Music in the movies

[nicholas dean]

Hello everyone; hope you all enjoyed good holidays. I have been 
playing catch-up with posts and enjoying them.

One of my Christmas presents was the soundtrack to GoF, which I have 
been listening to in the car recently. I have long admired Patrick 
Doyle's work; he does triumphant (vide 'Non Nobis, Domine' from 
Branagh's Henry V) and wistful ('My Father's Favourite' from Sense 
and Sensibility) very well, and I think that some of his work for GoF 
was excellent.

I tend to be a bit ambivalent about movie soundtracks in general; 
mostly there are a few good tunes linked together with Dramatic! 
Loud! Chords! which work fine when heard as a backdrop to the action 
of the film, but not so well when listened to without the visual 
references. Having said that, I think that the two waltzes on the GoF 
soundtrack, particularly 'Neville's Waltz', which is played, as I 
recall, in its entirety, are charming. I also liked the poignant 
'Harry in Winter' which is reprised in the pieces at the end of the 
movie.

How to compare with Williams' work on PoA? I confess that I greatly 
enjoyed an unusually large number of tracks on that one. I first 
heard 'Aunt Marge's Waltz' on the radio; title unannounced, so I was 
trying to figure out whose it was as it was playing. I thought 'It's 
John Williams...no, 
Shostakovich...Williams....Shostakovich....definitely Williams'. 
'Double Double', a reworking of 'Hedwig's Theme', was really clever; 
'Buckbeak's Flight' and 'Window to the Past' both stirring...I am a 
sucker for swelling strings...but my word, Williams does like his 
crescendoes, doesn't he? He barely seems able to write anything which 
doesn't contain at least one loud climax. If you compare 'Fawkes' 
theme' from CoS to Doyle's 'Neville's Waltz'; both start off as 
lovely, lyrical, swaying music; but whereas Doyle maintains this 
throughout, Williams has to introduce a crashing middle riff which 
detracts from everything else.

One thing which stood out for me on the PoA CD, however was that, 
unusually for the HP soundtracks, it included the music which plays 
over the end credits, which effectively revists all of the major 
themes of the movie, and in some cases ('Window to the Past' frex) 
plays the music in its entirety, not just the snippet heard in the 
film.

By and large I like Williams' music; he did good work for Star Wars, 
Indiana Jones, Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan etc, and 
'Hedwig's Theme' is high on my list of best-ever movie music. That's 
another one that I first heard on the radio, title unannounced, 
before PS/SS was released, at a time when I had no intention of 
seeing the movie, since it couldn't possibly live up to my vision of 
the books. When I heard 'Hedwig's Theme', I knew it was John 
Williams's and worked out that it must be the music to the new Harry 
Potter film; that's how well it portrayed the  magic, melancholy, 
drama and adventure of the story.

IMHO, of course.

Cheers,
Nicholas