Happy Birthday To John Williams: A Look At His Legacy
Imagine a great white shark fin cutting through the ocean waves, a space battle, an alien species finally making contact with Earth, bicycles flying through the air in the silhouette of the moon, a brachiosaurus roaming the Earth munching on the leaves of a tall tree, or a Quidditch match. We don't just see those images, we hear them. The magical special effects in each of those scenes is an incredible achievement in its own way, but it is the music of John Williams that brings them all to life.
No music composer in film history has had a more significant impact on cinema than John Williams. After six decades of composing music for film and television, Williams turns 90 years old on February 8th and shows no sign of slowing down. Williams is and has been the gold standard for film music for decades. Here is a look back on the person's legacy who has affected how we watch movies forever.
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Williams' career in film and television began in 1958. At that point, the world was already exposed to influential film composers such as Max Steiner (King Kong, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre), long-time Alfred Hitchock collaborator Bernard Hermann (Vertigo, Psycho), Alfred Newman (How the West Was Won), Erich Wolfgang Korngold (The Adventures of Robin Hood), and Miklós Rózsa (Ivanhoe). But what sets John Williams apart from his predecessors and contemporaries is his use of musical themes or leitmotifs. Leitmotifs are a tool composers use to signify a character's involvement in the story, either physically or in spirit. This technique was something Williams picked up from German classical composer Richard Wagner in his opera The Ring of the Nibelung (1869-1876).
One of Williams's first credits is the jazz piano in Henry Mancini's Peter Gunn. Williams is also credited for writing the music for the original Lost in Space (1965-67) television series as Johnny Williams. However, it was not until the early 1970's that Williams’ film composing career really took off. Between 1972-74 Williams became known for writing the music for a slew of disaster films like The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno, and Earthquake. Director Steven Spielberg collaborated with Williams on the 1974 film, The Sugarland Express; 1975 was the year of the shark, Jaws.
Williams' career began snowballing at this point as he wrote music for blockbuster after blockbuster collaborating mostly with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. He favored orchestral scores over modern technical music. Lucas once stated that sound and music make up 50% of a movie's entertainment. Currently, John Williams holds the record for most Oscar nominations for a living person at 52. The only person to receive more is Walt Disney at 59.
Even in his ninth decade, John Williams is wrapping up work on two new film scores and has plans to conduct five concerts, each with a different orchestra, pandemic permitting. Celebrating Williams's ninth decade, he is releasing a two-disc set of some of his most familiar work. John Williams: The Berlin Concert will feature music from Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, and Superman, as well as some of his lesser-known music from Solo: A Star Wars Story.
A companion disc set was released in 2020 that Williams did with the Vienna Orchestra (which is considered the best orchestra in Europe) called John Williams: Live in Vienna. This set contains different music from Schindler's List, Jaws, Hook, and The Witches of Eastwick. That's not all. In June, Williams will return to Washington D.C., where he received Kennedy Center Honors, for his 90th birthday gala concert. Joining him will be cellist Yo-Yo Ma and long-time collaborator Steven Spielberg.
Even now, Williams is hard at work on a score for The Fabelmans, another Spielberg film. This will be their 29th collaboration since 1974. On top of that, Williams is also writing the music for the fifth Indiana Jones movie releasing in 2023. So many young composers see Williams as a role model, not just for his resume but for his technical instincts in music.
John Williams has been a huge part of my life for several reasons. First, of course, there is Star Wars, but my father, who was a fan of classical music, always appreciated Williams' work. And my father's love of classical music has rubbed off on me (for better or worse). Being born and raised in Massachusetts, I always took pride in knowing that John Williams conducted The Boston Pops from 1980-1993. He always felt like one of our own. One of my greatest memories was being at Star Wars Celebration Orlando in 2017 and having John Williams there as a surprise guest, quietly telling the audience to hush simply by placing his finger to his mouth. Being the maestro that he is, we listened, and so began "Princess Leia's Theme." And like little children huddled around a fire, we listened.
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