But I will say that "Azkaban" is by far the best of the three Williams scores.

Any case against it better have good arguments.

Any case against it better have good arguments."

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Originally posted by Christian Kühn:
The Goblet of Fire.

Azkaban's score is too badly represented both in the film and on CD...

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Is it? True, I was nearly in tears that Peter Pettigrew's motif does not show up on the album at all, but I thought the majority of the score was pretty well presented.

While I attest that Goblet of Fire *is* excellently written music (as about all of Doyle's work is) with a lot of heart, it is just soooo generic. Cookie-cutter type stuff. (in my opinion, of course)

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Azkaban's score is too badly represented both in the film and on CD...

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Or to put it another way: I listen to bits and pieces of Azkaban a lot more than I listen to Goblet, but I've listened to Goblet all the way through far more than any other Potter score.

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How can a score be badly represented in BOTH, the CD *and* the film?

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On CD so much material is missing...it might be most badly assembled Williams album since Phantom Menace.

And in the film, what is there is edited, re-edited and mixed way too lowly. Thus, we lose on both fronts, which keeps the score from achieving #1 status on my lists.

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Is there a hidden, unreleased score for PoA that I'm not aware of?

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Yes. No. Maybe.

CK

Harry's theme is a real beaut, and that melody for his parents that shows up during the Mirror scene and the finale is spot-on: a succinct, simple melody but still moving.

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Originally posted by Christian Kühn:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=1 face=arial>quote:</font><HR size=1>
How can a score be badly represented in BOTH, the CD *and* the film?<HR size=1></BLOCKQUOTE>

On CD so much material is missing...it might be most badly assembled Williams album since Phantom Menace.

And in the film, what is there is edited, re-edited and mixed way too lowly. Thus, we lose on both fronts, which keeps the score from achieving #1 status on my lists.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=1 face=arial>quote:</font><HR size=1>Is there a hidden, unreleased score for PoA that I'm not aware of?<HR size=1></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yes. No. Maybe.

CK

[Message edited by Christian Kühn on 04-21-2007]

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Ehm, so if the score is butchered by the director and badly produced on cd it is a bad score? That's like saying a painting is bad because it has been represented badly in a museum and the printings are bad.

I haven't found this to be true. What, exactly, do you think is missing from the score?

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Originally posted by vdemona:
>>On CD so much material is missing...it might be most badly assembled Williams album since Phantom Menace.<<

I haven't found this to be true. What, exactly, do you think is missing from the score?

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A few items I can think of...

- The bloody elusive PETER PETTIGREW motif! Dangit, why couldn't we have it at least once?!?

- The downright creepy music during the downright creepy scene when Professor Trelawney freaks out on Harry and delivers a prophecy

- Some nice elaboration on the Double Trouble theme, heard in the end credits and elsewhere I think

- I seem to remember some great suspenseful music from the scene with Harry frantically looking from map to darkness as "Peter Pettigrew" approaches in the hallway.

I've only seen the film once, so I'm sure Christian can come up with more. Ya think there's any chance we'll get a complete release of this gem, Christian?

And is the Azkaban CD a poor representation because of things like the various appearances of the 'Window to the Past' theme being gathered together in a suite instead of being presented in full chronological order? I thought the album was brought together very nicely... could have flowed a little better, but otherwise good. While I wouldn't mind having the second appearance of Buckbeak's theme from the film's climax, the track 'Finale' flows marvellously with that portion cut out, making a stronger impression.

Edit: I can't say NeoVoyager's list above is making me go 'oh damn, yeah that would be a great cue to have'. It seems more like there's a few odds and ends missing, some more interesting than others, but the heart of the score is on the CD.

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Originally posted by franz_conrad:
Edit: I can't say NeoVoyager's list above is making me go 'oh damn, yeah that would be a great cue to have'. It seems more like there's a few odds and ends missing, some more interesting than others, but the heart of the score is on the CD.

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... not that it was meant to. That's just all I could think of. I concur that the overall volume could have been a good bit higher.

Actually, most of the time I'm listening to a mix I made called Lumos Musica!: Years One, Two and Three at Hogwarts, which is an overview of Williams' contribution to the series.

While I don't think that the Prisoner of Azkaban album is anywhere near the level of disaster that The Phantom Menace's original CD was, it nevertheless leaves off huge swaths of score, completely eliminating the Pettigrew music - which might have been represented by the aforementioned cue when Harry is prowling the corridors with the Maruauder's Map but also the climactic Shrieking Shack scene. It also leaves off the breathtakingly beautiful sequence between Lupin and Harry in the Astronomy tower, the moving piece for when Harry finds out about his relationship to Sirius (which is reprised as Lupin leaves Hogwarts) and the rousing reprise of Buckbeak's theme that should appear in the "Finale."

As far as the assembly goes, well, I've said it once, and I'll say it again. John Williams is one of my favorite film composers as well as one of my least favorite album producers. "A Window to the Past" makes a nice listening track, but the theme's modest representation on the rest of the album means that it just kind of comes out of left field on the few occasions when it does show up. As it stands, the Grim fanfare one of the score's major motifs, only appears in "Quidditch, Third Year."

While I like the suite for the finale, including it just meant that about seven of ten minutes that might have been devoted to clearing up some of these issues were wasted on music that already appeared elsewhere on the CD.

Meanwhile, as much as I like the film (which is quite a lot), I have to agree that there is a lot of editing and low mixing.

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Originally posted by Swashbuckler:
As it stands, the Grim fanfare one of the score's major motifs, only appears in "Quidditch, Third Year."

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Originally posted by Swashbuckler:
I really wouldn't mind more music being available from Williams' scores for the first and third films (or the AOTC flavored Quidditch cue from the second), and even from Doyle's, which had quite a few very nice tracks that never made the album either.

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Yes YES... that marvelous pounding "forward-motion" cue that begins right when Harry sees Fleur get taken down by a grindilow (sp?) in the Black Lake. We wants it!

And @ Marian: no, that "Grim fanfare" only appears in the aforementioned Quidditch track (there's possibly an ever-so-evanescent hint of it played by one violin in "The Knight Bus"... but nothing solid).

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Originally posted by NeoVoyager:
And @ Marian: no, that "Grim fanfare" only appears in the aforementioned Quidditch track (there's possibly an ever-so-evanescent hint of it played by one violin in "The Knight Bus"... but nothing solid).

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That's the one I'm talking about. As far as I remember, it sounded pretty solid to me even before I knew it underscores the moment when Harry sees the newspaper article on Sirius.

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Check out the 11-minute suite on his MySpace page... Great, big, magical stuff there. Love the choir!! If only the film version of GoF has this kind of material... not that Doyle's was bad by any means! I just see where there could have potentially been a better alternative.

http://www.myspace.com/jeremysoule

Jeron

The same could be said for the "Hogwart's Hymn," how it repeats itself, but this is the stand-out cue for me. It's in the vein of Henry V and sounds exactly like I should have expected a Patrick Doyle/Harry Potter score to sound like but for some reason didn't see coming.

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Originally posted by gkgyver:
Wow, good stuff!
Are there actual score releases for that? If not, does anyone know how to obtain some of it?

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EA released all of Jeremy's HP scores on iTunes, but they are basically cue dumps that aren't assembled properly.

I wouldn't expect to be blown away by the presentation. The music is great, but Jeremy wrote it to work with the Pathfinder music system that HP games use, which dynamically and seamlessly links cues together depending on the situation, so in essence, based on certain variables, the game pulls from a pool of cues written for that scenario, and then dynamically scores itself accordingly. It's pretty fascinating in action, and requires a lot of creative and technical finesse to actually make it work.

For example, toward the second half of the Goblet of Fire Suite, you're hearing the final battle w/ Lord Voldemort. And while the edit has been presented in this one particular way, in reality, the game would shift the tone of the music depending on how well you're doing. So, if Harry's winning as he battles Voldemort in the cemetery, the music becomes more brilliant and utilizes Harry's theme... and then, if he's losing the battle, it becomes darker and more violent, with Omen-esque choir and such. And then there are all the appropriate musical transitions that the system has available to it in order to seamlessly link the bigger chunks together.

John Williams would probably storm out of the room in frustration if he was required to write music in this manner. LOL. Kudos to Jeremy for finding a creative and remarkably original and compelling way to accomplish the task. It's good music; the films certainly wouldn't suffer from having some Soule magic behind them.

Jeron