John Williams, composer

VEGANGELICA · 11-10-2015, 04:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frownland

Do you think that that's because of John Williams' composing skills or more because those five notes are used as a plot device? I'm leaning toward the latter, since it's not a particularly notable song.

Better film composers: Elmer Bernstein, Johnny Greenwood, Mica Levi, Mike Patton, Art Zoyd (if you can count them, they did soundtracks after the movies had been released), and Philip Glass.

Thank you for the list of other film composers. I'll take a listen to them.

I feel John Williams' five note theme from Close Encounters of the Third Kind is memorable for both reasons: it is used as a plot device, like you say, but I also feel it is a pretty good sequence of five notes.

Williams also creates a delightful alien musical response that is composed of variations of that five note theme, turning it into a much more complex and interesting piece. The weird, musical playfulness of the response made me not even notice or mind that the aliens, apparently, possessed tubas for making their booming sounds!

I will concede, however, that the human-alien musical scene from Close Encounters of The Third Kind might have been even more memorable if it had gone a little something like *this*:

Close Encounters of the Redneck Kind