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Audio Arts – Week 9 – Semester 2, 2008 “”

What impressed me most about the Hoth ice battle scene was, despite the corniness (Village Voice criticism duly noted!), Williams’ ability to switch between motifs as dictated by on screen action. To perform this with convincing style is extremely difficult.

I have been meaning to experiment with minor/major inversion tricks for compositional sleight of hand for some time. Clearly the effect of this technique is responsible for the Vader theme’s longevity. Other points of interest in Kalinak’s article were exposing the laborious task of orchestration and the discovery of why so many 1960s movies annoy me. Why cant American business men stick to their own game? This high jacking of film to sell Pop records reminds me of a certain 1950s US songwriter who felt threatened by the self contained juggernaut of Elvis Presley. The said composer put his art on the back burner for a while and (in the traditional entrepreneurial US style of marketing mindless crap to mindless consumers) created some stupid little collector dolls of the King himself. Once these were on the open nick-knack market they apparently outsold Elvis’ ludicrously high record sales in the first year! It seems a fitting story to parallel with a time when the accompanying Pop songs of many pictures “out grossed the films they were composed for.” (Kalinak 1997: 3)


Reference:

Harrald, Luke. “Audio Arts – Week 9 – Semester 2, 2008.” Lecture presented at EMU Space, level 5, Schultz building, University of Adelaide, 7th of October 2008.

Kalinak, Kathryn. “John Williams and ‘The Empire’ Strike Back.” Online article, accessed 9th of October, 2008. URL: http://web.archive.org/web/19970516041818/
http://citd.scar.utoronto.ca/VPAB93/course/readings/kalinak.html

Labels: Audio Arts IIIB

posted by David J Dowling @ 1:33 PM