Great or Overrated - John Williams

John Williams.  When you say his name, more than any other composer ever, most people can name something he composed (usually Jaws or Star Wars or Indiana Jones, occasionally Harry Potter, Jurassic Park, or E.T.).  That, in and of itself, is quite an accomplishment.  Most people can't actually name a piece by Mozart or Bach and if it weren't for Fur Elise and Ode to Joy, Beethoven would be in equal trouble.  But people know John's work.  The real question is, to what does he owe his fame; pure talent or more of a right place/right time situation?

I've asked myself this about many people, Shakespeare, Tolkien, Van Gogh, Streep, Hanks, Nolan, Spielberg, and many more.  Should this particular run down get any sort of attention, I may share some more of my thoughts on which of the above are truly talented, and which just got lucky, but for today, we're just focusing on Williams.

The biggest argument for either case is essentially the same; "John Williams is only famous because he composed the music for some of the most successful movies ever, so more people know his music" opposed to "John Williams composed music that resulted in his movies becoming some of the most successful movies ever."  It's really a cause and effect situation here.  Did Williams' scores lead to the movies' successes or did the movies' successes lead to the popularity of his scores?  There are some movies *cough* Harry Potter *cough* that would have been huge with no help from Willliams.  Though a bad enough score might have been able to ruin the film, any decent score was sufficient to see the film succeed.  Other movies, like Star Wars or Close Encounters or Jaws, were only moderately expected to be successful, and yet they were all incredibly successful.  We can't attribute all of that to Williams, certainly, but it is telling that many of his films that were not necessarily going to be hits still did extremely well. 

That's not to say he never composed a dud.  John Wayne is not especially known for his turn in Williams orchestrated "The Cowboys" nor does everyone love to revisit that Dick Van Dyke classic "Fitzwilly" for the great score by Johnny Williams (yep, he went by Johnny for a while in his early career).   Still, it's been since that Indiana Jones sequel we don't like to talk about that Williams has written a score that hasn't gotten an Oscar nomination (as of 2017).  Okay, so he's an Academy favorite, that doesn't actually make him good, right?

Well, no.  There are plenty of Academy favorites that are overrated, and, more importantly, plenty of artists that don't receive the recognition they deserve from the Academy.  So, it's hard to say that Williams is good just based on the popularity of his music or from the number of Oscars he's racked up (just 5 so far, out of an insane 36 nominations).  So, it looks like we'll have to go and look at the actual product that he delivers, his music.

Film music, in my opinion, has one job: to tell the story.  That's it.  It's not to be beautiful or have a catchy tune or to explore the range of modern musicianship.  It's to tell the story.  Film music does this in two main ways; creating mood and establishing themes.  Mood is created by using the natural character of various harmonies, timbres, and textures to evoke certain emotions in the listener.  A slow, sparse tune on an oboe in a minor key is going to give us a sense of loneliness.  That's due to the nature of certain qualities of the music itself, as well as decades of training that we all receive daily on how to react to music.  You won't hear the oboe solo at a football game as you take the field, because it doesn't match.  Themes are a little easier to understand, a certain melody is played during a character introduction or when a relationship is forming or when a certain idea is discussed and for the rest of the movie, when we hear that music, we think of that character or relationship or idea.  It's probably the easier aspect of film music, but still not always easy.

This brings me to why I think that John Williams is truly great.  He is one of the greatest theme builders, and theme manipulators, in film history.  People will argue that he "borrows" his themes from existing music.  There's some truth to that, but that's not why Williams is great.  John Williams is great because of one thing.  He could rip off everything else he does and this one thing would be enough to make him stand out by itself.  Williams doesn't just use themes like blunt tools to reinforce the story on the screen.  Williams turns his themes into fine instruments.  They shift and evolve and twist in and out of each other to do more than just reiterate what's been said, but to tell something more every time.  Anakin's theme in Phantom Menace ends with the same four or five notes as the Imperial March.  The Jaws theme starts sparse and suspenseful, but it's also used with added orchestration later to create a sense of intensity and excitement.  Hedwig's theme in Harry Potter gets a festive remix to show the passage of time.  Time and again, Williams uses his existing themes in new ways to help tell the story.

Another factor in composer greatness is versatility.  Williams has composed for science fiction, adventure, dramas, fantasy, horror, comedy, and westerns.  He's written for kids and adults, for topics ranging from Christmas to superheroes to the holocaust to classic disney characters.  His versatility is established enough, I can't find much of a gap in it anywhere.  I'm fairly confident he could compose for any film genre without a problem.

So, the verdict is out.  I honestly thought I was going to write that John Williams was definitely a little overrated by the end of this, but here I am, still feeling he's earned his position at the top of his field.  He may be a favorite in the Academy, he may carefully pick his projects so as to not end up with a flop, but at the end of the day, Williams has talent and that can't be denied.