1. William’s Star Wars Theme
2. Bachs Orchestral Suites #3
3. Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite
4. Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons
5. William’s E.T. (The Extra Terrestrial) Theme
6. Mozart’s Piano Concert
7. Williams Harry Potter Theme
8. William’s Jaws Theme
9. Beethoven’s 5th Symphony
10. William’s Jurassic park theme

They are listed in opposite order, 10 being my favorite.

• This list is different from the one I completed for the Course Summary activity, because I did not realize William’s works could be included in this list. I was thinking the musical works had to be from the way past. The reasons for so many of his works being included on my list is: his themes for films are incomparable, and the ones I listed happen to be my favorite, and he was my personal composer that I had the chance to learn more about by completing the profile on him.

John Towner Williams  is an American composer who was born on February 8th, 1932 in Floral Park, NY. When he was 16, his family moved to Los Angeles and he attended UCLA. While living there, he actively took part in private composition lessons. After serving in the Air Force, he returned to New York and began to attend the Julliard School, where he was a student of the piano. In 1956, he again returned to California, this time Hollywood, and was trying to work as a pianist. He was successful in that, and eventually became a staff arranger for Columbia Pictures and then 20th Century Fox. While working there he worked on orchestrations for multiple masters of film scoring.

In the 1960s, he began working on compositions of television shows, writing the themes for: Gilligan’s Island, Lost in Space, and Land of the Giants, etc. He won Emmys for his scores on Heidi and Jane Eyre, and won his first Oscar for his adaptation of the music for the broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof (1971).

In the 1970’s, he created music for multiple movies that didn’t do so well, however, it was his score for the Steven Spielberg horror film Jaws (1975), with its iconic musical depiction of the shark, that won him another Oscar and secured his musical reputation. He has provided the music for most of Spielberg’s movie since then, and there has been a long list of great ones. By Spielberg’s recommendation, he worked on George Lucas’ Star Wars films.

Since then, he has scored an impressive list of features, including: Superman, multiple Indiana Jones films, E.T. (The Extra Terrestrial), which won him his third Oscar, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List (another Oscar win), Saving Private Ryan, and the Harry Potter film series, etc.. He also wrote the fanfares for the Olympic summer games of 1984 (in Los Angeles), 1988, and 1996 (in Atlanta).

He has also wrote concert music including two symphonies, a cello concerto, and concertos for violin, flute, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, and tuba, etc. In 2003, he composed and conducted a new work, called Soundings, that opened the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. To this day  (NPR book written in 2006), he has won five Oscars, has 43 Academy Award nominations, 18 Grammys, three Golden Globes, two Emmys, and five BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) Awards.

A musician perfectly attuned to his metier, Williams is the most successful, versatile, and prolific film composer in the history of the medium, and most likely the highest paid composer ever. He almost single handedly revived the big orchestra Hollywood film score. His style is eclectic in the best sense, the sweep of his ideas and grandeur of his orchestration clearly pay homage to the work of many famous sound trackers, but he has also made inspired use of elements drawn from the idioms of Holst and Prokofiev (who we learned about earlier in the course) and many others. The result, almost invariably, sounds apposite rather than derivative. Few living composers in any line of work can match him when it comes to creating atmosphere, drama, and a sense of adventure.

Here are a few of my favorite works by Williams:

• Jaws
• Jurassic Park
• Harry Potter

Sources: The NPR’s Listener’s Encyclopedia of Classical Music

I really really enjoy movies, so when I saw this module would be about the music in films I was excited. Immediately, John Williams is mentioned, and I am doing a composer profile on him (which will be posted later today). He is one of, if not, the most well known musical movie composers of all time. He’s done such great work on so many different epic films.

The first musical example is from the movie “Catch Me If You Can”. Starring my favorite actor, Leonardo DiCaprio. Such a great film, and I never realized how intriguing the opening scene music is. Here is that example. 

Another interesting part in this module came when it mentioned “Psycho”. The old horror flick by Hitchcock. Bernard Hermann (The Master of Suspense) was the conductor of the “shower scene”, which is one of the most iconic scenes in horror film history. Horror films are some of my favorite movies, I really enjoy how the suspense gets your blood pumping and heart racing. Here is the “Shower scene” example.

Zimmer and Elfman are also both wonderful composers of the modern time. They both have contributed to some fantastic movies and made fitting, enjoyable music for them. Without all of these people/composers, music and in particular film music wouldn’t be where it is today.

So for my interpretation of this dramatic plot, I thought that the beginning of the music sounded like somebody (possible a hero, or a person sent out on a quest), was either waking up or maybe tiptoeing/ascending into a situation (could be a castle). That happened from the 0 mark to about 33 seconds. Then beginning at 34 seconds, the person seems to have confronted a large figure (possibly a dragon or a beast), and begins to battle/fight it. That stops at the 53 second mark, and it becomes peaceful for some time, almost as if the large figure (dragon) has been defeated or killed. After that there is a lead up until about the time 1:21, when it suddenly becomes as if there is a celebration for the person who has conquered the beast, almost a celebration of sorts, and that ends abruptly at 1:37.

-Dr. V suggested that I should share a time and a place that this scene is all going down, and I had a vision in my mind but never expressed it. I thought that it would be happening in the Medieval times and throughout an entire day or throughout a quest.

There were a lot of good suggestions/posts on VoiceThread by all the students but two I selected are Nathan’s, because his is “similar” to my story and also he states that it is happening in Medieval time. Also, Steven had a very good post about a scene from Pirates of the Caribbean, like me he said it sounded as if people were sneaking up onto somebody (in his case, Jack Sparrow). This post was also nice because it included something we’ve semi-learned about/heard musical examples from with the Pirates of the Caribbean mention.

Relating to Program music, a symphonic poem is “quite simply, a one-movement work whose primary purpose is to tell a story.”

It was said in the module that possibly the most famous of these symphonic poems is “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, by Paul Dukas. This was made very popular by Walt Disney’s film called “Fantasia.” I remember hearing/watching this movie in my music class while I was in my elementary school music class. The music teacher showed us the film and I remember seeing Mickey Mouse with the blue “wizard” hat on with a star and a moon and the red robe. I don’t remember much else about the movie, but here is a clip of the film featuring the Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

And here is a picture of the Mickey Mouse I remember from the film.

Tchaikovsky’s 3 Ballets really intrigued me. When I was in high school, I saw a movie called “Black Swan”, and the ballet in that movie was of his, “Swan Lake”. The movie was very intense and intriguing for the viewer and it struck me very cool to see that he was the composer of that. Also, the Waltz from Sleeping Beauty, I’m less familiar with, but i have seen the Disney movie and Im sure it is incorporated into that film somehow somewhere. Lastly, the Nutcracker, every bodies heard of that. Around Christmas time you always see little nutcracker figures sitting around people houses and when i was a child (maybe 7-8) years old, our grade schools went to see this play at a playhouse here in Erie. Very interesting that they’re all by Tchaikovsky!

Here is the trailer to the movie “Black Swan”

The Sexism in Early Opera and Oratorio struck me as interesting. Now, it was not a surprise that they didn’t want women performing at this time, seeing as women didn’t have equal rights at all back then and in a way still don’t to this day. However, it was mentioned that they had to use a man with a high pitched voice to fill in for the “women’s” part in the music. Also, this man was known as the “star” of the show and was commonly the highest paid performer!

I was ecstatic to see the New York Yankees post in module 6. They have been my favorite sports team ever since I was born. I remember wearing my Derek Jeter #2 jersey during all of their world series games growing up in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. Also, one of our family traditions is going to Cleveland to watch them play every single year, we haven’t missed a year ever since I was born.

Kelly Clarkson did a wonderful job on her national anthem at the beautiful new Yankee Stadium, they tore the old one down in 2008 and won the world series in their inaugural season playing there. Here is the clip once again from the module National Anthem .

Just letting everyone know, my background image is a photo of my male English Bulldog, named Bruce. This picture was taken when he was only 8 weeks old, and he is now 3.

Just a bit about the Sergei Prokofiev page, at the end of his page, there was a clip produced by Danny Elfman (who’s work has been compared to Prokofievs) for “Big Top Pee Wee”. I never had heard of this man before but i found it interesting he made music for such a silly film. A film that I personally really enjoyed as a child.  It was mentioned that we will learn more about Elfman in module 9 “music in film” and i am looking forward to that.