Star Wars composer John Williams says he ‘never liked film music very much’
27 August 2025, 08:54 | Updated: 27 August 2025, 09:23
The most decorated film composer hits back at his own genre
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John Williams may be the most decorated film score composer in history, but he has confessed a dislike for film music.
“I never liked film music very much,” he said in an interview for his upcoming biography.
“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”, he added, “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.”
Read more: All of John Williams’ 54 Oscar nominations so far – including five wins
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.”
'Shark Theme' from Jaws - John Williams
He was being interviewed by Tim Greiving for a biography, John Williams: A Composer’s Life, which will be published in September.
He told The Guardian he was taken aback by Williams’ comments, saying: “His comments are sort of shocking, and they are not false modesty. He is genuinely self-deprecating, and deprecating of ‘film music’ in general.
“He has this internalised prejudice against film music,” he added, “It’s a functional type of music, which is funny because I consider his film music to be kind of sublime art at its best. That’s not modesty. He’s just saying it’s a lesser art form.
“Typically that is true, though. It is written much quicker and much more economically. But I do think his music defies that. He perfected the art of film scoring. He took it to its greatest heights. He elevated film music to a high art form.”
Williams has the most Oscar nominations of any living person – 54, to be precise – and has scored over 100 films. Despite this, he still said to 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.”
Read more: Hear the original score from John Williams and Steven Spielberg’s first EVER film together
As well as the Star Wars franchise, Williams has composed music for blockbusters including Indiana Jones, Schindler's List, Jaws and the Harry Potter films. He has worked with director Steven Spielberg on 29 films and the duo even released a greatest hits album together in 2017.
He has composed for the concert hall, too. Williams premiered his first piano concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra earlier this year and has also composed concertos for the violin, flute, tuba, clarinet, cello, trumpet, horn, viola and oboe.
