John Williams

What can be said about John Williams that hasn't already been said? Williams is not only the best-known film composer, but his skill and mastery at his craft are matched only by long-gone masters such as Bernard Herrmann, Erich Korngold, Miklos Rozsa, Jerry Goldsmith, and the like. Williams is a musical titan, and even if he hadn't written any concert works, he would still be considered a great composer. He may have written some of the best known and catchy themes of all time, but a closer listen to any of his scores will reveal compositional depth and clever musical ideas that bolster his surprisingly complex melodies.

Williams was born in New York and studied composition at UCLA and Juilliard after which he became a jazz and film score pianist for great composers like Henry Mancini and Jerry Goldsmith. Williams's first full score was in 1958 for a film called Daddy-O. Throughout the '60s, he scored many light, romantic comedies of this type, using the casual, jazzy style he had employed as a pianist. He got to branch out with films like None But the Brave and The Reivers, but his foray into blockbuster fare came with his relationship with Irwin Allen. Williams scored the themes and several episodes of Allen's TV shows The Time Tunnel, Land of the Giants, and Lost in Space before Allen hired him for the feature The Poseidon Adventure. A year before, Williams had won an Oscar for adapting the score for Fiddler on the Roof, but soon his own music would become recognized by the public and the critical establishment. After scoring two more disaster films (Allen's The Towering Inferno and Earthquake), Williams formed a seminal relationship with Steven Spielberg by scoring The Sugarland Express. Their next film, Jaws, became a sensation with its famous, menacing two-note theme. Even more impressive, the score contained inventive orchestrations and additional themes to underscore the danger and adventure of the film. Williams would score all of Spielberg's feature films as director except for The Color Purple (scored by Quincy Jones) and Bridge of Spies (scored by Thomas Newman). Their collaborations would include Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1941, the Indiana Jones films, ET, Empire of the Sun, Always, Hook, the first two Jurassic Park films, Schindler's List, Amistad, Saving Private Ryan, AI, Minority Report, Catch Me If You Can, The Terminal, War of the Worlds, Munich, Adventures of Tintin, War Horse, Lincoln, and The BFG. After scoring Alfred Hitchcock's final film in 1976 (Family Plot), Williams created an even bigger splash with his score to Star Wars. Throughout the series' six films, Williams provided immortal themes filled with excitement, beauty, tenderness, melancholy, and terror. The same year as the first Star Wars film, Williams created another musical touchstone with his experimental, dissonant music for Close Encounters of the Third Kind as well as a famous five-note theme. Superman was another smash, with Williams providing not only the title march, but a soaring love theme, heroic action music, tender strains for Smallville, a comic march for the villains, and more modern music for Krypton. Raiders of the Lost Ark and ET were next up on Williams's non-stop hit parade, the former one of the most exciting action scores ever, and the latter featuring exultant and emotional music for the bond between boy and alien. In the '90s, Williams wrote surprisingly touching music for two Home Alone films, swashbuckling adventure music for Hook, melodies of wonder and terror for Jurassic Park, and reached heights of poignancy with Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan. As the new millennium rolled around, Williams scored the first three films of the incredibly popular Harry Potter franchise, providing the boy wizard (or his pet owl, at least) with an enduring, magical theme. The end of 2011 signaled the end of a three-year Williams drought with two superb scores for War Horse and The Adventures of Tintin.

Although Williams is best known for the themes for his blockbusters, his filmography contains hordes of lesser known but still awesome scores, from the wildly unconventional Images and the pastoral The River to the triumphant SpaceCamp and the beautiful, thrilling Far and Away. He also composed the NBC News "Mission" theme, the theme for DreamWorks SKG, and four Olympic fanfares alongside numerous concerti and other concert pieces. With the exceptions of Memoirs of a Geisha and The Book Thief, Williams has only written film scores for Spielberg, Star Wars, and Harry Potter since 2000's The Patriot, but his music remains as exciting and inventive as ever. He deserves all the recognition and praise that he gets. Unfortunately, with the advent of sound-design drone scores, his work has become under-appreciated by certain film critics, mainly of the younger generation. Regardless of their opinions, Williams's music is among the most superb written for film.

AI*
The Accidental Tourist
Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn*
Always

Amistad
Angela's Ashes
The BFG

Black Sunday
The Book Thief

Born on the Fourth of July

Catch Me If You Can

Close Encounters of the Third Kind*

ET**

Empire of the Sun*

Family Plot

Far and Away**
The Fury*

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone*

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban*
Heartbeeps
Heidi

Home Alone**

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York*

Hook**

Raiders of the Lost Ark**

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom**

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade**

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Jane Eyre*

Jaws*

Jaws 2*

JFK

Jurassic Park**

Jurassic Park 2: The Lost World
Lincoln

Lost in Space (TV Series)

Memoirs of a Geisha*
Midway

Minority Report*

Munich

Nixon

The Patriot
Pete 'n' Tillie

The Poseidon Adventure
The Post
Presumed Innocent
The Reivers

The River

Rosewood
Sabrina

Saving Private Ryan

Schindler’s List**

Seven Years in Tibet
Sleepers

SpaceCamp
The Spielberg/Williams Collaboration (3 Volume Compilation)
Stanley & Iris

Star Wars**

Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back**

Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi**

Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace*

Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones

Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith*
Star Wars: The Force Awakens*
Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Stepmom

Superman: The Movie**

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace* (with Alexander Courage)

The Terminal*
Tom Sawyer (with Richard and Robert Sherman)

The Towering Inferno
War Horse**

War of the Worlds
The Witches of Eastwick
1941