Composing America: Patriotism, Mythology, and Piety in the Film Scores of John Williams (2024)

Scoring The President: Myth and Politics in John Williams'sJFKandNixon

Journal of the Society for American Music, 2015

Throughout his career, John Williams has set the musical tone for the American presidency, most elaborately with his scores for Oliver Stone's controversial filmsJFK(1991) andNixon(1995). While invested in capturing the character of these commanders in chief through musical codes, Williams's soundtracks are equally engaged in the act of the evocation and telling of “history.” Specifically, they construct a tragic myth of 1960s America in which the promise represented by JFK is destroyed from without, and Nixon from within, both by the malevolent forces of the military-industrial complex. In considering the thematic and dramatic means by which Williams paints his orchestral portraits, I reveal the extent to which music supports Stone's paranoiac narratives, especially in cases where the director's collage-like visual aesthetic puts pressure on the otherwise nostalgic traits of Williams's default tonal style.I offer a music-analytical approach toJFKandNixoninformed...

Modal Interchange and Semantic Resonance in Themes by John Williams

Journal of Film Music 6.1 (2013) 1-26

This article examines the semantic properties of several characteristic triadic shifts in the film and ceremonial music of John Williams. These shifts result from particular modal inflections in major keys, which include the mixolydian subtonic (associated with the heroic and/or patriotic), and the lydian supertonic (associated with magic, wonder and flight). My aim in examining Williams’ use of modal interchange is both to gain a more precise understanding of one particular aspect of his style, and to place it into the larger context of the musical tradition in Hollywood.

John Williams and the Musical Avant-garde: The Score for War of the Worlds

John Williams: Music for Films, Television and the Concert Stage, 2018

When thinking of John Williams, one thinks of the memorable themes and hummable melodies composed for the Star Wars saga created by George Lucas (1977-ongoing), Superman (Richard Donner, 1978), E. T. (Steven Spielberg, 1982), the Indiana Jones saga (Steven Spielberg, 1981-ongoing)-to name just the most celebrated scores. Being both supportive of the picture and enjoyable to listen to, Williams's music became a signpost not only of Hollywood film scoring, but of film music in general. Yet, in the early 2000s, particularly in Steven Spielberg's new millennial science-fiction trilogy, John Williams wrote more modernistic scores than usual. The score for Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg, 2001), based on a Stanley Kubrick project that Spielberg had inherited, features partly «atonal dialect and a sort of futuristic minimalism-with colouring touches of synthesizers and electric guitars» 1. In Minority Report (Steven Spielberg, 2002), inspired by a Philip K. Dick short story, even more non-functional harmonic writing was present, blended with elements of old film noir music, with a special nod to Bernard Herrmann 2. The third instalment of Spielberg's science fiction trilogy, War of the Worlds (2005) was an adaptation of the famous novel by Herbert George Wells. The score offered very few tonally stable cues and is dominated by non-functional harmonies.

Constraint and creative decision making in the composition of concert works, film and video-game soundtracks

2019

This PhD research investigates the types, implications and origins of constraint within the contexts of various music composition projects. It then presents the practical value of this deeper understanding as a contemporary music composer. To explore the topic of constraint, the doctorate contains a portfolio of original music compositions and a reflective commentary on those compositions. The music spans a wide range of purposes, including works for concert hall, film and videogame. This breadth, across 33 musical works for 17 different projects of both collaborative and independent types, facilitates the extension of our understanding of constraint and its role in the process of music-making. The commentary, focussing on each composition individually or in small groups, extrapolates how constraint emerges within different circumstances. Analysing the music, in tandem with an account of their contextual backgrounds, demonstrates how different constraints influence music composition. The result of this research is that one can start to generalise the creative challenges a contemporary composer faces in the form of constraint. The research does this by proposing a series of labels: intrinsic, extrinsic, functional and aesthetic. These categories emerged through the creative practices of the portfolio, delineating and searching for constraint as a means of grounding creative decisions. The commentary and portfolio, taken together, will offer insights into the four proposed categories of constraint while explicating my compositional practice.

Carlos Chávez’s Polysemic Style

Journal of the American Musicological Society, 2015

The critical discourse on Carlos Chávez’s music is full of contradictions regarding the presence within it of signifiers of the Mexican, the pre-Columbian, and the indigenous. Between 1918 and 1928 Chávez in fact developed, from stylistic preferences that appeared early in his compositions, a polysemic language that he could use equally well to address the very modern or the primitive, the pre-Columbian or the contemporary mestizo, in and only in those works in which he chose to do so. Chávez’s referents emerged in dialogue with the cultural and political contexts in which he worked, those of post-revolutionary Mexico and modern New York. But he was attracted above all to modernism and modernity, and was impacted by cosmopolitan forces at home and abroad. By the end of the decade he had earned a position within the modern musical field’s network of social relations, and had drawn the attention of agents of recognition such as Edgard Varèse, Paul Rosenfeld, Aaron Copland, and Henry Cowell. These composers and critics added Chávez’s constructed difference to their much-sought collective difference as Americans within a European art. Chávez’s own use of explicit Mexican referents in some of his works shaped the early reception of his music as quintessentially American/Mexican, eventually influencing the way we understand it today.

Carlos Chávez’s Polysemic Style: Constructing the National, Seeking the Cosmopolitan

Beyond Modern Jazz: The Evolution of Postmodern Jazz Performance and Composition from 1969 to the Present

2017

Form and Dialectical Opposition in Elliott Carter's Compositional Aesthetic

http://hdl.handle.net/1885/148811, 2017

In his many writings and interviews, Elliott Carter frequently stresses the connection between human experiences of opposition and conflict and the opposition he composes into his musical interactions. While these concepts have received much attention in the scholarly literature over the decades, in this dissertation I examine the role of opposition in Carter’s music by bringing Carter’s aesthetic into contact with an Adornian tradition of dialectical aesthetics, something new to Carter scholarship. In particular, I harness Adorno’s concept of the social mediation of music materials to shed light on Carter’s linking of the musical and the human in his highly abstracted music. Central to this mediation is the way materials respond immanently to social conditions. I show how Carter conceives of musical form and temporality in terms closely aligned to Adorno, particularly with respect to non-repetition and freedom of formal design. However, I also argue that the way in which Carter worked with his musical materials did not remain static but responded to a changing modernism around the turn of the twenty-first century. Through an analysis of two of Carter’s late-late orchestral compositions, I examine how the notion of dialectical opposition finds expression in sonic images of lightness, effervescence and human fragility rather than the explosive oppositions of Carter’s middle period music. Part 1 of the thesis identifies traces of dialectical thinking in Carter’s writings and interviews and interprets these through an Adornian lens. Part 2 presents technical analyses of both the Boston Concerto (2002) and the ASKO Concerto (2000), focusing on how the repetition built in to the ritornello form of both pieces is re- formed by way of Carter’s dialectical handling of form and content. Part 3 offers a ‘second reflection’ in which philosophical concepts in Part 1 and technical concepts in Part 2 are drawn together into a critical analysis of how both materials and composer are mediated by the social.

2013

Experiential time : the special world of music therapy composition

2015

Music Therapy Auditions. Note: applicants can choose to be heard in one of our overseas venues for the Musical Audition, but all Interviews will take place in London. Musical Audition. At the audition, candidates are expected to demonstrate a high standard in their Principal Study (usually diploma level). The other part of the interview involves participation in a group run by one of the department’s experiential group leaders. This session gives an opportunity to assess applicants’ patterns of relating in peer groups and also provides a helpful opportunity to reflect on a challenging process. All successful candidates will be subject to a Disclosure and Barring Service and health check. STANDARDIZATION: Music therapy goals, objectives and progress are documented in a treatment plan, following client assessment, and delivered in accordance with the AMTA Standards of Clinical Practice. Music selections and certain active music making activities are modified for client preferences and...