John Williams
American composer born 8 February 1932 in New York.
John Towner Williams took up the piano at the age of eight, as the United States prepared to enter the Second World War. In 1948, his family settled in Los Angeles, where he studied with pianist and arranger Bobby Van Eps. From 1951 to 1954, he served in the music division of the US Air Force as a conductor and arranger. It was in this setting that he honed his skills as an orchestrator, particularly for brass fanfares. Upon returning to New York, he studied with Rosina Lhévinne at Julliard, as well as performing in jazz clubs and recording studios. He subsequently returned to the West Coast, where he studied privately with Arthur Olaf Andersen and Castelnuovo-Tedesco, among others, while also attending UCLA.
In 1956, Williams gained employment in Hollywood, first as a studio pianist, and two years later as an arranger and composer for television. He composed music for television series until the mid-1960s, as well as working as a pianist, arranger, and conductor for Columbia Records. During this period, he launched his career as a composer for cinema with John Goldfarb, Please Come Home (1964) and How to Steal a Million (1966), and wrote his first concert works: (Essay for Strings and Symphony n°1).
In 1974, John Williams composed the score for one of the first films of Steven Spielberg, The Sugarland Express. The two collaborated again the following year on Jaws, which earned Williams an Oscar. Since then, Williams has composed the scores for almost all of Spielberg’s films, including E.T., for which Williams again won an Oscar. Williams’ career in Hollywood took another decisive turn in 1977, following the release of Star Wars by George Lucas. The global success of this film earned Williams wide acclaim, and Lucas and Spielberg went on to collaborate on films such as Indiana Jones and subsequent episodes in the Star Wars saga.
In 1980, Williams succeeded Arthur Fiedler as conductor of the Boston Pops, allowing the composer to perform a number of his own concert works for orchestra. It was also around this time that Williams composed his first fanfares, including Olympic Fanfare and Theme, composed for the 1984 Olympic Games.
The 1990s saw Williams compose the music for films such as Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan.
In the early 2000s, Williams once again earned wide acclaim with his scores for the Harry Potter trilogy. At the same time, he continued to compose concert works, incuding several concertos.
In 2009, Williams composed Air and Simple Gifts for the inauguration ceremony of President Barack Obama, who bestowed the National Medal of Arts upon him later that year.
Awards, Grants, and Prizes:
- Academy awards (Oscars): 49 nominations and 5 Oscars for the scores of:
-Fiddler on the Roof (1971)
-Jaws (1975)
-Star Wars (1977)
-E.T. (1982)
-Schindler’s List (1993)
- Emmy awards: 6 nominations, 3 awards.
- Golden Globe Awards: 25 nominations, 4 awards.
- Grammy Awards: 63 nominations, 21 awards.
- British Academy of Film and Television (BAFTA) Awards: 7 awards.
- 2004: Kennedy Center Honors.
- 2009: National Medal of Arts.
© Ircam-Centre Pompidou, 2014
By Jacques Amblard
Asked to discuss the work of John Williams for IRCAM’s database, I was tempted to focus on his “serious” concert pieces. But I don’t, for two reasons: First, film music is important, despite what even the cinema industry itself seems to think in giving music an ancillary place in its production process. Second, Williams’s achievements in film music far surpass those of any of his colleagues, in its social influence if not in its aesthetic value. In fact, since Star Wars (1977), Williams has singlehandedly become a kind of pantheon for film music. Two years earlier, Jaws, with a score by Williams, had already become a historic success with earnings of a half-billion dollars. But the blockbuster genre that led to the marketing of licensed merchandise, toys, etc., was born with Star Wars, the first “universal” success in cinema history and a film recognized as a cultural phenomenon. Williams was in part responsible for its success, as producer, screenwriter, and director George Lucas was undoubtedly aware: from one film to the next in the saga, the actors changed but the composer stayed. The mere fact that there is a Skywalker Symphony Orchestra (in California) is telling; what other fictional character could lend their name to an orchestra? The characters’ themes in Star Wars, like Richard Wagner’s leitmotifs in the Ring (their inspiration, according to Philippe Gonin1and James Buhler2), are famous. The best known is undoubtedly the Imperial March that the public usually associates with the evil character of Darth Vader.
Vader, black swan of the twentieth century
Vader’s theme contains many of the building blocks of Williams’s style and thus is worth analyzing in detail. Its first notes outline an arpeggio, presented here in A minor: A, A, A, F, C-A, F, C-A. In most of its occurrences, this arpeggio is played by the brass. The theme is a fanfare, familiar to Williams from his involvement in the Air Force at the beginning of the 1950s. But it is also more broadly national, American, stemming from the tradition of Leonard Bernstein, Samuel Barber, and, perhaps above all, Aaron Copland, who favored robust tonality and bright brass. The United States is of course the birthplace of jazz, including by white musicians who showcased prominent brass sections. It is also a country of parades and exalted military anthems, as referenced in the music of Charles Ives. Moreover, Williams’s brassy arpeggio recalls the English composer Edward Elgar, who stands out for his heroic, martial, and official pieces, such as the famous first march from Pomp and Circumstance (1901). This is an influence that Williams explicitly acknowledged.
There is also the more unmentionable Soviet influence of Sergei Prokofiev, transmitted via the closer example of Erich Korngold. Williams’s arpeggio draws inspiration — directly or not — from Prokofiev’s lively neoclassicism. Williams is a romantic, but only on the surface. His language also brings in modernity, from which Russian neoclassicism was not exempt. The notes of the arpeggio belong to an F major chord, but its underlying harmony alternates three times between A minor and F minor, which share one common note: C. Darth Vader’s arpeggio, like his tormented personality, is thus torn between two distant keys separated by four flats. As elsewhere in Williams’s scoring, the chords are simple yet lead to tonal surprises and decontextualizations, like the music of Prokofiev (which would also be adopted by Francis Poulenc and many others, including Korngold to some extent). We find the oscillation between A minor and F minor in many other contexts, from the first of Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs (1948) to the finale of Arvo Pärt’s Symphony No. 4 (2008). Its seed is in Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake (1875-1876), with its arpeggio-like main theme (E, A B C D E, C E, C E, A C Ab F C A). I find this melody to be a direct, if unconscious, influence (“The true code is unconscious,” writes Pierre Schaeffer3). Darth Vader’s theme disguises his resemblance to the black swan. Vader is the black swan, or the black sign, of the twentieth century, to use Lacanian analysis. He is the schizophrenic West, darkened, blackened by his own technology, but whose soul is fortunately not entirely dead.
Leading up to Vader’s leitmotif, the introduction of the “Imperial March” contains repeated notes that require virtuosic speed from the brass players. Rapid brass note repetitions are typical Williams, perhaps preceded by Florent Schmitt. That the brass are in the low register hints of Prokofiev once again. That the theme is generally given to the brass is reminiscent of Wagner’s Tannhäuser (1845). The dotted rhythms in this introduction recall Jean-Baptiste Lully’s French overtures for Louis XIV. The majestic power and solemn, dotted-rhythm march is that of the Sun King, and ultimately that of Vader under Williams’s pen.
The double feat of Star Wars: orchestral film music modernized and modernity popularized
It is often the case that Williams’s fanfares connect contrasting tonalities and have melodies made of arpeggiated chords that are absent from the harmony. In Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), the discovery of the ark in the Well of Souls is scored with a melody played in unison by the soli strings, which partially arpeggiates contrasting and decontextualized chords. The melody (C, A, D, F, G#, C#, G, B) is harmonized with a series of romantic-sounding minor chords: A minor, D minor (nothing but functional so far), and then a sudden deviation to C# minor, then E minor. The resulting effect, within the tonal system, is singularly mysterious. Aside from Wagner, perhaps only Prokofiev or Dmitri Shostakovich could have written such a progression.
Among the modernist sounds he adapts from the early twentieth century, Williams also uses neoclassical dynamism to enliven his scores: most of his themes are allegro in order to fit the fast pace of action films (his specialty). His slower themes are barely andante. He almost never uses adagio.
Another early twentieth-century technique he brings back is melodic octave displacements. The theme during the Star Wars opening crawl, given to the trumpets as in many other Williams scores, goes beyond the Wagnerian emancipation of the brass. The notes (transposed to C major) C… G… F-E-D-C… G, would be banal if the second C were not displaced to the higher octave. The ear anticipates a lower C after the brief descending scale, which would mark the end point, if it existed. Prokofiev (yet again) as well as Varèse, Béla Bartók, the Viennese school, and sometimes Igor Stravinsky would disrupt Wagner’s chromaticism with abrupt octave displacements — as if in a desperate attempt to surpass him. Williams applies this practice to traditional tonal melodies, to the diatonic line that existed before Wagnerian chromaticism. His diatonicism with octave displacements puts Williams’s melodic style into contrast with the simpler romantic style of many other Hollywood orchestral film scores.4 Korngold, who shaped orchestral film music in pre-war Hollywood as, in his own words, “opera without singing,” based his dynamic model on Strauss’s symphonic poems. Author of the scores for Captain Blood (1935) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), he was accustomed to tonal but jagged instrumental lines. His melodies were inventive, made disjunct through arpeggios, and destabilized with appoggiaturas.
In another example of a foray into modernity, let’s quote once more the opening crawl of Star Wars, when the text scrolls at an angle to emphasize the infinite depth of the cosmos and then the camera dives down to invariably reveal a large spaceship. As the brass instruments of the initial fanfare finish their part, they briefly borrow a sound that is largely absent from the nineteenth century: stacked fourths. This moment is reminiscent of the end of the first movement of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony (1905), or of Arnold Schoenberg’s First Chamber Symphony (1906), as well as of many works by Bartók, notably the fanfare in fourths from his Second Violin Concerto (1937-1938) or the beginning of the finale in his Dance Suite (1923). Otherwise, we can recognize, closer to Williams’s time, Lalo Schifrin’s jazzy film music composed at the end of the 1960s.
What follows in this score is yet another borrowing, from Impressionism. It occurs during the customary view of a large spaceship at the beginning of each of the saga’s films. The flute appears, returning, if you will, from Claude Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (1892-1894) or Syrinx (1913). The strings add delicacy. Trills and pianissimo effects are layered with added-note chords in the manner of Maurice Ravel. Impressionism is often associated with descriptions of nature, in particular flowing water, as in La Mer (The Sea), Une barque sur l’océan (A Boat on the Ocean), Jeux d’eau (Fountains), L’Isle joyeuse (The Joyful Island), Poissons d’or (Golden Fish), La Cathédrale engloutie (The Sunken Cathedral), Sirènes (Mermaids), and the two Ondines.5 Williams, using a similar language, extends this projection to the cosmos. We are reminded of Olivier Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie, which premiered in 1949 in Boston, a city that Williams would come to know, not far from the Tanglewood Festival. Was Messiaen a relay for Impressionism’s journey toward space, with the ondes Martenot that accompanies the Debussyist chords in his “Chant d’amour I”? In any case, it is no longer “The Sea” or “The Joyful Island.” These new musical adventures reach beyond, to “Space” or “The Joyful Asteroid” (for The Empire Strikes Back [1980] and its famous scene in an asteroid field).
The borrowings from Impressionism are refined in Raiders of the Lost Ark. In the opening sequence in South America, the mystery of the Amazon Forest, along with the mythic face of the hero that we gradually discover, is scored with the large orchestra and delicate textures of French Impressionism. A ray of sunlight that glistens through the leaves is adorned with a complex chord over a non-chord tone in the bass, which comes directly from the rich harmonic universe of Daphnis et Chloé (1912) by Ravel.
But while Wagner and Tchaikovsky were widely regarded for their cinematographic potential since the beginnings of cinema, the same cannot be said of the French Impressionists. It was not until the film Woolf (1994) that Ennio Morricone, for example, borrowed the parallelisms of Ravel’s expansive chords. Yet, these parallelisms were already present in Raiders of the Lost Ark, in the scene in which the Nazi officer tries to seduce Marion, his captive, by offering her a dress. Between 1977 and 1981, Williams had probably given another listen to French orchestral music of the 1910s.
A Hollywood career
Why focus so much on only two films, so far, when Williams’s filmography contains over one hundred scores? Because these two scores contain the essence of his style. Pärt, as well, according to various sources, had already sketched out the voice used in his entire life’s work during the similar distinctive period of 1976 to 1979. It was in 1977, in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, that Williams laid the foundations of his Wagnerian fluid motivic system. The score betrays traces both of Schoenberg in its maximal development of tenuous material and of Alban Berg in its symbolism: the entire score is woven with the five notes of the alien theme (D, E, C, C, G), the first four notes of the Dies irae (C, B, C, A), a rising tritone, and a brief motif that disguises a well-known Disney theme (When You Wish Upon a Star).
Of course, Williams kept experimenting after 1981. One experiment was with choirs. In Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and Empire of the Sun (1987), two more collaborations with Spielberg, the choirs act as if to sing the triumph of Hollywood and of the planet’s sheriff, the United States, but somehow too late and perhaps without much conviction.
As Spielberg attempted to mythologize the figure of the American child as a dreamer, a fan of baseball, dressed in a ball cap and sweatshirt — first in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and later in various parts of the Jurassic Park saga (from 1993) — Williams’s orchestrations found their archetypes. Sometimes the brass hand over the theme to the strings, which are typically doubled by the celesta, as in the melody that accompanies the first sighting of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park (1993): the orchestra glistens, flashy, tinkling, as if to conjure a music box belonging to Spielberg’s now classic child characters.
The concertos: Exploring orchestral effects
As for the concert works, the earliest significant pieces date from around 1966. To some extent the Symphony and, even more, the Essay for Strings contain most of the tonal surprises mentioned above. The tonality, however, is less clear. Familiar chords act as signposts, and we can recognize the dark melodic energy of Shostakovich’s work, or Strauss’s most experimental piece, Metamorphoses (1945).
Williams next turned to the concerto, the most brilliant genre in instrumental music. Williams is, above all, an orchestrator and an arranger, and thus is keenly sensitive to timbres and textures. The concerto genre is essential in this effort, letting a soloist unify a work and even shape it through its unique and omnipresent timbre.
Williams generally wrote only one concerto per instrument.6 His foray into this genre is a systematic exploration of the various possibilities offered by solo instruments. Wind instruments, the brass in particular, are especially showcased, with one concerto each for trumpet, tuba, and horn. His preferences recall Jean Françaix or again Strauss, who privileged the instrument of his father, a famous horn player. The fanfare remains a fruitful source of inspiration in these pieces.
The first concerto, for flute (1969), is mostly atonal, which is rare in the Williams oeuvre. The sounds are almost sporadic, and the intervals are dissonant and disjunct as in expressionist and dodecaphonic aesthetics. The strings are characterized by violent pizzicati and col legno, echoes of which he uses later in the suspenseful scenes of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
With the Violin Concerto (1976), Williams hit a high point. The second movement has an untiring melodic flow in a kind of counterpoint new to Williams. The accompaniment is driven by gradually more complex homorhythm. Each chord includes an expressive echo, like an inhale and exhale. It seems to evoke the rational counterpoint of Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, expanded here to the whole orchestra. The work remains on the fringes of modality or diatonicism, but sometimes all the notes of a mode are stacked, creating a certain harmonic suffocation. The orchestration as well conjures Bartók, particularly Bluebeard’s Castle (1918). It is alternatively powerful or sublime, and full of contrasts, distinctly post-Impressionistic. The film-music aesthetic is not far off, but the soloist requires listeners to focus on its line rather than on images. The music is also more modern, modulates rapidly, uses complex diatonicism, and veers toward atonality. Williams was not bringing up mere ghosts of music history; ambiguity between tonality and atonality, well established by Messiaen, has remained an attribute of twenty-first-century music. Williams was even ahead of many of his distinguished colleagues who, only since 2000, have plunged back into dialectic uncertainties inspired by modernity and postmodernity.
With the Tuba Concerto (1985), Williams demonstrates the often overlooked virtuoso potential of this instrument, which, because of its valves, is much more agile than the trombone. The finale highlights nearly perpetual motion in the soloist’s low register, interspersed with orchestral fanfare chords that, for Williams, seem unusually ironic and repetitive, reminiscent of Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments (1920).
The Cello Concerto (1994) has strong form, brilliant and dynamic orchestration of strikingly variable sizes throughout the piece, and an ambivalence between tonality and atonality that manages to lighten the very modern thematic material. It recalls Henri Dutilleux’s most active symphonic works, perhaps the finale of Métaboles (1964) with slightly more diatonicism.
With the Bassoon Concerto (1993), Williams strips away his characteristic sparkling sound to bring out starkly different timbres. The work’s subtitle, The Five Sacred Trees, evokes the kind of spiritual purification represented in the first movement, or “tree.” Williams reclaims two-voice polyphony, imitation, and even a canon between two lines that push diatonicism to the edge of atonality, once again. (Though his orchestration is stripped down, Williams is not using the national minimalism of Philip Glass. He pares down only the orchestral sound, not the language.)
The second movement of the Horn Concerto (2003), subtitled Battle of the Trees, returns to brilliant and brassy post-Impressionism, as if the sacred trees discussed above relapse into a profane fury. The result nearly attains the same level of savagery of György Ligeti’s final work, the Hamburg Concerto, which was completed the same year and in which the horn is also a soloist.
In the Viola Concerto (2009), Williams once again drastically thins the orchestra’s texture, recalling the timbral self-castration in Stravinsky’s serial music of the 1960s and ’70s. The finale, far from offering the triumphant ending one could expect, sets up a long dialogue between the soloist and a harpist. Was Williams so bored in his academic compositions, after the easy success of the Harry Potter saga? He reduces his forces to even smaller and frailer than the translucent ensemble of Debussy’s Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp (1915). Justly famous for its understated modernity, discretion, and economy of means, the sonata had provocatively brought together three instruments that have a reputation for being only moderately sonorous and therefore are infrequently used in chamber music. Is there an explicit reference here? Is Williams telling us: “the symphony orchestra takes its leave here, and I with it”?
Political involvement
The choir, mentioned above in connection with two Spielberg films from the 1980s, has not received much further attention from Williams. He has remained a specialist of the orchestra and of the instrument. It is almost as if the United States has chosen him as its elected representative of what it expects from learned musical craftmanship. While vocal music has been monopolized by the pop world — a popular singing aesthetic invented by anglophones — orchestration is the craft par excellence. It is built on empiricisms and a few special cases, but has no overarching concept or very binding rules, except those dictated by the limits of each instrument’s construction, as exposed in the treatises on instrumentation and orchestration from Hector Berlioz to Charles Koechlin. For the New World, Williams is one of the great traditional craftsmen. He transmits the voice of the ancestral orchestra, whose subtle timbres offer depth and a preindustrial ecological sound that neither synthesizer nor guitar can replace. The orchestra, this medium of romanticism and Impressionism (two currents aligned with resonances, with echoes), is better equipped than a synthesizer or a voice to convey the deep sound of the cosmos, as in Star Wars.
As for the fanfares to which Williams repeatedly returns, they seem to celebrate, involuntarily, the military power of the United States and the country’s role as global arbiter. In Saving Private Ryan (1998), the simple and pacified trumpet in “Hymn to the Fallen” sounds the powerful voice of a nation — a nation self-assured and imperialistic. It may claim to be wise and unaggressive, but it should not be provoked unless to coax it into its role as humanity’s savior — a role that the film commemorates. The brass reclaim their medieval function as outdoor music used by lords: powerful timbres to accompany powerful people. One might wonder if Williams, by offering his talents as a Hollywood orchestrator and scoring the Star Wars saga, doesn’t share some responsibility in the universal propagation of American ideals, which, though problematic, at least contributed to the fall of the Soviet Bloc.
Even if this last causal link is questionable, it is certain that Williams has become a spokesperson for the United States, if not its official composer. It was not Glass or John Cage or even John Adams (who is more associated with brassy ensembles) but Williams who was commissioned to write the opening fanfares for the Olympics held in summer 1984 and winter 1990 in the United States. He was also asked to write the first commissioned “classical” work for a presidential ceremony: Air and Simple Gifts, performed at the inauguration of President Barack Obama in January 2009. His Prelude and Fugue (1965) for wind ensemble and percussion is rarely performed, but it is recorded by the US Marine Band, a prestigious national military band. And what other composer of his time has written as many heroic pieces with political resonances, such as America, the Dream Goes On (1981), Liberty Fanfare (1986), Hymn to New England (1987), Fanfare for Michael Dukakis (1988),7 Celebrate Discovery (1990), Sound the Bells! (1993), Song for World Peace (initially named Satellite Celebration, 1995), Summon the Heroes (1996), Call of the Champions, American Collection, and American Journey? If anyone thought the genre of the patriotic piece had died out in the West, at least since 1918, well, no, not in the United States. According to Neil Lerner, Williams exalts a sense of nostalgia mixed with authoritarianism.8
Williams greatly contributed to the restoration of orchestral music in Hollywood when jazz and rhythm and blues had been more in fashion for about a decade. Above all, he led the romantic orchestra into the cosmos (and along with it, suffering modern humanity, which has remained romantic, according to Elie During9), bringing hope to a planet known in almost every corner of the globe and thus disenchanted. If the Star Wars saga can be likened to a Wagnerian opera, Lucas is simply the librettist. In this Gesamtkunstwerk, it is Williams who pulls the strings and uses his themes to weave invisible connections. It is worth noting that the global craze for Star Wars happened in 1977, a few years after the oil crisis of 1973, closing nearly thirty years of postwar economic growth. It was time for this economically doomed planet to be left behind: and so, a journey to the stars was no longer a threat, as it had been earlier in the Cold War when occupying troops from the Russian Federation were the “little green men” of concern.
Moreover, in 1977, no doubt also because of the economic crisis, postmodernism was taking shape as a streamlined aesthetic, based on a triumphant (and soon-to-be Reaganian) business model. In the United States,10 this postmodernism is known as post-minimalism.11 Like the postmodernists of the recording industry, Williams has perpetuated a classical music tradition, but within the more affluent film industry. His business (Lucasfilm or Hollywood) has had more resources than the crisis-stricken concert stage and classical record labels. He has not been obliged to strip the orchestra of woodwinds and brass and rely on the strings, as Pärt and Henryk Gorecki did. He has had the resources to employ the romantic symphony orchestra; powerful Wagnerian horns, trombones, and trumpets; the spirit and virtuosity of jazz and fanfares; the Impressionist orchestra of Ravel in scenes evoking mystery; Prokofiev and the Americans for his marches (the Raiders march may evoke the one from The Love for Three Oranges, 1921); neoclassical modernity for melody; and atonality for chaos and commotion.
Williams may well have been one of the most influential American composers of the late twentieth century — and all the more so if the influence of films on the general public is subliminal. Considering his work’s global reach, one might wonder if he was the most recognized orchestral musician, or at least the most felt composer, of the late twentieth century.
Translated from the French by Tristan Paré-Morin.
1. See Philippe GONIN, “L’héritage Wagnérien dans la musique de John Williams: Réflexion sur l’usage du leitmotiv dans la première trilogie Star Wars,” in John Williams: Un alchimiste musical à Hollywood, ed. Alexandre TYLSKI, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2011, p. 95-112. ↩
2. For James Buhler, Wagner is not distorted here but fully recreated, because the leitmotif recaptures a “mythical content,” unlike Hollywood’s first leitmotifs, which Buhler finds were justifiably criticized by Theodor Adorno and Hanns Eisler. James BUHLER, “Star Wars, Music, and Myth,” in Music and Cinema, University Press of New England, 2000, p. 33. ↩
3. Pierre SCHAEFFER, Treatise on Musical Objects: An Essay across Disciplines, trans. by Christine North and John Dack, Oakland, University of California Press, 2017 [1966], p. 223. ↩
4. Bernard Hermann, in his scores for Alfred Hitchcock, was a famous prior exception with his slight borrowings from Stravinsky. ↩
5. Daniel DURNEY, “L’Eau dans la musique impressionniste,” Revue Internationale de Musique Française, no. 5, June 1981, p. 43. ↩
6. [Translator’s note: In 2021, Williams ended this tendency with his Violin Concerto No. 2, which is actually his third if we include TreeSong (2000). He also wrote several shorter concertante works, including the Elegy for cello and orchestra (which seems to be an homage to Fauré’s own Élégie).] ↩
7. This piece is dedicated to an unsuccessful presidential candidate in the year that George H. W. Bush was elected. Did Williams write it out of political support for the Democratic candidate, or simply to fulfill a commission? Is one possible without the other? ↩
8. See Neil LERNER, “Nostalgia, Masculinist Discourse, and Authoritarianism in John Williams’s Scores for Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” Perfect beat: The Pacific Journal of Research into Contemporary Music and Popular Culture, vol. 6, nos. 2-3 (Off the Planet: Music, Sound and Science Fiction Cinema), Libbey (UK), 2004, p. 96. ↩
9. See Elie DURING, “Prototypes: un nouveau statut de l’œuvre d’art,” in Esthétique et société, ed. Colette TRON, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2009, p. 20. During thinks we are only beginning to come out of romanticism through “prototypes,” new works of art produced by artists who are “entrepreneurs,” “engineers,” “operators,” or “researchers.” ↩
10. The year 1976 had seen the creation of Glass’s Einstein on the Beach (his first so-called post-minimalist, i.e., postmodernist, work), the development of Pärt’s famous tintinnabuli style, the Third Symphony by Gorecki (which became the biggest classical album hit in history after being recorded by the London Sinfonietta in 1992), and Krzysztof Penderecki’s earliest postmodern works. ↩
11. For the following discussion, we refer the skeptical reader to Fredric JAMESON, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Durham, Duke University Press, 1991. ↩
© Ircam-Centre Pompidou, 2011
- Solo (excluding voice)
- Piano Sonata for piano (1951)
- Three Pieces for cello (2001)
- Rounds for guitar (2012)
- Conversations for piano (2013)
- Chamber music
- Wind Quartet [inachevé] (1960)
- Elegy for cello and piano (1997)
- Quartet La Jolla for violin, cello, clarinet and harp (2011)
- Instrumental ensemble music
- Essay for Strings for strings (1965)
- Symphony n°1 (1966)
- Sinfonietta for wind ensemble (1968)
- Fanfare for a Festive Occasion for fanfare orchestra (1980)
- Jubilee 350 Fanfare for fanfare orchestra (1980)
- Pops on the March for fanfare orchestra (1981)
- Esplanade Overture for fanfare orchestra (1982)
- Olympic Fanfare and Theme for fanfare orchestra (1984)
- Celebration Fanfare for fanfare orchestra (1986)
- Liberty Fanfare for fanfare orchestra (1986)
- A Hymn to New England for fanfare orchestra (1987)
- Fanfare for Michael Dukakis for fanfare orchestra (1988)
- Fanfare for Ten-Years-Old for fanfare orchestra (1988)
- The Olympic Spirit for fanfare orchestra (1988)
- Winter Games Fanfare for fanfare orchestra (1989)
- Fanfare for Prince Philip (Aloft… To the Royal Masthead) for fanfare orchestra (1992)
- Sound the Bells ! for fanfare orchestra (1993)
- Song for World Peace (1994)
- Variations on Happy Birthday for fanfare orchestra (1995)
- Summon the Heroes for fanfare orchestra (1996)
- Tributes ! (for Seiji) for fanfare orchestra (1999)
- Fanfare for Fenway for fanfare orchestra (2012)
- Fanfare "For the President’s Own" for fanfare orchestra (2013)
- A Toast! for fanfare orchestra (2014)
- Music for Brass for brass ensemble and percussion (2014)
- Concertant music
- Concerto for flute and orchestra (1969)
- Concerto n°1 for violin and orchestra (1974-1976)
- Concerto for tuba and orchestra (1985)
- Concerto for clarinet and orchestra (1991)
- Concerto for bassoon and orchestra [The Five Sacred Trees] (1993)
- Concerto for cello and orchestra (1994)
- Concerto for trumpet and orchestra (1996)
- Concerto n°2 for violin and orchestra [TreeSong] (2000)
- Heartwood : Lyric Sketches for cello and orchestra (2001)
- Elegy for cello and orchestra (2002)
- Concerto for horn and orchestra (2003)
- Duo Concertante for violin and viola (2007)
- Concerto for viola and orchestra (2009)
- Concerto for harp and orchestra [On Willows and Birches] (2009)
- Concerto for oboe and orchestra (2011)
- Scherzo for piano and orchestra (2014)
- Vocal music and instrument(s)
- America, The Dream Goes On for voice, choir and orchestra (1982)
- We're Lookin' Good ! for voice and orchestra (1987)
- Seven for Luck for voice and orchestra (1997)
- Seven for Luck for soprano and orchestra (1997)
- Call of the Champions (2002)
- Unspecified instrumentation
- Prelude and Fugue (1965)
- Thomas and The King (1975)
- For New York (To Lenny!, To Lenny!) Variations on themes by Leonard Bernstein (1988)
- Celebrate Discovery 500th anniversary of the arrival of Christopher Columbus in America (1990)
- Soundings (2003)
- Air and Simple Gifts (2009)
- Quartet for violin (2010)
Catalog sources and details
Les fiches œuvres de ce catalogue appartiennent uniquement à la catégorie « musique de concert », et nous listons ci-dessous les compositions originales pour le cinéma. Toutes ces informations sont issues de l’ouvrage réalisé sous la direction de Alexandre Tylski, John Williams, Un alchimiste musical à Hollywood, éditions L’Harmattan, 2011, ainsi que du site internet http://www.jwfan.com/.
Pour un catalogue complet de l’œuvre de John Williams, voir l’ouvrage d’Alexandre Tylski et les liens Internet https://johnwilliams.org/ et http://www.jwfan.com/ (liens vérifiés en novembre 2014).
Compositions originales pour le cinéma (ordre chronologique) :
- My Gun Is Quick (non crédité, 1957)
- Daddy-O (1958)
- Because They’re Young (1960)
- I Passed for White (1960)
- The Secret Ways (1961)
- Bachelor Flat (1962)
- Diamond Head (1963)
- Gidget Goes to Rome (1963)
- The Killer (1964)
- None But the Brave (1965)
- The Rare Breed (1966)
- The Katherine Reed Story (1965)
- John Goldfarb, Please Come Home ! (1965)
- Sergeant Ryker (1965)
- The Plainsman (1966)
- Not With My Wife, You Don’t ! (1966)
- Penelope (1966)
- Valley of the Dolls (1967)
- A Guide for the Married Man (1967)
- Fitzwilly (1967)
- How to Steale a Million (1968)
- Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting (1969)
- The Reivers (1969)
- Storia di una donna (1969)
- Images (1972)
- The Poseidon Adventure (1972)
- The Cowboys (1972)
- Pete ‘n’ Tillie (1972)
- Cinderella Liberty (1973)
- The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing (1973)
- The Long Goodbye (1973)
- The Paper Chase (1973)
- The Towering Inferno (1974)
- Earthquake (1974)
- Conrack (1974)
- The Sugarland Express (1974)
- Jaws (1975)
- The Eiger Sanction (1975)
- Family Plot (1976)
- Midway (1976)
- The Missouri Breaks (1976)
- Black Sunday (1977)
- Star Wars (1977)
- Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
- Jaws 2 (1978)
- The Fury (1978)
- Superman (1978)
- 1941 (1979)
- Dracula (1979)
- Star Wars Episode V : The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
- Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
- Heartbeeps (1981)
- E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
- Monsignor (1982)
- Star Wars Episode VI : Return of the Jedi (1983)
- Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
- The River (1984)
- SpacesCamp (1986)
- Empire of the Sun (1987)
- The Witches of Eastwick (1987)
- The Accidental Tourist (1988)
- Born on the Fourth of July (1989)
- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
- Always (1989)
- Stanley & Iris (1990)
- Resumed Innocent (1990)
- Home Alone (1990)
- JFK (1991)
- Hook (1991)
- Far and Away (1992)
- Home Alone 2 : Lost in New York (1992)
- Jurassic Park (1993)
- Schindler’s List (1993)
- Sabrina (1995)
- Nixon (1995)
- Sleepers (1996)
- Rosewood (1997)
- The Lost World (1997)
- Seven Years in Tibet (1997)
- Amistad (1997)
- Stepmon (1998)
- Saving Private Ryan (1998)
- Star Wars Episode I : The Phantom Menace (1999)
- Angela’s Ashes (1999)
- The Patriot (2000)
- A.I. : Artificial Intelligence (2001)
- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001)
- Catch Me if You Can (2002)
- Star Wars Episode II : Attack of the Clones (2002)
- Minority Report (2002)
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
- The Terminal (2004)
- Star Wars Episode III : Revenge of the Sith (2005)
- War of the Worlds (2005)
- Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)
- Munich (2005)
- Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
- The Adventures of Tintin : Secret of the Unicorn (2011)
- Warhorse (2011)
- Lincoln (2012)
- The Book Thief (2013)
- 2014
- A Toast! for fanfare orchestra
- Music for Brass for brass ensemble and percussion
- Scherzo for piano and orchestra
- 2013
- Conversations for piano
- Fanfare "For the President’s Own" for fanfare orchestra
- 2012
- Fanfare for Fenway for fanfare orchestra
- Rounds for guitar
- 2011
- Concerto for oboe and orchestra
- Quartet La Jolla for violin, cello, clarinet and harp
- 2010
- 2009
- Air and Simple Gifts
- Concerto for viola and orchestra
- Concerto for harp and orchestra [On Willows and Birches]
- 2007
- Duo Concertante for violin and viola
- 2003
- 2002
- Call of the Champions
- Elegy for cello and orchestra
- 2001
- Heartwood : Lyric Sketches for cello and orchestra
- Three Pieces for cello
- 2000
- Concerto n°2 for violin and orchestra [TreeSong]
- 1999
- Tributes ! (for Seiji) for fanfare orchestra
- 1997
- Elegy for cello and piano
- Seven for Luck for voice and orchestra
- Seven for Luck for soprano and orchestra
- 1996
- Concerto for trumpet and orchestra
- Summon the Heroes for fanfare orchestra
- 1995
- Variations on Happy Birthday for fanfare orchestra
- 1994
- Concerto for cello and orchestra
- Song for World Peace
- 1993
- Concerto for bassoon and orchestra [The Five Sacred Trees]
- Sound the Bells ! for fanfare orchestra
- 1992
- Fanfare for Prince Philip (Aloft… To the Royal Masthead) for fanfare orchestra
- 1991
- Concerto for clarinet and orchestra
- 1990
- Celebrate Discovery 500th anniversary of the arrival of Christopher Columbus in America
- 1989
- Winter Games Fanfare for fanfare orchestra
- 1988
- Fanfare for Michael Dukakis for fanfare orchestra
- Fanfare for Ten-Years-Old for fanfare orchestra
- For New York (To Lenny!, To Lenny!) Variations on themes by Leonard Bernstein
- The Olympic Spirit for fanfare orchestra
- 1987
- A Hymn to New England for fanfare orchestra
- We're Lookin' Good ! for voice and orchestra
- 1986
- Celebration Fanfare for fanfare orchestra
- Liberty Fanfare for fanfare orchestra
- 1985
- Concerto for tuba and orchestra
- 1984
- Olympic Fanfare and Theme for fanfare orchestra
- 1982
- America, The Dream Goes On for voice, choir and orchestra
- Esplanade Overture for fanfare orchestra
- 1981
- Pops on the March for fanfare orchestra
- 1980
- Fanfare for a Festive Occasion for fanfare orchestra
- Jubilee 350 Fanfare for fanfare orchestra
- 1976
- Concerto n°1 for violin and orchestra
- 1975
- 1969
- Concerto for flute and orchestra
- 1968
- Sinfonietta for wind ensemble
- 1966
- 1965
- Essay for Strings for strings
- Prelude and Fugue
- 1960
- 1951
- Piano Sonata for piano
Catalog source(s)
Les fiches œuvres de ce catalogue appartiennent uniquement à la catégorie « musique de concert », et nous listons ci-dessous les compositions originales pour le cinéma. Toutes ces informations sont issues de l’ouvrage réalisé sous la direction de Alexandre Tylski, John Williams, Un alchimiste musical à Hollywood, éditions L’Harmattan, 2011, ainsi que du site internet http://www.jwfan.com/.
Pour un catalogue complet de l’œuvre de John Williams, voir l’ouvrage d’Alexandre Tylski et les liens Internet https://johnwilliams.org/ et http://www.jwfan.com/ (liens vérifiés en novembre 2014).
Compositions originales pour le cinéma (ordre chronologique) :
- My Gun Is Quick (non crédité, 1957)
- Daddy-O (1958)
- Because They’re Young (1960)
- I Passed for White (1960)
- The Secret Ways (1961)
- Bachelor Flat (1962)
- Diamond Head (1963)
- Gidget Goes to Rome (1963)
- The Killer (1964)
- None But the Brave (1965)
- The Rare Breed (1966)
- The Katherine Reed Story (1965)
- John Goldfarb, Please Come Home ! (1965)
- Sergeant Ryker (1965)
- The Plainsman (1966)
- Not With My Wife, You Don’t ! (1966)
- Penelope (1966)
- Valley of the Dolls (1967)
- A Guide for the Married Man (1967)
- Fitzwilly (1967)
- How to Steale a Million (1968)
- Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting (1969)
- The Reivers (1969)
- Storia di una donna (1969)
- Images (1972)
- The Poseidon Adventure (1972)
- The Cowboys (1972)
- Pete ‘n’ Tillie (1972)
- Cinderella Liberty (1973)
- The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing (1973)
- The Long Goodbye (1973)
- The Paper Chase (1973)
- The Towering Inferno (1974)
- Earthquake (1974)
- Conrack (1974)
- The Sugarland Express (1974)
- Jaws (1975)
- The Eiger Sanction (1975)
- Family Plot (1976)
- Midway (1976)
- The Missouri Breaks (1976)
- Black Sunday (1977)
- Star Wars (1977)
- Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
- Jaws 2 (1978)
- The Fury (1978)
- Superman (1978)
- 1941 (1979)
- Dracula (1979)
- Star Wars Episode V : The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
- Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
- Heartbeeps (1981)
- E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
- Monsignor (1982)
- Star Wars Episode VI : Return of the Jedi (1983)
- Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
- The River (1984)
- SpacesCamp (1986)
- Empire of the Sun (1987)
- The Witches of Eastwick (1987)
- The Accidental Tourist (1988)
- Born on the Fourth of July (1989)
- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
- Always (1989)
- Stanley & Iris (1990)
- Resumed Innocent (1990)
- Home Alone (1990)
- JFK (1991)
- Hook (1991)
- Far and Away (1992)
- Home Alone 2 : Lost in New York (1992)
- Jurassic Park (1993)
- Schindler’s List (1993)
- Sabrina (1995)
- Nixon (1995)
- Sleepers (1996)
- Rosewood (1997)
- The Lost World (1997)
- Seven Years in Tibet (1997)
- Amistad (1997)
- Stepmon (1998)
- Saving Private Ryan (1998)
- Star Wars Episode I : The Phantom Menace (1999)
- Angela’s Ashes (1999)
- The Patriot (2000)
- A.I. : Artificial Intelligence (2001)
- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001)
- Catch Me if You Can (2002)
- Star Wars Episode II : Attack of the Clones (2002)
- Minority Report (2002)
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
- The Terminal (2004)
- Star Wars Episode III : Revenge of the Sith (2005)
- War of the Worlds (2005)
- Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)
- Munich (2005)
- Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
- The Adventures of Tintin : Secret of the Unicorn (2011)
- Warhorse (2011)
- Lincoln (2012)
- The Book Thief (2013)
Liens Internet
- Site officiel du compositeur, http://www.johnwilliams.org/ (lien vérifié en novembre 2014).
Bibliographie
- Doug ADAMS, « The sounds of the empire. Analyzing the themes of the Star Wars trilogy », Film Score Monthly, iv/5, 1999, p. 22–25.
- Richard DYER, « Making Star Wars Sing Again », Boston Globe, 28 mars 1999, repris dans Film Score Monthly, iv/5,1999, p. 18–21.
- Derek ELLEY, « The film composer John Williams », Films and Filming, xxiv (Juillet/Août, 1977–8), n°10, p. 20–24 et n°11, p.30–33.
- Fred KARLIN and Rayburn WRIGHT, On the Track. A Guide to Contemporary Film Scoring (New York, 1990).
- Kathryn KALINAK, Settling the score. Music and the classical Hollywood film, Madison, WI, 1992, p. 184–202.
- Alexandre TYLSKI (éd.), John Williams. Un alchimiste musical à Hollywood, L’Harmattan, 2011.
Discographie
- 1969-1999, « Greatest hits », Yo-Yo Ma (violoncelle), Itzhak Perlman (violon), Tim Morrison (trompette), Christopher Parkening (guitare), London Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops Orchestra, The Skywalker Symphony Orchestra, American Boychoir, Tanglewood Festival Chorus, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, 2 cds Sony Classical, novembre 1999.
- « Yo-Yo Ma plays the music of John Williams », Concerto pour violoncelle et orchestre ; Élégie pour violoncelle et orchestre ; Trois pièces pour violoncelle solo ; Heartwood, Recording Arts Orchestra of Los Angeles, John Williams (direction), Sony Classical 89670, février 2002.
- « American Journey », Call of the Champions ; American Journey ; Song for World Peace (aka Satellite Celebration) ; Jubilee 350 Fanfare ; The Mission (NBC News theme) ; For New York (aka To Lenny! To Lenny!) ; Sound the Bells! ; Hymn to New England ; Celebrate Discovery, Recording Arts Orchestra of Los Angeles, Utah Symphony Mormon Tabernacle Choir, John Williams (direction), Sony Classical 89364, janvier 2002.
- « TreeSong », Concerto pour violon TreeSong ; trois extraits de Schindler’s List, Gil Shaham (violon), Boston Symphony Orchestra, John Williams (direction), Deutsche Grammophon 471 326-2, septembre 2001.
- Essaipour cordes ;Concertopour trompette, également le Concerto pour harpe etA long way de Kaska, Arturo Sandoval (trompette), Ann Hobson Pilot (harpe), Kristine Jepson (mezzo-soprano), London Symphony Orchestra, Ronald Feldman (direction), Denouement Records DR 1003, avril 2002.