JOHN WILLIAMS
Born February 8, 1932, in Flushing, Queens, New York
The Cowboys Overture (about 10’)
Last performed by the Wichita Symphony on April 22, 2017. Daniel Hege conducted.
From a two-note motive warning of a shark in the water to a brilliant fanfare announcing a space fantasy, the music of John Williams has become deeply embedded in the hearts and ears of audiences around the world. Still active at ninety years, Williams is probably the best known and most popular among living composers. His music is a gateway into the orchestral sound rooted in the late-19th century symphonies and mid-20th century Hollywood film scores and continues to inspire a younger generation of composers.
Williams’ list of movies for which he composed scores numbers about 125, in addition to music for some twenty-five television shows, fanfares for the Olympics, NBC, and other celebratory occasions, and many concertos and works composed for the symphonic repertoire. As the most celebrated Hollywood composer, Williams’ honors include fifty-two Academy Award nominations with five Oscars, twenty-five Grammy Awards from seventy-one nominations, three Emmy Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards from twenty-five nominations. He is also the recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors (2004), several honorary doctorates, and many other awards and recognitions over his long career.
With early studies and work as a jazz pianist, Williams studied composition in Los Angeles with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, a European émigré who discovered new opportunities with Hollywood film studios. Following service in the U.S. Air Force, Williams set his sights on a career as a concert pianist entering the legendary piano studio of Rosina Lhévinne at the Juilliard School in 1955. After surmising his career chances as a pianist against studio peers like Robert Browning and Van Cliburn, Williams decided that his career was better suited to music composition. Williams ended up in Los Angeles, where he honed his skills as an orchestrator, studio pianist, and session musician.
Williams’ feature film score debut came in 1958 with music for a B-movie titled Daddy-O. He received his first Academy Award nomination for Valley of the Dolls in 1967 (Best Scoring of Music – Adaptation or Treatment). He won his first Oscar in 1971 for Best Scoring: Adaptation and Original Song Score for Fiddler on the Roof.
The Cowboys, starring John Wayne and directed by Mark Rydell, appeared in 1972, a year in which Williams received two Academy Award nominations for The Poseidon Adventure and Images. Cowboys was Williams’ second score for a Rydell film following his Academy-Award nominated score for The Reivers (1969)
Cowboys is a coming-of-age movie in which an aging rancher (John Wayne) takes on a team of inexperienced teenage drovers for one final cattle drive from Montana. The drive produces challenges like weather, horse thieves, and death that force young men to grow up in a hurry.
The music Williams composed for The Cowboys is a big orchestral score in the tradition of scores for Hollywood Westerns written by Jerome Moross for The Big Country (1958), Elmer Bernstein for The Magnificent Seven (1966), and Williams’ earlier Americana-hued score for The Reivers.
Symphony and film geeks enjoy playing a parlor game that attempts to link Williams’ music to its influential source, whether it be music by Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Gustav Holst, Arron Copland, Erich Korngold, or others. As with any great composer, Williams adapts his sources and assimilates the style into his unique voice.
We hear many of Williams’ signature characteristics in The Cowboys: vigorous rhythmic elements to convey horseback riding and calf-roping on the Great Plains, colorful orchestration with a distinctive use of brass and winds – in particular, note the soaring horn theme, and melodic qualities easily associated with Americana folk music. Music for The Reivers and The Cowboys caught Stephen Spielberg’s attention and admiration, leading Spielberg to hire Williams for their first collaboration on The Sugarland Express (1974). The rest is history!
The Cowboys Overture that we hear this weekend consists of music from the film that John Williams adapted for a concert performance by the Boston Pops in 1980.
Notes by Don Reinhold ©2022
