Craig Bennett: John Williams on Movie Music

by Craig Bennett*

John Williams is probably the most in-demand composer of film scores presently working in that field. Therefore, it’s rather surprising to learn that movie music is a genre for which he’s never had much affection. At the age of 93, Williams has some 60 years’ worth of film scores to his credit, having received an Oscar for five of them. Although he derives his compositional technique and devices from such universally acclaimed composers as Brahms and Tchaikovsky, he just doesn’t consider anything he’s produced for Hollywood to have come even close to what they and their peers produced during their lifetimes.

I would tend to agree. There are film scores that I’ve really enjoyed on their own merits, and I own a few recordings of those. Jarre’s score for Dr. Zhivago and the 3-CD recording of music from Lord of the Rings, for example. For me, listening to the music from those movies is the next best thing to watching the movie itself. And as for the absence of “greatness” in the film music repertoire, there are Sergei Prokoffiev’s scores for Alexander Nevsky and Lt. Kije. Each of these has become part of the orchestral repertoire and have been both performed and recorded many times over the last century. The music for Nevsky is regarded by many critics as the greatest film score ever written. I believe that John Williams is correct in his assessment; but I find the music he’s written for many films to be enjoyable, even if it falls short of whatever defines greatness in a musical composition.

But there are other things for which I admire John Williams besides his music. Much like jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong, in addition to being a musical talent to reckon with, he is also an admirable humanitarian. And it’s refreshing to encounter such a formidable talent as Williams who is also remarkably modest regarding his own abilities. Apparently, when Steven Spielberg approached him about composing the score for Schindler’s List, he replied that it was a film of such moral gravity and seriousness that music to accompany it would require a composer of greater ability than his own. Spielberg’s alleged reply was, “Yes, but they’re all dead.”

And my favorite John Williams anecdote involves a handful of trombone players from one of the Hollywood area high school bands who decided they wanted to honor him in some way, not only for the quality of the music he’d written, but also because he himself was a trombone player. So they took their instruments and some carefully selected music to his house, where they assembled on the sidewalk out front to serenade him with tunes from some of his better-known film scores. Much to their surprise and delight, after a selection or two the front door opened, and out came John Williams with his trombone and joined them as they played.

Those high school musicians will remember for the rest of their lives how the most famous composer of movie music at the time put down whatever he was working on in the house, grabbed his trombone, and came outside to join them—a bunch of completely undistinguished high school kids—in their enjoyment of playing music. That he would be seen and heard playing along with such obscure, not-yet-mature nobodies bothered him not in the least. These were young people who were still discovering music, developing as musicians, and finding people in the field whom they could admire and seek to emulate. They could definitely benefit from the support, approval, and encouragement of someone like John Williams; and he did not hesitate to give it to them.
When I think of some of the famous musicians I’ve heard about and how both their ego and their apparent insecurity led them to treat their fans and admirers as little more than bothersome inconveniences, I have to remember John Williams. Then I’m reminded that true greatness consists non only in the height of one’s talent, but also in the depth of one’s humanity.

*Craig H. Bennett, author of Nights on the Mountain and More Things in Heaven and Earth, available at amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, and most book stores.

SOURCE: McGowan, Andrew. “John Williams Says He “Never Liked Film Music Very Much,” Variety, Tuesday, August 26, 2025

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