Guardian Article about JW

[Sunshine Reger 3,697]

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/aug/24/composer-john-williams-never-liked-film-music-very-much

Quote

“I never liked film music very much,” he confessed in a rare interview for a forthcoming biography.

 

He added: “Film music, however good it can be – and it usually isn’t, other than maybe an eight-minute stretch here and there … I just think the music isn’t there. That, what we think of as this precious great film music is … we’re remembering it in some kind of nostalgic way …

 

“Just the idea that film music has the same place in the concert hall as the best music in the canon is a mistaken notion, I think.”

 

He added: “A lot of [film music] is ephemeral. It’s certainly fragmentary and, until somebody reconstructs it, it isn’t anything that we can even consider as a concert piece.”

Yikes.

[Mr. Hooper 7,205]

C'mon. Deep down, you know he's right. 

[Sunshine Reger 3,697]

Just now, Mr. Hooper said:

C'mon. Deep down, you know he's right. 

Let's look at the positives: it's a better confirmation than we could ever hope for that were it not for Spielberg and Lucas stylistically dragging JW by his ears, there would be almost no music we love he ended up writing! 

[Edmilson 11,121]

John Williams to fans:

 

"Hey guys, you know the music (not just from me - and especially not from me) that y'all love? Well, it's ass. It's utter and complete garbage. Go listen to classical music. Burn your film score CDs in a fire and go listen to Mahler, Mozart, Wagner, etc."

[Mr. Hooper 7,205]

So, does that mean he was feeling an acute sense of imposter syndrome when leading some of the best orchestras in the world in a program of his film music?

 

 

 

[Sunshine Reger 3,697]

6 minutes ago, Mr. Hooper said:

So, does that mean he was feeling an acute sense of imposter syndrome when leading some of the best orchestras in the world in a program of his film music?

 

[Not Mr. Big 4,870]

57 minutes ago, Sunshine Reger said:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/aug/24/composer-john-williams-never-liked-film-music-very-much

Yikes.

That's what I've always suspected.  Williams never seemed very big on film music.

[Mr. Hooper 7,205]

YouTube comments section: "Mozart, Beethoven, and John Williams!"

 

JW: "Film music doesn't measure up to the greats."

 

YouTube comments section:

 

 

 

[Andy 6,548]

It pays the bills though.  
 

Still rather shocking to hear him swing at ALL film music with the same snobbish attitude the Boston Pops probably gave him when he came aboard in 1980. 
 

I get what he’s saying with it being fragmented short cues versus cues reworked into concert pieces. But still It really doesn’t seem like something he would say. What have they done with the real John Williams?  

[Jurassic Shark 15,645]

 

1 hour ago, Sunshine Reger said:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/aug/24/composer-john-williams-never-liked-film-music-very-much

Yikes.

 

Main takeaway:

 

John has been listening to Zimmer again.

[Mr. Hooper 7,205]

2 hours ago, Andy said:

It pays the bills though.  
 

Still rather shocking to hear him swing at ALL film music with the same snobbish attitude the Boston Pops probably gave him when he came aboard in 1980. 
 

I get what he’s saying with it being fragmented short cues versus cues reworked into concert pieces. But still It really doesn’t seem like something he would say. What have they done with the real John Williams?  

I think that, deep down, all composers who work in film have this insecurity.

 

Bernard Herrmann tried to champion film as the "great vehicle" for modern composers, but he was also trying to compose a great concert work on the side to achieve "legitimate" recognition in the concert halls, for which he'd be remembered.

 

Well, like it or not, we don't get to choose how we're most remembered...

 

For Herrmann, it's the score from 'Psycho'—and not his 'Wuthering Heights' opera.

 

And for Williams, probably to his dismay, it's 'Star Wars' (et al.), and not his violin concertos.

[JohnnyD 1,670]

The actual takeaway here is, yes, film music is not in the same company as, say, Mozart, Beethoven, or Brahms, with very few exceptions. 
 

However, like @Maestro said, you can’t take his words at simple face-value. After all, it was the Maestro himself who went out of his way to legitimize film music as a high art form, that music written for film, when taken seriously and done right, is capable of reaching the same heights of the great classical music of the ages. 
 

How rare is it that many film compositions work just as well as concert pieces that have as much impact outside film as they do within the films themselves? John Williams has succeeded in that. He has bridged the “divide” between film music and concert music to the point where it becomes blurred.
 

There is simply good music and bad music. The Maestro’s music, on the film side AND concert side, fall into the former category. 

 

In that sense, I think it can be said that John Williams is the the modern equivalent of Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky or Stravinsky.

[Andy 6,548]

Well there goes my dream Williams concert. 
 

Part One

 

Anything Goes Play Off  Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom 

 

The Typewriter Jaws

 

The Vision Takes Shape Close Encounters of the Third Kind 

 

The Crash Site Superman the Movie

 

The Closet E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial 

 

Franklyn Falls The Sugarland Express

 

The Horseshoe Far and Away

 

You Bread Raptors Jurassic Park

 

Thunderstorm Heartbeeps

 

Part Two

 

The Photo Jaws 2

 

Indy Rides the Statue (Insert) Raiders of the Lost Ark 

 

Another Vision Close Encounters of the Third Kind 

 

Hermione’s Feather Harry Potter

 

The Never Feast (Insert) Hook

 

Sinister Visitors Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

 

Case Dismissed (Film Version) Presumed Innocent

 

Encore

 

Ensign Gay Afloat Midway

 

Indy’s Home Raiders of the Lost Ark

 

The Jinx Connection SpaceCamp 

 

Drums Insert Star Wars the Phantom Menace 

 

General Parker’s Arrival Not With My Wife You Don’t 

[Mr. Hooper 7,205]

9 minutes ago, Andy said:

General Parker’s Arrival Not With My Wife You Don’t

Definitely the 'Imperial March' of short cues. 

[bruce marshall 1,959]

See , Copland and Bernstein were correct- he is NOT a Real composer!😎

No wonder the Boston POPS walked out on him over him programming his own music?

[Marian Schedenig 10,921]

There's more to it in the article than quoted above, including some context and partial counter-arguments by @Maestro. And keep in mind that Williams's typical speech pattern in interviews often has him redirecting his sentences halfway through to more precisely convey what he means (as evidenced by the dash and ellipses in the above quote).

 

That said, there are several interpretations (or possibly a spectrum of them) that you could derive from his statement.

 

Roughly:

A. Film music is inherently inferior to concert music and cannot possibly be its equal

B. Film music *can* be equal to concert music, but never or rarely is

 

Interpretation B can then be further broken up into being dependent on certain composers (as in: Film music generally isn't up to concert music, but some composers occasionally/usually are an exception) or points in time (as in: Film music today is less able to stand on its own than film music from the 1950s).

 

Ultimately, it's also tied to the blurred spectrum between "classical" and "pop" music. I generally tend to think of film music as an extension of "classical" music in that a film score is, or generally used to be, a longer work that's made of individual cues, as opposed to the typical "pop" concept of having a collection of "songs" that (maybe) make up an album (concept albums take this further into "classical" territory, but they're usually still built up from individual songs). Of course, even "classical" music is broader than that - you have songs, and song cycles, etc. But I imagine the specific kind of music Williams talks about in this case is the "long(er/ish)-form" type that he would also use to categorise his own concertos.

 

What usually unifies that kind of "classical" music is a certain reliance on form - something that certainly is much harder to achieve in film music. Yet when you look at the development of classical music over especially post (I guess) 1800, the development of the forms (especially that of the symphony) is one of the core aspects of what is used to classify "great" composers, and one of the driving forces behind those composers - to the extent that composers since Beethoven's 9th had struggled to write new symphonies because they felt Beethoven had already reached the pinnacle of the form and any further contribution would be too insignificant. Followed by composers like Bruckner and Mahler stretching the form further until many considered the concept of the symphony exhausted post Mahler.

 

The general element that made composers be remembered as "the greats" and ensured their works a long-term place in the repertoire was innovation - of form, or harmony, or maybe instrumentation, etc. Bach, the master of counterpoint. Monteverdi, the inventor of opera. Haydn the inventor of the symphony. Beethoven, the perfector of the symphony (and stretcher of the harmonic language, even into atonality). Mendelssohn, the re-discoverer of Bach, who reintroduced Bach's complex counterpoints into the symphonic language, and so on. Again, not generally something that thrives in film music (with exceptions).

 

Of course, some composers are remembered mainly for their superior craftsmanship. Mozart strikes me as one of those. That's an area where film composers have a better chance of competing - even a particularly strong one, because you certainly need a lot of craftsmanship to deliver a musically worthwhile score to a film on a deadline.

 

Look at Brahms, one of Williams's idols: He spent 20 years working on his first symphony, which wasn't finished and premiered until the composer was 43 years old (the same age at which Williams wrote Jaws, incidentally). Why? Because although he clearly had the craftsmanship and his own innovations, he felt the pressure of having to contend with Beethoven's 9th - which had been written 30 years before Brahms even started writing his own. In a similar sense, I can see Williams measure film music against the ever looming mass of classical masterworks.

 

The problem isn't new either, as we just discussed in another thread. Stage music for example has been around for a long time, with greats like Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Grieg writing their fair share of it - all of which is mostly, and in many cases almost exclusively, remembered via overtures and concert suites. The rest was clearly deemed unable to stand on its own, and since the plays the music was written for, if they are still performed at all, are performed with new stagings, the music has lost its original intent. What wasn't adapted for concert performances (by the composers themselves, or sometimes by others) was usually forgotten, until some of those works were rediscovered in the recording age. Today you'll find several recordings of Grieg's full Peer Gynt music, but still very few of Beethoven's various stage compositions.

 

Personally, the older I get and the more music I listen to, the more I realise that "film music" as a whole is a very broad field, and much of it seems indeed overrated, at least when you judge it solely on its musical merits. Nostalgia, as Williams alludes to, certainly plays a part in this - or rather/even more affection for the film behind the music. To various degrees for various people to be sure (just think of all the people who will readily cheer when they hear the Star Wars main title, but only know it because of the film and never even thought of listening to other music by Williams). Also, for our generations at least, nostalgia in the sense that we grew of with film music in our formative years and have become attached to it. I find that quite a few scores that used to be favourites of mine 20+ years ago have decreased in "value" for me. I still "like" them, but I rarely listen to them because I've since found so much other worthwhile music that has more meat to it. Quite a few classic scores are certainly competent and enjoyable, but are simply less interesting than all the other stuff I could listen to instead.

 

In Williams's specific case, he clearly doesn't consider it all worthless, and more than that, he seems to believe in its potential: "It’s certainly fragmentary and, until somebody reconstructs it, it isn’t anything that we can even consider as a concert piece." - He's been doing that reconstruction work for decades, both with his own music (in its various concert forms) and with that of other composers. He made the world aware of it by starting to regularly perform this kind of music at Tanglewood. But clearly, he has rather rigid standards for what he considers worthy enough, and that rules out large stretches of underscore, or also I suppose bits of music in scores which he might very well attribute potential to, but which he considers unfinished/unrefined, be it because they are not fleshed out enough, or are too disjointed in context of the full score, or maybe don't have a proper ending - just think of all the people complaining about lazy fade outs in pop music: Film music, mostly by necessity, is full of that kind of thing).

 

Which also leads straight into the whole "listening experience" vs C&C debate. Obviously "classical" music has usually been written with the listening experience being the core concept. Film music necessarily has other goals, and depending on the composer, listening experience might play a larger or smaller part in what "extra" they can achieve, or none at all. Due to the nature of film music, it will almost always be compromised to a certain extent, but I also think that with composers who possess both the craftsmanship and the intention of writing "proper" music, there's enough worthwhile musicality to all (or most) of it to warrant being preserved and enjoyed as music. Would it have been written like that and considered finished if the composer had a standalone piece of music in mind, without the (structural and economical) restrictions imposed by the film? Of course not - but then many of the landmark works of classical music history were contractual jobs that to some degree or other had to be released at some point whether they the composers considered them completely, utterly "finished" or not. And even those that were written on the composers' own time were then often revised again and again over years or even decades. It's hard to define "finished", but much concert music was finished only by some definitions and not by others. And if film music generally is "less finished" (from a strictly musical point of view), that doesn't mean even the less finished bits are not still worthwhile.

[Edmilson 11,121]

I mean, James Horner also used to say stuff like that. I imagine most composers, especially those with a classical formation, think very low of film music, both the job done by their colleagues and by themselves. 

 

They just don't keep saying that in order not to create a fight within the industry... But deep down, that's what they all think.

[bruce marshall 1,959]

Has Marian finished typing yet?

😁😉

[Marian Schedenig 10,921]

Just now, bruce marshall said:

Has Marian finished typing yet?

😁😉

 

Yes, but not because I managed to say everything I wanted to, but because what I did manage to say was already much longer than I'd like to. Williams managed to put all of that in a few short sentences (but see what came of that).

[Andy 6,548]

[Chen G. 5,544]

2 hours ago, Sunshine Reger said:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/aug/24/composer-john-williams-never-liked-film-music-very-much

Yikes.

 

Williams' wouldn't be the first artist to be wrong about his own works of art or artform within which he operates. I really don't attribute much significance to this sentiment. I chalk it up as self-deprecation, or the inability of someone from within the "trade" to be able to step out of it and have a good perspective of it.

[Sunshine Reger 3,697]

Just now, Chen G. said:

Williams' wouldn't be the first artist to be wrong about his own works of art or artform within which he operates.

 

I really don't attribute much significance to this sentiment. I chalk it up to self-deprecating.

John Williams combining classical snobbery and Hollywood cynicism and joining a cultural discourse not just on the side of Johannes Brahms, but Norman Lebrecht, was not on my 2025 geopolitical bingo card.

 

I can only paraphrase Arturo Toscanini - of all unlikely allies - and say that the great John Williams of the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s fame told me directly otherwise - through the scores!

 

[Chen G. 5,544]

29 minutes ago, Sunshine Reger said:

John Williams combining classical snobbery and Hollywood cynicism and joining a cultural discourse not just on the side of Johannes Brahms, but Norman Lebrecht,

 

By Brahms you mean his comment about the War of the Romantics, and not finding Wagner very approachable? He himself admits his lack of grasp of German might have had something to do with it.

 

You also never know the standards of the production he saw: it would have been circa 1966 while scoring Heidi, at a point where Wagner was almost always produced with gaping cuts, and who knows the standards of the singing and playing?!

[Mr. Hooper 7,205]

30 minutes ago, Marian Schedenig said:

Film music *can* be equal to concert music

Yeah, if it's reworked into something presentable in a concert hall...like, for example, 'The Asteroid Field.'

 

 

Okay, bad example.

 

 

 

[bruce marshall 1,959]

He is just being modest.

Brando made similar statements about how film can't compare to the works of Shakespeare 

[Sunshine Reger 3,697]

Even Williams speaking about affection being mostly nostalgia should be put in the context of what people he met on his path told him. If you are surrounded by J.J.Abrams-like figures, musicians during a concert tour telling you how your music reminded them of childhood, autograph-hunting fans saying the same... it might skew one's judgement.

 

It is possible that hanging out more with scholars, analysts, and other astute and erudite observers telling him otherwise with the candour of Previn and Herrmann instead would have swayed him on this point in a different direction.

[Mr. Hooper 7,205]

24 minutes ago, bruce marshall said:

He is just being modest.

I dunno. The way he said it had the ring of truth. But he's so famously modest that we're having trouble taking him at his word here.

 

Also, what he said wasn't only self-deprecating—he took a deprecation on the medium as a whole.

[Chen G. 5,544]

Artists working in a certain medium just don't always have the perspective to step outside and assess that medium as a whole.

[Andy 6,548]

6 minutes ago, Mr. Hooper said:

he took a defecation on the medium as a whole.

Fixed(?) 

[Mr. Hooper 7,205]

1 minute ago, Andy said:

Fixed(?) 

I tried to be subtle. 

[Marian Schedenig 10,921]

31 minutes ago, Mr. Hooper said:

Yeah, if it's reworked into something presentable in a concert hall...like, for example, 'The Asteroid Field.'

 

 

Okay, bad example.

 

Not a bad example at all, because it shows the issues of both sides of the equation: Those (like Williams) who may consider it "necessary" for a concert performances, and those who decry it as pointless or inferior. I like both versions and I see the merit in both. The same goes for Adventures on Earth.

[King Mark 3,893]

I checked if it was April 1. JW really said that? Now I'm permanently depressed.

 

Reminds me of that SNL sketch with Williams Shatner where he calls all the Trekkies at a convention losers and to go home.

[Xander Harris 8,641]

Well it looks like he hates it 

[King Mark 3,893]

 why did he spend all his life composing intricate scores like that when he could have half assed it or retired a long time ago.

[GerateWohl 6,233]

At last we know What Williams thinks about the the work of his fellow film composers. 

[Chen G. 5,544]

6 minutes ago, King Mark said:

why did he spend all his like composing intricate scores like that when he could have half assed it or retired a long time ago.

 

A great lesson in life: you don't look at what people say, you look at what they do.

 

So Williams can speak of film music being a kind of lesser artform. But the fact that he dedicated so much of his talent to it suggests - somewhere deep inside - he feels otherwise.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 11,361]

9 minutes ago, King Mark said:

I checked if it was April 1. JW really said that? Now I'm permanently depressed.

 

Reminds me of that SNL sketch with Williams Shatner where he calls all the Trekkies at a convention losers and to go home.

 

He's right though. Just lighten up.

 

How much film music have you felt invested in in the last 2 decades?

 

Virtually nothing in the great scheme of it, i wager 

[Jurassic Shark 15,645]

1 hour ago, Mr. Hooper said:

I dunno. The way he said it had the ring of truth. But he's so famously modest that we're having trouble taking him at his word here.

 

Also, what he said wasn't only self-deprecating—he took a deprecation on the medium as a whole.

 

Perhaps his two strokes have something to do with this change of tune.

[Quintus 5,953]

The first thing I thought about after reading this is KM will be devastated.

 

Anyway, this perpetually humble and self-belittling schtick of his is annoying at this point. Take your acclaim old man, jeez!

[Chen G. 5,544]

It also pays to say that there's some bias going on.

 

Classical music - perhaps moreso than any performance art - has the most selective repertoire imaginable. The extent to which we only remember the towering masterpieces - overriding millions is second-rate compositions and the oeuvres of entire composers, including some of the most acclaimed composers of their day - is astounding and helps give classical music this rareified aura.

 

But it had known just as much slop as film music has.

[Quintus 5,953]

In the end, John Williams believes that film music is essentially little better than AI slop.

[Mr. Hooper 7,205]

15 minutes ago, King Mark said:

Reminds me of that SNL sketch with William Shatner where he calls all the Trekkies at a convention losers and to go home.

[Xander Harris 8,641]

22 minutes ago, King Mark said:

 why did he spend all his life composing intricate scores like that when he could have half assed it or retired a long time ago.

Yeah who needs any of this stuff

[Quintus 5,953]

If he said this in the late 80s or the early 90s I'd have been like, huh, you wot m8?

 

But it's 2025, film music is almost completely shite and is about as tuneful as a fire in a pet shop, and John Williams has never been more right about it.

[BB-8 5,657]

4 hours ago, Mr. Hooper said:

So, does that mean he was feeling an acute sense of imposter syndrome when leading some of the best orchestras in the world in a program of his film music?

 

 

 

- An Imposter's Life

[Jurassic Shark 15,645]

Quote

Despite the acclaim, Williams is self-critical, telling Greiving: “If I had it all to do over again, I would have made a cleaner job of it – of having the film music and the concert music all being more me, whatever that is, or more unified in some way. But none of it ever happened that way. The film thing was a job to do, or an opportunity to accept.”

 

Is JW saying he'd prefer that his film music sounds more like his concert works? 🤔

[Andy 6,548]

That’s how I interpreted it. 

[Quintus 5,953]

The thing you have to think about is this: are his remarks upsetting to Steven Spielberg? Probably not. He knows JW better than most, and he'll have a deeper grasp of his angle here than we do. Moreover, in his heart, the composer knows his ethic and his contribution, he knows that he transformed these globally beloved movies he worked on and that they became cultural touchstones in no small part due to his involvement, his work. My own feeling is that even in his autobiography, he was flippantly - decrepit old man candour - denying his oeuvre's worth.

 

I saw him standing there looking all proud and happy in 2024, when they named that new building in Culver City after him, and that he had earned it.

[Jurassic Shark 15,645]

He's becoming like Previn, distancing himself from his film music to seem more like a serious concert hall composer. 

[Sunshine Reger 3,697]