What Is My least Favorite John Williams Score?

Why Answering the Question, “What Is My least Favorite John Williams Score?” Is Extremely Difficult

Written by Noah Marconi in response to Cody Bigenho

Now, I think the place to begin is to say what I’ve always said: John Williams is the greatest film score composer in history. However, he has not written the greatest film score. That right I reserve for Howard Shore’s score to the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. That said, Williams’ magnum opus is the Star Wars saga and that comes in meters away from Howard Shore’s effort. In order to answer this question, one must interpret how it should be answered. In my objective view, there are two paths to consider: the first is the actual quality of the music itself, and second is how the music enhances a particular scene of a film. Subjectively, I can answer the

question right now and say that his scores to the war films Midway (1976) and 1941 (1979), are not really my favorite. However, for both films, Williams produced marches that are unbelievably fun to listen to and stand apart from the rest of the score as major concert staples.

In regards to the first path, Williams is an unbelievably gifted melodist and very much worthy with his use of the harmonic palette. Whatever your thoughts are on his “stealing” from the classical repertoire, it is undeniable that Williams knows exactly what he is doing and knows full well how to elicit potent emotional responses in his audiences. One of his most modernist scores is the music he wrote for Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1977. The score is rampant with complex dissonant harmonies which evokes the alarm and fear of the mysterious alien race. Williams asks a lot from the orchestra in terms of extended techniques especially in the scene when the 3-year-old Barry gets taken by the aliens. Also featured during this creepy scene is a wordless choir echoing over the texture. The effect is pure terrifying. Another amazing aspect of this score is the main theme of just five notes: Re-Mi-Do-Do-Sol, or, G-A-F-F-C. This theme acts as both diagetic and non-diagetic music. Diagetic music is heard by the characters in the film whilst non-diagetic music is the actual film score not heard by the characters. At the end of the film, the scientists use these notes to communicate with the aliens and from there, Williams builds an orchestral cue to great effect and then blasts the theme in an earth shattering statement which would make any human being tear up. 

With the Star Wars Saga, John Williams makes prevalent use of leitmotifs to carry the story of the film forward. No other score does this better than perhaps Lord of the Rings, and, as I said above, Williams’ effort comes in just short of LOTR. I want to highlight the fact that Williams foreshadows Anakin’s eventual turn to the dark side in the prequel trilogy. The theme Williams writes for young Anakin is full of youthful innocence and pastoral quality. Throughout the course of the film, Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace (1999), Anakin’s theme is never altered, as he is still a boy and not yet poisoned by his own inner demons and the words of Senator Palpatine. However, at the end of the credits to the first film, Williams states Anakin’s theme in all of its beauty, but at the end of the statement, in a melodic and harmonic turn, he quotes the Imperial March, thus marrying the two themes, and thus foreshadowing Anakin’s eventual turn. Moments like this represent John Williams’ ultimate genius in storytelling. How he is able to use melodic and harmonic formulas to serve the dramatic motion of the film is unparalleled. 

A favorite score of mine is the one he wrote to Jurassic Park (1993). In this score, he displays a very important aspect of film scoring: cadential synchronization. Now, the Jurassic Park score is not the only one that displays cadential synchronization. He uses the technique in every score he’s written. I’m just using that particular one as an example. If you have seen the film, and I do sincerely hope you have, you’ll remember the famous scene when we first see the Brachiosaurus and John Hammond utters the line, “Welcome to Jurassic Park.” During this whole scene, Williams takes the opportunity to fully deliver his gorgeous Jurassic Park theme. After Hammond utters the line, the camera zooms in on the bewildered face of Dr. Grant and Williams sets up a major cadence in his music. As soon as the resolution is reached and the theme begins again, the scene cuts to the wide-shot of the valley populated with dinosaurs. The joining of powerful cadential resolutions with scene cuts adds an extra dimension of thrill to the film, and Williams is a master of this technique. 

Another inspiring aspect of John Williams’ music is his startling range of style and emotion. In scores such as Jaws (1975), Williams makes full use of his modernist side as well as his popular side. There is a action scene near the end of the film when the shark gets caught in a net and thrashing about. Williams uses chaotic and terrifying percussion effects as well as thunderous low piano strikes to capture the mood quite evocatively. In the same movie, Williams treats the musical material for Amity Island in a more quasi-Americana way. Trumpet fanfares and warm harmonies make up this music in direct contrast to the music of the shark attacks which are most usually always dissonant. Other scores such as Jurassic Park, and War of the Worlds (2005), treat the music in the same way. In The Adventures of Tintin (2011), the opening title sequence features a delightfully sexy and rigorous jazz tune, which also acts as a canon. Williams can muster any style he chooses to suit the needs of a particular scene, and that skill is by no means easy to acquire. 

Speaking of using old forms such as canons in his film scores, a genre that is notably absent of all traditional classical music forms, Williams uses fugues, scherzos, and as mentioned above, canons. When Brody, Quint, and Hooper are building the shark cage at the end of Jaws, Williams wrote what is now famously called the “Shark Cage Fugue”. It is a full blown classical fugue with functional harmony and counterpoint and proves that Williams is a master of his craft. There is a particular selection from the score to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), when Jones and his father try to escape the Nazis via a motorcycle. The cue is called “Scherzo for Motorcycle and Orchestra”, and it is exactly what you would expect from a classical scherzo: wit and humor.

All of the above examples are meant to illustrate the sheer compositional range of the composer John Williams. Because all of his scores offer so much to be discovered with multiple listenings, it is almost impossible to isolate one in particular and say that this is the definitive Williams score. Sorry to break this to you but there is no definitive Williams score. All of them are definitive, and all of them are great in some capacity. It is for that reason that answering the question of “What is my least favorite John Williams score?” is impossible. 

What follows is Noah Marconi’s definitive ranking of the scores of John Williams that he knows. I cannot number them one after the other because I honestly can’t say what is better, his Jurassic Park score or his Close Encounters of the Third Kind score, to name two. Instead, I will assign all of them to three categories: the Masterpieces, the Fabulous Scores That Are Not Exactly Masterpieces, and Gets The Job Done. Keep in mind that these are only the scores that I know and have listened to. He’s written many more!

Masterpieces

Jaws (1975)

Star Wars IV: A New Hope (1977)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

Superman (1978)

Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi (1983)

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

Empire of the Sun (1987)

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

Home Alone (1990)

Hook (1991)

Far and Away (1992)

Jurassic Park (1993)

Schindler's List (1993)

Rosewood (1997)

Jurassic Park: The Lost World (1997)

Seven Years In Tibet (1997)

Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace (1999)

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001)

Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones (2002)

Minority Report (2002)

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)

Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith (2005)

Munich (2005)

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

War Horse (2011)

The Adventures of Tintin (2011)

Lincoln (2012)

Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens (2015)

Fabulous Scores That Are Not Exactly Masterpieces

The Witches of Eastwick (1986)

Sabrina (1995)

Amistad (1997)

The Terminal (2004)

Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)

War of the Worlds (2005)

The Book Thief (2013)

Gets The Job Done

The Reivers (1969)

The Cowboys (1972)

Midway (1976)

1941 (1979)

Born on the Fourth of July (1989)

JFK (1991)

Stepmom (1998)

The Magic of Korngold

When one thinks of opera, one thinks of people in wigs singing to the old aristocracy, one thinks of Mozart's conflicts, quartets, and his metaphors of society, one thinks of Wagner's mythological masterpieces and revolutionary harmonic writing, and one thinks of Beethoven's ideas of justice, humanity, and love over oppression. But what about the psychology of a man, the tormenting demons of lost love and guilt? Few operas take on such challenging material. However, Viennese composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold took on that challenge when he wrote what would become his only full scale opera, Die tote Stadt, or, The Dead City.

The story of Die tote Stadt is based on a 1892 novel and subsequent play by Belgian author Georges Rodenbach, under the title of Bruges-la-Morte (The Dead City of Bruges). The play was later translated into German by Siegfried Trebitsch who was a close friend of Erich Korngold's father, Julius Korngold. One day in 1916, the two men met in the street and talked about a possible adaptation of the play into an opera. When the idea was pitched to the young Erich, who was only 19 at the time, he was delighted at the opportunity. After the first act of the libretto was written by Trebitsch to Erich's dissatisfaction, he and his father decided to write the libretto themselves under the pseudoym Paul Schott. Korngold started writing the music soon after, and the opera did not have its' premier until 1920.

The story tells of a man named Paul who cannot come to terms with the recent death of his young wife Marie. He keeps a "Temple of Memories" devoted to her complete with photographs, a painting, clothing, and a lock of her hair. Paul soon meets a young dancer girl named Marietta who looks exactly like Marie, and, believing that this is his wife, invites her back to his house. When she arrives, she is put off by his odd behavior but insists on charming Paul. However, she soon realizes his secret and leaves. Paul, driven to a state of extreme anxiety, suffers a horrific vision which begins with a visit from the ghost of his dead wife. The ghost tells him not to forget her and he is torn between his loyalty to his wife and his new affection for Marietta. The vision continues as he alienates his friends with the pursuit of Marietta. Eventually, Paul, still hallucinating, yields to Marietta and they engage in a passionate embrace. As the vision continues, we find Paul living with Marietta at his house. They quarrel as she becomes fed up with his continuing obsession with Marie. Marietta soon begins to taunt Paul by dancing seductively holding the lock of Marie's hair. In a fit of rage, Paul grabs Marietta, throws her to ground, strangles her with the hair, and kills her. After this, he awakes from his vision and realizes his unhealthy obsession. His friend Frank invites him to leave the "Dead City" and he answers, "I will try." The story ends with Paul casting one more look around his "Temple of Memories" before leaving the room for the last time.

Musically, Die tote Stadt is nothing short of amazing. Korngold works in a late romantic idiom which has roots in the style of composer Richard Strauss. However, Korngold's approach takes his music to a different realm, a realm that links him to the golden age of Hollywood cinematic film scores. Indeed, Korngold in the 1930's moved to the United States where he became one of the founding fathers of film music.

Here is Marietta's Song, a key central moment in the whole opera:

Filled with romantic passion and dramatic flare, it's hard to imagine this music not accompanying a love scene in a film, especially when one listens to the melody beginning at 4:55. It is one of the most gorgeous passages of music I have ever heard, and if it ever were to be featured in a film, there would not be a dry eye in that theater.

Until next time,

Noah V.M.

The Negro Spiritual

My first post will deal with one of the most significant forms of American folksong, the Negro Spiritual. Created and developed by the enslaved African people in the United States, spirituals are lullabies and work songs that sought to express religious faith under the iron whip of the South. They are primarily sung a cappella, but it is very common to feature a piano alongside the singers. Spirituals have had a tremendous impact on modern music and they are the primary predecessor to what we call gospel music today. Moreover, spirituals have also influenced classical music. The most famous example of this influence can be found in the second movement of the New World Symphony by Czech composer Antonín Dvořák, written in 1893.

I listened to a collection of spirituals arranged by Moses Hogan, who was an American conductor and composer in the latter half of the 20th century. His most famous work is The Oxford Book of Spirituals, which he created in 2002.

Here is a recording of his arrangement of "My Soul's Been Anchored in the Lord."

What is immediately evident is the jazzy, almost blues influenced language of the harmonies. These harmonies create a powerful, tragic and archaic sound that is pivotal in spiritual and gospel music. One has to remember that this style of music was created under great suffering, pain and anguish. This specific style of harmony is where great enjoyment can be found. 

Those of you interested in the album itself, here is a link to the album on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/7yvgxDZfCTNl6LnNfCjKFa

Until next time,

Noah V.M.