Month: November 2017

Who is John Williams?…

He’s a composer who has overwhelmed his audiences with joy and nostalgia, has left them tense and trembling in fear, and has even brought tears to their eyes. I knew that he would inevitably make his way into the blog somehow, for it would be a disservice not to discuss him or his influence. I am surprised that I was able to make it this far without mentioning one of the greatest film composers of all time!

Setting that aside, who really is John Williams? Born on February 8, 1932 in Queens, New York City, John Williams was raised in a musical family, as his father Johnny Williams was a jazz percussionist in the Raymond Scott Quintet. During his teenage years, Williams and his family moved to California, where he would gain much of his early schooling in music. After being drafted into the U.S. Air Force in 1952, Williams conducted the U.S. Air Force Band as part of his duty. Completing his service in 1955, Williams attended Juilliard to become a jazz musician. He then started his music career as a session musician for composer Henry Mancini and eventually began composing scores for television shows and films.

Since then, Williams has become one of the most influential and well-known composers of our time. In Academy Awards alone, he has been nominated for 50, more than any other living individual, and he has won five. Williams has composed dozens of famous film scores, many of which are found in the films of director Steven Spielberg, his friend and common collaborator. Some of the most recognizable include Jaws (1975), Star Wars (1977), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Schindler’s List (1993), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Harry Potter (2001), and Catch Me If You Can (2002). These scores among dozens of others have captivated and moved audiences for decades, and even at the age of 85, Williams continues to create beautiful, awe-inspiring music for all to experience and to admire.

Williams has a profound grasp of human emotion. Using rhythms and chord progressions like syntax and diction, Williams can poetically describe and capture scenes and emotions through his music. One could say that music is Williams’s second language. Through all of his scores, Williams evokes scene-appropriate emotions from the audience to fit the movie’s mood but also to create an everlasting emotional experience for each listener.

Williams is a master of emotion. He can inspire joy and love or he can dig up feelings of worry, fear, and loneliness. In one of my all-time favorite movies, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Williams wrote pieces coming from this whole range of emotions. My favorite piece from the film plays during the final bike chase scene on the way to E.T.’s spaceship (Video Link 1: E.T. Bike Chase Scene). Through Williams’s score, the scene moves from mysterious to curious to hopeful to mischievous to fleeting to dangerous to finally overcoming the danger and feeling like you can fly as the children soar away on their bikes. There are dozens of additional micro-changes with certain audio and visual cues, but these are the major shifts. I encourage you to watch the scene with this mood sequence in mind and consider how you feel it fits. Whenever I watch this scene, I become consumed by the chase and shed a tear during their final triumph in the clouds. I feel that the song perfectly captures how it feels when you are bursting with joy and think that you can walk on air. The violins especially capture that fleeting and ethereal emotion on the upper octave of the melody.

When considering the works of Williams, we also must listen to the works which seek to capture more angry and intense emotions. In Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), Williams composed the fierce and authoritative March of the Resistance (Song Link 1: Star Wars March of the Resistance) to show the strong comeback of the Resistance movement. Pounding full chords with strong offbeats give this song the unique qualities of a fiery march, and the battling and destruction on screen add to the Resistance’s growing authority and power as they take down their foes.

One last thing I would like to mention about John Williams is his versatility. He can do more than orchestral masterpieces; he can create art in multiple music genres. In Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can (2002), Williams returned to his jazz roots in the opening credits sequence (Song Link 2: Catch Me If You Can Intro). Dark, mysterious, dynamic, and fleeting, this song is reminiscent of main character Frank Abagnale Jr. and his scheming life as one of the most successful con artists of all time. The song goes through a number of moods that grow increasingly tense, representing Frank’s increasingly desperate escapes from the FBI’s grasp before he is finally caught. This amazing 1960s-style jazz piece shows how talented and emotionally aware Williams can be through his music.

John Williams is one of the best composers of all time and I hope that you have learned to appreciate him and his work just even a little bit more now. Thank you for reading this post and I hope to see you next time on Scoring the Score!

Image Credits:

Figure 1: Image 1

Figure 2: Image 2

Figure 3: Image 3

Atonement (2007), directed by Joe Wright, brings actress Keira Knightly and composer Dario Marianelli back for another compelling period piece after the success of Pride and Prejudice (2005). The film tells the life story of Briony Tallis from the fateful day that her false accusation of a crime irreversibly changed many lives, including her own. As a young girl, Briony misinterprets the love affair between her older sister Cecilia (played by Keira Knightly) and Robbie Turner (played by James McAvoy) after accidentally reading a dirty letter that Robbie wrote to Cecilia, convincing the naive Briony that Robbie must be a deranged sexual deviant. When Briony’s cousin Lola (played by Juno Temple) is later raped at a dinner party, Briony concludes that it must have been Robbie because of his inappropriate letter and sexual thoughts. Taking this into consideration, she then falsely accuses Robbie of the crime, forever ripping Cecilia and Robbie apart once the police take him away. Compelling, tragic, and heart-wrenching, Atonement was nominated for 7 Oscars, including Best Picture, and it won the Oscar for Best Original Score. The composer, Dario Marianelli, had received several nominations prior to this, but his work on Atonement made for his first Oscar win. A true talent, he writes beautiful melodic pieces typically featuring the piano. What made his Atonement score so unique though was his interesting variations of repeated ominous, sad, and even haunting melodies and the use of the typewriter as a motif.

The film opens on Briony finishing a play she has been writing on her typewriter. The viewer then follows her as she runs throughout her house searching for her mom in order to show her this new achievement. During this scene, a much more serious and ominous song plays, beginning with the sounds of Briony’s typewriter in Briony (song link 1: Briony). An eerily calm melody then joins the ensemble as the typewriter becomes the song’s beat. As the song progresses, the typewriter enters as a driving force with frantic strings and other wind instruments. This song sets up the seriousness of the story while simultaneously introducing the importance of the typewriter and the reoccurring melody, which will come back to haunt Briony as more and more devious and damaging events occur down the road, all triggered by her one fateful decision. The melody and its precise typewriter beat describe Briony’s cold and unloving personality.

Marianelli masterfully uses familiar melodies to conjure memories and feelings from earlier spots in the movie. For example, every time the Briony melody comes back in another variation, the audience gets the feeling that something bad or devious is about to happen, that the plot is moving forward. Marianelli also created a second melody to evoke a different feeling, tragedy and deep sadness. This melody was featured most prominently when Robbie was wrongfully arrested and taken from Cecilia on the night of the dinner party. The song, Farewell (song link 2: Farewell), marks the beginning of the film’s heart-wrenching tragedy. This dramatic melody first appears in Robbie’s Letter (song link 3: Robbie’s Letter), but the fully developed version appears in Farewell and later in The Cottage by the Beach (song link 4: Cottage by the Beach). Its connection to Robbie’s love letter and dream to be with Cecilia connects this song to Robbie and Cecilia’s complicated relationship and develops the tragic sadness of their separation through song.

One scene and song in particular helped to grab this score the Oscar. This famous song is the Elegy For Dunkirk (song link 5: Elegy For Dunkirk). Without spoiling how, Robbie eventually becomes an English soldier in World War II and ends up on the beaches at Dunkirk. In an amazing five minute tracking shot of the beach where the evacuation from Dunkirk took place, the beautiful and emotional Elegy For Dunkirk softly plays. With the soldier’s beautiful hopeful singing and the progressing string voices, the song provides closure for the battle and a touching emotional experience as the next part of the tragedy unravels.

Besides the familiar motifs from beautiful melodic music, Marianelli also used the typewriter as a motif in the score. Marianelli made the crucial decision to feature the typewriter in his compositions because of its role in the film. The typewriter helped Briony write her stories and eventually her biography, and Robbie wrote his fateful love letter on a typewriter. The key item which drove the plot also drives the score, an excellent parallel which connects the music to the film’s themes and atmosphere. Throughout several of the songs, the typewriter is featured heavily as background sound or the beat and percussion. This helped Marianelli create drive in his melodically dramatic and flowy music. The weight of the heavy typewriter clicks pushes the music forward and makes the listener’s heart beat just a bit faster.

Thanks for reading this post! I realize that I mostly focused on the music this time instead its role in the plot, but I purposefully made this decision since not knowing the plot before was so crucial to enjoying this film as intended. There’s a dramatic tragedy, some philosophical questions, and a huge unexpected twist within the story and I did not want to spoil anyone’s enjoyment. Take some time to watch this one and maybe Pride and Prejudice too. See you next time on Scoring the Score!

Image Credits:

Figure 1: Image 1

Figure 2: Image 2

Figure 3: Image 3