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The sonata concept served some of the greatest imaginations in the history of music, but seriously it is, as I like to say to students, “so not a form”. Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms were not in need of a standardized template, and in essence what has come to be called sonata form is more like courtroom procedure: a process that allows for an infinite variety of stories to be unfold, from a fender bender to vandalism to murder.

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John Williams – composer of the first three Harry Potter film soundtracks – is set to receive the 44th AFL Life Achievement award at a gala tribute on June 9th 2016, marking the first time a composer has been honoured by the American Film Institute.

“John Williams has written the soundtrack to our lives,” said Sir Howard Stringer, Chair, AFI Board of Trustees. “Note by note, through chord and chorus, his genius for marrying music with movies has elevated the art form to symphonic levels and inspired generations of audiences to be enriched by the magic of the movies. AFI is proud to present him with its 44th Life Achievement Award.”

Over 150 titles spanning seven decades are owed to Williams’ ingenuity. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Jurassic Park (1993) and the Star Wars (1997) sountracks are composed by Williams, along with famous collaborations with Steven Spielberg which include Jaws (1975), E.T. (1982) and Schindler’s List (1993). The newest Star Wars films will also be composed by him.

He has had the most Oscar nominations (49) of any living person, and has won 5 Oscars in total.

The Wrap reports:

‘The AFI Life Achievement Award dates back to 1973 and is presented to a single honoree each year “whose talent has in a fundamental way advanced the film art; whose accomplishment has been acknowledged by scholars, critics, professional peers and the general public; and whose work has stood the test of time.”

The 43rd AFI Life Achievement Award honored Steve Martin, and other recipients include Mel Brooks (2013), Tom Hanks (2002) and Meryl Streep (2004).’

Join us here at Leaky in congratulating John Williams on another amazing (and well-deserved) achievement!

In celebration of The BBC Proms 120th anniversary we have created a comprehensive reading list of books, journals, and online resources that celebrate the eight- week British summer season of orchestral music, live performances, and late-night music and poetry.

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We asked our composers a series of questions based around their musical likes and dislikes, influences, challenges, and various other things on the theme of music and their careers. Each month we will bring you answers from an OUP composer, giving you an insight into their music and personalities.

Here’s what OUP composer Michael Finnissy had to say:

Which composer were you most influenced by?

Charles Ives, when I was twelve or thirteen. I think Anthony Hopkins introduced the Concord Sonata in his BBC Radio ‘Talking about Music’ series, from which I learned so much about aesthetics and the craft of composing.

Can you describe the first piece of music you ever wrote?

The first piece I ever wrote was called ‘The Chinese Bridge’, I was just over 4 years old, and had been told the ‘story’ of the willow-pattern pottery. The piece was one line long, clumsily pentatonic, and all in the middle octave of the piano. I thought my mother’s sister had kept the music-book it was written in, but in several moves of house it got lost.

Have the challenges you face as a composer changed over the course of your career?

The main challenges for a composer, to maintain integrity and authenticity, take quite a battering from the UK ‘music business’ — pressures to conform, to be intelligible, to be ‘amusing’. Teaching keeps me up to speed, but I still suffer terrible uncertainties and depressions. Being stubborn, intensely obsessive and passionate probably helps. None of this ever seems to get any better.

What is the last piece of music you listened to?

The last thing I listened to properly was some Chinese traditional music, wonderfully played on a recent visit to Taipei. But I am half-way through watching a DVD of a slightly irritating production of Richard Strauss’s ‘Die Liebe der Danae’, having to close my eyes to focus on the sound.

What might you have been if you weren’t a composer?

You don’t choose to be a composer, it’s what you are put here to do. My parents wanted me to teach English. I had to fight.

Is there an instrument you wish you had learnt to play and do you have a favourite work for that instrument?

I only played the piano ‘by accident’, and if I had chosen the viola (the sound of which I love), could I have endured the stupid jokes and insults? I would have liked to sing well, but was told I sounded like a corncrake.

What would be your desert island playlist? (three pieces)

Busoni’s Doktor Faust, Stravinsky’s Les Noces, and Tippett’s The Midsummer Marriage. All singing, all dancing. I would also hope to have the scores of a couple of late Beethoven quartets, Matthijs Vermeulen’s 2nd Symphony, and — right now — some of the Voices and Piano pieces by Peter Ablinger, which I need to investigate further!

How has your music changed throughout your career?

Oddly enough I never intended to write the same piece over and over again: so of course I think my music, and my life, has changed, and I’ve been lucky enough to get older and research a bit more deeply. But in other respects it is said that ‘leopards don’t change their spots’. I am thinking about the NEXT piece, not my ‘career’! Working in a university has made me aware that there are many people better qualified than I am, and musicians who – if they are interested – can better tell you HOW my music (and anyone else’s) has changed.

Headline image credit: Music Piano Keys by geralt. CC0 via Pixabay.

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Hearing is clearly the most important sense for a musician, particularly a composer, so the trauma of experiencing difficulties with this sense is hard to imagine. Beethoven famously suffered deteriorating hearing for much of his adult life; an affliction which brought him to despair at times. The cause of his deafness is still unknown, although much speculated upon, but the composer’s feelings about his situation are well-documented: Beethoven kept ‘Conversation Books’ full of discussions of his music and other issues which give a unique insight into his thoughts, and in a letter to his brothers (the Heiligenstadt Testament) he wrote a heart-wrenching description of his sense of despair and isolation caused by his inability to hear.

Despite his catastrophic loss of hearing Beethoven continued to compose — producing some of the greatest works in Western musical history. So how was this possible? How can a musician, particularly a composer, continue without full, or even hyper-sensitive, hearing?

We can get a modern day insight from Michael Berkeley — one of OUP’s composers who, over recent years, has been struggling with hearing troubles himself. Berkeley’s hearing damage was the result of a blocked ear, brought on by a fairly minor cold, which has caused irreparable nerve damage. These days there’s better help available to sufferers of hearing loss. However, sound distortion remains a problem, and hearing aids can only help so far, as Berkeley explains:

“Music was appallingly distorted, and in fact I couldn’t go to concerts as it was just so painful. I got a condition called hyperacusis, where loud sounds are unbearably painful. I got some very good digital hearing aids which made a great difference to speech, but it can only amplify what I’m already hearing so it didn’t help for music.”

Michael Berkeley explains how he continued to write music:

“If you are trained as a composer you can write in your head: you hear the sounds internally, and you’ve been trained how to get those sounds onto the page without a piano or any intermediary. It’s something you learn to do gradually through lots of hard work and by instinct. The problem is, when the music is played back I can’t comment very usefully: what I hear may not be what the conductor or the rest of the audience hear…it could be my hearing disability is distorting the real sound.

“The extraordinary thing is, I realised after a number of months that I was beginning to hear music more clearly. I remember there was a Haydn string quartet on, and I suddenly realised I was hearing it better: I was so overjoyed that I went to bed with an iPod and played it all night long! Apparently what can happen is that the brain begins to rewire itself. We hear with our brains — the ear is essentially a conduit — so if you have a template of musical knowledge then the brain begins to compensate for the distortions. My brain is learning to reprocess sound, and so it’s like discovering music anew: it’s absolutely wonderful!

“I’ve always thought that less is more. In Beethoven’s late music, particularly the late string quartets, the music is pared down to the absolute essentials, and I now find in my writing, partly because I can hear better when I play it back, that I’m beginning to concentrate much more on the essence of the sound and try to rid it of extraneous notes.

“I do feel that the music I’ve written in these last two years is actually as good as everything I’d written up until then: hopefully better.”

Michael Berkeley is the composer of a substantial number of highly acclaimed works, including three operas which have been produced in Europe, America and Australia. In addition to having been an associate composer to both the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Berkeley has had performances of his works given by many of the world’s finest orchestras, ensembles, soloists and opera companies, and many of his works have been released on CD. He is currently composing an anthem for the service of enthronement of Archbishop of Canterbury-elect, Justin Welby, in March 2013.

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John Williams, the famed composer behind Hedwig's Theme, will be honored with a lifetime achievement award at this year's Classic Brit Awards in October.

Williams composed the soundtrack for the first two "Harry Potter" films, but is also well known for composing the soundtracks to "Star Wars," "Schindler's List," "Jurassic Park" and "ET."

Dickon Stainer, co-chairman of the Classic Brit Awards committee, said:

"John Williams has crafted some of the most memorable film scores for over half a century and we are delighted that he has kindly accepted the Lifetime Achievement award in honour of his fine work."

My sister teaches music in elementary schools in California.  I am in awe of how she inspires young children to perform.  Yesterday, she shared Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir with me.   I am ashamed to say, I did not even know who Eric Whitacre was before she mentioned him.  The idea behind the Virtual Choir came when a student sent a YouTube of herself singing one of Eric's compositions to the composer.  He wondered what would happen if he challenged singers from around the globe to send him YouTubes of themselves singing their individual parts of one of his compositions - in the same key and tempo, of course.  The results are amazing - wonderful - moving. Watch one of the results below.

The soundtrack for "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2," composed by Alexandre Desplat, has been nominated for a Grammy in the category of Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media.

Desplat is also nominated again in the same category for composing the score to "The King's Speech."

Winners will be announced during a ceremony at the 54th annual Grammy Awards on February 12, 2012.

Oscar-winner T Bone Burnett and Grammy-winner Danny Elfman will create the music for The Hunger Games film adaptation. According to the release, this project is “an unprecedented film music collaboration.”

The two composers will work together on the film score. Additionally, Burnett will serve as the executive music producer for both the score and the soundtrack. Many Hunger Games fans have reacted happily to the announcement on Facebook.

Lionsgate’s head of film music Tracy McKnight explained: “The Hunger Games is such a special property – it has worldwide mass appeal, but it’s also sophisticated, cerebral, soulful, and rebellious. We needed a composer who can translate these qualities musically, and we have not one but two incredible artists in an absolutely thrilling first time ever collaboration.”

continued…

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For the Love of Music: The remarkable  Story of Maria Anna Mozart by Elizabeth Rusch, paintings by Steve Johnson and Lou Francher. Tricycle Press, 2011 (review copy provided by the publisher)

The CIP in this books shows the LC subject heading as "Berchtold zu Sonnenburg, Maria Anna Mozart, Reichsfrelin von, 1751-1829" aka Maria Anna Mozart, Wolfgang's sister. Rusch uses  the piano sonata form, which she describes before the story begins, to frame her story as Maria played them frequently.   Billed as Wonders of Nature! and Child Geniuses!, Maria and her younger brother, Wolfgang performed together across Europe.  The two spoke French and Italian and had rich imaginations.  A composer and prodigy in her own right, Maria noted down Wolfgang's compositions for him, before he could write.  When their father chose to focus on Wolfgang as a solo performer, Maria was left behind at home, a move that devastated her.  The siblings remained close though even after Maria's marriage and many of Wolfgang's compositions were dedicated to his sister.

Artists, Johnson and Francher use a collage of woven fabrics, rich brocades and embroidered satins, to bring the story to life. The textiles act as a canvas for the paintings and give them richness and depth. The paint is laid on thickly in places rendering a three dimensional feel to the figures.  The pianos are layered with  images of original hand written sheet music from the Mozart family collection.  I would love to see the original artwork for this book. 

A brief but complete bibliography  includes books, letters and documents and personal interviews.  An "encore" summary of Maria Anna Mozart's life fills out details of her story.  This book is beautifully executed in every way.
Bravi!

Warner Bros.' monthly Harry Potter newsletter has a brand new interview with Nicholas Hooper in which he talks about his experiences scoring "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" and  "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix." In the interview Mr. Hooper comments that the journey to the cave was his favourite scene to score in the sixth film and that "[upon hearing] it performed by the hug... Read the rest of this post

Radio listeners in the UK have selected Hedwig's Theme by John Williams as the all time favorite in a new poll of children's classics for station Classic FM. The PA reports the iconic main theme song for the Harry Potter films was the winner,"with youngsters choosing it ahead of other movie scores such as Jurassic Park, Pirates of the Caribbean and E.T. But more traditional classical tunes by P... Read the rest of this post

The soundtrack for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince composed by Nicholas Hoooper is now available at retailers everywhere and on iTunes. As announced previously, if you purchase the actual CD of the music, you will receive "free digital download of the soundtrack in 5.1 Surround Sound, which is only one of the handful of bonus features available through the active content portion of this ... Read the rest of this post

The Los Angeles Times Hero Complex Blog recently spoke with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince soundtrack composer Nicholas Hooper, who spoke about his role and influence in creating the music for the sixth film.  Having worked with film director David Yates on various other projects over the past nineteen years, Mr. Hooper discusses the process of putting his own stamp on the score for the... Read the rest of this post

2009 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Felix Mendelssohn, the German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period. British readers will no doubt have been hearing a lot more about him recently thanks the BBC Radio 3’s recent Mendelssohn weekend, celebrating his life and works. With that in mind, today I bring you an excerpt from our book Mendelssohn: A Life in Music by R. Larry Todd, describing Mendelssohn’s years as a child prodigy. His sister, Fanny, also showed an aptitude for composing, as you’ll see below.

Between the ages of eleven and fourteen, in an explosion of precocity, Felix produced well over a hundred compositions, a quantity no less astonishing than its variety—keyboard and chamber works, symphonies, concerti, Lieder, sacred choruses, and operas. When the first collected edition of Felix’s music appeared during the 1870s, most of these efforts, judged stylistically jejune, were excluded. But the launching of a second edition a century later refocused interest on Felix’s apprenticeship, and several early works, including concerti, the twelve string symphonies, and the Singspiel Die beiden Pädagogen, appeared during the 1960s and 1970s, opening new windows into Felix’s formative years. Still, much of this music awaits publication. To the biographer, it reveals a musical diary of a prodigy comparable to precious few European composers.

Zelter scrupulously oversaw Felix’s apprenticeship of bursting creativity. Scarcely less industrious was Fanny, who completed her thirty-second fugue by December 1824; the siblings, Zelter reported to Goethe, were like diligent bees gathering nectar. But Fanny’s parents never imagined she would entertain serious musical aspirations, and it fell to Abraham to temper her enthusiasm. From Paris he wrote in July 1820, as Felix was crafting fugues and beginning his third piano sonata:

Music will perhaps become his profession, while for you it can and must only be an ornament [Zierde], never the root [Grundbaß] of your being and doing. We may therefore pardon him some ambition and desire to be acknowledged in a pursuit which appears very important to him, . . . while it does you credit that you have always shown yourself good and sensible in these matters; . . . Remain true to these sentiments and to this line of conduct; they are feminine, and only what is truly feminine is an ornament to your sex.

Fanny was thus to hang musical ornaments, not build a foundation (Grundbaß, a pun on Kirnberger’s fundamental bass). While her brother essayed increasingly ambitious compositions, she chose piano pieces and songs—the smaller, intimate genres of domestic music making associated with the feminine. In particular, her songs (seventy-four date from 1820 to 1823) earned parental approval. Pampering Abraham’s Francophilia, Fanny preferred the verses of Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian (1755–1794), who had specialized in pastorals and fables derived from Cervantes and Aesop. Typically strophic, Fanny’s settings evince a lyrical melodic gift and a certain “lightness and naturalness,” thereby approaching Abraham’s ideal of the feminine musical decoration. In contrast, Felix wrote few songs during this period, and set only one of Fanny’s Florian texts, about Jeanette, who would choose a shepherd over a king. A rapprochement with Fanny’s musical world, Pauvre Jeanette (ca. March 1820) momentarily bridged the gender gap between the siblings’ musical ambitions, as Felix adopted Fanny’s tuneful, chordal style to produce a simple folksonglike setting that utterly obscured his devotion to Bach’s fugues.

By December 1819 Felix was preoccupied with chorale harmonizations. The exercise book contains several melodies in Zelter’s unrefined hand for which Felix devised a figured-bass line and filled in the alto and tenor parts (Fanny received similar instruction around this time8). The next step was to decorate the note-against-note exercises with flowing eighthnote embellishments. Zelter included three examples of a more specialized technique, derived from Kirnberger, in which the chorale melody migrated to the alto, tenor, or bass. Finally, Zelter allowed Felix himself to compose and harmonize several melodies to verses of the Leipzig poet C. F. Gellert (1715–1769).

Largely neglected today, Gellert was a widely read figure of the German Enlightenment who produced fables, sentimental comedies, and the devotional Geistliche Oden und Lieder (Sacred Odes and Songs, 1757), designed, while sung to popular chorales, to elevate awareness of the religious sublime. Moses Mendelssohn held Gellert in high regard, and Haydn reportedly favored him above all other authors. Several composers—J. F. Doles and Quantz in the eighteenth century, and J. F. W. Kühnau and M. G. Fischer in the nineteenth—created new tunes for these poems, while others set them as a cappella canons (Haydn) or solo Lieder (C. P. E. Bach and Beethoven). Felix’s assignment proved challenging: more often than not, his chorale phrases are melodically stale (some he recycled from earlier exercises), and his cadences are not always harmonically compelling. But the childhood efforts later bore fruit: several of Felix’s mature works contain free chorales, which thus evolved from the modest Gellert chorales to become a compositional device.

Late in March 1820 Zelter began to initiate Felix, barely eleven years old, into strict counterpoint, for centuries the domain of learned musicians. The first topic was double counterpoint at the octave, which Kirnberger had explicated in the conclusion of Die Kunst des reinen Satzes. Felix mastered the technique by writing two-part inventions à la Bach, in which the parts are periodically exchanged. Next Felix took up two-part canon, including the esoteric diminution and augmentation canons, in which one voice replicates the other at twice or half the speed. These musical conundrums reflected Zelter’s own training under Fasch. Probably by the end of May 1820, Felix was analyzing fugal subjects and negotiating the thicket of rules governing “real” (literally transposed) and “tonal” (adjusted) answers in fugal expositions. Since Kirnberger’s massive tome omitted canon and fugue, Zelter now drew upon Marpurg’s Die Abhandlung von der Fuge (Essay on the Fugue), which in 1754 had unraveled Bach’s most cerebral contrapuntal techniques. By the latter part of 1820, Felix was progressing from two- to three-part fugue and canon, over which he labored through the early months of 1821. All told, he recorded about thirty fugues in his exercise book, the last of which, a three-part fugue in C minor, dates from late January 1821. Here the eleven-year-old emerges as a Bach devoté by writing a fugal gigue, recalling the Thomascantor’s fondness for combining that stylized baroque dance with artful contrapuntal displays (as in the finale of the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto). Thus did Felix, as Marpurg quipped of Bach, shake “paper intricacies out of his sleeve.”

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire film composer Patrick Doyle has given an interview to InTheNews.co.uk in which he briefly discusses his work on the fourth Harry Potter film.  Sitting down to talk about the upcoming concert highlighting the many film scores performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, which will feature the "Harry In Winter" song, Mr. Doyle relates his involvement in scoring ... Read the rest of this post