John Williams on the Prisoner of Azkaban Score

[Professor_Snape]

The Chicago Sun Times has talked to film composer (THE GOD) John Williams recently. I have included to full article below or you can click this link: http://www.suntimes.com/output/delacoma/cst-ftr-williams28.html


During the past century, anybody who was anybody in the classical music world has popped up on the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's stage. Its repertoire covers a Who's Who of three centuries, and virtually every living giant of the field, from Richard Strauss to Stravinsky, Toscanini to Solti, Casals to Yo-Yo Ma, have either conducted, appeared as soloists or had their music played by the CSO.
It's safe to say, though, that no musician in the CSO spotlight during its 113 seasons -- with the possible exception of Luciano Pavarotti -- is more widely known than John Williams. A conductor as well as composer of the scores for such iconic films as "Jaws," the "Star Wars" series, "Schindler's List" and the Harry Potter films, Williams makes his downtown conducting debut with the CSO tonight. (He has conducted the CSO at Ravinia several times, most recently in 1999.) Suites from his movie scores are on the program tonight, Saturday and Tuesday, and the final two concerts also include the world premiere of his first concerto for French horn, a CSO commission written for principal horn Dale Clevenger.
Tens of millions of people around the world know Williams' music, from the low, short-breathed rumble of cellos and basses that announces the shark's presence in "Jaws" to the melancholy solo violin theme from "Schindler's List." In addition to writing music for more than 90 films, he conducted the legendary Boston Pops from 1980 to 1993 and is now that orchestra's laureate conductor.
Relatively few moviegoers, however, also know that the 71-year-old Williams is one of those rare Hollywood composers who also has kept a hand in the world of classical music. He has written two symphonies and several concertos, including a cello concerto commissioned by the Boston Symphony for Yo-Yo Ma. Like his new concerto for the CSO and Clevenger, two of Williams' recent concertos were commissioned by major orchestras for their principal players: a bassoon concerto for the New York Philharmonic and a trumpet concerto for the Cleveland Orchestra.
"Most of my work for the past four decades has been in the film area," said Williams, sitting down after a CSO rehearsal earlier this week for an interview in Symphony Center's backstage conductor's suite. When Daniel Barenboim, the CSO's music director, is in residence, a haze from his beloved cigars hangs over the suite's leather couches and easy chairs. Williams, a tall, fit-looking man with a modest manner and gentle voice, limits his indulgence to an occasional swig of bottled water.
"During that time," Willliams continued. "I've had a free month here, six weeks there. I've gotten in the habit -- even when I was a kid -- of composing every day. When I'm working on a film, it has to be six days a week. So if I stop doing that, whenever I'm not working on a film, I feel like I have to be doing something [musical], practicing the piano or writing. It's like a neuromuscular thing."
In composing for the concert hall, Williams exercises different musical muscles.
"In film, what we have to do is very prescribed," he said. "A scene will be three minutes long. There will be dialogue from here to here, there will be action from there to there, it should be soft from here to here. You can make a graphic illustration of what that three minutes has to look like and sound like. But I can sit down with a blank piece of paper and say, 'What do I want to write for Dale Clevenger?' without anybody saying it has to be three minutes long, loud or soft, this or that."
Born in New York, Williams studied piano as a child and moved with his family in 1947 to Los Angeles, where his father, a percussionist, found work in the orchestras that studios typically maintained in those days. As a young man, Williams had no ambitions to write music for movies. As so often happens, he fell by chance into his professional field.
"When I was in school, they didn't teach anything like this," said Williams, the wonder of stumbling into his career still lingering in his voice. "Now every music school has a cinema department. I came to it accidentally. I was a piano student, I married in my early 20s and needed a job. My father said there was an opening at the Columbia Pictures orchestra. They had a 52-week contract, a very good salary. I auditioned and got the job."
For two years, Williams played in the orchestra under Morris Stoloff, a conductor and composer whose lengthy film credits include "His Girl Friday," "The Desperadoes," "The Eddy Duchin Story" and "Fanny."
"Mr. Stoloff would occasionally come over to the piano at the end of the day and say, 'Can you orchestrate? Can you do this little scene for Thursday, for so-and-so?' And with the temerity of youth, I said I could. Pretty soon, I was doing orchestration for older colleagues but still playing in the orchestra. What a school, what a way to learn. I was playing in the orchestra for people like Alfred Newman and Bernard Herrmann and Franz Waxman and orchestrating for some of them." (Newman, Herrmann and Waxman are master film composers whose music also has found a place in the concert hall.)
Eventually, Stoloff asked Williams if he could write a score. Williams said yes, and he started working on "Because They're Young," a 1960 film with thingy Clark as a beleaguered high school teacher dealing with students including Tuesday Weld. Williams was on his way to becoming one of Hollywood's most successful film composers. More than 40 years later, his resume includes 42 Academy Award nominations, five Oscars and 18 Grammys.
Williams has scored most of Steven Spielberg's films and worked often with George Lucas and Robert Altman. He has worked on films as epic as "Jurassic Park" and as relatively intimate as "Catch Me If You Can." But the process usually follows a predictable pattern.
"There are great variations," said Williams, "but most typically, a director will come to a composer with a fairly completely edited film, a first cut or a director's cut. It's usually longer than what the public will see, but at least we can sit and look at something that's fixed in time. We can say, we need music from there to there or so on.
"You really can't get that off the page of script," Williams explained. "There may be one page of script that could be five minutes of film, or five pages of script that's 30 seconds of film. We need to see it."
Williams then starts composing, working on a schedule he describes as "always too little time."
Before arriving in Chicago, Williams was in London catching an early glimpse of the third Harry Potter film, which he is scoring for scheduled release next summer.
"The principal photography is ending about now," he said "I'll record the music in March, so that leaves about two-and-one-half months to write almost a two-hour score. It's colossally tight. And after mid-March, there's another month or six week for mixing and dubbing. So I would say for a picture like that -- fairly long, with special effects -- we're talking about four or five months.''
Thanks to computers and synthesizers, "shrinking post-production periods have become the norm in our business," he said with a sigh. "But I'm still a pencil-and-paper man and I write every note. It's very labor-intensive."
Williams has reduced his conducting schedule in recent years, doing most of it during the summer at the annual Tanglewood Festival in Massachusetts. A chance to write a new work for the CSO and conduct the world premiere was irresistible, however.
"This was such a privilege," he said, "to be invited to come here, that I said I would carve out the week, even in the middle of 'Harry Potter.' "

[Sabastian]

WOW, Thanks Professor!  John Williams is the greatest!  "The God"  I agree.

[Kiara Johnson]

But I'm still a pencil-and-paper man and I write every note. It's very labor-intensive."
^^ That's one of the things I love about him.  He's so....old style.  The man is a genius

[~ Ella]

 :)

[Fawkes]

 :D