Page 283 - ESSENTIAL LISTENING TO MUSIC

Listening Cue
John Adams, Short Ride in a Fast Machine (1986)
Delirando (with exhilaration)
Download 52
what to listen for: Lap 1: Woodblocks, woodwinds, and keyboard synthesizers; Lap 2: Bass drum “backfires”; Lap 3:
Starts quietly with sinister repeating motive in bass; Lap 4: Two-note falling motive in bass; Lap 5: Trumpets play fanfare- like motives as in a “victory lap”
reAD . . . a detailed Listening Guide of this selection online.
LiSTeN TO . . . this selection streaming online.
WATCH . . . an Active Listening Guide of this selection online.
DO . . . Listening Exercise 16.3, Adams, Short Ride in a Fast Machine, online.
A Postmodernist Synthesis of Classical and Popular: John Williams (b. 1932)
Art is a medium for change—one person’s vision of the human experience con- veyed to another, in hopes that the viewer or listener comes to see or hear life in a different way. If the new is adopted, it becomes the new normal, as is now the case with the music of film composer John Williams (b. 1932). Williams’s music is not music of change, but music after change. It represents consensus and stylistic harmony. Does Williams write classical music or popular music? Well, both. In a sense then, Williams is the ultimate Postmodernist composer, a creator of music for all.
Whose music has been heard most: Mozart’s, Michael Jackson’s, or John Williams’s? If you count listening during movie viewings, probably that of John Williams. Among the films that Williams has scored are: Jaws, the Star Wars se- ries, Superman, the Indiana Jones series, E.T., Home Alone, Jurassic Park, Saving Private Ryan, Lincoln, the first three films in the Harry Potter series, and more than forty more. Only Walt Disney has received more Academy Award nomina- tions than John Williams.
Yet Williams is a less-than-likely poster boy for Postmodern art. He stud- ied classical piano at the Juilliard School and did some of his first orchestrations while serving in the U.S. Air Force Band. When he composes, he does so the old- fashioned way: at a piano, writing out the score by hand. Williams’s universal appeal comes from a combination of the old and the new. He takes the tradi- tional symphony orchestra, with all the emotional responses it can generate, and harnesses it to globally disseminated film. In the Star Wars series, Williams bor- rowed from the tradition of Richard Wagner (see Chapter 13) by creating musical leitmotifs that are character and idea specific. So, too, in the Harry Potter series, we hear two leitmotifs for the evil Voldemort and two for Hogwarts itself, along
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