the times | Friday August 7 2020 1GT 5
cover story
course he shocked the world by hitting
that top C with that extrovert, heroic,
raw timbre he had — the perfect
sound for the kind of action film that
Star Wars was. I loved him from that
moment! We always said that we
would have a round of golf together,
but of course we never found the time,
and then he died way too soon.”
With most work in Hollywood
suspended during the pandemic,
Williams might be forgiven for taking
a well-earned break from composition.
Not a bit of it. He’s spending his time
finishing a violin concerto for Anne-
Sophie Mutter, who also features in
the Vienna concert playing virtuoso
arrangements of his soundtracks
(“Harry Potter meets Paganini,”
Williams quips). Astonishingly, it will
be the 19th concerto or quasi-concerto
he has written for the concert hall.
“I think of my work outside film
as being part of my own musical self-
education,” he says. “And believe me,
the road to being harp-savvy enough
to write a harp concerto is a long one.
But it’s also nice to write something
that doesn’t require the approval of
a studio boss. And, you know, even
if I wasn’t being paid I would always
want to write music. The greatest
thrill of my life has been hearing my
music played, almost immediately,
by wonderful orchestras. It’s
something I wish every composer
could experience.”
He’s not so far away from his tenth
decade. Does he ever contemplate
hanging up his quill? “Never,” he
says. “I will press on. Music isn’t a
profession. It’s my oxygen. Take that
away and I’d really be in trouble.”
John Williams in Vienna is released
on August 14 on DGdrummer, moved the family
there in 1948, and Williams
began his career playing
piano in Hollywood
orchestras throughout the
1950s. Yet some of his most
famous scores for Spielberg
were recorded not in Hollywood,
but in Britain, with the London
Symphony Orchestra at Denham
or Shepperton studios.
“I was introduced to the LSO by my
dear friend André Previn when he was
the orchestra’s principal conductor,
and of course the LSO players were
whizz kids at sight-reading, so we
made many recordings together,”
Williams recalls.
In fact, the story is more dramatic
than that. In 1976 the LSO — in
desperate financial difficulties —
asked Previn if he could write another
film score so the orchestra could make
some money by recording it. Previn
said he was too busy, but offered to
phone a friend who was writing a
score for “some sci-fi film”.
The friend was Williams, who said
he would hire the LSO as long as the
orchestra could squeeze in 18 sessions
in the next month. The orchestra
agreed, as long as some sessions
could begin at 11pm, after its regular
concerts were over. And thus was the
soundtrack to Star Wars recorded.
Even more extraordinary, the LSO
had just recruited a principal trumpet
— the soon-to-be-legendary Maurice
Murphy. So on his first day in his new
job Murphy’s first task was to blast the
opening notes of one of the 20th
century’s greatest movie melodies.
“Yes, Maurice came out to Denham
and we started with the fanfare from
Star Wars,” Williams recalls. “And ofComposing
music for
films is a
job of
carpentry
...
a journalist than a novelist.
You have a certain number
of days to write a certain
number of minutes of music,
and you have to get on with
it. It’s a job of carpentry, of
manufacturing musical things.”
So he never hits a blank? “Oh
sometimes, but if there’s a section of
a scene I can’t think how to treat I will
just move on to another bit, then come
back to it. It usually solves itself.”
How much do film directors help or
hinder the process? Another knowing
chuckle down the line. “Directors will
always talk about what they think they
want musically,” Williams replies. “And
I always listen to them. But usually
when I get to the piano and start to
work, those ideas are pretty much
gone. It’s always better for me to
respond to the visual material — the
film that’s actually being shot — than
to verbal instructions.
“And of course there’s huge
variety in that species of humanity
called film directors. Some are very
musical. Others are suspicious of
using music at all.”
Where does Steven Spielberg, the
director with whom Williams has
collaborated for 46 years, sit in that
spectrum? “Oh, with Steven there
can’t be enough music,” Williams
exclaims. “He always wants more and
more. It’s rather touching in its way.
He will come to a recording session
that ends at a certain hour, the
musicians will be packing up, and
Steven will say, ‘Where are they
going? Why are you stopping? Haven’t
you got anything else you can play?’
He just loves the process so much.”
Williams admits to being a “child
of Hollywood” — his father, a jazzCOVER AND BELOW: ALAMY. UNIVERSAL/KOBAL/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK; AMANDA EDWARDS/WIRE IMAGE/GETTY IMAGESMeet the
heirs to
Williams
Hans Zimmer
The biggest beast in film music
after John Williams, Zimmer broke
through in 1988 with his synth score
for Rain Man. The German went on
to win an Oscar for the non Elton
John bits of The Lion King and has
been nominated for nine more
films, including Gladiator and The
Thin Red Line. He has built up a
close relationship with Christopher
Nolan, working on his Batman
trilogy, Inception and Interstellar.
His excruciatingly tense music was
arguably the most important part of
Nolan’s Dunkirk. Not bad for a man
who wrote the theme to the naff
quiz show Going for Gold.Hildur Guonadottir
You may not be able to pronounce
her name, but chances are you’ve
been moved by Guonadottir’s
music. The Icelander moved to
the top table in 2019, working
simultaneously on two striking
projects. Her claustrophobic music
for Chernobyl sampled sounds
recorded in the abandoned
Lithuanian nuclear plant where it
was filmed, while on the superhero
spin-off movie Joker, Guonadottir
had a level of influence that
composers have rarely enjoyed
since the days of Alfred Hitchcock
and Bernard Herrmann. Joaquin
Phoenix improvised his “bathroom
dance” to her monotonic music.
She won an Oscar, a Golden Globe
and a Bafta for Joker and an
Emmy for Chernobyl.Thomas Newman
The Los Angeles-born composer
was given one of his first big jobs
by Williams: orchestrating Darth
Vader’s death in Return of the
Jedi. He made his name with
his melancholic music for The
Shawshank Redemption (1994) and
Sam Mendes’s American Beauty
(1999) and went on to score Steven
Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies and two
James Bond films and 1917 for
Mendes. Newman is the son of the
composer Alfred Newman and the
cousin of the singer-songwriter
Randy Newman, with whom he has
gone head to head at the Oscars.Nicholas Britell
He has collaborated with directors
such as Barry Jenkins (Moonlight
and If Beale Street Could Talk) and
Adam McKay (The Big Short and
Vice), but the New Yorker is perhaps
best known for his mischievous,
sinister music to Succession.Daniel Pemberton
The British composer has worked
with big-hitters on both sides of the
Atlantic, composing for Danny
Boyle (Steve Jobs and Yesterday),
Ridley Scott (The Counselor and
All the Money in the World) and
Aaron Sorkin (Molly’s Game and
the forthcoming The Trial of
the Chicago 7).
Ed PottonAbove left: Jaws (1975). Above, from top:
Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark
(1981); Rupert Grint and Daniel Radcliffe
in Harry Potter and the Chamber of
Secrets (2002). Left: ET (1982)d
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