J
ohn Williams is prob ably the most suc cess ful com poser in film his tory. His name is as so ciated with many of the major Hol ly wood box-office block-bust ers of the last forty years. In a ca reer span ning more than fifty years, John Williams has won four Golden Globes, five Emmys, twenty-one Gram mys, seven BAFTA Awards, a num ber of Gold and Plat i num Records, hon orary de grees from twenty-one American uni ver sities, and five Acad emy Awards.Even more stag ger ing, with forty-nine Oscar nom i na tions, he cur rently holds the record for being the most Oscar-nominated liv ing per son, the sec ond most nom i nated per son in his tory, rank ing just be hind Walt Dis ney. His film scores have sold mil lions of cop ies, with Star Wars still being the best-selling sym phonic album of all time.
Williams’s suc cess and fame is not con fined to the film in dus try. For four teen years he served as conductor-in-residence and ar tis tic di rec tor of one of the most fa mous American sym phony or ches tras, the Bos ton Pops. As Bos ton Pops con duc tor, he per formed not only in the United States but also in three tours to Japan. As a “Bos ton Pops Lau reate Con duc tor” since 1994, he still main tains a busy con cert sched ule, both with his an nual ap pear ances in Bos ton and as a guest con duc tor with other famed or ches tras. John Williams also pur sued a ca reer as a con cert com poser, re ceiv ing com mis sions from such im por tant in sti tu tions as the New York Phil har monic, the Chi cago Sym phony, and the Bos ton Sym phony. Plácido Do mingo even tried to lure him into com pos ing an opera for the Los An geles Opera House.1
Over the years, John Williams has be come Amer ica’s “Com poser Lau reate.”
In par tic u lar, the num ber of cel e bra tory pieces com mis sioned for many
4 • Introduction
im por tant events of American his tory and life have made him a modern- day American ver sion of George Frideric Han del. His fan fares, marches, mini ature pieces, and over tures have been per formed on world wide TV broad-casts; they ac com pa nied the Los An geles Olym pics in 1984, the cen ten nial cel e bra tions of the Statue of Lib erty in 1986, the At lanta Cen ten nial Olym pics in 1996, the Salt Lake City Win ter Olym pics in 2002, and Pres i dent Ba rack Obama’s first in au gu ra tion in 2009. In 2012 he wrote the “Fan fare for Fen way”
to cel e brate the first cen ten nial of the Red Sox and his be loved Boston’s Fen way Park. As the Lon don Times re ported, “Williams’ work is often de scribed as quin tes sen tially American. He writes big music for big stu dio mo vies. He has been called ‘the king of gran di os ity.’”2
In contrast to this huge suc cess, Williams has re ceived lit tle at ten tion from es say ists and crit ics, and some times a kind of ill-concealed an i mos ity from schol ars. As of De cem ber 2013 there are only four books on him world wide:
two in Span ish, one in Ger man, and one in French.3 There are no books in En glish so far. Such a lack may de rive from sus pi cion about the composer’s enor mous suc cess and from some ideo log i cal prej u dices, both of which I dis-cuss later in the book. Sim i larly, Eu ro pean ac a demic stud ies prob ably ne glect Williams be cause he is judged to be too com mer cial and a sym bol of the “im-pe ri a lis tic” Hol ly wood film in dus try: “If, as some argue, American cin ema has con quered the world, then Williams can lay claim to have writ ten the vic tory march.”4
John Williams at tracts as many ad mir ers as de trac tors who look at his work with con des cen sion and spite. Be cause of his suc cess, many crit ics have cat e go-rized and dis missed Williams sim ply as a “com mer cial com poser.” They often de lib er ately focus on his most com mer cially suc cess ful works, such as Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977); Super man: The Movie (Rich ard Don ner, 1978); or Raid ers of the Lost Ark (Ste ven Spiel berg, 1981), as if to imply that the score’s suc cess is merely a con se quence of its lucky as so ci a tion with a suc cess ful film. Most crit ics also ne glect or ig nore his more ex peri men tal scores, such as Im ages (Rob ert Alt man, 1972), or more so phis ti cated ones, such as Jane Eyre (Del bert Mann, 1970) and Me moirs of a Gei sha (Rob Mar shall, 2005). Such a biased at ti tude is rarely found to such an ex tent to ward other sim i larly suc cess ful film com pos ers, Ennio Mor ri cone for one.
This prej u di cial stance has caused a se ri ous con se quence, namely the ab sence of a thorough study of Williams’s most im por tant con tri bu tion to the his tory of film music: the re vi val of the clas si cal Hol ly wood music style. Besides his sin gle scores, com mer cial suc cess, and ar tis tic achieve ments, Williams is a pivotal fig ure in Hol ly wood his tory be cause he has been al most single-handedly
re spon sible for bring ing back the clas si cal Hol ly wood sound, up dat ing it to the re quire ments of the con tem po rary block buster film, and, more im por tant, lead ing peo ple to re dis cover and ap pre ciate the music of Hollywood’s Golden Age. In the 1970s, Williams re vived some then dis used fea tures of the clas si cal style and con se quently launched a neo clas si cal film music trend, of which he has been and still is the most rep re sen ta tive com poser. More over, in the 1980s, as con duc tor of the Bos ton Pops Or ches tra, Williams acted as the lead ing pro moter of film music by pre sent ing its best achieve ments in con cert, which con trib uted highly to its ac cep tance. This book stud ies how Williams brought back the clas si cal Hol ly wood music, and to what ex tent, and analyzes the his tor i-cal land marks of the pro cess.
Part I fo cuses on the clas si cal Hol ly wood music style. This style is given an ar tic u late defi ni tion and its his tory charted for its tem po ral bor ders, its main au thors, its lan guage, its com po si tional tech niques, and the mu si cal means typ i cally uti lized. The for mal func tions that this style used to per form in clas si cal films are also de scribed. Williams is not yet men tioned in this part, but a pre lim i-nary re view of the clas si cal Hol ly wood music is in order here, al though a num ber of books have al ready dealt with the topic. For the al ready well-informed film- music spe cial ists and en thu siasts, this sec tion traces a custom-made ac count of the clas si cal Hol ly wood music, which stresses the thin red line of in flu ences, his-tor i cal events, and sty lis tic traits that con nect Williams to the clas si cal pe riod.
For those read ers not fa mil iar with the film-music lit er a ture, it is a handy sum-mary that pro vides the proper back ground.
Williams’s role as the com poser who re vived the clas si cal style and founded the film-music neo clas si cal trend is fully cov ered in Part II. First, I de scribe the con text of the New Hol ly wood where the “Williams rev o lu tion” took place.
Then I an a lyze Williams’s style in terms of neo clas si cism and focus on the 1975–83 pe riod, the peak of the neo clas si cal trend. The Star Wars case—aka Star Wars: A New Hope (George Lucas, 1977) after the 1997 edi tion—is an a lyzed as the most in fluen tial neo clas si cal work. As a case study to close the sur vey and strengthen the point, this book of fers a full, in-depth film/music anal y sis of Raid ers of the Lost Ark (Ste ven Spiel berg, 1981), a per fect ex am ple of Williams’s neo clas si cism. The part ends with an over view of Williams’s con duc tor ship of the Bos ton Pops Or ches tra, a highly in fluen tial pe riod in which Williams brought the clas si cal film-music rep er toire into the lime light. Fi nally, a few re-marks are pre sented on the present-day Hol ly wood music and on what re mains of Williams’s neo clas si cal in flu ence in the con tem po rary film-scoring prac tice.
This book is not writ ten from a music o log i cal per spec tive but from that of film stud ies. Nor does it give an ex haus tive ac count of Williams’s music out put,
6 • Introduction
cov er ing all his scores and each pe riod of his ca reer. Al though a few themes and mo tifs are an a lyzed mu si cally, ex ten sive music anal y sis is not at the core of this book. As the first English-language book on Williams, its aim is to present a micro-history within the larger Hol ly wood his tory, more than sim ply pro vid ing a music o log i cal essay on Williams. It cen ters not so much on Williams the com poser as on Williams the “re storer” of a part of Hollywood’s clas si cism.
There are many film com pos ers who can be stud ied and ap pre ciated for their fine mu si cal achieve ments, and per haps such stud ies can be under taken more ef fi ciently by musi col o gists. How ever, Williams is a unique fig ure for his com-pe tent re trieval and clever up dat ing of a piece of Hollywood’s his tory, and here the film his to rian can per haps say more than the musi col o gist.
Fo cus ing on the peak of the neo clas si cal trend, the anal y sis is de lib er ately nar rowed to three films, con sid ered the key his tor i cal mo ments and the most fit ting ex am ples to il lus trate Williams’s neo clas si cism: Jaws (Ste ven Spiel berg, 1975), Star Wars: A New Hope, and Raid ers of the Lost Ark. There are many more films that can be listed in the neo clas si cal Williams canon, such as Super man, 1941 (Ste ven Spiel berg, 1979), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Ste ven Spiel berg, 1982), the other chap ters of the Star Wars saga, and a few oth ers. They all would de serve a sim i larly in-depth anal y sis, but here they are given only a brief over view.
There is no need to an a lyze each Williams neo clas si cal score but in stead to il lus trate the his tor i cal ac count with a lim ited num ber of se lected ex am ples.
For the same rea son, Williams’s scores that are not strictly neo clas si cal—for ex am ple, the piano-based Ac ci den tal Tour ist (Law rence Kas dan, 1988) and Stan ley
& Iris (Mar tin Ritt, 1989)—are men tioned only briefly in ap pen dix 1. Each of the three afore men tioned films is dealt with dif fer ently. Jaws is an a lyzed in search of the hid den hints of neo clas si cism, that is, how many ele ments in the score and the use and place ment of the music dif fer from the es tab lished prac tice and mod els of the film music of the 1970s. Star Wars is not given a mu si cal anal y sis but is stud ied as an anom aly within the con text of the late 1970s film music, so as to under line its un ex pected suc cess and un prec e dented im pact on the present and fu ture of film music. Fi nally, Raid ers of the Lost Ark has been cho sen as an out stand ing spec i men of Williams’s neo clas si cism and is the ob ject of a full
“film/music anal y sis”—a de tailed film anal y sis based on the de scrip tion and ex pla na tion of how the score works in each scene and within the over all film’s form.
This book is not meant to be the de fin i tive “Williams bible,” but it seeks to lay the first brick to fill a gap in film-music stud ies. The im pact of John Williams’s work on the his tory of film music—past and fu ture—is too im por tant not to be con sid ered in a schol arly study.