Proposal

Film music plays a huge role in a movie. The music of a scene conveys emotion, tension,
action, mystery, and much more. The film composer must pay attention to the smallest details in
the music to enhance the film in the most appropriate ways. John Williams is the master of film
music, having scored over 100 films! He is the second most Oscar nominated person after Walt
Disney. John Williams uses compositional techniques that capture every emotion of the film.
Because of this we will look into where he draws inspiration from, how his music affects the
audience, and the Hollywood movie style that John Williams revamped.

Annotated bibliography

Scheurer, Timothy E. “John Williams and Film Music Since 1971.” Popular Music and
Society, 21:1 (July 2008): 59-72, DOI: 10.1080/03007769708591655
This article explains in depth the challenges that John Williams faced when scoring movies. This
article covers many of his compositions and explains who and what John Williams drew
inspiration from, giving examples of works by Stravinsky, Debussy and Wagner. This source
also contains a list of all of the film music written by John Williams. I found it very interesting
just how similar John William’s compositions are to previous works and this article explains
those similarities really well, even by providing sheet music.

Orosz, Jeremy. “John Williams: Paraphraser or Plagiarist?” Journal of Musicological

Research, 34:4 (October 2015): 299-319, DOI: 10.1080/01411896.2015.1082064
This article is a critical analysis oh John William’s film music. This source also emphasizes the
fact that John Williams took ideas from preexisting works, gives sheet music examples. Jeremy
Orosz compares themes that John William’s wrote with composers such as Copland, Strauss,
Dvorak, Holst, and many more. The article comes to the conclusion that John Williams does not
plagiarize, he paraphrases.

Thornton, Daniel. “Star Wars Soundtracks: The Worship Music of John Williams.” The Journal
of Religion and Popular Culture, Vol. 31, No. 1 (March 2019): 87-100, DOI: 10.3138/jrpc.2017-
0014
This article looks at John William’s Star Wars Soundtrack in a different way than most. Daniel
Thornton explains the religious experience found through music, embodiment, and extraordinary
emotional experiences that can happen with film music. This article explains the extreme love
people have towards Star Wars and how that love can influence their religious beliefs, the music
aids this experience in many ways.

Audissino, Emilio, “John William’s Film Music: Jaws, Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and
the Return of the Classical Hollywood Music Style.” Wisconsin Film Studies,
University of Wisconsin Press (June 2014): IBSN 9780299297343
This is the first book written in English on John William’s career. This book explains the
classical Hollywood music style, background on Hollywood’s golden era, and how John Willams
fit into all of this. Emilio Audissino includes a large glossary of terms pertaining to film music.
For example, “Mickey-mousing,” “Temporal perceptive function,” and “villains’ chords.” This
book gives attention especially to music from Jaws, Star Wars, and a full analysis of the film and
the music the Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Karlin, Fred, Rayburn Wright, “On the Track: A Guide to Contemporary Film Scoring.” 2nd ed.
New York: Routledge. (2004)
This book offers a guide to scoring films. It addresses different styles and genres explaining the
balance between a composer’s vision and the needs of the film. This book includes a foreword
by John Williams explaining how helpful the information in this book is and how he wished he
was able to read it towards the beginning of his career. The information explained in the text is
applicable to John William’s works and will be used to relate his compositional techniques to
those outlined in this book.