John Towner Williams will go down as one of the greatest
orchestral composers of the 20th and 21st centuries. From composing the scores for many award
winning movies. The movies he composed
scores for include Jaws, the Indiana Jones series, the Star Wars series, Saving
Private Ryan and Jurassic Park (John
Williams Web Pages). His scores have
changed the music Americans have come to expect in their movies.
Williams was born in New York on Long Island on Feb. 8,
1932. (AllMusic) He attended college at University of California
at Los Angeles and at Juilliard School in New York City. He then studied privately under Rosina Living
and composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. (LyricsFreak) While in the Air Force as part of his regular
duties he was assigned to arrange music for the Air Force Band.
John Williams earned his living while in New York as a
pianist in many of New York’s night clubs.
He married his first wife, Barbara Ruick from 1956 until her death on
1974. (LyricsFreak) They had 3 children together: Jennifer, Mark
and Joseph. He married his second wife, Samantha Winslow, in 1980. After working in New York for several years
Williams decided to return to southern California and work in Hollywood
composing music. He mainly composed
music for films, winning two Emmy Awards during the 1960’s. (The
John Williams Pages)
Williams got his first film composition into the movie Daddy-O in 1958. His first movie score came two years later in
the movie Because They’re Young. Over time he gained recognition within
Hollywood for his excellent music. He
received his fist academy award in 1967.
He was nominated in 1969 for his piece in the movie Goodby, Mr. Chips. During
the 1970’s he was busy composing music for several big movies, earning the
Academy Award for the classic Fiddler on
the Roof. He composed large scale
disaster scores for the movies The
Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake, and The Towering Inferno. (LyricsFreak)
In 1974 John Williams was first approached by the now
well-known movie director Stephen Spielberg about making the music for his
debut film, The Sugarland Express.
Williams did so well that Spielberg the following year asked him to
compose music for his movie Jaws. The
music for that movie is now well known today. All suspense music today is
patterned after Williams’ in Jaws. The
score earned him a second Academy Award.
Spielberg introduced John
Williams to George Lucas, who in the late 1970’s was looking for a composer for
his planned films Star Wars. Williams composed a symphonic score that has
gone down as easily the most recognizable in movie history. It’s main theme, Luke’s Theme, as well as Force
March and Princess Leia’s Theme earned
him a third Academy Award for the best original score. (LyricsFreak)
Of course, Williams did not want
to only compose the score for one Star
Wars movie. He went on to compose
the music for the movie’s Empire Strikes
Back, and Return of the Jedi.
Perhaps one of Williams most recognizable piece from Empire Strikes Back is Imperial March, Darth Vader’s theme
song. He earned two other Academy Award
nominations for his work in the Return of
the Jedi.
During the 1980’s Williams wrote
and conducted music for Indiana Jones:
Raiders of the Lost Ark and E.T the
Extra Terrestrial. He won his fourth
Academy Award for his E.T.
music. He worked with Richard Donner to
compose the score for the movie Superman. Many say in the 1980’s Williams created his
best music.
John Williams did not only focus
his attention of composing music for movies.
Before he started composing for movies he began to compose music for
such television series as Gilligan's Island, Lost in
Space, and The Time Tunnel. In
1980 he became the conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra. (Boston Symphony
Orchestra)
In 1999 George Lucas approached
John Williams again to create the music for three new Star Wars movies. These were
to be the prequels to the ones created in the 1970’s and 1980’s. One of Star
Wars fans favorite song is Duel of
the Fates, where Darth Maul and Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi Wan Kenobi duel in the
Phantom Menace. Williams combined many parts of his previous
scores to make entirely new scores for the last two movies, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. His entire work in the six Star Wars films would take an entire
orchestra 14 hours to perform! (LyricsFreak)
In the early 2000’s Williams was asked to create the score
for the new Harry Potter movies. He helped create Hedwig’s Theme, Patrick Doyle and Nicholas Hooper, which is the most recognizable song
from the Harry Potter movies. Like his work in the movies Jaws, Star Wars, Superman and Indiana Jones fans have come to identify
those movies with their theme’s.
John Williams has remained busy for most of the 21st
century. He is a popular guest
conductor, and appears annually at some Boston Pops concerts. He still loves to play the piano, and stays
busy by composing even more music today.
John Williams won a total of 5 Academy Awards for his scores in Fiddler on the Roof (1971),
Jaws (1975), Star
Wars (1977), E.T. (1982) and Schindler's List (1993). He has
been nominated for 40 others (The
John Williams Web Pages) He has won
four Golden Globes and 21 Grammy Awards.
He holds honorary degrees from 14 American universities, among them: Berklee
College, Tufts University, University of South Carolina at Columbia, Boston
University, New England Conservatory of Music, University of Massachusetts
at Boston.
John Williams will go down as one of the greatest American
composers in history. Movie fans will
always remember films because of his music.
He is one of the most decorated music composer of all time, and is loved
by many in America.
Works Cited
AllMusic. Rovi Corp, 2013. Web. June 11, 2013
Boston Symphony
Orchestra. Massachusetts Cultural Council, 2013. Web. June 12, 2013.
The John Williams Web
Pages. The John Williams Web Pages, 2008. Web. June 12, 2013.
LyricsFreak. LyricsFreak, 2013. Web. June 12, 2013
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