Post by erik on Sept 11, 2021 13:16:02 GMT -5
On this, the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001, the Classical Works Spotlight looks at John Williams' score to a Spielberg film that tackled the 9/11 terrorist attitudes of America by focusing in on an equally infamous 1972 terrorist attack on the Olympics.
John Williams: MUNICH
Many partnerships between Hollywood filmmakers and members of the Hollywood film music community have produced significant works both in terms of cinema and music. This is certainly true when it comes to director Steven Spielberg and film composer extraordinaire John Williams. Spielberg had known about Williams’ reputation from two scores he did for director Mark Rydell, for The Reivers in 1969 and The Cowboys in 1972; and the two men began collaborating when Williams provided an Americana-type score for Spielberg’s first big-screen effort, the 1974 crime drama The Sugarland Express. Over the next forty-three years (with only three exceptions), Williams would be Spielberg’s go-to composer, resulting in Williams himself getting several Grammy Awards for Film Music. But one of the most unique scores of the Spielberg/Williams partnership came in 2005, with the release of Spielberg’s ultra-controversial film Munich. Based on Canadian writer George Jonas’ 1984 book Vengeance, the film is a docudrama of a secret Israeli hit squad that sought out the eleven members of the Black September terrorist organization who planned the attack on the 1972 Summer Olympic Games in Munich, in which eleven Israeli athletes were singled out and killed. Coming as it did just four years after the terror attacks on America on September 11, 2001, Munich became arguably the most controversial and most hotly debated movie of Spielberg’s entire career, though it found a sizeable audience. Williams’ methodology was to go for stark modernism, not too dissimilar to what he did for Spielberg with Schindler’s List in 1993 or for director John Frankenheimer on the 1977 film Black Sunday (a fictional film about an attempted Black September attack on Super Bowl 10). Jewish influences permeated Williams’ score, and got him one of his fifty Academy Award nominations, a total exceeded only by Walt Disney, and legendary film composer Alfred Newman (one of Williams’ early mentors). The score showed that Williams could be more than just a composer of “popcorn film” music, something he would demonstrate with equal skill when he and Spielberg would collaborate yet again, this time for the equally intense 2017 docudrama The Post.
Vocal Soloist: LISBETH SCOTT
Hollywood Film Chorale
Hollywood Studio Symphony Orchestra/JOHN WILLIAMS (Decca)
John Williams: MUNICH
Many partnerships between Hollywood filmmakers and members of the Hollywood film music community have produced significant works both in terms of cinema and music. This is certainly true when it comes to director Steven Spielberg and film composer extraordinaire John Williams. Spielberg had known about Williams’ reputation from two scores he did for director Mark Rydell, for The Reivers in 1969 and The Cowboys in 1972; and the two men began collaborating when Williams provided an Americana-type score for Spielberg’s first big-screen effort, the 1974 crime drama The Sugarland Express. Over the next forty-three years (with only three exceptions), Williams would be Spielberg’s go-to composer, resulting in Williams himself getting several Grammy Awards for Film Music. But one of the most unique scores of the Spielberg/Williams partnership came in 2005, with the release of Spielberg’s ultra-controversial film Munich. Based on Canadian writer George Jonas’ 1984 book Vengeance, the film is a docudrama of a secret Israeli hit squad that sought out the eleven members of the Black September terrorist organization who planned the attack on the 1972 Summer Olympic Games in Munich, in which eleven Israeli athletes were singled out and killed. Coming as it did just four years after the terror attacks on America on September 11, 2001, Munich became arguably the most controversial and most hotly debated movie of Spielberg’s entire career, though it found a sizeable audience. Williams’ methodology was to go for stark modernism, not too dissimilar to what he did for Spielberg with Schindler’s List in 1993 or for director John Frankenheimer on the 1977 film Black Sunday (a fictional film about an attempted Black September attack on Super Bowl 10). Jewish influences permeated Williams’ score, and got him one of his fifty Academy Award nominations, a total exceeded only by Walt Disney, and legendary film composer Alfred Newman (one of Williams’ early mentors). The score showed that Williams could be more than just a composer of “popcorn film” music, something he would demonstrate with equal skill when he and Spielberg would collaborate yet again, this time for the equally intense 2017 docudrama The Post.
Vocal Soloist: LISBETH SCOTT
Hollywood Film Chorale
Hollywood Studio Symphony Orchestra/JOHN WILLIAMS (Decca)