Firstly, the Halifax Symphony Orchestra blasted its way through a Star Wars medley last Saturday, a performance it was a privelidge to conduct, with the brass section on coruscating form (by the way, in the eyes of the Courier's reviewer I was "lively" this time - does she read my blog? Is she teasing me?).
Secondly, I've been reading Alex Ross's (otherwise excellent) history of 20th c. music The Rest is Noise, in which nonentities such as Varese get a dozen references but Williams is missing altogether.
Thirdly, I went to see the new Star Trek movie the other night, and found it pretty much like Star Wars only with mediocre music; which made it a pretty mediocre experience.
Why should John Williams feature in Ross's book? After all he's not a classical composer. Wrong. Actually Williams has written quite a bit of concert music, including concertos for violin, clarinet and cello (this last for Yo Yo Ma). But that's not quite the point. Ross finds space for several Hollywood composers of the 30s and 40s, forced out of Europe by the rise of Nazism. Why not space for one Hollywood composer of the 80s and 90s forced out of the concert hall by the rise of Serialism?
For all the debt Williams owes to Shostakovitch and Prokofiev (isn't there a good deal of Beethoven in Brahms?), he has one priceless quality afforded only to the very, very lucky. A gift for memorable harmony and melody. And what makes music last is not its originality, the sublety of its construction or the superficial allure of its intellectual foundations: it is the quality of the invention.
That's why Williams's is a greater composer than Varese, and why his music will still be played when Varese is long forgotten.
