The music of John Williams (born 1932) needs no introduction because he is the astoundingly prolific movie composer of over 75 scores including some of the greatest blockbusters of all time. He has been nominated for 54 Academy Awards and won five: Fiddler on the Roof (1971), Jaws (1975), Star Wars (1977), E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial (1982) and Schindler's List (1993). But don’t forget Indiana Jones, Superman, Harry Potter, etc. In addition, Williams has written theme music for TV (NBC News) and marches for the Olympic Games -- the 1984, 1988, 1996 Summer Olympics, and the 2002 Winter. It is hard to imagine a composer in history whose orchestral music is more well known to the public. Williams has expressed all the “blockbuster” emotions whether soaring through the sky with a cape or a via bicycles, expressing pure evil or the triumph over it -- magical spells, the brute attacks of a monstrous shark, the poignancy of suffering persecution, and quiet heroism confronting it. Williams has expressed a huge spectrum of scenic situations – more than can be possibly mentioned here.
So, we all know the Art of John Williams. No surprises. Right? Wrong! Here, I must relate a personal anecdote. I attended the world premiere of the John Williams Horn Concerto (2003) played by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under the direction of the composer with the late Dale Clevenger, the reigning Principal Horn of the CSO, as soloist. We were all prepared for brass-powered, triumphant, heaven-storming, resounding tunes that would stir our basic gut emotions to peak levels of excitement. What we got was a modern, complex, melodically fragmented, variegated music that might remind one more of later Stravinsky or Hindemith. Pleasing, interesting, and undoubtedly showing a mastery of what the horn could play -- along with the many expressive colors of the orchestra. The work involved the mind and elevated the consciousness. But it provided nothing to walk out of the hall humming. Williams knows audiences and performed the theme from Star Wars as an encore. When that staid, CSO subscription audience recognized the heroic music, they let out a spontaneously enthusiastic ROAR of approval that I had never heard in that venue before -- nor since.
So, are his concertos (19 in all) the “real” John Williams? Are the movie scores just “slumming” where he mines the choice bits from Tchaikovsky, Mahler, Strauss, Stravinsky, Bartok, etc. to press the emotional buttons of a movie audience? I would vigorously argue against that notion. I think violinist James Ehnes (who has just recorded the Williams Violin Concerto No. 1) makes a great point that the movie scores contain a large amount of complex music as the dramatic connective tissue between the melodies that we remember. Tonight with "Centennial Overture," composed in celebration of the 100th Anniversary of the Hollywood Bowl (2022), Concerto for Viola and Orchestra (2009) with local favorite Matthew Lipman as soloist, and the “Star Wars Suite” we are getting a full, rich meal of music with various ratios of drama and intellect, beauty in simplicity and beauty in intricacy.
There seem to be two sides to classical music, and for many of us, they can be hermetically sealed from each other, but they shouldn’t be. There is the German concept of Bildung— an untranslatable word referring to the inner development of the individual through learning and art -- prominently, the Novel in Literature, the Tragedy in Theater, and greatest forms of Classical Music. That is why it is not nonsense when the late string quartets of Beethoven are described as expressing “a kind of cosmic understanding of the world that is unparalleled.” Often, these striving works are not “easy” pieces.
Yet, there is also a rich history of Drama in Classical Music that is of the greatest importance. Combining Drama and Music is not a mongrel endeavor but essential to the Art Form and important to elucidate. So, please indulge me in this historical record.
Music and Drama in Western Art have been associated since the times of the ancient Greeks. There was no musical notation to record the music that accompanied the choruses in the Greek plays, but it is standard opinion that they were sung and even danced as one of the important, emotionally engaging, aspects of even the great tragedies like Oedipus the King. Indeed, it may well be that the Greek tragedy actually evolved from choruses called dithyrambs—lyric hymns in praise of the god Dionysus. Plato in his ideal Republic, would promote certain modes of music (systems of scales similar to “major” and “minor”) as being so moving that they could promote bravery in battle while others would be banned for promoting emotions detrimental to the ideal Republic.
By the turn of the 17th Century, there was a movement in Italian noble courts to try to re-capture the emotional and dramatic power of the Greek Drama (a re-birth or “Renaissance” of ancient classical culture) by combining singing and drama with sets, choruses, and acting (i.e., opera). The first great opera, l’Orfeo, was composed by Claudio Monteverdi in 1607 for the Gonzaga court in the Italian city of Mantua. Monteverdi employed complex madrigal-like numbers – a look backward -- but also many simple solo arias and emotionally powerful, declaimed sung passages in a technique called recitative. This simplified but powerful combination of music and drama soon became astonishingly popular with the burgeoning ticket-buying middle class rather than just the occupants of stately courts. Soon opera theaters had sprung up all over the Italian peninsula in a manner that approximates the movie palaces of the 20th century. So here is the connection to our modern times. Drama and Music are an essential combination.
Opera composers were the original “movie directors” in their cultural power right up to the motion-picture era. Because of the fame of their other compositions and the relative obscurity into which many of their operas have fallen, it is not well appreciated that Vivaldi, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Richard Strauss, and Prokofiev were essentially opera composers.
Even Schubert, who wrote over 600 songs, which were like mini dramas, completed more operas/operettas, 11, than symphonies, seven. (There is an anecdote that when Rossini was told that he had learned enough about musical composition to write opera but not enough for church music, he declined further studies to go write operas.) Even Beethoven, who was thought to be highly envious of Rossini’s popularity, when visited by Rossini told him to compose more “Barbers” (i.e., of Seville). And speaking of movie-score-like compositions, Beethoven wrote a great scene of “melodrama” where there is spoken dialogue over a background “score” in his one opera Fidelio.
The two titans of 19th century music, Verdi and Wagner, almost exclusively wrote operas. Prokofiev (1891-1953), mentioned above as an opera composer, also wrote movie scores. Prokofiev decried movie scores where “the spectator will leave without remembering a single theme.” His movie-score philosophy was: “if one theme is repeated insistently, it sticks in the memory and becomes popular.” This was a formula that has been adopted widely in movie scores.
It is no great insight to say that, since the early 20th century, movies ARE the dominant cultural Art Form. And to be one of the leading composers utterly essential to the success of that Art Form is to be considered with our fine, classical composers. Bravo, John Williams!
Program Note by IPO Board Member
Charles Amenta, M.D.