BOSTON
SYMPHONY
ORCHESTRA
JOHN WILLIAMS (b. 1932)
Music From The Movies
Today everyone knows John Williams as the composer of some of the most famous and
recognizable film music in the world, with music from the Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and
Superman movies being just the tip of the iceberg,
but he has composed the music and served as music
director for more than 100 films, including Memoirs
of a Geisha, War of the Worlds, Harry Potter and the
Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry Potter and the Chamber
of Secrets, Minority Report, Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer’s Stone, The Lost World, Rosewood, Sleepers, Nixon, Sabrina, Schindler’s List, Jurassic Park,
Far and Away, JFK, Hook, Home Alone, Presumed
Innocent, Born on the Fourth of July, The Accidental
Tourist, Empire of the Sun, The Witches of Eastwick,
E.T. (the Extra-Terrestrial), Close Encounters of the
Third Kind, Jaws, and Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Mr.
Williams has received 45 Academy Award nominations, making him the Academy’s most nominated
living person, and has been awarded five Oscars,
seven British Academy Awards, twenty Grammys, four Emmys, and four Golden Globes,
as well as several gold and platinum records. Born in New York, Mr. Williams attended
UCLA, studied composition privately with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and attended
the Juilliard School, where he studied piano with Madame Rosina Lhévinne. He worked
as a jazz pianist before beginning his career in the film studios, where he worked with
such composers as Bernard Herrmann, Alfred Newman, and Franz Waxman. In January
1980 Mr. Williams was named the 19th Conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra since
its founding in 1885. He assumed the title of Boston Pops Laureate Conductor following
his retirement in December 1993 and at Tanglewood.
Forever linked with the characters of the Emperor and his servant Darth Vader, Luke
Skywalker’s father and nemesis, the “Imperial March” from the Star Wars movies signals
the entrance of villains on the scene more clearly and succinctly than any other theme of
its kind. When Steven Spielberg and George Lucas envisioned how they would represent
the fight between good and evil they decided to paint evil as a faceless, immense, impossibly large and powerful empire, with Darth Vader and his master the Emperor at its
head; with its searing trumpets and relentless percussion, their March captures perfectly
the martial power embodied in their ruthless domination. “Aunt Marge’s Waltz” from
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is another story altogether: here John Williams takes a light-hearted dance form, the waltz, and makes it into a caricature of Harry
Potter’s Aunt Marge. Stuttering woodwinds and lilting strings, followed by bumbling
brass figures, render Harry’s growing annoyance with his aunt, who has little interest in
magic and less in him.