John Williams - composer extraordinaire

John Williams - ET The Extra-Terrestrial Special Edition sounctrack CD cover John Williams should need little introduction since he is almost certainly the most well-known film composer, and possibly to many people the best-known composer, period. Born in New York, Williams started out doing television work composing for Irwin Allen shows like "Lost in Space", "Time Tunnel" and "Land of the Giants". His first brush with Hollywood was as a pianist. During the Golden Age of Hollywood Cinema, he worked as a pianist and arranger with film music luminaries such as Alfred Newman, Franz Waxman, Bernard Herrmann, and later Henry Mancini. With such exposure to the industry, and the encouragement of Newman in particular, Williams made the transition into film composition. Early steps in that direction found Williams again working for Irwin Allen, when he came to do a series of popular disaster movies including "The Poseidon Adventure" and "The Towering Inferno". One particular early success was his first Oscar (of five currently) for his adaptation of Jerry Bock's music for the stage musical "Fiddler on the Roof". Williams also conducted and provided the incidental music for the film, and the part of the fiddler himself was played by violinist Isaac Stern.

Williams was already establishing a respected position for himself in Hollywood, when his career was to reach an important turning point. Stephen Spielberg was starting out in the movie business and approached Williams to score his early movies. In quick succession this led to Williams' second oscar for Jaws and his introduction to George Lucas who then hired him for his Star Wars saga leading to his third oscar. This succession of events rapidly established John Williams as one of the foremost film composers of the day. The close relationship with Steven Spielberg and the director's own meteoric career meant that he was the composer for many major films of the period, including "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", "Superman", "E.T." (winning oscar number four) and the Indiana Jones movies.

John Williams - Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade soundtrack CD cover Williams' music is firmly from the classical tradition, based heavily on the style of the late-romantics such as Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. It has at times some modernistic overtones (such as with Close Encounters of the third kind), yet primarily it is just wholesome music full of good memorable tunes with fanfares and fun marches particularly prominent. Williams is rightly well-regarded for his ability to construct a tune and sound which perfectly complements the mood of a film. An interesting documentary about John Williams' film music has appeared on youtube, made during the making of "The Empire Strikes Back" but including many clips from his films and comments from Lucas and Spielberg. The documentary is in 6 parts - start here with part 1 of Star Wars Music by John Williams and follow the links to related videos to see the other parts.

Although the relationship with Spielberg was obviously central to his career in Hollywood, it can also be seen as perhaps limiting musically, since most of his movies belonged to a narrow range of family fantasy and adventure stories. However that limitation was not significant in the longer term. Firstly, both director and composer have not always shared an exclusive relationship. Spielberg chose Quincy Jones to score his "The Colour Purple" for example, and John Williams for his part has worked with a number of different directors. Irwin Allen and George Lucas have been mentioned already and, outside this circle, Williams also scored "The Witches of Eastwick" (for George Miller), "J.F.K." (Oliver Stone), "Home Alone" (Chris Columbus) and many others. The other factor that impacted the type of movie he worked on, was that Spielberg himself sought to broaden his range of movie genres with films such as "Empire of the Sun", "Schindler's List" (Williams winning his fifth oscar), "Saving Private Ryan", "Amistad" and most recently "Minority Report".

John Williams - Movie Themes cover For a time Williams was conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra, and he has written several classical concert pieces. As America's best-known composer, he as also been commissioned to compose works for some big events such as the Olympics and the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty. Several of these works can be found on album collections of Williams' music. In the realm of film music, it seems as though Williams will always be very much in demand. In recent years he has been scoring the three "Star Wars" prequels, "The Patriot", the various "Harry Potter" films, the jazzy retro-sounding "Catch Me If You Can", and for Steven Spielberg, "AI" and "Minority Report". The latter film has an exciting soundtrack by Williams and also features Schubert's Unfinished Symphony during the "conducting" scenes - surely a joke from the Music Supervisor since the crimes detected by the precogs have not happened yet and will be stopped in the nick of time by the police! One point to note that is frequently mis-quoted even in reference books, is that John Williams the composer had no involvement with the "Deer Hunter", though John Williams the guitarist played the theme tune "Cavatina" by Stanley Myers, later to have lyrics added and sung by Cleo Laine.

John Williams has recently re-crafted his Star Wars music from all six films to fit a show called "STAR WARS: A Musical Journey". This is a live two-hour musical event with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and chorus, with scenes from the movies and live narration. The show will start in London's "O2 arena" (previously called the Millennium Dome) in April 2009 before going on tour across Europe. The venue will also host an exhibition of models, props, costumes and artwork from the Lucasfilm Archives. Tickets will go on sale on 15th December 2008 - see The O2 site for further information.

See also our review of the new boxset Indiana Jones: The Soundtracks Collection which explores the most complete versions of these film scores so far released.

Films by John Williams:

TV music and themes by John Williams:

Recommendations:

John Williams - Star Wars A New Hope soundtrack CD cover Many John Williams soundtracks are available, though there are also many CDs featuring "best of" compilations such as "Filmworks" or John Williams conducting the Boston Pops Orchestra in his film music. There are also a large selection of sheet music available for piano and other instruments, and there is also a John Williams web-site which is well worth a visit. In terms of sheet music, John Williams is better served than almost any other film composer and any supplier should have a number of titles available. For immediate online download you might want to check out these sections of the Music Notes site - Harry Potter Sheet Music and Star Wars Sheet Music.


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