My favorite film composer of all time is Jerry Goldsmith. His music was always inventive, often challenging, and thoroughly engaging. It's a shame the Academy so seldom recognized his work, so let's discuss someone who the Academy has recognized and delivered a bevy of Oscars to, John Williams.
Williams' career is somewhat contemporaneous to Goldsmith's. Both started in television. That's where I first heard Williams' music, for Irwin Allen's Lost in Space. This relationship with Allen would lead to Williams composing the music for Allen's two greatest disaster films, The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. Williams became the master of the disaster suite.
His music always struck me as almost startlingly different from other composers. Goldsmith could shock you with an inventive use of one instrument or another, but Williams would seduce you with lush melodies and rich harmonies. Listen to the track "Planting the Charges" from The Towering Inferno soundtrack; Williams takes you on a journey through the film, from bold opening, to the quiet creeping about, culminating with a countdown to detonation. There's also the marvelous musical underpinnings of the finale to Poseidon, at once sorrowful yet ending with hope as the survivors finally see daylight again.
And this is essentially how Williams started his career.
Williams is a long-time collaborator with director Steven Spielberg. Indeed, over his entire cinematic career, Spielberg has used Williams for all but two of his films. The two exceptions were to let Quincy Jones produce the music for The Color Purple and for Thomas Newman to handle Spielberg's latest, Bridge of Spies. Newman had to step in because Williams' health would not allow him to handle two films at once. Instead, he concentrated on Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Which is as it should be. For all my love for all things Goldsmith, Williams simply owns the ability to make sequels to his own music. Goldsmith made a valiant effort at that title with the three Star Trek scores he composed, but in the end, except for some opening and closing music, they sound like three different films. James Horner might have come closer if he had the opportunity to score Star Trek: The Voyage Home, because his work for The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock was excellent.
But no, Williams holds the crown. You listen to all four compositions for the four Indiana Jones films and you hear 1) music that is recognizably John Williams and 2) the music that sings Indiana Jones. And that string of work is surpassed by seven Star Wars films.
What Williams does is compose themes that work wonderfully on their own. Luke's Theme, Leia's Theme, Yoda, Rey, etc. You can listen to each of these and feel a warm joy at the sheer beauty that's caressing your ears (yes, hyperbole but damn, this is fine music). Williams will then take each of those themes and intertwined them with each other for a wholly new composition. I don't know of any other film composer doing this. I doubt anyone can do it as well as Williams does, almost as casually as you and I draw breath.
It seems to harken back to one of those dead Russian composers Williams reportedly discussed with Spielberg way back when they were working on Jaws, perhaps including Sergey Prokofiev. The most obvious example of what I'm talking about is Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf. Each animal and character not only has their own music instrument, they each have their unique theme. And Prokofiev wove them all together, which is what Williams does.
Which also might explain why I love Williams' music, because I love music from those dead Russian composers. If I was stranded on a desert island and could only listen to one music composition for the rest of my life, I'd be torn between Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture and Williams' End Credits for The Empire Strikes Back.
Williams is nominated for an Oscar for the umpteenth time, for The Force Awakens. It's wonderful work, albeit not quite reaching the exuberance of the original Star Wars or the dizzying heights of The Empire Strikes Back. I'm tempted to call him a shoe-in, except that one of the other nominees of Ennio Moricone. While I'm not a tremendous fan of Moricone's work (except for what he did with Sergio Leone, because oh my God, all of that is awesome), there's little question that the Academy now finds itself with two music giants in the arena, along with three others who must be awed to find their work in the company of honest to goodness Legends (yes, capital L).
I wouldn't cry if Moricone won, but my heart is with Williams. For both of these men, the day is coming when what we have of theirs is all that we'll ever have of theirs. Like Goldsmith and Horner, the pen will be put down and the final note played. I have 80 some albums of Williams' work, and it will never be enough.
Williams' career is somewhat contemporaneous to Goldsmith's. Both started in television. That's where I first heard Williams' music, for Irwin Allen's Lost in Space. This relationship with Allen would lead to Williams composing the music for Allen's two greatest disaster films, The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. Williams became the master of the disaster suite.
His music always struck me as almost startlingly different from other composers. Goldsmith could shock you with an inventive use of one instrument or another, but Williams would seduce you with lush melodies and rich harmonies. Listen to the track "Planting the Charges" from The Towering Inferno soundtrack; Williams takes you on a journey through the film, from bold opening, to the quiet creeping about, culminating with a countdown to detonation. There's also the marvelous musical underpinnings of the finale to Poseidon, at once sorrowful yet ending with hope as the survivors finally see daylight again.
And this is essentially how Williams started his career.
Williams is a long-time collaborator with director Steven Spielberg. Indeed, over his entire cinematic career, Spielberg has used Williams for all but two of his films. The two exceptions were to let Quincy Jones produce the music for The Color Purple and for Thomas Newman to handle Spielberg's latest, Bridge of Spies. Newman had to step in because Williams' health would not allow him to handle two films at once. Instead, he concentrated on Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Which is as it should be. For all my love for all things Goldsmith, Williams simply owns the ability to make sequels to his own music. Goldsmith made a valiant effort at that title with the three Star Trek scores he composed, but in the end, except for some opening and closing music, they sound like three different films. James Horner might have come closer if he had the opportunity to score Star Trek: The Voyage Home, because his work for The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock was excellent.
But no, Williams holds the crown. You listen to all four compositions for the four Indiana Jones films and you hear 1) music that is recognizably John Williams and 2) the music that sings Indiana Jones. And that string of work is surpassed by seven Star Wars films.
What Williams does is compose themes that work wonderfully on their own. Luke's Theme, Leia's Theme, Yoda, Rey, etc. You can listen to each of these and feel a warm joy at the sheer beauty that's caressing your ears (yes, hyperbole but damn, this is fine music). Williams will then take each of those themes and intertwined them with each other for a wholly new composition. I don't know of any other film composer doing this. I doubt anyone can do it as well as Williams does, almost as casually as you and I draw breath.
It seems to harken back to one of those dead Russian composers Williams reportedly discussed with Spielberg way back when they were working on Jaws, perhaps including Sergey Prokofiev. The most obvious example of what I'm talking about is Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf. Each animal and character not only has their own music instrument, they each have their unique theme. And Prokofiev wove them all together, which is what Williams does.
Which also might explain why I love Williams' music, because I love music from those dead Russian composers. If I was stranded on a desert island and could only listen to one music composition for the rest of my life, I'd be torn between Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture and Williams' End Credits for The Empire Strikes Back.
Williams is nominated for an Oscar for the umpteenth time, for The Force Awakens. It's wonderful work, albeit not quite reaching the exuberance of the original Star Wars or the dizzying heights of The Empire Strikes Back. I'm tempted to call him a shoe-in, except that one of the other nominees of Ennio Moricone. While I'm not a tremendous fan of Moricone's work (except for what he did with Sergio Leone, because oh my God, all of that is awesome), there's little question that the Academy now finds itself with two music giants in the arena, along with three others who must be awed to find their work in the company of honest to goodness Legends (yes, capital L).
I wouldn't cry if Moricone won, but my heart is with Williams. For both of these men, the day is coming when what we have of theirs is all that we'll ever have of theirs. Like Goldsmith and Horner, the pen will be put down and the final note played. I have 80 some albums of Williams' work, and it will never be enough.
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