Sandor

Im sorry, what? The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi have some outstanding action music. A little different from his older style, but still very good. Before that, The BFG has writing every bit as intricate and intense as any action score, just not as loud. He doesn’t deliver four of these a year anymore, but he’s still got it.

I’m not sure I like the attitude emanating from this thread. After everything JW has given us in his eight-decade-spanning career, hasn’t he earned the benefit of the doubt? Can’t we wait until we see the film or listen to the OST before worrying that JW has somehow let us down? And even if it turns out a couple minutes in his two-hour pencil-on-paper score are lifted, does that diminish the fact that that lifted music stands head and shoulders above what nearly anyone else on the planet could write?
 
We continue to get so much from the man and somehow it’s never quite enough. Fucking ingrates.

For me, it’s a 5 star score and a true classic.
 
Joe: thanks for sharing your wonderful story! 

I’m about to post knowing I won’t be able to put all the things I love about Jaws into words but here goes. 
 
I think I saw it for its first theatrical rerelease. I was probably 6 or 7 I guess. I remember I kept asking my mother “is this a true story?”  Yeah, it definitely was real to me. The thought of the shark being fake never ever crossed my mind.  These days, he’s a classic movie monster to me.  Real great whites aren’t as cool looking as Bruce.  
 
I also have fond memories of renting the Super8 ten minute reel from the public library and projecting that on a bedsheet in my room.  Make no mistake, even that little highlight reel would scare the shit out of me.  Although with that tech you could run it in reverse to watch Quint’s death backwards, quite amusing to a pre teen. 
 
The score… well obviously most joes can’t see the forest through the trees composed of two notes.   There is so much complexity and nuance to the complete score. Stuff you definitely don’t even pick up on the wonderful OST presentation. 
 
So many moments. 
 
Small motifs, like the serene “open ocean” motif that closes out the Preparing the Cage fugue on the OST makes two appearances in the score, when Brody looks through the estuary bridge to the open sea, and when Hooper and Brody are attempting to snag the two barrels.   That sustained note almost makes a sort of reprise of the final note in the End Titles as if to suggest the ocean is still and the water is calm once again. 
 
The sea shanties elevate this from terror, beyond adventure, to something impossibly joyous when it shouldn’t be.  And they’re not all “Spanish Ladies”.  There’s the main one based on the Orca theme, a secondary one that really brings the high adventure in Man Against Beast, and a third, which bears similarity to Spanish Ladies when it appears in One Barrel Chase.  But you need the full score to get the delightfully woeful actual singular quote of Spanish Ladies played by flutes against strained high strings suggesting hopelessness as Quint looks at the soaked life vests below deck. (“Quint Thinks it Over”) Absolutely brilliant. 
 
Can we talk about the shark theme?  Isn’t it more than a motif?  That slithering French horn that plays counterpoint to the ostinato is absolutely beautiful and fearsome. It opens up “The Pier Incident” in woodwinds to great effect.  The OST Main Title also has that wonderful series of triplets after the first crescendo of the motif.  You hear these triplets on harp along with the woodwinds playing the slithery counterpoint at the beginning of “The Empty Raft” (Kintner’s attack) and of course the harp triplets start off Chrissie’s Death in both recordings.  When the Shark Theme really crescendos on the OST Main Title, the triplets yield to that awesome motif suggesting the massive size of the shark, also heard in Man Against Beast (or Sea Attack Number One on the OST). This is not a two-note motif!  And yet, strip away the horn counterpoint or the harp triplets and you have “The Shark Approaches”, perhaps one of the most machine like, unstoppable, and yeah even scary statement of the theme in the whole score.  Those celli and double bass just chug that to pieces!
 
The End Titles start with the gentle four note bed with tolling bell. The perfect denouement to bring peace back to the audience.  One masterful allusion to that happens in the full score (“Tug on the Line”) which was dialed out in the film.  Maybe Spielberg felt Williams was telegraphing an eventual happy ending, but musically it’s a wonderful callback, or call forward in this case. 
 
@Belloshmentioned Blown to Bits, which features  the Cage Fugue played as an adrenaline surging shark hunter theme for when the men are getting serious about their work.   I love its appearance in Sea Attack Number One and of course Man Against Beast.   It allllmost is a prototype sound for the military theme from CE3K.   And the proper full treatment of the Fugue in Preparing the Cage … well, I don’t really have words. 
 
My god, how many themes are we up to now?
 
I haven’t even mentioned pieces like Night Search (which is like a mini movie in itself) and the Indianapolis Story.  Two notes!? “Jesus H Christ” as Quint would say. 
 
The writing for harp in Jaws deserves its own “Greatest Thing Ever” thread.  The aforementioned triplets, almost suggestive of rising bubbles before the leviathan breaches and hell breaks loose.  The frantic harp glisses in The Underwater Siege are astonishingly violent. And although JW isn’t the first to orchestrate underwater with harp, he’s the best. Those prickly plucks of confusion just before the shark pulls the estuary victim under his capsized boat make my neck hairs bristle.  
 
AND THEN you have “Father and Son”. Holy God, how can so much be conveyed with so little?  The delicate harp and piano, against the long sustained bass, acting as almost a foghorn of doom that still looms above Brody as he has a tender moment with his kid.  That this cue exists in this kind of film from that era is a miracle. 
 
From delicate to as violent as an orchestra can sound with “Quint Meets His End” (dialed out in the film, but used iirc in some TV Spots.  Jeepers that is orchestral thunder. And those shrieking piccolo stabs, coupled with the relentless two note brass hits, which recall similar brass for Man Against Beast where Quint waits until the last second to fire the harpoon.   Incidentally, I happen to personally enjoy Sea Attack Number One just a hair more than Man Against Beast, which gets a lot more attention (used in live performances to show the scene with and without music). 
 
It’s getting late and I gotta go to bed and I still haven’t even gotten to Out to Sea or The Promenade Montage!!!
 
I guess I’ll stop by saying Jaws never stops surprising me.  I know every note of many scores from his golden era, but Jaws is the one where I continue to find those little moments, that connective tissue that suggests that nobody in the crew took their job more seriously than Williams. 
 
Anyway, he delivered the bomb. 

Any time. I am revisiting the scores in preparation for rating John's fine works.
But Jaws deserves praise beyond praise.

For me, it’s a 5 star score and a true classic.
 
Joe: thanks for sharing your wonderful story! 

TRACK LISTING:
 
DISC 1
 
SCORE PRESENTATION 53:32

1. Theme From Sabrina (Extended Version) 5:19
2. Main Title 1:28
3. To Paris :57
4. Learning The Ropes*† 1:34
5. Thinking Of Home / Work Montage 2:10
6. Photographing Paris† 1:51
7. Growing Up In Paris*† 3:01
8. La Vie En Rose 1:20
9. The Drive 1:48
10. Sabrina Is Home* 2:06
11. Linus And Mother 2:44
12. Off To The Vineyard* 1:44
13. On The Porch* 2:12
14. Beach Walk* 2:21
15. Linus And Father* 3:05
16. Sabrina To The Office* 1:09
17. Dinner Montage* 2:21
18. The Princess Grows* 3:16
19. Have Your Tea :39
20. Eavesdropping* 1:10
21. Sabrina’s Return To Paris* 2:24
22. Wrapping It Up* 1:35
23. Linus’ New Life* 2:46
24. End Credits 4:24
 
ADDITIONAL MUSIC 25:09

25. (In The) Moonlight - Instrumental of Moonlight* 2:59
26. To Paris (Alternate) :58
27. Learning The Ropes (Film Version)*† 2:13
28. Work Montage (Alternate) 1:47
29. Growing Up In Paris (Alternate)† 2:43
30. La Vie En Rose (Alternate) 1:18
31. Sabrina Is Home (Alternate)* 1:59
32. On The Porch (Alternate)* 2:12
33. Have Your Tea (Alternate) :38
34. Linus’ New Life (Alternate)* 2:47
35. Theme From Sabrina (Reprise) 5:21

DISC 1 TOTAL TIME: 78:43
 
DISC 2
 
PARTY IN THE MOONLIGHT • SONGS OF SABRINA
1. Moonlight* 5:23
Performed by Sting
2. (In The) Moonlight Piano Improvisation* 4:29
3. Stella By Starlight 2:58
4. Call Me Irresponsible 2:39
5. Moonlight Becomes You 1:20
6. Isn’t It Romantic? 2:36
7. (In The) Moonlight Piano Interlude* 2:51
8. (In The) Moonlight Party Instrumental* 3:17
9. All The Way / High Hopes 2:22
10. I Wish I Were
In Love Again 2:30
11. My Old Flame :35
12. How Can I Remember?† 2:50
Performed by Michael Dees
13. How Can I Remember? Party Instrumental† 3:17
14. (In The) Moonlight Piano Interlude No 2* 4:03
15. (In The) Moonlight Party Instrumental No 2* 4:13
16. For All We Know 3:37
17. When Joanna Loved Me 2:36
18. The Shadow Of Your Smile 2:53
19. La Vie En Rose Party Instrumental 1:12
20. How Can I Remember? Party Instrumental No 2† 2:56
21. (In The) Moonlight Party Instrumental No 3* 4:43
22. (In The) Moonlight Piano Closing* 4:22
 
DISC 2 TOTAL TIME: 68:39
 
* Contains “(In The) Moonlight”
† Contains “How Can I Remember?”
Original Music Composed and Conducted by
JOHN WILLIAMS
Performed by The Hollywood Studio Symphony
 
This is a CD format release.

https://imgur.com/7H7zhttps://imgur.com/7H7zmpk

Yes! Even better! 

I would love a release or releases of the whole John Williams/Oliver Stone "trilogy", Born on the Fourth of July, JFK and Nixon.

I'm still hoping for an expanded Born On The Fourth Of July release one day. 

I'm still hoping for an expanded Born On The Fourth Of July release one day. 

Very quickly made this. Will give it another try this weekend, placing the logo on the bottom. 
 

Very quickly made this. Will give it another try this weekend, placing the logo on the bottom. 
 

Very quickly made this. Will give it another try this weekend, placing the logo on the bottom. 
 

Very quickly made this. Will give it another try this weekend, placing the logo on the bottom. 
 

Very quickly made this. Will give it another try this weekend, placing the logo on the bottom. 
 

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