John William's Musical Secret Behind Star Wars and Jaws

You sit tensely in your seat, fingers clenched tightly around a bowl of popcorn and your date's crushed hand. Although this is the umpteenth time you have seen Jaws, your stomach still crunches and your heart still skips a beat as the impending theme signals the entrance of the great white man-eating shark. Flip the channel, and you find yourself watching some classic Star Wars, triumphant musical themes paralleling the dastardly death match between Luke Skywalker and the Dark Side. In comes Darth Vader, and suddenly triumphant becomes ominous as Vader's characteristic foreboding Star Wars death march begins.

All of this music comes from the same film composer - John Williams. What is the musical secret behind William's excellent scoring? Without out a doubt, John Williams has the ability to wrench an audience from their seats emotionally, in a matter of minutes tearing hearts apart with sensuous musical love themes, dark musical clashes, and heroic film music.

What is the key to John Williams' musical prowess? Besides masterful orchestration and the ability to make memorable themes that fit each film like a glove, John Williams has also mastered the art of musical consonance and dissonance - harmonic tension and release.

What is dissonance? Classical music consists of a tug-of-war between pleasant sounding consonance and the harsher sounding dissonance. Much of this stems from simple mathematical principles from Pythagorus regarding ratios. The simpler the ratio, the more pleasant the sound is to the Western ear. So while the musical theme from Jaws sounds dissonant (it is built around a minor second, a complex ratio), the main theme to Star Wars easily sounds triumphant because its primary melodic element is the fifth, a simple ratio of 3:2.

While most listeners agree that Debussy's Le Mar or piano music by Chopin sounds beautiful to the ear, when more dissonance classical works from Stravinsky, Wagner, or Minura Miki are performed, the music can sound "bad" or, in musical terms, "dissonant". Why does some music sound "bad"?

When any one tone is being played, there are many other tones (harmonics) which sound simultaneously. Some notes do not sound pleasing to the ear because the harmonics (those extra sounds) do not sound good at the same time. That is another reason why tension is built in Jaws. The notes clash with each other.

Next time you watch a film, listen to the music. Allow it to sweep you away sonically into another musical realm. Take the time to listen to the music outside of the film. How does it make you feel? What does it sound like? After a few more listens, you may be able to uncover the film composer's musical secrets.