Thanks for that clip. Never realized that was John Williams! It reminded me somewhat of the beautiful lyrical jazz Bernard Hermann wrote for Taxi Driver (one of my favorite scores). I see your comparision w/ mid -career Stravinsky. With asmaller orchestral resourcese he draws a wonderful array of timbres and colors that works so structurally well with the images, most obvious is the orchestration delineates the ternary structure (which is in keeping with the “ternary” structure of the animation - silhouttes are squarer and sharper and against blue field at beginning, in middle rounder silhouettes against gold and the return of the former visual themes at the end.)

Also, Williams seems to be having fun with the visual’s slippery lines which turn and twist and disappear — to some extent Williams does the same with musical line without sacrificing thematic recognition and structural unity.

This is really a wonderful piece of music to study both for film and animation music writing. Do you know where (or even if) one can get the orchestral score for this?

I personally think he will go down as one of the great 20th century composers. While he has a number of detractors who say his stuff all sounds the same, they don’t really listen to his music. This film is very different from Star Wars, from Schindler’s list. He is a very talent man…

Here’s to trying to follow in his footsteps.

As far as lack of desire to outing (in an unconventional sense), for a really awkward one, how about having no interest in out-Ferneyhoughing Ferneyhough?

Come to think of it I have no idea what his music sounds like these days either, but reading his quotes on brainyquote.com probably gives an indication =)