The John Williams Phenomenon

Last weekend I went to Vienna to attend the first concert that John Williams has ever given on continental Europe and the first concert in Europe since 1998. Like no other musician, Williams has shaped the way of my life.

When I was a little boy, my dad bought the VHS of Jurassic Park. As I was too young to watch it officially, I secretly watched it when my parents weren't home one day. Besids being fascinated and scared at the same time, I was blown away by the music. Particularly the sequence where the helicopter approaches the island left me speechless. When I realized that the music was by the same composer who also wrote the music for my favourite Christmas movie at that time HOME ALONE and that I kept humming all through Christmas, my life was changed forever. I decided I want to write such music and haven't left that thought ever since.

Besides my own personal story with his music, I know that many such stories exist all around the world. Williams has inspired several generatons of musicians and music lovers alike and considering the excitement of the audience that swept like a tidal wave through the Musikverein Wien with several standing ovations (the first when Williams entered the hall) cheers and many wet eyes, all this seems like the accumulated excitement of several decades needed to break loose in this one singular moment of Williams actually being present.

Since I've become a professional musician I kept asking myself what makes Williams such a beloved composer. And while many factors come at play here, a few of these can maybe be a guideline for learning composers.

Undeniably, Williams has had a lot of luck in is career. Teaming up with Spielberg allowed him to be for 20+ years at the absolute peak of filmmaking, dishing out block busters in rapid succession. Also, it seems like the sudden loss of his first wife in the 70s sparked a creative burst in him that lasted for decades while he also is and has been incredibly hard working.

But in my opinon, one of Williams' most important factors for his popularity is how universally accessible his music is. Williams manages to write music that can be enjoyed by people who don't have much musical experience for its simplicity in ideas. Most of Williams' themes are hummable and simple in structure. At the same time, musically more educated people enjoy the finesse that he puts into the development of these ideas, the surprising turns he takes and the complex concepts he approaches with these ideas. It seems like everybody can find something enjoyable in his music.

For instance I'm constantly fascinated how he sometimes dares to write such things like "For Always" from A.I. - Artificial Intelligence. I wouldn't dare to walk a path that is musically so overused like the head motif in the chorus. Yet, Williams doesn't shy away from such simplicity which of course makes it extremely accessible for a broad audience who don't feel like me about this musical path and probably have the same emotional response as with one of their other favourite pieces that most likely shares this musical path.

Another big factor is that Williams never wrote music that is merely serviceable to the film. No matter how unimportant the scene was, every film cue that he writes he approaches with the premise to write music that can stand on its own as music, even without the film. And with directors like Spielberg he had the luxury of having filmmakers that were happily making space for the music. I personally feel that a lot of film music that is written today is too serviceable. While I can appreciate the emotional effect a lonely synth drone can have in a film, it never embraces me emotionally as much as a musical cue that does more than that. This is of course debateable but in my opinion the test of time will prove me to be right on this ;)

The third and equally important factor is that he knows extremely well how to work with the collective memory of his audience. Williams is definitely well aware that some of his music sounds like something else from the classical music literature. He doesn't just know that but he actually actively triggers these connections. This musical vocabularly is so engrained in the collective memory of the audience that it will trigger exactly the desired emotional response. This is a topic that I will cover in a lengthy article very soon as there is a lot more detail to this.

The question whether all these factors and character traits need to be exactly the same to have a career like Williams will most likely remain unanswered. I'm sure there are and have been composers out there who have the same level of genius as he has, but didn't have the luck like him to be allowed to write such music. Still, what we can learn and take away from his work are these things mentioned above. No matter what kind of music you write and where on the spectrum of musical taste you stand personally, I feel these points are universal and can at least be a guideline to consider when writing one's own music.

In any case, seeing John Williams live has fulfilled one of my childhood dreams and will remain as a once in a lifetime experience in my memory.