# John Williams (the composer that is)



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

I’m hearing John Williams more and more often on the radio these days. Per Wiki:

“Williams has won 23 Grammy Awards, seven British Academy Film Awards, five Academy Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards. With 50 Academy Award nominations, Williams is the second most-nominated individual, after Walt Disney. In 2005, the American Film Institute selected Williams's score to 1977's Star Wars as the greatest American film score of all time. The soundtrack to Star Wars was additionally preserved by the Library of Congress into the National Recording Registry, for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." Williams was inducted into the Hollywood Bowl's Hall of Fame in 2000, and was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors in 2004 and the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2016. Williams composed the score for eight of the top twenty highest-grossing films at the U.S. box office (adjusted for inflation).”

He’s written quite a bit of concert music, but it’s his film music that gets the ear time. What do you think? Should we consider Williams’ film music part of the classical canon?


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Some innovative and influential composers wrote film music. I'm not sure Williams is among them. Maybe time will tell.

I remember back in the day when Star Wars first came out, I thought I had to have the soundtrack. In the liner notes Williams talks about borrowing the idea of the leitmotif from Wagner for the score which was supposed to have been a new kind of thing for Hollywood. But didn't Hermann and many others do similar things decades earlier? 

I don't know. Maybe it was a revival of sorts and I'm just jaded from hearing the music too much. I haven't gotten as excited over his concert music yet.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

I just checked my database of the 2015-16 season among the 30-40 leading US orchestras. Williams was programmed at 14 concerts with 37 performances. Nowhere near the top, but ahead of composers such as Poulenc, Franck, Bizet, Ives, von Weber, Rodrigo, and of course Schoenberg.

The top 20 for those interested:

1 - Ludwig van Beethoven
2 - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
3 - Johannes Brahms
4 - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
5 - Maurice Ravel
6 - Sergei Rachmaninoff
7 - Jean Sibelius
8 - Antonín Dvořák
9 - Richard Strauss
10 - Igor Stravinsky
11 - Sergei Prokofiev
12 - Dmitri Shostakovich
13 - Gustav Mahler
14 - Aaron Copland
15 - Felix Mendelssohn
16 - Joseph Haydn
17 - George Gershwin
18 - Johann Sebastian Bach
19 - George Frideric Handel
20 - Leonard Bernstein


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

If Sousa's marches, Joplin's rags and the like are considered classical, then why not Williams's film scores?

Yeah, yeah, I know, slippery slope... before you know it they'll be calling medieval nuns "classical"... :lol:

This is the "problem" with classical music no longer being for the elite - it's harder to impose a top-down view of what it's supposed to be. Clearly today's wider audience (not the dedicated concert-goers or record-buyers, I mean the people who sometimes listen to Classic FM or just want a "100 greatest classics" compilation) has no trouble with film music being considered classical, and this may be having a knock-on effect.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

I'm fine with considering some film music like John Williams and also some video game music as part of the classical canon. I would classify most music in this area as 'light' classical.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Nereffid said:


> If Sousa's marches, Joplin's rags and the like are considered classical, then why not Williams's film scores?


Are they? Where?


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

EdwardBast said:


> Are they? Where?


Retailers? Record labels? Radio stations? Possibly also some places not beginning with R.


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## bharbeke (Mar 4, 2013)

The latest KBAQ Most Wanted 100 list has Williams' themes from Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark included on it.

I fail to see how music written to accompany ballet or the theater that can be enjoyed separately can be classified as classical while excluding film music. The same symphony organizations playing Schubert and Liszt are also playing Williams and Horner, and if someone did not already know the movie music, they might not know that they were not written as pure music.

Also, if Haydn or Beethoven could have written for film, I'm guessing they would have.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Has anyone asked Williams if he considers his scores to be classical music? I'd be curious.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Certainly Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Vaughan Williams had their film music turned into concert music. So it's not the medium, but the mediocre-dom I may have problems with. But Williams can write a memorable theme, and if I recall some of the music for Close Encounters is quite edgy. I'll still have to defer to future generations to evaluate him.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

isorhythm said:


> Has anyone asked Williams if he considers his scores to be classical music? I'd be curious.


https://www.theguardian.com/film/2002/feb/04/artsfeatures

"I think of myself as a film composer," he says in his measured, professorial way. "I'm not a frustrated concert composer, and the concert pieces I've done have been a small part of my work. What I've sought there is instruction, variation from the demands of film and relief from its restrictions."

The composer is 70 this year, as productive as ever and apparently beyond ego. That must come when you have won five Oscars and been nominated 30 or so times. But he accepts that traditionalists see film scores as a very inferior form of classical music. "We have to be hopeful," he says, "that if there is a musical genius in the future, that individual is someone who has a connection with film and doesn't regard the old division between fine arts and media arts as rigidly as we do."


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Nereffid said:


> https://www.theguardian.com/film/2002/feb/04/artsfeatures
> 
> "I think of myself as a film composer," he says in his measured, professorial way. "I'm not a frustrated concert composer, and the concert pieces I've done have been a small part of my work. What I've sought there is instruction, variation from the demands of film and relief from its restrictions."
> 
> The composer is 70 this year, as productive as ever and apparently beyond ego. That must come when you have won five Oscars and been nominated 30 or so times. But he accepts that traditionalists see film scores as a very inferior form of classical music. "We have to be hopeful," he says, "that if there is a musical genius in the future, that individual is someone who has a connection with film and doesn't regard the old division between fine arts and media arts as rigidly as we do."


Thanks. If he doesn't consider his scores to be classical music, I don't think I need to worry about it either.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

To be precise it is Williams's score for Star Wars which is most popular, but why have Williams when Holst - whose music is clearly the basis for it - can be programmed?

I like Williams's music, but the facts have to be faced: like a lot of film composers he has borrowed liberally from the classical canon.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Fwiw, Williams is discussed in this thread: Movie Themes/Soundtracks As a Category of Modern Classical Music


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

eugeneonagain said:


> To be precise it is Williams's score for Star Wars which is most popular, but why have Williams when Holst - whose music is clearly the basis for it - can be programmed?


Actually, it's pretty obvious that Williams borrowed -- and quite directly -- from another film composer, Erich Korngold, and not from Holst.


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## Gordontrek (Jun 22, 2012)

This very discussion comes up a lot around here actually. I've started similar topics myself. 
I think that John Williams is definitely among the best composers alive today. But film music and classical are separate for a reason. Most film music as it stands is not suitable for the concert hall, and the specific, made-to-order style of composition often makes it artistically limited compared to classical music. 
That said, there is in fact a lot of film music that DOES make good concert music, and many John Williams scores are among them. Star Wars makes a terrific concert suite and so does Indiana Jones, Close Encounters, etc. But this usually involves the film cues being rearranged into an orchestral suite. 
I DO think that in the future, at least some film music will make it into the classical canon. But only the very best of the best of the best. If I got into a time machine and went 150 years into the future, I would not be surprised to see Shostakovich and Jerry Goldsmith on the same orchestral program. NOW is not the time though. It will probably not be until some other medium of entertainment overtakes film and television, and lord knows what that will be.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

KenOC said:


> Actually, it's pretty obvious that Williams borrowed -- and quite directly -- from another film composer, Erich Korngold, and not from Holst.


I wouldn't call it "pretty obvious". I've seen that and other videos on you tube. Korngold was, in my opinion, a Wagner clone, there's not much said about that.

I'm not merely talking about the Star Wars theme. In any case there is no explicit acknowledgement from Williams that he was influenced by this score; with regard to influence from Holst, there was.


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## Joe B (Aug 10, 2017)

Classical music or not, the themes for Yoda and Prince Leia (just to name two of his pieces) from Star Wars are beautiful. What category you put them into or John Williams as a composer into doesn't negate the fact that he is an artist with a boat load of talent.


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## bharbeke (Mar 4, 2013)

Joe B said:


> Classical music or not, the themes for Yoda and Prince Leia (just to name two of his pieces) from Star Wars are beautiful. What category you put them into or John Williams as a composer into doesn't negate the fact that he is an artist with a boat load of talent.


George Lucas called him the "secret sauce" of Star Wars at a convention this year. That's no small compliment.


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## LezLee (Feb 21, 2014)

His music is mostly immediately recognisable and not in a good way, it all sounds the same to me. Don’t remembering hearing anything I’ve liked of his 
I don’t know how music is categorised these days (and does it matter?) but I still think of film music as separate from classical.
This year’s Classic FM ‘Hall of Fame’ included not just film music but several entries from video games. Composers such as Eric Whitacre are now quite mainstream.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

I'm not a huge fan of his soundtracks although he can come up with a short moving theme to fit the moment as in Saving Private Ryan and Lincoln.


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## QuietGuy (Mar 1, 2014)

I'm very fond of the E.T. soundtrack; not so much Star Wars.

Two other favorites are concert pieces he arranged from films "The Cowboys" (as The Cowboys Overture) and The Reivers, arranged for narrator and orchestra. These two he did for his premiere as conductor of the Boston Pops orchestra in 1980.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

There is a fairly substantial concert suite from _Close Encounters _prepared (I think) by Williams himself that's quite good. I don't see it on YouTube, but maybe Spotify has it. Here's the CD: LA Phil, Zubin Mehta cond.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

KenOC said:


> There is a fairly substantial concert suite from _Close Encounters _prepared (I think) by Williams himself that's quite good. I don't see it on YouTube, but maybe Spotify has it. Here's the CD: LA Phil, Zubin Mehta cond.


If they're going to also have a French version of the title, then it must be classical. Though I prefer "Krieg der Sterne." It fits in better with those uniforms. 

"Rencontres du troisième type" on the other hand, sounds like a title Debussy or Ravel might have come up with.


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## Gordontrek (Jun 22, 2012)

KenOC said:


> There is a fairly substantial concert suite from _Close Encounters _prepared (I think) by Williams himself that's quite good. I don't see it on YouTube, but maybe Spotify has it. Here's the CD: LA Phil, Zubin Mehta cond.


I own a CD of that performance on a different album. It really is a very nice recording. Probably the best recordings of both scores outside of the original soundtracks.


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## Harrowby Hall (Aug 8, 2017)

I think that the problem with this whole thread is the apparent need to fit music into predefined categories which then determine how, where and when that music is performed. Music which is attractive, well-constructed, memorable and enjoyed by a wide range of people has every bit as much right to be performed as any other. The use of the term "classical" to exclude music which does not fit into a particular small set of moulds which are defined by little other than history and prejudice is dishonest.

"Classical" - to describe s particular music genre is little more than market segmentation and serves to exclude not only music but potential audiences. It enables people to avoid music they do not know on the grounds that they believe they will not enjoy it.

How, for instance is _Flying_ from _ET_ less worthy than, say, say the _Intermezzo_ from _Jewels of the Madonna_ by Wolf-Ferrari or Elgar's _Salut d'Amour_? Does it have to be condemned as unworthy of performance simply because it was not specifically written as a "concert" piece?

The exclusion of excellent pieces of music from concert programmes purely because they were composed for some other purpose is outright snobbery.


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## BabyGiraffe (Feb 24, 2017)

Williams is a craftsman - good orchestrator and aranger, but his music is derivative (his best bits usually are "borrowed" or modifications of music by older "famous" composers, because the director used Hanson, Brahms, Holst, Stravinsky, Korngold, Copland, Saint-Saëns etc etc etc for the temporary musical track). 
Korngold and Bernard Herrmann are probably better composers than him, are they considered classical?


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Korngold, Herrmann and Williams all composed works outside their film music, and in that respect they should be regarded as classical composers regardless of how you classify film music.

Personally, I file soundtracks and movie suites that I like under classical in my system.


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

Williams has written 17 Concertos, the last one premiering in 2018: *Highwood's Ghost*, _*An Encounter for Cello, Harp and Orchestra*_


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

Oh my goodness. How many John Williams threads are there?? :lol: I'm going to have to start one about John Williams the guitarist.


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

consuono said:


> Oh my goodness. How many John Williams threads are there?? :lol: I'm going to have to start one about John Williams the guitarist.


This one?


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

Fabulin said:


> This one?
> View attachment 148839


Yep, sort of. :lol: :lol:


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