Speaking with Variety ahead of the 96th Academy Awards this coming Sunday, the maestro John Williams looked back at his singular career, one that has not only seen 54 Oscar nominations come his way with 5 wins (Fiddler on the Roof, Jaws, Star Wars, E.T and Schindler’s List) but also a look at his work on the Star Wars saga and a creative decision which somewhat changed the complexion of a classic theme.
There is a maximalism to that kind of scoring that wasn’t in vogue in the arty, hard-bitten ’70s when Williams set to work on George Lucas’ first “Star Wars” film, not knowing that he was hitting a reset button for the whole field.
“George was very clear to me that the music should be symphonic,” recalls Williams, a sunny man dressed, as almost always, in a black turtleneck. He is eloquent but soft-spoken. “I took it to mean late 19th century, maybe European — Mahler, Wagner, Strauss, that period of orchestral writing. He said it should be classical. Not Bach — not classical in the baroque sense, but in the romantic sense, the Byronic sense. Why? Because all the images you’re going to see are images of desolate places or places you’ve never seen before, with people wearing clothes you’ve never seen before. It’s all alien, the whole visual experience. So the emotional experience should be familiar. It should be a classical modality that describes heroism and romance and adventure and operatic emotions higher than reality.”
“Star Wars” was not the one-off Williams had imagined, inspiring sequels, spinoffs and streaming series that continue to this day. And Williams’ music, with its sumptuous and stirring signatures, gave the space opera a transcendent power. “Doing it at the time, I didn’t think it was radical,” he says. “What made it radical was the embrace that it had. People seemed to have been starving for this kind of expression, and here was a vehicle into which it could be put.”
There was one blip in scoring the first movie. “I mistakenly wrote a love theme for Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker. I learned later that they were brother and sister, so it was an incestuous idea to have a love theme for them. But George never told us there was going to be a second film!”
Fortunately, Lucas didn’t scrub that romantic theme out of future releases like he did Han Solo drawing his blaster first on Greedo. But realizing the error of his ways gave Williams an opportunity to write Carrie Fisher a new, non-incestuous theme for “The Empire Strikes Back,” along with first-time leitmotifs for Darth Vader and Yoda that would further become part of this universe. Over the nine “Star Wars” films he scored, Williams has written 45 identifiable, recurring themes — or so he’s been told by fans. (“It’s hard to believe, but I imagine people are seriously counting.”)
Fingers crossed he can make it 6 wins with Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny this Sunday, and we’ll be sure to cover the events here in the site.
- Hardcover Book
- Miller, John Jackson (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 432 Pages - 04/09/2024 (Publication Date) - Random House Worlds (Publisher)
