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Schindler's List: (John Williams) Based on the
novel by Thomas Keneally and a screenplay by Steven Zaillian,
Schindler's List is the powerful story of factory owner Oskar
Schindler and his evolving plight to save Jews during Nazi Germany,
first for the purposes of the profits of his own factory, and eventually
for the sake of saving as many people from extermination as possible.
Shot mostly in black and white, the film's balance between audacious
presence and passionate restraint is the mastery of Steven Spielberg,
who maintains that
Schindler's List was his most emotionally
charged professional directorial project. The film swept the Academy
Awards (among other ceremonies) for 1993, giving Spielberg his overdue
statuette and proving that any terrible and vivid madness, no matter how
horrifying, can be elegantly portrayed in a dignified fashion on film.
One crucial element in the success of
Schindler's List was the
score by John Williams; Spielberg and Williams together had just
completed
Jurassic Park, a film score that had brought endless
riches and popularity throughout the year. As much of a success as
Jurassic Park was (and Williams was already doing the concert
rounds and showing if off at the end of his shows),
Schindler's
List would ultimately overshadow the previous score with such an
enormous memorable punch that
Jurassic Park has come dangerously
close to being classified as a "forgotten" or "underrated" score a dozen
years later. It has been argued that
Schindler's List's is
Williams' greatest score in his lengthy career, and while nobody with a
decent film score collection will dispute its title as Williams' best
"artistic" effort, it's really difficult to compare it to the classic
horror and adventure scores for which Williams had earned his previous
Academy Awards. Regardless of context, though,
Schindler's List
is a force to be reckoned with, and its success on screen and album
exists in Williams' ability to precisely mirror Spielberg's own
passionate restraint in the production process.
To simply describe the technical elements of the
Schindler's List score would not do justice to its effectiveness
as an overall product. So much of what makes the score a gripping
emotional enticement is intangible, stemming often from significant
influences in its heartfelt performances. Much credit needs to be
awarded to Williams, however, for keeping it simple. The complex layers
of frenetic activity that collectors had begun to hear in Williams'
writing in the early 1990's (including
Jurassic Park fresh in
memory) is completely absent from
Schindler's List. Instead, like
Spielberg, Williams approaches the horrors on screen with a beauty so
primordial that the score is dripping with romantic heartbreak at each
of its harmonic turns. Williams creates three themes to accomplish this
addictive loveliness, two of which are expanded upon with enough
attention to merit concert performances. The primary theme is the
unparalleled success story, meandering about an octave as smoothly and
gracefully as any in modern history. Each lush progression of the title
theme, famous for its teasingly near-octave alterations, takes advantage
of heart-wrenchingly simple harmonic progressions, ironically combining
to form a theme that, despite these very basic movements, is a unique
and lasting memory for many listeners. A secondary theme is introduced
in "Remembrances," a piece meant to commemorate the Holocaust from a
modern perspective rather than the primary theme, which was meant as
more of a companion for tragedy of the events as they unfolded. The
"Remembrances" theme is more robust than the primary theme because its
performances muster a more complete ensemble. Structurally, the two
themes contain many of the same note progressions, allowing them to
interact easily in counterpoint, an ability that Williams unfortunately
uses sparingly in the score despite the phenomenal beauty that results
when he does so. Both of these themes receive two concert performances
on the album for
Schindler's List, including a lengthy
back-to-back presentation at the end. A third, less heralded theme is
announced in "Jewish Town," and serves as a procession piece for
Schindler's factory workers. It's the working class theme, set to a
churning bass rhythm and replacing the elegance of the other two themes
with a mechanical sense of movement through the same lens.
As with any score for which simplistic beauty is the
key,
Schindler's List relies upon the careful choice of
instrumentation and the performances of that ensemble. This score united
Williams with famed violist Itzhak Perlman, and it was the pleasure and
success of this collaboration that would lead Williams (and other
prominent composers) to seek the services of similar top-flight soloists
for their film scores. Many people credit Perlman's performances for
making
Schindler's List what it is, and while Perlman does have a
dramatic impact on the score, to limit its attractiveness to his
performances alone would be a disservice to the plethora of other
intriguing and integral performances in the score. The air time for
Perlman is actually quite low; he performs on less than half of the
tracks on the album, with other soloists, a choir, or the entire
ensemble replacing him in other cues. When he does perform, the
sincerity of his street-corner style of lament cannot be questioned,
especially when moving to the high ranges of the instrument over the
Boston Symphony Orchestra musicians. While the violin is offered with
sparse context at the outset, many of
Schindler's List's most
poignant cues include the violin as an accent to the flawless whole of
the ensemble. That group flourishes with the layered strings of the
"Remembrances" theme, taking the lush romanticism of the end titles of
Born on the Fourth of July and slowing them to a melodramatic
crawl. Equally effective is Williams' alternation of his soloists with
the ensemble in counterpoint positions; Perlman rounds out "I Could Have
Done More" and "Give Me Your Names" as a counterpoint agent. Another
noteworthy set of solo performances is delivered by a recorder, and fans
of Williams'
Harry Potter scores will recall Richard Harvey's
fantastic solo integration into the third entry in that franchise. In
Schindler's List, the recorder performs all three themes
throughout the score, carrying the title theme at the end of
"Immolation" and the "Remembrances" theme in "Stolen Memories." In both
these cues, Williams also employs a choral element. The former cue
offers the only outward tragic horror chant by the chorus, while the
latter cue offers the chorus as a background contributor in much the
same fashion as the fantasy theme in
Jurassic Park.
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Despite the nobility of the title character's action,
there is very little outwardly heroic touch in
Schindler's List.
Only in "Making the List" does Williams shift the attitude of music
towards defiance, both through the use of brass and by instructing the
violin and flute soloists to emphasize the title theme with more force.
The darkness of the topic prevails in only a few cues, including its
inherent hints in the "workforce" theme. The mechanical thematic battle
between violin and woodwind in "Schindler's Workforce" plays over a
percussive and ethnic rhythm of sharp, muted intensity. As the only
outwardly malevolent cue on album, "Auschwitz-Birkenau" presents Perlman
in his only dissonant moments, with the cue serving as the only
detraction from the hypnotic flow of the album's listening experience.
Two traditional Jewish songs were recorded with choirs in Tel-Aviv,
Israel, and both are short enough to fit into Williams' surrounding
score; "Nacht Aktion" would foreshadow much of the same faint, droning
baseline and solo as heard later in
Munich, one of the
surprisingly few connections between the related Williams scores.
Overall, even John Williams would be hard pressed to succeed on this
level again. In all of his collaborations with solo artists hereafter,
including Perlman's performances in
Memoirs of a Geisha, the
result would never again be so overwhelmingly effective. The use of the
violin in
Schindler's List, so symbolic in its historical
prevalence to the topic, as well as the performances of Perlman and the
ensemble, were a formula of perfect timing and execution. The album is
arranged well, and the solo performances (and the recorder in
particular) are well mixed. Unfortunately, the original pressing of the
album suffered from the inclusion of studio noise, including
distractingly creaking chairs at 1:35 in "Immolation" and at 2:35 in
"Remembrances." The packaging of the original MCA album is also
incorrect in its credit notation, as well as in its listing of track
times. A 24K gold-plated version of MCA's album (with identical
contents) was released in 1995, and solves some of these problems with a
remastering. No matter the albums' minor flaws, however,
Schindler's
List is a nearly unparalleled artistic masterpiece, a more subtle
triumph in the career of John Williams.
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