On my list of favourite people and superheroes is John Williams. I don’t believe there are many of us, if any, who wouldn’t recognize the music of John Williams from the more than one hundred films his musical creations have empowered over his career. Movieweb.com tells us he is the “best” movie composer of all time, which is likely, but suffice to say he is extraordinary. I like to think John Williams has written the soundtrack for my life with French horns, oboes, violins, and of course cymbals, the score filled with the deep heavy notes of the double bass and tuba, the power of the trombone and trumpet, the gentle playful piccolo and flute, with crescendos and decrescendos, the intensifying volume putting me on alert and the softening sound telling me it’s okay, I am safe.
John was born in 1932. I use his first name because we are such close friends, one-sided I realize, but still. He was “filled with the love of music,” he says, from which we all have benefited. He studied piano, trumpet, trombone, and clarinet as he worked his way into the movie industry. He was a jazz pianist and wrote songs for “Wagon Train” and “Gilligan’s Island”. In 1954, he wrote the musical score for a Newfoundland tourism film entitled “You Are Welcome”, which seems deliciously fun. He began composing for films in the late 1960s. He was nominated for an Oscar more than fifty times. A documentary celebrating his brilliant legacy will stream on Disney on November 1st. The documentary honours John’s work and is a “thank you for that amount of joy,” proclaims Chris Martin (Coldplay).
In 2009, John composed and arranged music for the occasion of Barack Obama’s inauguration. I’m not sure many presidents, if any, can boast of that in a memoir. John’s last score was for “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” in 2022, but he has no plans to retire from film should the right project come along. He is currently creating a new concert piece. He was nominated for an Oscar at the age of ninety for “The Fabelmans”. He has had a remarkable professional life filled with achievements. The theme music from “Star Wars” still fills me with excitement as I visualize John conducting the orchestra with passion, his arms waving, his baton cutting through the air. Could I recite a list of all his film creations? Not a chance, nor could I place the ones I adore in any sort of order but suffice to say that anything from “Star Wars” fills me with vigour, including but not limited to the “Imperial March”. The theme from “Superman” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark” makes me feel like I too might be able to save the world. The theme from “Saving Private Ryan” is gentle and comforting. The “Jurassic Park” theme is so empowering it has me imagining I am cresting a hill and beholding the beauty of the Rainy River, as I stand on the piece of geography that defines me still, every single time I hear it.
I was ahead of my time when I first learned to whistle, my own launch into music appreciation. I whistled an entire song on one note, repeatedly, the extent of my whistling prowess in those early days, which drove my family mad. This was years before John Williams played two notes, one after the other from the lower register of the piano, that drove fear into the hearts of movie-goers. Just two simple notes and we were all quivering in terror and vowing to never swim again in case we run into a great white shark. Perhaps John heard of my whistling before he sat at the piano to create the score to “Jaws”. Who knows. This was on the heels of my singing while moving my jaw left and right to simulate what I considered an operatic quality, though my interpretation of the sound was sadly misguided. Again, I digress.
Music fills the corners of our lives with the power to make us feel what we might not otherwise feel. I can’t imagine a life without music in it. Music becomes a placeholder for a memory and that memory springs to life when we hear a certain song or familiar piece of music. Those who lose their memories to dementia, still hold fast to the music safely stowed in their heart; the music taking them back to who they used to be for those moments in time.
John Williams, who will be 93 in February, is young by any standard, a shining example of how engaging with creativity keeps a soul and body vibrant. “Music is enough for a lifetime,” says Mr. Williams, “But a lifetime isn’t enough for music.” Lucky us to have shared this era in music with John Williams. wendistewart@live.ca
