainder of his life. Lost in Translation is a memoir about the author's struggle with language as an immigrant, a struggle that contributes to her exceptional ability to analyse and devise literary narratives. These fortuitous encounters with literature become a means to structure their respective fictional and non-fictional lives. In addition, Stoner and Hoffman are outsiders to academia, but both discover that their outsider status makes them especially attuned to the close analysis of words and to several questions of identity and the self. A comparative reading of Stoner and Lost in Translation thus draws our attention towards several large questions that reside at the heart of literary studies: What do we seek to translate into another language, into a commentary, into works of literary criticism or theory? What do we strive to render visible in our writing and teaching that revolves around these literary works? By reading John Williams' novel alongside Eva Hoffman's narrative, I aspire to lend these fairly abstract questions a more concrete guise. By way of conclusion, I emphasize how due to the force of chance and circumstance, Stoner and Hoffman stumble into literary studies where they are confronted by questions that underscore the arbitrariness and unknowability of literature, language and life.

Animaciones musicales: Marcha Imperial de "El imperio contraataca", John Williams.

Se trata de una animación realizada sobre un fragmento de la Marcha Imperial de “El Imperio contraataca” del compositor de música de cine John Williams. Se ha optado por una estética visual con elementos figurativos icónicos en coherencia con la función de esta pieza musical como parte de la banda sonora de la célebre saga de películas “La guerra de las galaxias”, manteniendo también la lógica formal y resaltando además otros parámetros sonoros y psicológicos de la obra. En el proyecto Animaciones Musicales, a las alumnas y alumnos del grado de Educación Infantil dentro de la asignatura de Didáctica de la Música se pedía elegir libremente una pieza musical instrumental de entre 1 y 4 minutos de duración y, tras su análisis (forma, carácter, parámetros sonoros y elementos más relevantes...), realizar sobre esa base musical una creación visual de animación (empleando el programa PowToon o similar) en la que hubiera coherencia formal entre música e imagen. Se dio plena libertad en la elección de tema, estética visual, parámetros musicales representados, tipo de música... y se fomentó la originalidad en los planteamientos. Los vídeos resultantes se vieron y analizaron colectivamente en clase y también se expusieron públicamente en una pantalla de televisión ubicada en uno de los accesos a la Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación coincidiendo con la Exposición de cotidiáfonos “Se ruega tocar” en la que se mostraban trabajos también realizados por los alumnos de la misma asignatura.

‘Yet another guitar recital filled the Wigmore Hall’: The Popularization of the Classical Guitar in Britain, c.1950–c.1970

The popularity of the classical guitar in Britain surged between 1950 and 1970. The virtuosity of elite professionals led by the pioneering Andrés Segovia and the new stars Julian Bream and John Williams earned the classical instrument considerable purchase within the wider culture. Above all, it inspired thousands of largely middle-class, male, relatively young and urban amateur players, attracted not simply by the instrument’s intrinsic appeal but also by the opportunity offered to display a fashionable modernity and sophisticated connoisseurship. However, although securing for the classical guitar a much-enhanced musical role, these enthusiasts also created an often inward-looking specialist culture.

Republic

This chapter is the first of two “foundations” that form the second part of the book. Starting with an analysis of the analogies drawn between Donald Trump and Roman emperors across the mediascape of 2016, it introduces the temporal and political relationship between the Roman and American republics, via the work of Hannah Arendt and Ian Baucom. It then moves backwards through American history, from the twenty-first to the eighteenth centuries, bringing in a wide range of American writers: Ursula Le Guin, John Williams, Upton Sinclair, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, Louisa McCord, Mercy Otis Warren, and several others. Keeping the Roman analogy at the heart of its discussions, this chapter ultimately demonstrates the ways in which writers generate networks of coeval connection between ancient past and modern present in order to variously uphold and break down the seemingly contingent political, social, and racial logics of American empire.

An Austrian in Hollywood

When interviewed about film music, John Williams is often quick to credit Max Steiner as the originator of the leitmotif technique in film music. Steiner brought with him to the U.S. the compositional techniques he learned as a child prodigy in Europe, including the leitmotif technique. This paper will discuss Steiner’s use of leitmotifs in his Academy Award winning score to the 1942 Warner Bros. film Now, Voyager. Film musicologists disagree on the relevance of themes being heard in different keys throughout a film score and their possible effect on the audience. I intend to demonstrate that, although the significance of these key relationships may only exist on a subconscious level, they do contribute in a meaningful way to the viewing/listening experience. To demonstrate this, I will use examples of “Charlotte’s Theme,” also known as the “Love Theme,” which appears in various keys throughout the film. The key relationships are clearly intentional and well thought out by Steiner. This theme, which is almost always in triple meter, was recorded in 1943 by Allen Miller and his Orchestra as a pop tune, in quadruple meter, with the title “It Can’t Be Wrong.” Steiner plagiarizes himself when this instrumental version is heard as source music in the 1945 Warner Bros. film Mildred Pierce. Vocal versions, including one recorded by Frank Sinatra, include lyrics by Kim Gannon. This version was also sung in the Star Trek: Voyager episode “The Killing Game, Part 1.”