[Malte Müller]

I think, the difference between older generation masters like John Williams or Jerry Goldsmith and even James Horner was that when they wanted to sound modern, they often sounded modern in a quite old fashioned way, like they had stopped listening to pop music after 1972.

I have to agree as well. As much as I love them, they probably indeed stopped in 1972 😉

If you’d asked me in 1975 (although that was 2 years before I was born), I would count Williams among the ‘consistent versatility’ guys. He kept in tune with certain contemporary trends up to that point, whether it was tapping into Beach Boys-like songs or current jazz, but after that not so much.

Indeed when I heard MISSOURI BREAKS the first time I totally surprised. I was not that familiar with his earlier work but a score totally without orchestra was not what I expected.