John Williams is one of the most prolific film composers of all time, having created some of the most iconic scores of the past 60 years, winning five Oscars and becoming the gold standard of movie musicians. Ironically, though, the 93-year-old maestro recently admitted to his indifference and criticism of film music as a genre, telling a biographer “I never liked film music very much.”
In this Guardian interview with author Tim Grieving about Grieving’s upcoming biography of the composer, Williams broke down the craft that he’s contributed so much to. “Film music, however good it can be – and it usually isn’t, other than maybe an eight-minute stretch here and there,” he said, “I just think the music isn’t there.”
He continued, brushing off the appreciation for film music as the product of “remembering it in some kind of nostalgic way,” before adding, “Just the idea that film music has the same place in the concert hall as the best music in the canon is a mistaken notion, I think.” Furthermore, he criticized most film music as “ephemeral” and “fragmentary and, until somebody reconstructs it, it isn’t anything that we can even consider as a concert piece.”
Williams’ greatest works include the Academy-Award winning scores for “Fiddler On The Roof,” “Jaws,” “Star Wars,” and “Schindler’s List,” and his unmistakable music in “Jurassic Park,” “Indiana Jones,” “Superman,” “Harry Potter,” “Home Alone,” “Saving Private Ryan,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Empire of the Sun” and more. His latest original score for a theatrical film was for “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” in 2023.
Part of the reason that his scores are so remarkable is because they take influence from classical and romantic composers like Johannes Brahms and Pyotr Tchaikovsky. Unsurprisingly, Williams has also composed music apart from the screen, including numerous concert works.
