The John Williams Piano Collection

[The Lost Folio 186]

I am announcing the publication of my new website The John Williams Piano Collection. It gathers information on all the piano sheet music by John Williams ever published, which I have been collecting for many years. At this moment, the Folios and Anthologies pages are complete. The piano solos (sheet music singles) will be added in a few weeks. This page will inform pianists, musicologists, collectors, and John Williams fans about this gigantic repertoire. Pieces from around 80 films scored by John Williams have been published, totaling 300 pieces, more than any other film composer. In some cases, the piano sheet music remains the only source of Williams' unrecorded works. I will not share or sell any of the sheet music listed on the website. However, I am more than happy to share more information about certain pieces than what I list online. I will also gladly receive comments, suggestions or updates.

 

I hope this website can be useful for some of you and that it leads to some interesting discussions among the musicians on this forum.

[Thor 8,353]

Sounds great, even if I can't read sheet music. Are these also piano transcriptions of orchestral pieces, or only pieces Williams wrote specifically for piano?

 

It would be interesting to see a playlist of Williams' works for piano (or where piano has a pronounced presence), although I guess that's a different topic. Perhaps I'll assemble one myself.

[Jurassic Shark 13,158]

This is a great initiative, @The Lost Folio! Will you only cover printed publications, or also digital-only publications?

 

I have a few questions for you:

 

As far as I know there's no official piano arrangement of A New Beginning from Minority Report. Is this correct?

 

Does it exist a piano arrangement of The Imperial March where the rhythmic accompaniment hasn't been "dumbed down"?

 

Does it exist a piano arrangement of Abandoned and Pursued from E.T.?

[Jurassic Shark 13,158]

 

3 hours ago, Thor said:

Sounds great, even if I can't read sheet music. Are these also piano transcriptions of orchestral pieces, or only pieces Williams wrote specifically for piano?

 

It's never too late to learn you know. You can find used pianos, both acoustic ones and digital, for free at finn.no.

[The Lost Folio 186]

3 hours ago, Thor said:

Sounds great, even if I can't read sheet music. Are these also piano transcriptions of orchestral pieces, or only pieces Williams wrote specifically for piano?

 

It would be interesting to see a playlist of Williams' works for piano (or where piano has a pronounced presence), although I guess that's a different topic. Perhaps I'll assemble one myself.

 

Thanks! These are mostly transcriptions of orchestral pieces. It is an interesting idea to add a list of pieces written for piano. There are few of them, but they are definitely of special interest for pianists. If you have a list ready, I could add it to my website. Otherwise, I'll do one myself eventually.

 

3 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

This is a great initiative, @The Lost Folio! Will you only cover printed publications, or also digital-only publications?

 

All sheet music listed on the website appeared in printed form. The digital market for sheet music is currently a mess: way too many websites to chose from, and a complete lack of organizational and advanced search tools. I am not going to list which piece is available digitally, but I can guide you toward some websites if you are looking for specific pieces. I am not aware of any official John Williams sheet music that is only available digitally, but amateur arrangements of unpublished music exists. I do not list these arrangements since the quality and availability vary greatly.

 

3 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

As far as I know there's no official piano arrangement of A New Beginning from Minority Report. Is this correct?

 

No arrangement of Minority Report, sadly.

 

3 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Does it exist a piano arrangement of The Imperial March where the rhythmic accompaniment hasn't been "dumbed down"?

 

No official arrangement. However, Sonya Belousova wrote a difficult arrangement of the Imperial March that you can find here: https://www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic/mtd.asp?ppn=MN0158098. Her performance of this is worth watching.

 

3 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Does it exist a piano arrangement of Abandoned and Pursued from E.T.?

 

No. The only arrangements all appeared in the folio.

[Jurassic Shark 13,158]

51 minutes ago, The Lost Folio said:

No. The only arrangements all appeared in the folio.

 

Flying isn't in the folio, but in several anthologies.

 

Btw, it seems you forgot to include the Faber anthology.

[The Lost Folio 186]

1 hour ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Flying isn't in the folio, but in several anthologies.

 

Btw, it seems you forgot to include the Faber anthology.

 

Flying is in the folio as "Theme from E.T." (unless you mean something else?).

 

I just added the Faber (Volonte & Co) anthology. Thanks for pointing that out!

[Jurassic Shark 13,158]

2 hours ago, The Lost Folio said:

 

Flying is in the folio as "Theme from E.T." (unless you mean something else?).

 

I just added the Faber (Volonte & Co) anthology. Thanks for pointing that out!

 

I incorrectly wrote Flying when I was thinking about the part from Adventures of Earth that's in the start of the below track. It's included in the Movie Themes anthology, and I haven't found it anywhere else.

 

 

[The Lost Folio 186]

5 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

I incorrectly wrote Flying when I was thinking about the part from Adventures of Earth that's in the start of the below track. It's included in the Movie Themes anthology, and I haven't found it anywhere else.

 

You are correct, this unique arrangement by Stephen Duro is in the Movie Themes anthology. As I wrote on the website, all arrangements in that anthology are unique and have not been reprinted anywhere else.

[Jurassic Shark 13,158]

23 hours ago, The Lost Folio said:

 

You are correct, this unique arrangement by Stephen Duro is in the Movie Themes anthology. As I wrote on the website, all arrangements in that anthology are unique and have not been reprinted anywhere else.

 

Indeed. I just wanted to point out that it's an entirely different part of Adventures of Earth than what's in the other anthologies and the folio.

[The Lost Folio 186]

Update: I added all the individual sheet music issued from films for which a complete folio was also published. I only added the covers on the right side of each folio. I believe this list is fairly complete, but the difficulty of finding some of these editions means that I could still be missing a few. Let me know if you find any omissions!

[bespinGPT 8,767]

I think you have too much sub-categories.  

 

(ignore my comment, it's pure irony)

[Jurassic Shark 13,158]

6 hours ago, The Lost Folio said:

Update: I added all the individual sheet music issued from films for which a complete folio was also published. I only added the covers on the right side of each folio. I believe this list is fairly complete, but the difficulty of finding some of these editions means that I could still be missing a few. Let me know if you find any omissions!

 

There's a thread over at FSM with a lot of "exotic" individual JW sheet music.

[The Lost Folio 186]

5 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

There's a thread over at FSM with a lot of "exotic" individual JW sheet music.

 

All the sheet music listed at FSM and much more will be accounted for when I open the "Solos" page. (The page is actually ready but since there's so much music, I want to make sure it's as accurate as possible.)

 

Unlike FSM, my website also includes detailed publication information about each piece.

[Jurassic Shark 13,158]

Which individual sheet music not included in any anthology or folio would you recommend the most?

[The Lost Folio 186]

13 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Which individual sheet music not included in any anthology would you recommend the most?

 

"The Devil's Dance" is a brilliant 12-page arrangement. It's highly challenging but rewarding to play. With "The Cowboys" overture (the anthology arrangement differs from the non-anthology publication), I would recommend it to any advanced pianist.

 

The "Theme from Sabrina" is another highlight that has never made it into anthologies. Beautiful piano arrangement!

[Jurassic Shark 13,158]

2 minutes ago, The Lost Folio said:

 

"The Devil's Dance" is a brilliant 12-page arrangement. It's highly challenging but rewarding to play. With "The Cowboys" overture (the anthology arrangement differs from the non-anthology publication), I would recommend it to any advanced pianist.

 

The "Theme from Sabrina" is another highlight that has never made it into anthologies. Beautiful piano arrangement!

 

I have the "Devil's Dance" arrangement for piano and violin. Is there a version for piano only?

 

The piano arrangement of "Theme from Sabrina" is indeed great. I'm surprised it didn't make it into Hal Leonard's 2017 anthology.

[The Lost Folio 186]

30 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

I have the "Devil's Dance" arrangement for piano and violin. Is there a version for piano only?

 

The piano arrangement of "Theme from Sabrina" is indeed great. I'm surprised it didn't make it into Hal Leonard's 2017 anthology.

 

There is indeed a rare version for solo piano. It's quite virtuosic but definitely worth having. If you're interested, you could contact tredwellsmusic.com, they might have a (photo)copy for sale.

 

I enjoyed the 2017 anthology, and I appreciate that they did new, more compact, engravings of everything. But they added wrong notes in many places, which makes me prefer the old engravings. I also wish the book was bigger. Hal Leonard published composers anthologies of 300+ pages, but we only get 180 for Williams? No Sabrina, no War Horse, no Marion...

[Jurassic Shark 13,158]

2 minutes ago, The Lost Folio said:

There is indeed a rare version for solo piano. It's quite virtuosic but definitely worth having. If you're interested, you could contact tredwellsmusic.com, they might have a (photo)copy for sale.

 

How would you rate the difficulty of this piano only arrangement compared to the piano part of the violin/piano arrangement?

 

3 minutes ago, The Lost Folio said:

I enjoyed the 2017 anthology, and I appreciate that they did new, more compact, engravings of everything. But they added wrong notes in many places, which makes me prefer the old engravings. I also wish the book was bigger. Hal Leonard published composers anthologies of 300+ pages, but we only get 180 for Williams? No Sabrina, no War Horse, no Marion...

 

I'm considering to buy this anthology, but I'm not sure when you write "they added wrong notes in many places". Is that really the case, or are you exaggerating a bit?

[The Lost Folio 186]

43 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

How would you rate the difficulty of this piano only arrangement compared to the piano part of the violin/piano arrangement?

 

They're comparable, both very difficult. The solo piano version has some harder passages because you have to play some of the quick scales given to the violin in the other version. There's definitely more jumping around in the solo piano version. I should also point out that they are different arrangements, including different sections of the piece since the violin version was adapted by John Williams to be idiomatic for the instrument while the solo piano version is a faithful arrangement of the orchestral piece.

 

54 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

I'm considering to buy this anthology, but I'm not sure when you write "they added wrong notes in many places". Is that really the case, or are you exaggerating a bit?

 

Buy it!! I could never recommend enough the new anthology! The new "Cowboys" overture is really exciting, you get the first piano arrangements of "Catch Me If You Can", "Duel" from "Tintin" and the NBC NFL Football theme ("Wide Receiver"), and even the "Theme from E.T." is finally printed with a completely new ending that matches the orchestral version. The wrong notes I am mentioning are easy to fix if you are familiar with the music, or if you own the original folios (or previous anthologies). For example, the right hand in bar 11 of "Hedwig's Theme" has the wrong chord: it's obvious, and if you look at the following page, the same music appears with the correct chord. It's not a huge problem, but it is annoying when you sight-read it. Sometimes, it's just an accidental that's missing. And sometimes, the music is slightly altered, and even when comparing with the orchestral version, it's hard to decide what should be the correct notes. I think that for most pianist, these wrong notes are of little consequence. But they are there nonetheless. (As a matter of fact, "The Devil's Dance" piano arrangement also has a few tiny mistakes.)

[Jurassic Shark 13,158]

16 minutes ago, The Lost Folio said:

 

They're comparable, both very difficult. The solo piano version has some harder passages because you have to play some of the quick scales given to the violin in the other version. There's definitely more jumping around in the solo piano version. I should also point out that they are different arrangements, including different sections of the piece since the violin version was adapted by John Williams to be idiomatic for the instrument while the solo piano version is a faithful arrangement of the orchestral piece.

 

Thanks. I've contacted Tredwell's Music and they do offer reprints.

 

Now I need to find the piano arrangement of The Planet Krypton. I guess that includes just the opening fanfare since it's only one page long in the Superman folio, but that's all I want!

[Jurassic Shark 13,158]

Btw, I suggest you also include a category containing notable arrangements with piano accompaniment, like The Devil's Dance for violin/piano, Theme from Sabrina for violin/piano, Three Pieces from Schindler's List for violin/piano, Three Pieces from Memoirs of a Geisha for cello/piano, and so on.

[Pellaeon 596]

This is great!

 

What is a sketch score?

 

How do the Star Wars arrangements by Tony Esposito and Phillip Keveren compare to the standard arrangements?

[Jurassic Shark 13,158]

10 minutes ago, Pellaeon said:

How do the Star Wars arrangements by Tony Esposito and Phillip Keveren compare to the standard arrangements?

 

You can check out the first page yourself:

 

https://www.scribd.com/doc/126225763/Star-Wars-Suite-Piano-Solo

 

He's also arranged a Phantom Menace suite which is less virtuosic:

 

https://www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic/mtd.asp?ppn=MN0028915

[Naïve Old Fart 10,426]

I'm pretty sure that he's got one at his office, and one at home.

"The John Williams Piano Collection" 

[The Lost Folio 186]

3 hours ago, Pellaeon said:

What is a sketch score?

 

A sketch score is a reduction on 3+ staves of music of the orchestral score as heard on the soundtrack, with notations indicating which instrument plays each line of music. Only 5 such arrangements were made from 1977 to 1981. Publishers probably realized afterwards that pianists preferred standard piano versions. Here's an example from the "Close Encounters" folio.

3 hours ago, Pellaeon said:

How do the Star Wars arrangements by Tony Esposito and Phillip Keveren compare to the standard arrangements?

 

The arrangements by Tony Esposito in the "Classic Film Score" series are among the most difficult arrangements of any film music. They are the most complete as they usually follow the orchestral score very closely.

The new arrangements by Phillip Keveren do not care so much about faithfulness to the orchestral score as they try to be more idiomatic for the intermediate pianist. These arrangements are really meant to be enjoyable to perform and fun to listen to.

3 hours ago, Richard said:

I'm pretty sure that he's got one at his office, and one at home.

"The John Williams Piano Collection" 

 

hm?

4 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Btw, I suggest you also include a category containing notable arrangements with piano accompaniment, like The Devil's Dance for violin/piano, Theme from Sabrina for violin/piano, Three Pieces from Schindler's List for violin/piano, Three Pieces from Memoirs of a Geisha for cello/piano, and so on.

 

I thought about doing a website listing all the scores published by John Williams, including everything from the Signature Edition. But I'm leaving that aside, at least for the moment. The Hal Leonard website provides detailed information for all the pieces in the Signature Edition. Plus, this page lists them all concisely.

[Pellaeon 596]

Very interesting. Thank you. I take it most of these piano scores, then, don’t indicate instrumentation even a little bit, the way vocal rehearsal scores do.

[The Lost Folio 186]

Actually, none of the piano arrangements indicate instrumentation. They must be seen as perpetuating the very long history of domestic piano music intended for amateurs. Unlike the Signature Editions, they are not meant for concert performance or study. But I don't think that diminishes their interest in any way.

[Jurassic Shark 13,158]

If you know where I can buy the Superman folio, on paper or pdf, without paying through my nose, please let me know!

[The Lost Folio 186]

I think the Superman folio is one of the rarest. You can try asking your local/university library for an interlibrary loan. Many libraries have this folio in the U.S. In Europe, I'm less sure. If you search for "superman soundtrack selections" through worldcat.org, you will see listed a few of the libraries that have it. Let me know if you can/can't find it this way!

[The Lost Folio 186]

Update: I added three pages to The John Williams Piano Collection, including a detailed listing of all the individual sheet music! I also added an index for quick reference and a list of songs published in piano-vocal arrangements. With these pages, my website is now complete. However, I am still missing a few early individual sheets, which I have listed but for which I cannot provide complete catalogue details and page counts. Please contact me if you have any of that information. Some minor changes will be made whenever I get missing information. I will keep posting major updates here.

[Score 772]

Hello, thanks for your interesting website.

 

I have a question about the two "sketch scores" included in "Star Wars: Deluxe Souvenir Folio of Music Selections, Photos and Stories 1977": apart for the obvious difference between sketch and full score, do they match the published full orchestral suites (e.g. by Hal Leonard, or the old Fox publication), or else, are they different and maybe closer to the original recording?

 

As an example: in the Main Title, bars 62-65, the signature edition (as well as the old published score) differs from the original recording in the first violins part (at least), where we find the triplets E-G-C C-G-E E-G-C C-G-E (this version was then used for all subsequent re-recordings). The piece recorded for the original soundtrack should have E-G-C C-G-C C-G-C C-G-E. What does the folio give? Also, does the folio give the end credits continuation, or else, does it stop at bar 98?

 

Thanks!

[The Lost Folio 186]

The Adventures of Han is now available for piano solo (a mere week after the movie's release)!!

Piano (7 pages): https://www.sheetmusicdirect.us/sheetmusic/1000315170

Easy Piano (9 pages): https://www.sheetmusicdirect.us/sheetmusic/song/1000315144/the-adventures-of-han

 

4 hours ago, Score said:

I have a question about the two "sketch scores" included in "Star Wars: Deluxe Souvenir Folio of Music Selections, Photos and Stories 1977": apart for the obvious difference between sketch and full score, do they match the published full orchestral suites (e.g. by Hal Leonard, or the old Fox publication), or else, are they different and maybe closer to the original recording?

 

As an example: in the Main Title, bars 62-65, the signature edition (as well as the old published score) differs from the original recording in the first violins part (at least), where we find the triplets E-G-C C-G-E E-G-C C-G-E (this version was then used for all subsequent re-recordings). The piece recorded for the original soundtrack should have E-G-C C-G-C C-G-C C-G-E. What does the folio give? Also, does the folio give the end credits continuation, or else, does it stop at bar 98?

 

The folio's sketch score stops at bar 98. I have never compared the sketch scores to the full orchestra scores in any detail. Here's bar 62 of the sketch score, which is different from both versions you give......

[Score 772]

11 hours ago, The Lost Folio said:

The Adventures of Han is now available for piano solo (a mere week after the movie's release)!!

Piano (7 pages): https://www.sheetmusicdirect.us/sheetmusic/1000315170

Easy Piano (9 pages): https://www.sheetmusicdirect.us/sheetmusic/song/1000315144/the-adventures-of-han

 

 

The folio's sketch score stops at bar 98. I have never compared the sketch scores to the full orchestra scores in any detail. Here's bar 62 of the sketch score, which is different from both versions you give......

 

Thanks, that's interesting... that's the harp part. So, it switches from violins (bar 61) to harp (bar 62).

 

 

 

 

[filmmusic 2,195]

Thank you very much @The Lost Folio for this very useful site!!

 

I wish I knew what the content was for The Secret Ways piece, but it's so rare and it seems you don't have this either..

[Jurassic Shark 13,158]

I would be interesting to know which piano arrangements you enjoy playing the most, @The Lost Folio.

[The Lost Folio 186]

6 hours ago, filmmusic said:

Thank you very much @The Lost Folio for this very useful site!!

 

I wish I knew what the content was for The Secret Ways piece, but it's so rare and it seems you don't have this either..

 

I own all the folios, but I am sadly missing about a dozen of the early solo sheets. I tried to contact libraries in London, New York and Dublin to request reproductions, but they will not share due to copyrights. I know that some people on the FSM forum had them because they shared the covers years ago, but I have never been able to get any info from them. Perhaps someone on this forum will see this and share with us the rare/early pieces to make this a complete and definitive website! Although I say I'm not sharing/selling any music, I would happily make an exception (at least in private) for the old, out-of-print, and unknown stuff like The Secret Ways.

[filmmusic 2,195]

35 minutes ago, The Lost Folio said:

 

I own all the folios, but I am sadly missing about a dozen of the early solo sheets. I tried to contact libraries in London, New York and Dublin to request reproductions, but they will not share due to copyrights. I know that some people on the FSM forum had them because they shared the covers years ago, but I have never been able to get any info from them. Perhaps someone on this forum will see this and share with us the rare/early pieces to make this a complete and definitive website! Although I say I'm not sharing/selling any music, I would happily make an exception (at least in private) for the old, out-of-print, and unknown stuff like The Secret Ways.

I do have Black Sunday if you want it.

[Jurassic Shark 13,158]

1 minute ago, filmmusic said:

I do have Black Sunday if you want it.

 

Oh, I won't mind it either!

[The Lost Folio 186]

1 hour ago, filmmusic said:

I do have Black Sunday if you want it.

 

Thanks but I already have it! My missing pieces are marked in the Index page of my website.

[Jurassic Shark 13,158]

5 minutes ago, The Lost Folio said:

 

Thanks but I already have it! My missing pieces are marked in the Index page of my website.

 

There seems to be something wrong with your index page.

[The Lost Folio 186]

You can get "Black Sunday" here: https://www.greatscores.com/Theme_From_Black_Sunday/sheet-music/7138793

 

2 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

There seems to be something wrong with your index page.

 

Like what? It works well on my end...

[Jurassic Shark 13,158]

13 minutes ago, The Lost Folio said:

Like what? It works well on my end...

 

The spreadsheet is not shown, and there's a message from Google Drive saying sorry, this document is not published.

[The Lost Folio 186]

Oh I see! Now it should work! Sorry about that!

[The Lost Folio 186]

On 01/06/2018 at 3:10 AM, Jurassic Shark said:

I would be interesting to know which piano arrangements you enjoy playing the most, @The Lost Folio.

 

I'd say my favorite arrangements are (in chronological order):

• Princess Leia's Theme (arr. by Tony Esposito)
• E.T. (the entire folio!)
• Cadillac of the Skies
• Hook (you could have guessed that  - I also made a lot of arrangements from the orchestral scores!)
• Jurassic Park (especially "Journey to the Island")
• Theme from Sabrina
• Harry's Wondrous World / Fawkes the Phoenix / The Chamber of Secrets

There's a lot of very interesting arrangements! What are your favorites?

[Jurassic Shark 13,158]

On 6/2/2018 at 5:15 PM, The Lost Folio said:

 

I'd say my favorite arrangements are (in chronological order):

• Princess Leia's Theme (arr. by Tony Esposito)
• E.T. (the entire folio!)
• Cadillac of the Skies
• Hook (you could have guessed that  - I also made a lot of arrangements from the orchestral scores!)
• Jurassic Park (especially "Journey to the Island")
• Theme from Sabrina
• Harry's Wondrous World / Fawkes the Phoenix / The Chamber of Secrets

There's a lot of very interesting arrangements! What are your favorites?

 

I usually only bother learning properly the arrangements that I'm quite satisfied with, where I feel that the piano arrangement is not a bad substitute for the original orchestra version. These arrangements are usually (but not always) on the harder side of the difficulty scale and therefore I need a lot of time to learn to play them properly, which means I haven't (yet) learned all the good arrangements which I'd like to play. The ones I've played the most are pieces from the JP folio, the Schindler's List folio, and the theme from Sabrina. I think the E.T. folio seems very well arranged, and it's on my immediate todo list. So is Buckbeak's Flight, Across the Stars, and The Spark. But there's plenty of other good arrangements to choose from.

 

Have you posted any of your own arrangements here at JWFan?

[Mitth'raw'nuorodo 43]

The website says that the original Return of the Jedi piano book had Han Solo Returns! But I can't find that arrangement anywhere on the Internet! Anyone have any idea where I could find it, short of tracking down the book itself?

[The Lost Folio 186]

"Han Solo Returns" was reprinted in the 1991 Anthology (Revised & Updated). Finding a used copy of that book might be the easiest way to get the piece (many libraries also have it). To my knowledge, there is no digital sheet music available.

[Jurassic Shark 13,158]

@The Lost Folio, any updates regarding your website?

[The Lost Folio 186]

I was finally able to acquire the piano/vocal sheet music of the rare song We're lookin' good (Official Special Olympics Song)! The sheet music consists of six pages of music. It is dedicated to Eunice Kennedy Shriver, founder and chairman of Special Olympics International. I don't think the lyrics by Alan & Marilyn Bergman ever leaked anywhere and I never found a recording of this piece as a song (rather than a fanfare), so here's a little sample of the words...

 

We're comin', we're hummin', we're lookin' good.

We're lined up and shined up and lookin' good.

The drummers are drummin' the beat of our hearts

and now it's time to move it, to make it, to reach out and take it.

We'll face the wind together. Then race the wind together.

Come on let's hear it: we're lookin' good!

 

It's a simple piece, but very effective as a Special Olympics hymn, especially the coda where John Williams gradually builds to a climax on the words "the sky is the limit."