John Williams (February 8, 1932) is one of the world's most famous movie composers and has been nominated for 47 Oscars (winning five), six Emmy nominations (winning three), 22 Golden Globes (winning four) and 59 Grammys (winning twenty). Only
Walt Disney has been nominated for more Academy Awards, with John Williams currently holding the record for most nominated living individual.
Williams composes music in a
Wagnerian style, using 19th-century Romanticism as his milieu. His scores make extremely liberal use of
Leitmotif — practically every
major character and concept has its own musical motif woven into the score. Williams is also fond of the
Fanfare.
When a Williams composition is playing, you will generally be in for a good movie. If the movie's not good, and that's happened, well,
the music will be.
You'll have certainly heard one of Williams' tunes. Most of his themes have become iconic in their own right, such as the famous string sting from
Jaws or the theme for
Indiana Jones. Williams has long been the go-to composer for
Steven Spielberg's films.
Interestingly, many fans of classical music actually hold Williams in rather low regard, as
many elements of his compositions (including some of his most well-known themes and motifs) are borrowed from older pieces of music. Though even they admit he's less guilty of this
than others.
Among his most famous scores are:
In addition to his film scores, Williams has composed music for four
Olympic Games,
The Mission suite for the
NBC Nightly News and the inauguration of President
Barack Obama, among many others. He was also conductor for the Boston Pops Orchestra from 1980-1993.
Early in his career, Williams worked for producer
Irwin Allen (under the name "
Johnny Williams"), providing the music for Allen's TV series
Lost in Space,
The Time Tunnel and
Land of the Giants, and such disaster films as
The Poseidon Adventure and
The Towering Inferno.
He is also
the man
.
His work provides examples of:
- Associated Composer: One of the greatest examples.
- Award Bait Song: It goes without saying.
- Bootstrapped Theme — The "Star Wars Main Theme" was originally intended to be purely "Luke's Theme", though it became so synonymous with the series as a whole, Williams forewent creating a new main theme for the Prequels, and even included the theme in several places in the Prequel scores.
- Williams originally scored the scene where Luke looks out to the double sunset with his theme but George Lucas suggested he use the theme he wrote for Obi-Wan instead. Williams complied and now it is known as "Binary Sunset" and used for any scene involving the Force.
- "Hedwig's Theme" has ended up being the theme of the whole Harry Potter series.
- Fanfare: He's so good, he's gotten raves from the directors just from watching him conduct. Richard Donner even admitted he screwed up a recording take for Superman by running into the room shouting how great it was.
- Leitmotif
- ShoutOut: The soundtrack of "Star Wars" strongly references Gustav Holst's The Planets. Does this remind you of anything?
- As sort of a self Shout Out, Williams uses few notes of the music he composed for the first Harry Potter film in one of the final scenes of Revenge of the Sith. Fitting, since both scenes involved an infant with great potential being left with relatives after the death of their mother.
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