John Williams admits he “never liked film music very much”
Classic movie score composer John Williams has made the perplexing revelation that he has “never liked film music very much.”
The musical maestro was speaking in a rare interview ahead of the publication of a biography about his life being published later this year, in which he surprisingly confessed that he thinks his own art form does not live up to the prolific heights of other genres of music.
Williams admitted: “I never liked film music very much,” before adding, “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.”
The composer went on to attempt to justify his stance by explaining that, in his view, film scores do not compare to true classical music. Indeed, “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 said.
Despite this, Williams stands as the most decorated Oscar nominee in history, with no less than 54 nods to his name for a whole back catalogue of classic films such as Schindler’s List, ET, Jurassic Park, Star Wars and countless other credits.
However, the 93-year-old gave an extremely frank view of his own status, saying: “The film thing was a job to do, or an opportunity to accept,” and even added, “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 biography John Williams: A Composer’s Life will be published by Oxford University Press in September this year.
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