Steven Spielberg selects favorite score frequent collaborator John Williams has composed for him
Of Steven Spielberg and John Williams' 29 collaborations—including Jaws, Jurassic Park, and Indiana Jones—the director has one fave
Aux News John Williams
Often, the “Original Score” category is a little too niche for the average moviegoer to be invested in, but some scores are so iconic that they seep deeply into the cultural consciousness. Everybody recognizes the theme from Jaws, or Indiana Jones, or Star Wars, or Harry Potter, or Jurassic Park—and those are just a small sampling of 54-time Oscar nominee John Williams’ body of work. (If he wins on Sunday, Williams will become the oldest Oscar winner ever at 92.) Given the sheer volume of musical scores Williams has created, it might be difficult to choose a favorite, but for his frequent collaborator Steven Spielberg, the choice is easy.
“Schindler’s List is the greatest piece of scoring John has ever done for me,” the filmmaker declares in no uncertain terms in a new Variety profile of Williams. (The duo have worked on 29 movies together.) “I will never answer that question about what’s my favorite of my films. I think the best film I’ve made is Schindler’s List. But I can say my favorite score and the best score—both combined—that John has done for me is Schindler’s. It doesn’t just reach deeper into my soul—that score has reached the depths of so many others who know how important it was to the images that I was creating.”
Spielberg, unsurprisingly, had some say in the final result. The not-so-retired composer recalls that he wrote two themes for the Holocaust film, “the one that we know and another one which is called ‘Remembrances’—and we recorded both of them with Itzhak Perlman. ‘Remembrances’ was my preference, but I played both for Steven and he said, ‘No, no, no, it should be this one.’ I said, ‘Really? I like the other one better.’ He said, ‘No, there’s a spiritual aspect to this one.’”
In the director’s view, Williams’ uncanny ability to create a timeless, memorable main theme is a crucial aspect of his success and part of why he’s the Oscars’ most-nominated artist alive. (Second-most nominated artist ever, behind only Walt Disney.) “Every score he’s ever composed, and even the ones that might have the most complicated orchestrations, he always has a beautiful main theme,” says Spielberg, who is working on a documentary about Williams. “And I don’t hear themes being written for movies as much as they used to be by Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, Max Steiner, Dimitri Tiomkin and Bernard Herrmann. Film composition isn’t a lost art, but thematic scoring is becoming more and more a lost art. And the great thing about Johnny is, he’s still got it.”
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Hook, Schindler’s List, and Jurassic Park (91, 93, and 93) are peak John Williams for me.
Same! I think it’s because I was precisely the right age when Hook came out (seven years old). That score is for me quintessential Williams.Also ET is spectacular. It’s so pure.
Add JFK (91) to that list. One of the best of the non-Spielberg soundtracks from that time period.
I still think his score for Superman might be the pinnacle of his work. I also realize we don’t look at it in the same way, but honestly, shouldn’t John Williams be considered one of the greatest composers of all-time? Like, I’m saying, doesn’t he deserve to be put in the conversation with Beethoven and Mozart and the like? It’s for a completely different medium obviously, but… his work speaks for itself. I’m sure folks who studied (or still study) music would have some differing opinions, and I defer to them as I’m not remotely musically inclined. But man, his work is just astonishing in terms of how much iconic music he’s created.
Superman theme is the greatest. It’s undiluted, unlike Star Wars.
Well, your opinion plus your name certainly do seem to go hand-in-hand.
😉
I would go so far as to say that his score for “The Empire Strikes Back” is one of the 100 greatest musical works of the 20th century. He absolutely should be considered as one of the great composers in history.
See it live if you get the chance – full movie with orchestra – whenever these things start touring again.
I read he had the most Oscar losses than anyone ever so he can’t be that good, right?
He pretty much gave birth to the modern movie soundtrack.
Well, more accurately, he saved the orchestral film score. If you go back to the sixties, you start getting a lot more jazz, experimental stuff, with – gasp! – drum kits and electric guitars. Morricone, or Monty Norman’s James Bond theme. And then Williams comes in with an E and an F and completely saved the symphony.
“He pretty much gave birth to the modern movie soundtrack.”Did he?
he has created iconic music (I am a mega John Williams fan) but is by no means worthy of comparison with the great classical composers. He writes great themes, but has never composed anything remotely as profound or complex as, say, a Beethoven symphony or Mozart opera. And I’ve listened to his non-Hollywood work too, none of which holds a candle to the great works of the canon.Morricone, on the other hand…
Depends if, in future conversations, the “Pop” structure of an album becomes thought of as equal to long form symphonies. Close Encounters, Schindler’s List, maybe E.T. and Jaws could be listened to as one full work that flows… Raiders and Superman are sort of like, “theme. theme. theme.” I’m not dunking on the “theme theme” structure. I love Superman so much I could cry. Maybe Superman… Surly Empire Strikes Back could be thought of as a nice merging of the “theme theme” pop style and overall flowing concept albums.
that’s a very interesting point. Williams is the modern-day inheritor of Wagnerian leitmotif. Maybe the opera comparison was fair.
I can’t agree, I absolutely believe his best work rivals and even surpasses the classical masters in terms of profundity and complexity. And to be clear, I’m not saying his achievements are greater or more important. The masters of today stand on the shoulders of their forebears.
But he is certainly more than just great themes. His command of harmonic structure is unrivaled. Analyzing his scores gets more and more head-spinning the closer you look. It’s not just Stravinsky. All of his work is infused with jazz theory and other strangeness. Even something as seemingly straightforward as the Star Wars main title has an underbelly of chromatic borderline-atonalism that I’ve seen even professional music educators struggle to unpack. He just has an incredible way of making this complexity go down smooth.
“I think Williams has found a very satisfying way of embodying dissonance and avant-garde techniques within a larger tonal framework. That’s the big achievement. Again, a making one of opposites, if you will.”
-composer Marcus Paus
All that said, I’m not claiming he’s the best. That depends on your yardstick. He’s perhaps not as inventive or challenging as Goldsmith or Herrmann, or as sincere as Morricone. But I do claim that he understands the languages of music with a deeper fluency than anyone who has ever lived.
Also a fair point. No question in terms of his ability to synthesize different genres. Still, there’s something either over-the-top bombastic or cloyingly sentimental about even the best of his works. Compare, say, Williams’s Schindler’s List Theme with Morricone’s Gabriel’s Oboe (from The Mission), and you can hear two different composers working in very similar styles, but only the latter achieving a real profundity. And again, I say this as a huge admirer of Williams.
I mean, there’s – and I’m not saying this is a bad thing – but there’s a shitload of Holst in his work. A lot of single, strained brasses, solo violins carrying melodies…pick any one of the planets, find someone who’s never heard of Gustav, and tell them “It’s a John Williams piece” and they’d likely believe you.
Good artists borrow… great artists etc. etc.
Oh, yeah, and there’s worse you could nick from than ol’ Gus.Especially if, y’know, you’re gonna end up scoring camp space operas.
Holst is only the one that makes the rounds. The more you know about classical music the more you see Williams as a master collage artist.
I once attended a Q&A with the Chicago Symphony orchestra before a performance where they performed a Star Wars movie in it’s entirety. Someone asked if they ever felt. as world class musicians, it was beneath them to play a movie score instead of Brahms or something. The answer was basically “Are you kidding? Most of the musicians here grew up obsessed with William’s music and being able to perform it with an orchestra is a dream come true.”
No.I get that there is a long tradition of ‘sampling’ existing music even within the classical world… But Beethoven and Mozart’s most well known and revered pieces are unique and groundbreaking. Not re-purposing Dvorak’s New World Symphony.
No one person in history has done more to expose more people to classical music than John Williams. You may think it might be Mozart or Beethoven, I think it is John Williams. Billions of people have heard his music and unknown numbers of people, moved by his scores, have gone on to love, play and or listen to other classical music.He should be considered one of the gods of classical music, he is not yet because of snobbery against movie scores.
Depends how you define classical music.
He’s certainly promoted orchestral music in ways no one else has, but then he’s also got the advantage of having lived in the time of recording technology so more people could hear his works. Not to mention their application in movies, so it’s not like someone has to deliberately want to just hear his music to still hear his music.
Also the old “snobbery against movie scores” thing died out at the end of the 20th century. Hardly anyone actually thinks that way anymore. There’s enough movie music of a quality to rival more traditional compositions that such an argument is pretty baseless these days, that even established academics recognise this.
All that said, if you want to get people to actually attend a concert of classical music, you put the names Beethoven and/or Tchaikovsky on the poster. Those names are still selling tickets over 100 years after the music was written (Beethoven’s 9th symphony is still beloved and performed 200 years later). Only time will tell if Williams has the same staying power.
Yeah, if you’re looking for someone from Hollywood who’s exposed more people to a ton of classical (and not just orchestral music)…I don’t deny he’s a genius – in fact, he’s my faovurite movie composer, and one of the greatest. (Beats the shit out of that copy-paste Hans Zimmer bullshit.)
I give Zimmer a pass because he’s been so prolific that he’s still produced more original music than most musos will in their lifetime.
And he still has the power to surprise me, e.g. the Man of Steel score.
Was that Zimmer, or one of his franchisees? I love the POTC score, but that was Klaus Badelt, with Zimmer only as “Producer”.And it’s easy to be prolific when you just recycle:
Can only really go by what’s said. When Zimmer saw the success of the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie he said he then wanted to score the rest himself, which is where we get that funky pipe organ sounding theme for Davy Jones.
Zimmer also said he composed the music for Man of Steel (and there’s plenty of original material in there) saying when he decided the best sounding interval was a fifth for his theme for Superman, that was when he realised he was following in the footsteps of John Williams.
I can literally HEAR this gif.
Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaain-tily.
Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaain-tily.
(Lol, Rick Stein’s Taste Of Italian Opera just came one. It’s has – yes – Rossini’s Seville overture as the theme…)
Starling?! You got that right. Lol. Also fucking Hoyt Curtin wrote every. single. Hanna-Barbera. cartoon. theme. ever. Like more than 200. Those two dudes scored my entire childhood ages 2 to 12, Williams took the baton after that.
Just effing listen to this without thinking it is from a dinosaur movie:Just stunning!
That was just gorgeous, and especially good as a headphone listen. And I wish I could do anything as well as that timpani player plays those drums.
As good a composer he is – and he’s great – Williams’ true talent is understanding the film he’s scoring for…often better than the directors themselves.There’s a great story of sitting down with Spielberg, who’s just heard Williams’ iconic E-F that everyone on earth knows means “shark” now, and Spielberg said he wanted something more melodic, less primitive for the shark-And Williams cuts him off and says “What you don’t have here is The L Shaped Room…you have made yourself a popcorn movie.”And, as Spielberg said: “He was right.”I think it started there – the seed was planted and sprouted with Jaws but bore absolute fruit with Jurassic Park.If you gave that score to any other composer they’d have done you up a thriller score, or a sci-fi score. Not Williams. Williams knew why we were in the cinema. And that was the awe and wonder and sheer joy he knew we’d get because…we finally got to see dinosaurs. It wasn’t about fear, or tension, or anything like that. It was about life, uh, finding a way.
It’s a bit tough with movie scores to divorce the quality of the score itself from the memories it brings up from watching the film (or the qualities it furthers in the context of the film itself) but there’s no doubt Williams is one of the greatest film composers, and arguably the greatest still living. I think he also should be given credit for managing to keep a pretty signature style without ever feeling like he’s just repeating himself (something that James Horner, who has also put out stupendous work, was very guilty of) or feeling like he doesn’t put it all into a work (Hans Zimmer when he’s interested in the project? Amazing. Hans Zimmer when he seems to just be interested in a paycheck? Might as well have gotten his underling army to do it and saved some money.) I think some of my favorite music of his are the dark horses from movies that frankly aren’t good or simply massively overshadowed by his successes. “Dance of the Witches” from The Witches of Eastwick is a bop, for instance. But I think “Hedwig’s Theme” is the one of the last unquestionably “can I expect most people to know this theme song” cultural juggernauts.
We don’t talk enough about the score for Prisoner of Azkaban – all the Baroque flourishes, the recorder and harpsichord – it’s really astonishing.
At a bar mitzvah I once told Itzhak Perlman that I heard he was “really good on the fiddle.” He shot eye daggers at me for the next two hours. So worth it.
It’s his own fault for climbing up on that roof, really.
He’s probably so tired of people requesting The Devil Went Down to Georgia
He’s also the only person to have at least one Oscar nomination in seven different decades (his very first was for 1967’s Valley of the Dolls).
I love Williams so much I don’t even call him my favorite composer anymore as it seems lazy and unfair to the others I love. I just sort of have him on this pedestal as obviously there and then I can list my others…Yoko Kanno, Hitoshi Sakimoto, etc. This makes sense in my head anyways. :)As an aside, while I LOVE movie scores, I haven’t loved many recent movie scores. There was a turn in style over the last decade and I haven’t quite liked a lot of it. I can’t really put my finger on why.
While not a Spielberg film, I’ve always thought his Patriot score is very underrated, or least rarely talked about.
So many brilliant choices, but I’m going with E.T. That score still make we well up with tears.
I feel like Williams’ jazzy score for The Adventures of Tintin deserves more love.
I mean it had to be Schindler’s List, right? I think it must be the best score he’s ever composed.