New York Philharmonic – Anthony Parnther conducts John Williams’s score for Steven Spielberg’s Jaws

John Williams
Jaws [1975; New York premiere of score]

Chief Martin Brody – Roy Scheider
Matt Hooper – Richard Dreyfuss
Quint – Robert Shaw
Ellen Brody – Lorraine Gary
Mayor Larry Vaughn – Murray Hamilton
Meadows – Carl Gottlieb
Deputy Leonard Hendricks – Jeffrey Kramer
Chrissie Watkins – Susan Backlinie
Mrs. Kintner – Lee Fierro
Interviewer – Peter Benchley

Directed by Steven Spielberg
Cinematography by Bill Butler
Edited by Verna Fields
Production design by Joe Alves
Screenplay by Peter Benchley and Carl Gottlieb

New York Philharmonic
Anthony Parnther

The New York Philharmonic opened this season’s ‘The Art of the Score’ series with an HD screening of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws to live orchestral accompaniment. Comprising some of the most frightening and memorable music ever composed for the cinema, the score earned John Williams his second Academy Award for Best Original Score (one of five he has won to date), along with a Grammy, a Golden Globe, and a BAFTA Award. Ranked as the sixth greatest soundtrack of all time by the American Film Institute, it has been the subject of scholarly debate concerning its relationship to Hollywood scoring conventions, and how it creates space for the audience to sense the emotions of a scene. While the Philharmonic has previously performed selections from the score, this was its first traversal of the complete opus.

Based on the 1974 novel by Peter Benchley, the film follows police chief Martin Brody, who bands together with marine biologist Matt Hooper and professional shark-hunter Quint to hunt down a man-eating great white shark that preys upon beachgoers in a small summer resort town on an island in New England.

The score has a curious history. The most famous part is the rhythmically simple but instantly recognizable shark motif – a drivingly insistent, two-note ostinato from the low strings and brass that creates suspense as its speed and volume increase, a musical phrase that has become synonymous with imminent danger. When Spielberg first heard Williams demonstrate the ‘thump-thump’ theme at the piano, he required some convincing. It struck him as too simple and silly. However, when issues of verisimilitude caused the notoriously unreliable mechanical shark to be largely absent from the first hour of the film, the unnerving music took center stage, suggesting the threatening presence of a looming monster not yet seen.

Running slightly over two hours, the film divides neatly into two halves, and apart from a charming promenade (whimsically titled ‘Tourists on the Menu’ on the original Soundtrack album) for the Fourth of July holidaymakers arriving on the island, there is little music in the first half. But when it does creep in – as it so frighteningly does in ‘Chrissie’s Death’ (the scene where the shark’s first victim killed) – we are abruptly thrust out of our comfort zone.

In the second half – devoted entirely to the hunt and filmed mostly on the open ocean – the tense and powerful score is more diverse. The jaunty hornpipe played when the fishing boat, the Orca, optimistically departs from the harbor was most enjoyable, conveying a splendid sense of adventure. The spectral soundscape heard as Quint relates his harrowing experience as a survivor of the catastrophic sinking of the USS Indianapolis was appropriately dark and foreboding, only to erupt triumphantly when the whole of the twenty-five-foot-long shark is first shown. The Bach-inspired fugue accompanying the assembling of the shark cage was another highlight, underscoring the complexity of the task and the urgency of the moment, and the swashbuckling brass fanfares heard when the Orca is chasing the shark were spectacularly rousing.

To hear this music performed live was to experience it through new ears. Led by Anthony Parnther, the Philharmonic played to a very high standard, bringing Williams’s soundtrack to life and making this viewing of the film even more enjoyable than seeing it for the first time.