moriarty@uw-june.UUCP (05/19/84)
> >> ... (too bad John Williams, Jerry Gold- >> smith or Michael Kamen didn't get to score it). > >John Williams, perhaps the greatest thief in the history of music. What's >worse, with his highly derivative Star Wars score, he started an horrific >trend towards making ALL adventure movie scores sound like ripoffs of >a combination between Holst's "Mars" and Stravinsky's "Sacre du Printemps". >Rick Wakeman is an amateur next to Williams. (Didn't Williams also write the >theme music from Lost in Space?). Goldsmith is not much better. Where is >Bernard Herrmann when you need him??? >-- > Rich Rosen pyuxn!rlr Hold on a minute, Rich. While I agree that I wouldn't have liked to see Williams score the soundtrack to "Risky Business", there is no way I would call him a thief. The Star Wars soundtracks were done in a way to recall the adventure soundtracks of the 30's and 40's... Max Steiner and Erich Korngold's beautiful, bouncing adventure themes. This type of movie has caught on, and Williams is adept at putting together the rousing marches which seem to fit these movies. Does this make the aforementioned composers thieves... does this make John Phillip Sousa a thief, with his great many marches? Also, while most of his scores HAVE sounded a bit like one another lately, check out some of his earlier stuff... "The Cowboys" and some earlier musicals. And while I think it can be valid to say that William's music has, of late, sounded much the same (I don't believe it, but there are different definitions for variety for each person), there is NO POSSIBLE WAY one could consider Jerry Goldsmith unoriginal! My God, look at his career! Twilight Zone (TV show & movie), Patton, L'Idyllic, and so many others I can't even begin to recall all of them! If this man doesn't have variety in this field, I don't know who does. As a sop, I miss Bernard Herrman, too; there are enough Lalo Schifferns out in the soundtrack industry to make the return of a great score composer a vast improvement for the industry. "...in an iron coffin, with spikes on the inside!" Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer UUCP: {ihnp4,cornell,decvax,tektronix}!uw-beaver!uw-june!moriarty ARPANET: moriarty@washington