“MOVIE MAESTRO – A PROFILE OF JOHN WILLIAMS

BY

DECLAN J CONNAUGHTON


Since the dawn of motion pictures, the soundtrack score has been one of the most important aspects in ensuring the success of any film. The “Spaghetti” westerns of the late sixties and early seventies were generally regarded not only for their stylised close-ups but also for their music. Indeed, the leading composer of the genre, Ennio Morricone, has stated that his scores were generally composed even before the film was even made.
As with all fields of life, there are the chosen few who dominate and succeed like no other, and the sphere of film composition is no exception.
John Williams was educated at Julliard School for the Performing Arts, along with some other famous film composers such as Jerry Goldsmith and Alexander Courage. Initially, Williams’ main interest was in classics and jazz. However, he soon moved into the area of film composition and began quickly making his mark.
It wasn’t until the musical “Fiddler on the roof”, in 1970, that Williams was finally given the recognition he deserved – winning his first Oscar for his musical adaptation. From that point on, Williams was to become the leading composer of motion picture soundtracks. Among the various notable scores which Williams scored around this period were The Towering Inferno, The Cowboys, as well as the comedy A Guide for the married man, directed by Gene Kelly.
In 1975 Universal Studios assigned a then relatively unknown director, Steven Spielberg, to direct Jaws, from the best seller by Peter Benchley. Williams was commissioned to write the score for the picture, winning him another Oscar, and gaining him a wide audience. There are many who may have never seen the picture, but recognise the score. Two years later, Williams was again assigned to score a Spielberg picture, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, winning the composer another Oscar nomination. Following this success, Williams scored the 1977 space epic Star Wars – winning him yet another Oscar. 1978 saw Williams at work on John Frankenheimer’s Black Sunday starring Robert Shaw and Bruce Dern. IN 1979 Williams also scored John Badam’s remake of “Dracula”, with Frank Langella in the title role, and Laurence Oliver as Van Helsing.
The eighties heralded Williams’ rise to a position of Conductor the the internationally famous Boston Pops Orchestra. Speilberg’s ET won Williams his fourth Oscar, and among the other compositions he was to score during this period were the Indiana Jones trilogy, the remake of Superman, the concluding chapters of the Star Wars saga, as well as The Witches of Eastwick with Jack Nicolson and Cher, and Spielberg’s Empire of The Sun. His most recent score to date had been Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July starring Tom Cruise. Indeed, Williams is strongly tipped to win his fifth Oscar for this film.
The main highlight of Williams’ career to date during the eighties, was when he was commissioned to score the music for the Los Angeles Olympics. He also scored The River, Starring Sissy Spacek and Mel Gibson.
Williams himself has stated that film music at the end of this century will be what opera represents to us today. It has been generally agreed that Williams had been the composer most responsible for re-introducing a more serious element into film composition, something sadly lacking in recent years.
In a sense Williams encapsulates what Dimitri Tiomkin and Max Steiner represent from the thirties on right on through to the sixties. Once cannot view Jaws without Williams’ theme, just as it would be impossible to imagine Psycho without Herrmann or The Omen without Goldsmith, or The Alamo without Tiomkin.
It is now apparent that John Williams is the most honoured film composer of our day, just behind the greatest composer of them all – Alfred Newman – who has an astonishing nine Oscars to his credit. However, I suspect Williams may surpass him.

Published “Orbit” Magazine March 1990