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Even while his already-
ascended star was still rising
in 1980, John Williams found himself
with big shoes to fill. The iconic
conductor Arthur Fiedler, who over
his nearly 50-year tenure as music
director of the Boston Pops had made
that orchestra a household name, had
died in the summer of 1979, and while
the famed Hollywood composer (and
onetime session pianist) Williams was
holed up in a London sound studio
that winter, diligently working on the
score to the much-anticipated sequel to
Star Wars
, he was named the successor
to Fiedler with the Pops. “The legend
of Arthur Fiedler looms large,” said
Williams. “The world knows him as
a beautiful-looking man who made
orchestra music immensely popular. But
the vastness of his reputation among
professional musicians and the depth of
his musical knowledge were even more
impressive.” At the time, the
Washington
Post
observed that the Boston Pops had
earned the right to call itself “the best-
known orchestra in the world,” between
its record sales in the tens of millions
and its regular summer and Christmas
concerts series, tours, and television
appearances, and that Williams’s success
in Hollywood nearly matched that
record for mass acceptance, albeit with
the suggestion that “he has become no
more a household name than most other
successful film composers.” Whether or
not that was true at the time, 40 years
on, if you were to ask any passerby to
name just two film composers, the first
mentioned is unlikely to be anybody but
John Williams.
As he took the post, Williams
commented that he hoped “to give film
music more prestige” by presenting
the best of it with the Boston Pops. Of
course, some of the best of his own
film music was still to come. In 1981, he
reteamed with director Steven Spielberg,
with whom he worked on
Jaws
, his
second Oscar-winning score, for
Raiders
of the Lost Ark
. The theme he created
for central character Indiana Jones, later
dubbed the “Raider’s March,” became
one of the most recognizable themes
in film history. The following year, the
composer and director worked on the
film that would earn Williams his fourth
career Oscar,
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
,
itself widely hailed as one of the greatest
movies ever made. At the beginning
of August, both films will be shown at
Ravinia while the Chicago Symphony
Orchestra plays the scores live. When
Williams first brought the Boston Pops
to Ravinia on July 21, 1985, he included
excerpts from his
E.T.
score, as well as its
forerunner,
Close Encounters of the Third
Kind
, on the program. He also included
several selections from Bernstein’s
inimitable music for
West Side Story
and the first Ravinia performance of “A
Simple Song” from Bernstein’s
Mass
,
which will receive its first complete
performance at Ravinia and by the CSO
on July 28 as the centerpiece of this
year’s celebration of Leonard Bernstein’s
centennial.
After making his Ravinia debut in 1985, John Williams returned with the Boston Pops in 1992 as well as in
1994, 1998, and 1999 to conduct the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
July 21, 1985
33 YEARS AGO
ON THIS DATE
JULY 9 – JULY 22, 2018 | RAVINIA MAGAZINE
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