Does Star Wars soundtrack count as classical music?

[karlhenning]

Another point. Consider the list given us: Shostakovich, Copland, Prokofiev, Bax, Eisler, Korngold, Toch, Frankel, Schnittke, Rota, Alwyn, Arnold, Walton and Vaughan Williams.

Now, I am going to reduce the list slightly, to reflect composers with whose oeuvre I am to some degree reasonably familiar: Shostakovich, Copland, Prokofiev, Korngold, Toch (really an excellent, underexposed composer, BTW), Schnittke, Walton and Vaughan Williams.

Something which is true of the practice of composition in the case of all these eight composers is, they have written works which can be (and are) programmed as the significant works in a concert: symphonies, oratorios, (proper) concertos.  (And to repeat an idea I have brought forward before, this is no mere accident of scale, but a question of the composer's competence in managing composition.)

I have heard, live or via radio broadcast, several "concert" works by John Williams.  But they were always the opener, a musical hors d'oeuvre, and not the main musical dish. Why?  Is that merely some prejudice on the part of (e.g.) James Levine?

If we are calling John Williams's work "classical music," what short-cuts are we, in our affection for those bemused hours in the cinema, freely allowing him?

[karlhenning]

I think it of interest, too, that Neal considers The Respectful Opposition here to be "tearing Williams down." It doesn't seem to occur to Neal that placing Williams in the ranks of Shostakovich, Copland, Prokofiev, Bax, Eisler, Korngold, Toch, Frankel, Schnittke, Rota, Alwyn, Arnold, Walton and Vaughan Williams may be overstating his talents.

[mc ukrneal]

Neal, you do not understand my part of this, long-term conversation regarding my own vocation, an artistic practice in which I have significant experience, if you really believe (as you caricature) that I am tearing Williams down.

Now, you say his music stands on its own. Yet you don't answer my simple request for three concert works which do "stand on their own."

How can you assert that any of his movie music "stands on its own"?  There's certainly a great deal of wiggle room in the discussion of music; but there, I think you have made one of the comparatively few impossible statements.

You also avoid the thread's hard (and genuinely interesting) questions with mere bromides. Is John Williams' work "classical music" because he has a successful Hollywood career (which, for the record, I do not envy)? Is it "classical music" because you leave the cinema humming the tunes? Is it "classical music" because of all the awards he's won (and we all know how reliable Hollywood's awards are, as an indicator of cultural worth!)?

But no, you don't permit the discussion, because you mis-characterize it as "tearing Williams down." I wish you might have addressed some of my points, instead of playing at Head Master.

You call me a headmaster (never been one of those - sounds cool) and then proceed to take the role onto yourself. This is not your thread to dictate what I should do or have to do. But that isn't worth us agruing over.

Unlike you, I don't think the classification particularly interesting or useful. It doesn't help us to understand anything new. Perhaps I am too practical on this matter. In any case,  I won't be wasting others time if they feel it doesn't add to the conversation. The reason I feel this way is that some here are using it as a way to elevate some composers and bring down others.  And it is a trap. We should celebrate a composer for what they are, not whether they fit some category or other.

Three concert works - I'm sure you can find what you like on wiki or other sites. Several works come to mind, including NBC's theme music and several hyms/marches for the olympic games. But I don't see what this or the other various concertos he wrote adds to the conversation. One doesn't need to justify his music on someone else's terms to make that music worthwhile. He didn't write like Bax, Korngold, Vaughn Williams, etc. But neither did they write like him.

You then implied that Williams has no expertise in composition - an absurd statement as far as I can see and not one that can be justified based on what he has written. I hope you were just exaggerating or something. One simply doesn't become successful without it. Otherwise, you would just have just bits and pieces of things - nothing would hang together.

Williams music doesn't stand on its own? I have several discs of his music. I enjoy listening to it (I gather you would not).  I assure you, it stands just fine on its own merits. Sometimes I even forget what movie it was associated with.   And if you want an example, just take the opening section to Saving Private Ryan. It's fabulous music even if you disassociate it from the film.

[mc ukrneal]

I think it of interest, too, that Neal considers The Respectful Opposition here to be "tearing Williams down." It doesn't seem to occur to Neal that placing Williams in the ranks of Shostakovich, Copland, Prokofiev, Bax, Eisler, Korngold, Toch, Frankel, Schnittke, Rota, Alwyn, Arnold, Walton and Vaughan Williams may be overstating his talents.

You write too fast. I can;t keep up AND do my job! Yikes!

Man, you're gonna hate me, but I don't think so. In fact, If you forced me to rank them, I would put him on par with Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Copland, and Vaughn Williams. You seem to find that insulting for some reason that I have yet to fathom. (Maybe insulting is the wrong word - couldn't come up with a better one)

[Grazioso]

I think it of interest, too, that Neal considers The Respectful Opposition here to be "tearing Williams down." It doesn't seem to occur to Neal that placing Williams in the ranks of Shostakovich, Copland, Prokofiev, Bax, Eisler, Korngold, Toch, Frankel, Schnittke, Rota, Alwyn, Arnold, Walton and Vaughan Williams may be overstating his talents.

I should note that I didn't include him in that list to comment on his worth or ability.

Secondly, you keep bringing up (and tearing down) Williams's compositional skills. The relative, subjective quality of his work for film or directly for the concert hall is irrelevant here.

It's a question of classification, and you seem to proceed under the assumption that "classical music" necessarily equals "good music," Williams is supposedly bad, ergo his music isn't classical or couldn't reasonably be construed as such.

When I hear his scores, I hear orchestral incidental music that, in its use of melody, harmony, rhythm, and orchestration, bears close resemblance to other orchestral incidental music, largely in the Western Romantic classical tradition. It's just that, unlike, Shostakovich or Prokofiev et al., he's not an officially canonized "classical" composer who appears in textbooks and concert halls with the same regularity.

If anything, the Star Wars soundtrack seems to have much more in common with what we normally consider classical music than not, and there's certainly no harm in people enjoying it or using it as an entryway to what you consider classical music proper.

[karlhenning]

I should note that I didn't include him in that list to comment on his worth or ability.

Noted.  As is probably apparent from my part in the conversation, I do think the nature of his ability is an interesting subject, and that it does figure in the topic of this thread.

Secondly, you keep bringing up (and tearing down) Williams's compositional skills. The relative, subjective quality of his work for film or directly for the concert hall is irrelevant here.

Again, I call it "discussing the nature and quality of his work."  I wonder why more than one participant in the discussion seeks to marginalize my part in the conversation by smearing it as "tearing Williams down."  It is a most peculiar conversation, in which the quality of Williams's work is supposedly irrelevant, but the fact that a composer considers that question is supposedly inadmissably critical.

It's a question of classification, and you seem to proceed under the assumption that "classical music" necessarily equals "good music," Williams is supposedly bad, ergo his music isn't classical or couldn't reasonably be construed as such.

Ah, but you see, since you are playing into the game of "What Karl is saying, and all that Karl is doing, is 'tearing Williams down'," you mistake this aspect of my argument.

There is a lot of bad music which is classical music.  Mediocre composers of the Baroque and Classical eras (whom we shan't name, because then there will be a hue and cry about how really they're great composers, too).  Really, the assertion that I am supposedly equating "classical music" with "good music" is practically refuted before the statement opens out onto the air.

OTOH, there is frequently in these threads a tendency for the "good music is music which I like" wheeze to creep in.

Furthermore, I remind you that I happily remove the question from any matter of John Williams at all.

So:  if we consider Adams's El niño and Boulez's Sur incises "classical music," is a movie soundtrack also "classical music"?

You're perfectly right that part of the slipperiness of this discussion is, the matter of defining "classical music."

When I hear his scores, I hear orchestral incidental music that, in its use of melody, harmony, rhythm, and orchestration, bears close resemblance to other orchestral incidental music, largely in the Western Romantic classical tradition. It's just that, unlike, Shostakovich or Prokofiev et al., he's not an officially canonized "classical" composer who appears in textbooks and concert halls with the same regularity.

I love the "It's just that..."! What in your opinion are the reasons that Williams has not been "canonized"?

Your remark here touches on a suggestion I was planning to offer earlier.  Listen to one of the suites from Prokofiev's Romeo & Juliet; listen to side A of the soundtrack to Star Wars (and disregard the fact that, e.g., Williams cribbed so heavily from Mars in Holst's The Planets). Repeat, so that you listen to each three or four times.  There is a difference in quality in the use of the orchestra, which is not on the plane of musical personality.

When I hear his scores, I hear a use of the orchestra which a bit too frequently reminds me of short-score marching band.  (Is John Philip Sousa "classical music"? Must be: there is a Sousa series on Naxos.)

If anything, the Star Wars soundtrack seems to have much more in common with what we normally consider classical music than not, and there's certainly no harm in people enjoying it or using it as an entryway to what you consider classical music proper.

No one is suggesting that there is any harm in people enjoying John Williams movie soundtracks. What an idea!

Does a movie soundtrack count as classical music?...

[MN Dave]

I believe they call it Soundtrack.

[MN Dave]

Popular Orchestral might be accurate.

[karlhenning]

Here's something interesting from Wikipedia!

Notably, Williams has won the Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Composition for his scores for Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Superman, The Empire Strikes Back, E.T. The Extraterrestrial, Angela'a Ashes (1999), Munich (2005), and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The competition includes not only composers of film scores, but also composers of instrumental music of any genre, including composers of legitimate classical fare such as symphonies and chamber music.

There you have it:  Williams has received multiple awards for best instrumental composition, and in each of those years, his composition was superior to anything composed for symphony orchestra or chamber ensemble.

I consider my question quite amply answered.

[MN Dave]

It's music that sounds like classical music. 

[karlhenning]

It's music that sounds like classical music. 

Nicely played! (I'm not a doctor, but I do play one on television . . . .)

[MN Dave]

Nicely played! (I'm not a doctor, but I do play one on television . . . .)

Exactly. It looks like a duck and sounds like a duck but some of its feathers are falling out revealing the mockingbird beneath.

[canninator]

Fine. I am making a point which was not made by the cited post;  nothing particularly unusual there, I trust.

Nor have you addressed my question.  And, as we amply see on the forum, not addressing a questioner's actual points is nothing new, either.

I love it! I ask a question, as a composer myself, about the discipline of composition, and inviting nuance into the matter, and indeed inviting thoughtful and considered response, and I get A quick Wikipedia search! Wonderful!

I haven't read the Wikipedia article. One reads wonderful things there, to be sure!  I shall tell you what I know.  I have heard, performed live at Symphony Hall, two "concert" works by John Williams, which were negligible in content (not merely light, you understand, but negligible) and whose scoring was amateurishly ham-fisted (for but one obvious example, places where the accompaniment was too thickly scored for a harp soloist).  Ham-fisted, but obviously the work of someone who had generated the Procession and Ritual Clambake of the Ewoks.

I certainly agree that the role played by the quality of the work has not yet been satisfactorily discussed in this matter.  But there is a difference between a contemporary of Mozart's, whose writing is relatively uninspired, and a contemporary of ours.  That difference, too, is one I think there would be value in exploring.

One of the interesting things about this thread, is that those who invite us to view John Williams as, not merely a composer of classical music, but as the equivalent in our day of Giacomo Puccini, is that the arguments are on the order of a cookie-cutter.  Now, there are contexts and threads in which I happily embrace the question of Is it just all music?

In this thead, though, where the very title asks a probing question, we have one of the many contexts in which much of the value is to be found in discussing the distinctions between apparently similar objects.

My question therefore stands.  Setting aside the lists on Wikipedia, who has heard three concert works by John Williams which justify his inclusion in a list with (and I quote) Shostakovich, Copland, Prokofiev, Bax, Eisler, Korngold, Toch, Frankel, Schnittke, Rota, Alwyn, Arnold, Walton or Vaughan Williams?

For, as it is, it reads no great deal unlike Thomas Kinkade is an artist, just like Manet, Renoir, Matisse, Picasso, Miró, Klimt, Klee, Mondrian, Picasso, O'Keefe, Rothko & Hopper.

If it will help the great fans of John Williams to focus on the question outside of their sentimental fondness for the many movies he has scored: Strike the phrase Star Wars from the title of this thread.

Does a movie soundtrack count as classical music?  Why or why not?  Does the question yield an answer which applies to all movie soundtracks without distinction?

Dude calm down. I have zero interest in answering these questions and don't give a tiny gnats chuff if I have somehow failed an arbitrary intellectual standard for this forum. This board doesn't incite me to those dizzy heights.

I was making two points.

1. From my brief reading, between doing other things, you appeared to have made a mistake in assuming that the original poster was talking about "quality" of composer rather than the media for which they had composed. If that was an error on my part, I apologize, but it's not that big a deal. I wasn't rude about it.

2. You made a blanket statement about a lack of compositional skill which I think it was quite reasonable to call you out on. I even did it with cute emoticons to let you know I'm just mucking about so I'm not sure why you bunched your panties up like that. Having said that, you gave two very reasonable examples to support your statement, I'm happy, I've never heard any of his concerti so I'll take your word for it (even though your blanket statement is still not formally correct).

3. I've always had respect for you and in my limited dealings with you I have always been polite although, as here, direct so please lose the passive-aggressive in future. It's unbecoming.

[Daverz]

I think rejecting the music as "classical" on the narrow grounds that it is from a soundtrack ignores that the Star Wars music has been made into a concert suite, as has the "Close Encounters" music, and I'm sure other Williams scores.

[karlhenning]

I think rejecting the music as "classical" on the narrow grounds that it is from a soundtrack ignores that the Star Wars music has been made into a concert suite, as has the "Close Encounters" music, and I'm sure other Williams scores.

Well, say a concert suite has been made of a string of Beatles songs (and it may well have been done).  Does that make the Beatles "classical music"?

[Scarpia]

I see that this has turned into the typical web forum argument, where people are arguing about whether something is classical music or not, apparently oblivious to the fact that no clear definition of classical music has been agreed upon.

The fact that music is a movie score only indicates someone played it during a movie.  The fact that it is a movie score has nothing whatsoever to do with whether it is classical music or not.  Bona fide classical music gets incorporated into movie scores all the time.  The reason you are still  bickering is because you can't agree what is classical music and what is not, whether it is part of a movie score or not.

Now, the fact that the Atlanta symphony performed the Star Wars Suite for Orchestra on the same program as Holst's Planets would seem to indicate that some, not totally irrelevant, people consider it classical music.  You may consider it unsophisticated on bombastic, but I'd say it is very subtle compared to 90% of Khatchaturian's output, for instance.

[karlhenning]

Dude calm down.

I didn't think any of us was less than calm.

I have zero interest in answering these questions . . . .

All right.  I can hardly demand answers, to questions I am turning around myself.

I was making two points.

1. From my brief reading, between doing other things, you appeared to have made a mistake in assuming that the original poster was talking about "quality" of composer rather than the media for which they had composed. If that was an error on my part, I apologize, but it's not that big a deal. I wasn't rude about it.

What have I missed? Who said you were rude?

Near the beginning of the thread, Ernie offers the opinion that, if it can be given as a concert suite, we can call it classical.  Just here, I think we subvert that with the proposal to prepare a concert suite of Beatles favorites.

Is the idea that if there is an orchestra involved (the medium), then the label "classical music" applies?  Do I misunderstand you?

I should disagree, though that disagreement does not mean that I question your intelligence at all.

2. You made a blanket statement about a lack of compositional skill which I think it was quite reasonable to call you out on.

Remind me what I was "called out on"? I missed that somehow.

I have never claimed that Williams has no skill.  I have questioned the degree to which his tool box aligns with (say) Shostakovich's, Copland's or Vaughan Williams's tool box.  Maybe I'm the only one here who cares about that question; this too, I can live with.

[karlhenning]

I see that this has turned into the typical web forum argument, where people are arguing about whether something is classical music or not, apparently oblivious to the fact that no clear definition of classical music has been agreed upon.

Actually, I've pointed this out:

. . .

You're perfectly right that part of the slipperiness of this discussion is, the matter of defining "classical music."

But then, we should probably agree that it is also typical of web arguments that these points get lost in the noise.

[Scarpia]

I have never claimed that Williams has no skill.  I have questioned the degree to which his tool box aligns with (say) Shostakovich's, Copland's or Vaughan Williams's tool box.  Maybe I'm the only one here who cares about that question; this too, I can live with.[/font]

Non of those were ever asked to score a Star Wars movie.  He's using the toolbox Elgar made use of in his Pomp and Circumstances Marches. 

[karlhenning]

Non of those were ever asked to score a Star Wars movie.

That's true. Shostakovich was asked to score Kozintsev movies.

My point remains.  Shostakovich and John Williams went to comparable tasks, but their tool boxes differ.