Simplicity is success, and John Williams saw it like nobody else when he composed the theme song for Jaws for Steven Spielberg, although the director had a hard time seeing it.
This week was the 90th birthday of maestro John Williams , one of the key figures in the history of film music.
One of the composer's essential pieces came in 1975, in the movie Jaws , directed by Steven Spielberg , who enjoyed the honeys of the success of The Devil on Wheels .
The simplicity of the main theme of Tiburón has become a symbol of film music, involving the public as Bernard Herrmann did in his time in Psicosis .
That atmosphere of tension generated by the Tiburón theme makes it impossible today not to evoke the silhouette of a shark when we listen to its chords.
But in 1975, Steven Spielberg thought John Williams was making fun of him , according to The Hollywood Reporter .
" I was expecting something melodic, and weird, haunting, something out of this world. And what John played were two notes 'dun dun, dun dun, dun dun'. At first I laughed, I thought he was kidding me " .
But even though John Williams used to have a great sense of humor, he wasn't flirting with Steven Spielberg.
The filmmaker was capturing the essence that the theme evoked as he listened to it over and over again. The rest, as they say, is movie history.
Spielberg and Williams continued to collaborate , gifting us with unforgettable movies and soundtracks like ET The Extra Terrestrial , Indiana Jones , Jurassic Park , and Schindler's List , among many others.
It's hard to imagine what the great white shark stalks of Amity Island would have been like without those now-iconic chords that John Williams gifted us with in Jaws.
Can you imagine if Steven Spielberg had rejected the idea and the film would have come with another type of music? Something like "the space under the sea", as expected by the director.
0 Comments