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NOTESON THE PROGRAMBy James M. Keller, Program AnnotatorThe Leni and Peter May Chair

John Williams is the pre-eminent composerof Hollywood film music and has been for

more than four decades. The son of a film stu-dio musician, he grew up studying first pianoand then trombone, trumpet, and clarinet.When his family moved to Los Angeles, in 1948,Williams began working with the jazz pianistand arranger Bobby Van Eps. During the early1950s he did a stint in the Air Force (conduct-ing and orchestrating for bands) and studiedpiano at Juilliard for a year with RosinaLhévinne. Later that decade, he studied com-position with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco andArthur Olaf Andersen.

Williams orchestrated numerous feature filmsin the 1960s and by the 1970s emerged as an im-portant film-score composer in his own right.Ronald Neame’s The Poseidon Adventure (1973)marked one of his first incontrovertible suc-cesses as a film composer, but his great break-through came two years later with StevenSpielberg’s aquatic thriller, Jaws. Spielberg wenton to deliver Hollywood classics of widely di-verse character, and Williams became the com-poser of choice for music that would mirror,support, and advance their action and theiremotional states. A selective list of Williams’sscores for more than 20 ensuing Spielberg filmsincludes many “must hear” entries, includingClose Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Raidersof the Lost Ark (1981), E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial(1982), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom(1984), Empire of the Sun (1987), Indiana Jonesand the Last Crusade (1989), Jurassic Park (1993),Schindler’s List (1993), Amistad (1997), The LostWorld (1997), Saving Private Ryan (1998), CatchMe If You Can (2002), Harry Potter and the Cham-ber of Secrets (2002), War of the Worlds (2005),Munich (2005), and Lincoln (2012).

But Williams’s scores were not limited toSpielberg hits. He concurrently maintained closeworking relationships with other leading Holly-wood directors. For George Lucas he providedthe memorable musical underpinnings for StarWars (1977); Star Wars: Episode I — the PhantomMenace (1999); and Episode II — Attack of theClones (2002). For Oliver Stone he suppliedscores for Born on the Fourth of July (1989), JFK(1991), and Nixon (1995). He composed music forAlfred Hitchcock’s A Family Plot (1976), for Irvin

A John Williams Celebration

IN SHORT

Born: February 8, 1932, in Flushing, Queens,New York City

Resides: Los Angeles, California

Works composed and premiered: For NewYork, composed in 1988; premiered August 28,1988, at the Tanglewood Music Center in Mas-sachusetts, with the composer conducting theBoston Symphony Orchestra. Jane Eyre, com-posed in 1970; the made-for-TV movie first airedin December 1970 in Great Britain. Schindler’sList, composed in 1993; the film opened on February 4, 1994. Music for additional filmscomposed in the year of their premieres: CloseEncounters of the Third Kind, opened onDecember 25, 1977; Memoirs of a Geisha,on December 23, 2005; Harry Potter and theSorcerer’s Stone, on November 16, 2001; Jaws, on June 20, 1975; Born on the Fourth ofJuly, on January 5, 1990; Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, on May 24, 1989; Star WarsEpisode VII: The Force Awakens, on December16, 2015; Star Wars (later renamed Star Wars:Episode IV — A New Hope), on May 25, 1977

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Kershner’s The Empire Strikes Back (1980), forRichard Marquand’s Return of the Jedi (1983), forChris Columbus’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’sStone (2001), for Rob Marshall’s Memoirs of aGeisha (2005), and for J.J. Abrams’s Star Wars:Episode VII — The Force Awakens (2015). Oftenworking at a pace of about two film scores peryear, he has now completed almost 80, and inthe course of doing so he has been recognizedwith an impressive succession of honors, amongthem five Academy Awards (including for Jaws,Star Wars, and Schindler’s List), four GoldenGlobes (including for Jaws, Star Wars, andMem-oirs of a Geisha), three Emmys (including one forJane Eyre), and 22 Grammys, in addition to in-duction into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame(in 2000) and a Kennedy Center Honor (in 2004).

Williams has arranged selections from manyof his film scores into stand-alone concertsuites, which he has conducted not only withthe Boston Pops Orchestra (which he served asmusic director from 1980 to 1993, after whichhe became its laureate conductor) but alsowith many of the leading symphony orchestrasthat he visits regularly as a guest conductor. Healso remains active as a composer of orchestralconcert pieces not connected to films, includinga full-fledged symphony and a series of concer-tos, for flute, violin, clarinet, cello, bassoon

Angels and MusesFor New York, the three-minute curtain-raiser thatopens this program, was first heard under a differenttitle: To Lenny! To Lenny! John Williams composed itfor the 70th-birthday celebration for Leonard Bernsteinthat the Boston Symphony Orchestra mounted in Au-gust 1988 at the Tanglewood Music Center, whereBernstein taught conducting students, hobnobbedwith budding composers, and coached the Tangle-wood Music Center Orchestra. At the final event of thefour-day celebration, Seiji Ozawa conducted A Bern-stein Birthday Bouquet, Eight Variations on a Themeby Leonard Bernstein. The theme was “New York, NewYork,” from Bernstein’s 1944 musical On the Town, andthe variations were composed by (in the order pre-sented) Luciano Berio, Leon Kirchner, Jacob Druck-man, Lukas Foss, John Corigliano, Williams, ToruTakemitsu, and William Schuman. At the time Williamsserved as music director of the BSO’s sibling orches-tra, the Boston Pops. Covering the event for The NewYork Times, critic John Rockwell wrote:

The variations … tended to quote other works byMr. Bernstein or notable symphonic works he hasconducted. A goodly number also managed to workin “Happy Birthday.”

Williams’s variation, which Rockwell described as“feathery and flashy,” meets up with “New York, NewYork,” but it also incorporates allusions to “America”from West Side Story, “Lonely Town” from On theTown, and — yes — just a dollop of “Happy Birthday.”

In the Composer’s Words

For most of us, the ominous, two-note shark theme is synonymous with the film score of Jaws. And while its composer has described the line as “grinding away at you, just as a shark would do, instinctual, relent-less, unstoppable,” John Williams has also cited his own preference for the swashbuckling moments of “TheBarrel Chase”:

My own favorite cue in the film has always been thebarrel chase sequence, where the shark ap-proaches the boat and the three heroes think theyhave captured it. The music accelerates and be-comes very exciting and heroic. Suddenly, as theshark overpowers them and eventually escapes,the music deflates with a little sea-chant called“Spanish Lady.” The score musically illustrates andpunctuates all of this dramatic outline.

— The Editors

Encounter at sea, in a scene from Jaws

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(commissioned by the New York Philharmonic),trumpet, horn, viola, harp, and oboe. Philhar-monic Principal Tuba Alan Baer will make hissolo debut with the Orchestra in performancesof Williams’s Tuba Concerto this week.

The listening public has grown to appreci-ate John Williams as an indispensable voice ofour time. Although his scores cover a broad

emotional range — the tragic, the comedic, theepic, the intimate — music lovers probablycherish him most for the heroic optimism thatoften pervades his music. It seems perfectlynatural that he should have been tapped toprovide fanfares and theme music for the mostfestive and hopeful of occasions, right up toseveral of the Olympic Games.

Sources and Inspirations

Throughout his collaborations with various directors,including his decades-long association with StevenSpielberg, John Williams has made it his practice to notread film scripts, but to begin working out score ideasto the film footage, which helps give him a sense ofthe setting and mood. At a 2009 concert at Boston’sSymphony Hall (at which Spielberg was also in atten-dance), Williams told the audience that he was flab-bergasted when he saw a rough cut of Schindler’s List:

A scene from Schindler’s List

I had to walk around the room for four or five min-utes to catch my breath. I said to Steven, “I reallythink you need a better composer than I am forthis film.” And he very sweetly said, “I know, butthey’re all dead.”

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