Generations of moviegoers have grown up on the music of John Williams, which have been featured in “Jaws,” “Star Wars,” “Harry Potter,” as well as many of Steven Spielberg’s films. He has been writing for the movies for sixty-five years—more than half the history of movies themselves—and has more than a hundred credits under his belt, plus five Academy Awards. But the volume of his work isn’t what makes Williams extraordinary: his scores are among the most prominent and easily identifiable in recent film history. At ninety-one years old, Williams has said that “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” may be his last original score. Alex Ross, the New Yorker music critic, tells David Remnick about staring in awe at the composer’s original ideas for the iconic five-note theme “Close Encounters.” Williams, Ross says, is the last practitioner of Hollywood’s grand orchestral tradition, and his retirement marks the end of an era in film history.
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