Film composer John Williams turns 90 – culture

He has helped shape the Hollywood sound of the past 40 years and has also made a name for himself as a composer of pure concert hall music in recent years: John Williams has been writing film music for 70 years, and even with the big blockbusters one sometimes wonders what has the greater impact: Spielberg’s picture or William’s sound – why it really sucks the viewer into the picture. Because how should one imagine “Jaws” without the frightening bass beats at the beginning, and how small would the cosmos of “Star Wars” be if the sound didn’t span an infinity right at the beginning, which with the simplest of means the conventional sound space explodes into the limitless.

Williams only wanted to be a pianist. But then he found himself confronted with the highly gifted Van Cliburn generation of keyboard magicians and dropped that plan. He also wanted to earn money – an enterprising entrepreneur he is to this day. He publishes his film scores as sheet music, any orchestra can play them. And unlike his peers, he also has commercial success marketing his film compositions as concert pieces. The connection with the Vienna Philharmonic and Anne-Sophie Mutter was certainly beneficial.

For him, music is the real thing: it’s civilized and solemn

The star violinist is a big Williams fan, in 2019 she released the single “Hedwig’s Theme” from the music to “Harry Potter”, rearranged by Williams for mother, and in 2021 she premiered his Violin Concerto No. 2. The numerous solo concertos that Williams wrote, for example for flute, clarinet, cello, trumpet, horn, oboe or viola, show that such undertakings not only serve to cultivate his image. His tuba concerto has now entered the classical repertoire and is regularly required for entrance exams and competitions.

Williams has a gift for serious entertainment. His music is immediately accessible and more often relies on civilized solemnity than on martial effects. There are, too, but they sometimes seem a bit exaggerated and are better off with colleague Hans Zimmer. He has mastered electronic sound production like no other, while Williams is a traditionalist and prefers to sit in front of sheet music with a pencil and eraser than in front of a flickering screen. This also affects his music. It is finer built, more thoughtful, more lengthy than other large-scale screen symphony and surround-sound virtuosity. William always composes the emergency, no matter how tragic the story really is, always pursues a well thought-out dramaturgy – often with simple means.

What is striking is the recognition value, which is less based on a specific sound, the competition can do that too, but, a bit like the even more traditional Ennio Morricone, on conventional melodic patterns that walk the line between simple and banal. Above all, simple means: short motifs, often only one interval jump, and many repetitions. Williams’ favorite interval is the fifth – a phrase or a piece usually ends with the fifth step in the bass. Even his fanfares do not open with a signal-like leap of a fourth, the archaic alarm signal that continues to be heard in the siren, but regularly with an upward leap of a fifth, as in the wind opening of the main theme of “Star Wars”.

Second favorite interval is the octave, no real musical appeal because it’s just a repetition of a tone on a different level. Third, and this is where it gets interesting, he also uses the third as if this three-note spacing were a structurally significant interval. A complete aesthetic program is revealed here in three tones: the imperceptible and complete fusion of high art music with popular sing-along melodies. Because the choice of the fifth points to the origin and the center of all Western music from the Middle Ages to the present day. At least. And the third, still gross dissonance in the Middle Ages, is no longer a sound that one avoids, but quite the opposite: a euphonious and often a little sentimental consonance, the favorite interval of practiced amateur music, for example as an improvised second voice.

His secret weapon is the instrumentation: what goes best with which melody?

Nevertheless, the composed basic structure is one thing, the real sound is another. It depends on other sensibilities, you have to be sure which instrument sound suits which melody best in which situation – beyond the French horn choirs that are so popular in Hollywood and also often and gladly used by Williams – and how to make the whole thing even more brilliant or even more reserved, nebulous. You don’t learn that by experimenting with computer sets, you have to deal with it very seriously at some point and have internalized the tradition of this art, the peaks of which range from Berlioz to Wagner to Richard Strauss.

Then you can achieve a greater effect with little technical effort than with sheer volume, broad frequency coverage and perfect spatial sound reproduction. You can perhaps hear that in one of the most popular sound idols for film people, Strauss’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra”. The steep ascending trumpet at the beginning with its sharp top note and the following explosion of orchestral sound create a momentary climax, but the greater dramatic, long-term spatial effect only unfolds afterwards, in the less tangible goo of the strings. When the horns start up again, they seem completely different and even stronger than at the beginning.

Its design is catchy on the one hand, but not immediately identifiable on the other

But music, especially in pop and film, also lives from rhythm. With William, this is not always as easy to grasp as the controlled, accelerated bass beats in “Shark”, the beginning of which is very reminiscent of “Baba Yaga” from Modest Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition”. Williams is a gifted citation editor; After all, he received his first Oscar in the category “Adaptation” for Anatevka, which is no longer awarded. But whether based on Mussorgsky or, even more catchy, on Carl Orff – William’s rhythmic design is not immediately identifiable. Nor should it. It should go straight to the pit of the stomach, without going through the cerebral cortex.

How to structure what is not consciously perceived so perfectly that it actually creates the dramatic in the first place – this is where the master shows himself. Because even the most catchy melody and the most bombastic large orchestra sound rarely work on their own. A long-term effect must be prepared in a very targeted manner and unfold at the right time – accurate to fractions of a second. And where can one learn this better and more routinely than when working on film music, when composing as well as conducting the same? Williams pursues both with great passion to this day. On Tuesday he will be 90 years old. He is currently working on the Indiana Jones 5 soundtrack.