Denis Fodor <[log in to unmask]> writes of John Williams:

>But how about this: Williams is certainly good at his own crafty sort of
>art, or arty sort of craft.  And I don't consider his "borrowings" from
>others to be plagiarism, as such; rather, it strikes me as being in the
>nature of, shall we say, homogenized potpourri writing.  It's Williams'ed
>potpourri, as it were.  And damned good, though admittedly an off-beat
>genre.

Good? I wonder, after hearing the very revealing Film Music Promenade
Concert a week yesterday, introduced by a touchingly lachrymose Sir Richard
Attenborough.

I'd enjoyed many of these pieces hugely in the cinema, but how painfully
few of them stood up as concert hall items.  The Walton and Prokoviev stand
up well, but Bernard Herrmann's "Psycho Suite" sounded disappointingly thin
- even as "homogenized potpourri writing".

As for the "Star Wars March" - well, denuded of its immense wide- screen
glamour, it made this listener at least blush for its perpetrator.  How
many other pieces have earned so much for so little? It runs out of
technical competence, let alone tune, after 7.5 bars.

By chance, I saw "The Phantom Menace" in the cinema this week.  Splendid
stuff - the score works superbly, and provides a feast of fun for anybody
interested in learning how to disguise Philip Glass, Carmina Burana and
most of Holst's Planets just sufficiently to avoid The Copyright Wars.

I join Mr Fodor in saying hats off to Mr Williams as a splendidly pragmatic
example to us all - if only we had half so much skill as he in damping down
our consciences ...

Christopher Webber,  Blackheath, London,  UK.
http://www.nashwan.demon.co.uk/zarzuela.htm
"ZARZUELA!"