John Williams is 85 tomorrow

Ross Amico says:

An odd piece to share when you are supposedly lauding someone on a milestone birthday. In any case, there are some factual errors in it, even if we are to ignore the typos. Nino Rota dipped into his score for “Fortunella” for “The Godfather,” not “8 ½,” as you suggest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZgEkHWt58o

Also, Bernard Herrmann’s contribution could hardly be reduced to “an effect.” I’m surprised that in an article in which Williams’ eclecticism is on trial that one of the most original voices in the medium would be so easily dismissed.

If it comes down to “Star Wars,” I would argue that the eclecticism was intentional and ideally suited to the tone of a film that cribbed freely from the western, the swashbuckler, the serial, and the samurai film to create something fresh. (Granted, seven films later that can be hard to see.)

Also, try to remember that Williams works within the Hollywood system, wherein “temp tracks” are the norm, especially now, when so many filmmakers edit on their computers. Many composers have voiced their frustration with being brought in to score a particular scene after the film has already been cut to suit another piece of music. While hardly the most egregious example, there’s a scene in “Jurassic Park,” with an ailing Brachiosaurus, which was obviously temped with some of Patrick Doyle’s music for “Henry V.”

Williams frequently evokes a particular sound when he approaches his subject matter (to take two fairly recent examples, Vaughan Williams for “War Horse” and Copland for “Lincoln”), but like some of the Golden Age composers you cite, he never really sounds like anyone else. He could allude to Vaughan Williams or Copland or even Korngold (and there’s no questioning the man loves his Prokofiev and William Walton), but in the end, he truly never sounds like anyone more than himself. If you needle-dropped on any of his scores in the presence of anyone at all familiar with his “sound,” I am sure he would be easily identifiable.

While Williams may not “reveal any new depths of soul,” as it’s put in the comment above, I would argue there is plenty of soulfulness in his music, especially when the pace of a film allows everyone a moment to breathe. Granted, there are fewer and fewer of those moments! If anything, I would he deserves respect for having done his job so well in an industry that increasingly views its output as product and does its best to tamp everything down to the lowest common denominator.

Are we really to the point now where we are measuring artistic success, or even craftsmanship, by the number of Oscars one has accumulated recently? Has not the award itself lost much of its luster since Williams’ alleged heyday?

John McLaughlin Williams says:

You could have simply said Happy Birthday, and left it at that.