Houston audiences may know Brad Sayles best as the Houston Symphony’s Grammy Award-winning audio engineer, but he is also an active composer of film and concert music. He has also hosted Music from the Movies, a radio show that explored both new and classic film scores. In advance of our The Best of John Williams concerts this April, Brad shares his insights into the place the master’s film scores have found in the concert hall.
John Williams is one of the most famous composers living today. Known the world over for lush and memorable melodies, his film scores are gateways that bond audiences with characters and allow them to enter the worlds that film directors create. His music is amazingly effective in the context of the films he has scored, but it can also take on a completely new life of its own in the concert hall.
As a master composer, Williams excels at building sweeping musical structures. Movies do sometimes call for extended musical passages in which the composer can evoke characters, emotions and ideas through a web of instrumental colors and melodic motifs. But even in these cases, a film score is inherently constrained by the timeline a director lays out; the composer has very little input regarding the length a particular musical moment can exist. A cue can last a few seconds or several minutes, but whatever the boundaries, the composer must stay within them. While this segmentation effectively marries images with sound, it can also deter the musical development that makes a piece satisfying on its own.
When a score is liberated from the film that inspired it, there is no dodging of an important line from an actor or a scene cut. Instead, the composer becomes the director of his own music. In concert hall versions of his film music, Williams gives us the wonderful melodies and orchestral colors we remember from the film, but without constraints. Compared with the original film score from the Empire Strikes Back, the concert version of the Imperial March is a completely different piece. The film score backs away once the actors start their dialogue, while the concert version has a structure that favors the music and develops in a dramatic, colorful way that takes listeners on an incredible journey.
When you hear Williams’ film music in the concert hall, listen for how the composer develops, explores and transforms the melodies from the movies. You might be surprised by where the music takes you. Actor Richard Dreyfus once said about Williams’ music to Jaws: “It was so terrifying…I forgot I was in [the movie].” To make the people who made a movie forget that they were a part of it shows how powerful his music writing can be. You, too, can get lost in the music and let it take you away.
—Brad Sayles
The Houston Symphony performs The Best of John Williams April 20, 21 & 22. Get tickets and more information at houstonsymphony.org.
