John Williams Essay

Having scored over 100 films, awarded in the highest regards, and one of the most financially successful composers in United States history, John Williams is arguably the most popular film composer of the modern era. Williams has composed some of the most prominent scores of motion picture history, many of which have often been directed by the legendary Steven Spielberg.

John Williams was born John Towner Williams in Queens, New York on February 8, 1932. Brought up in New York, Williams comes from a musical family as John’s father was a percussionist in the CBS radio orchestra. John’s music life began when he was a young child and the first instruments he learned were the piano, trumpet, trombone, and clarinet. Also, John started to compose

music and was known to arrange his own musical pieces when he was just a teenager. Williams made his way to Los Angeles with his family in 1948 where he temporarily studied composition at University of California Los Angeles. Later in his life Williams was drafted in 1951 and served in the U.S. Air Force. While he was in the U.S. Air Force, Williams managed to arrange and conduct music in the military band.

In 1954, following his time in the military, Williams studied piano at New York City’s Juilliard School of Music where he also worked as a freelance jazz pianist.

Williams found work playing clubs and working in recording sessions as a jazz pianist. After John’s time in New York, he moved back to California and worked in Hollywood as a studio pianist. In Hollywood, John got to work as a studio pianist for notable films such as 1959’s Some Like it Hot, 1961’s West Side Story, and 1962’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Williams’s work in Hollywood as a studio pianist and composer also made its way into television. As for his work in Hollywood television, Williams wrote songs for shows such as Gilligan’s Island and Wagon

Train.

Williams made a powerful impact on Hollywood in the early 1970’s as a composer for big-budget disaster films such as The Poseidon Adventure in 1972. John’s soon to be long-time film collaborator, Steven Spielberg was an aspiring director in the early 1970’s and asked Williams to score his first feature, The Sugarland Express in 1974. Immediately following The Sugarland Express was an established partnership between Williams and Spielberg that would last for decades and into the present days. Williams has scored in every Spielberg film except for 1985's The Color Purple and 2015's Bridge of Spies. The powerful duo of Williams and Spielberg has strongly continued into the present days as seen in the recent adaptation of Roald Dahl's classic, The BFG. In the past, Williams has scored some of Spielberg’s biggest films such as 1975’s Jaws, 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1982’s E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, and the Indiana Jones films of 1981, 1984, 1989, and 2008. In addition, Williams also scored Spielberg’s Jurassic Park in 1993 and its 1997 sequel The Lost World, 1993’s Schindler’s List, and 1998’s Saving Private Ryan.

Over his long-lasting career, Williams continued to compose some of the most popular music ever put into film. Examples of his most memorable film music are the first three Harry Potter films in 2001, 2002, 2004 and the colossal themes for all of George Lucas’s Star Wars films in 1977, 1980, 1983, 1999, 2002, 2005, and 2016. Williams has also composed themes for the Olympic Games in 1984, 1988, 1996, 2002 and some of the NBC channel’s news broadcasts. Williams has been known particularly for his ability to produce rich, epic, and exuberant music with a real symphony orchestra. Williams’s work with symphony orchestras has influenced film to bring back the use of this performing force rather than to constantly rely on synthesizers or digital compositions.

In an analysis of his film music, Williams utterly enhances and gives life to motion pictures through his compositions.

Williams’s musical themes in movies help make them what they are as he improves the storytelling of movies. For example, in Jaws, Williams helped make the water a frightful place to be in. Williams forced suspense onto the viewer and helped create the tension, fear, and anxiety that came with watching Jaws. Also in E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Williams helped the alien and young boy soar into the sky with touching pieces of music. Williams generated the intense emotions that fill the viewer throughout the film as exemplified in the E.T departure scene. In Star Wars, Williams gave an extraordinary amount of power to the dark side. The iconic Imperial scores made the audience feel the strength, intensity, and evil of the dark side. For example, when the Imperial scores are heard in the early Star Wars films, it can be expected that Darth Vader and the Stormtroopers would soon appear marching in the scene. With all of Williams’s motion picture compositions, the audience can identify which scene is associated with each score. The fact that a viewer can pinpoint the scene of a movie through Williams’s music is remarkable in itself. Williams’s movie scores are so impactful; they create their own stories within the movies they are placed

into.

Aside from his work in film, Williams was a renowned concert composer as well as conductor. Williams has composed symphonies and concertos for numerous and diverse instruments. Williams became the conductor of the Boston Pops in 1980 and toured with, recorded with, and sometimes conducted the orchestra in live versions of his most memorable film scores. Following his retirement from the Boston Pops in 1993, Williams stayed a revered conductor for the orchestra and would guest conduct for other orchestras such as the London Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic. Later on in his career, Williams arranged and composed a song for the inauguration ceremony of U.S. President Barack Obama.

Williams has received many honors and awards for his work thus far. Williams was nominated for more than forty-five Academy Awards and has won five. Williams’s Academy Awards have been for his work in 1971’s adaptation of the musical Fiddler on the Roof, Jaws, Star Wars, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, and Schindler’s List. Williams was also the awardee of three Emmy Awards, over twenty Grammy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and in 2016 was the first composer to receive the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award. Williams was awarded a Kennedy Center Honor in 2004 and the National Medal of Arts in 2009 which is the highest award given to an artist by the U.S. Government. Williams was awarded the National Medal of Arts for his numerous achievements in symphony music for movies.