Bibliography
The following bibliography presents a chronological listing of major books and articles about John Williams's music as of 2023. It does not include press articles and published interviews, which are listed on the JWFan pages.
In 2023, Emilio Audissino published a detailed annotated bibliography (with brief descriptions of each source) in "John Williams", Oxford Bibliographies Online in Cinema and Media Studies (DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780199791286-0367).
General Resources on Sheet Music
These two catalogues of film music publications are specifically geared toward collectors of sheet music. Despite their attempts at comprehensiveness, they are incomplete, each missing numerous items related to John Williams (which are included on this website).
Donald J. Stubblebine
Cinema Sheet Music
A Comprehensive Listing of Published Film Music from Squaw Man (1914) to Batman (1989)
Jefferson: McFarland, 1991, 640 p. (reprint in 2012)
H. Stephen Wright
Film Music at the Piano
An Index to Piano Arrangements of Instrumental Film and Television Music in Anthologies and Collections
Lanham, Md.: The Scarecrow Press, 2003, 198 p.
Books
Roberto Aschieri
Over the Moon
La música de John Williams para el cine
Santiago: Universidad Diego Portales, 1999, 398 p.
Peter Moormann
Spielberg-Variationen
Die Filmmusik von John Williams
Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2010, 797 p.
Alexandre Tylski, ed.
John Williams
Un alchimiste musical à Hollywood
Paris: L’Harmattan, 2011, 220 p.
Contents
Ouverture (Nicolas Saada)
Introduction (Alexandre Tylski)
Une empreinte socioculturelle
Premiers pas à Hollywood (Stéphanie Personne)
La renaissance du symphonisme (Olivier Desbrosses)
Un compositeur américain (Florent Groult)
Un patchwork musical
John Williams et le beau son (Stéphane Abdallah)
L'héritage wagnérien dans la musique de John Williams (Philippe Gonin)
Le dynamisme harmonique dans l'écriture filmique de John Williams (Jérôme Rossi)
Symphonisme à la manière de John Williams dans le cinéma français contemporain (Cécile Carayol)
Lettres de compositeurs internationaux
Un acteur de musique (Michel Chion)
Ce qui reste d'enfance en nous (Bruno Coulais)
Éternel (Erwann Kermovant)
Évoquer sans imiter (Mario Litwin)
Bouquet de mots à John Williams (Alan Silvestri)
Andrés Valverde
John Williams
Vida y obra
Córdoba: Berenice, 2013, 296 p.
Emilio Audissino
John Williams’s Film Music
Jaws, Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the Return of the Classical Hollywood Music Style
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014, 346 p.
A revised edition of this book was published in 2021 (see below).
Andrés Valverde
Star Wars
La música
Córdoba: Berenice, 2016, 224 p.
Emilio Audissino, ed.
John Williams
Music for Films, Television and the Concert Stage
Turnhout: Brepols, 2018, xxiv + 440 p.
Contents
Introduction: John Williams, Composer (Emilio Audissino)
John Williams and the Musical Landscapes: Film, Television, Jazz, and Concert Halls
A New Symphonism for a New Hollywood: The Musical Language of John Williams’s Film Scores (Mervyn Cooke)
John Williams: Television Composer (Paula Musegades)
"Catch as Catch Can": Jazz, John Williams, & Popular Music Allusion (Ryan Patrick Jones)
No Sharks, No Stars, Just Idiomatic Scoring and Sounding Engagement: John Williams as a ‘Classical’ Composer (Emile Wennekes)
John Williams’s Film Music in the Concert Halls (Sebastian Stoppe)
The Williams Touch: Style and Musical Dramaturgy
The Use of Variation in John Williams’s Film Music Themes (Mark Richards)
The Themes of Star Wars: Catalogue and Commentary (Frank Lehman)
Star Scores: Orchestration and the Sound of John Williams’s Film Music (Ian Sapiro)
Orchestration Transformation: Examining Differences in the Instrumental and Thematic Colour Palettes of the Star Wars Trilogies (Nicholas Kmet)
The Villain’s March Topic in John Williams’s Film Music (Joakim Tillman)
Musical Dramaturgy and Stylistic Changes in John Williams’s Harry Potter Trilogy (Jamie Lynn Webster)
Case Studies
Sounding an Irish Childhood: John Williams’s Score for Angela’s Ashes (Laura Anderson)
John Williams and Sound Design: Shaping the Audiovisual World of E. T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (Chloé Huvet)
«Today I’m Hearing with New Ears»: John Williams’s Use of Audiovisual Incongruence to Convey Character Perspective in Munich and Spielberg’s Historical Films (David Ireland)
John Williams and the Musical Avant-garde: The Score for War of the Worlds (Irena Paulus)
Out of Darkness: John Williams’s Violin Concerto (Tom Schneller)
Happily Never After: Williams’s Musical Exploration of the ‘Controversial’ Ending to A. I.: Artificial Intelligence (Stefan Swanson)
The Performer’s Viewpoint
John Williams Seen from the Podium: An Interview with Maestro Keith Lockhart (Emilio Audissino — Frank Lehman)
John Williams Seen from the Piano: An Interview with Maestro Simone Pedroni (Maurizio Caschetto)
Emilio Audissino
The Film Music of John Williams
Reviving Hollywood's Classical Style
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2021, 376 p.
Chloé Huvet
Composer pour l'image à l'ère numérique
Star Wars, d'une trilogie à l'autre
Paris: Vrin, 2022, 432 p.
Aurélien Simon
L'Opéra des étoiles
Une anthologie de la musique de Star Wars
Montreuil: Omaké Books, 2022, 256 p.
Jean-Christophe Manuceau
L'Œuvre de John Williams
Le chef d'orchestre des émotions
Toulouse: Third Éditions, 2024, 288 p.
Book Chapters and Journal Articles
Randall D. Larson
"Déjà vu: John Williams"
in Musique Fantastique: A Survey of Film Music in the Fantastic Cinema (Metuchen: Scarecrow Press, 1985), 293–306.
William Darby and Jack Du Bois
"John Williams"
in American Film Music: Major Composers, Techniques, Trends, 1915-1990 (Jefferson: McFarland, 1990), 521–45.
Reprinted under the same title in 1999. The cover shows the 1999 edition.
Kathryn Kalinak
"John Williams and "The Empire" Strike Back: The Eighties and Beyond: Classical Meets Contemporary"
in Settling the Score: Music and the Classical Hollywood Film (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 184–202.
Timothy E. Scheurer
“John Williams and Film Music Since 1971”
Popular Music and Society 21, no. 1 (1997): 59–72.
James Buhler
“Star Wars, Music, and Myth”
in Music and Cinema, ed. James Buhler, Caryl Flinn, and David Neumeyer (Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 2000), 33–57.
Irena Paulus
“Williams versus Wagner or an Attempt at Linking Musical Epics”
International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 31, no. 2 (2000): 153–84.
Neil Lerner
“Nostalgia, Masculinist Discourse and Authoritarianism in John Williams’ Scores for Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind”
in Off the Planet: Music, Sound and Science Fiction Cinema, ed. Philip Hayward (Eastleigh: John Libbey, 2004), 96–108.
Jack Sullivan
"Family Plot: Hitchcock's Exuberant Finale"
in Hitchcock's Music (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 308–17.
Dana Anderson
"John Williams: The Film Music of John Williams"
in Sound and Music in Film and Visual Media: A Critical Overview, ed. Graeme Harper (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009), 463–71.
Giorgio Biancorosso
"The Shark in the Music"
Music Analysis 29, no. 1–3 (2010): 306–33.
Emilio Audissino
“John Williams, Star Wars and the Canonization of Hollywood Film Music”
in Il Canone Cinematografico/The Film Canon, ed. Pietro Bianchi, Giulio Bursi, and Simone Venturini (Udine: Forum, 2011), 273–78.
Jérôme Rossi
"Les Harmonies polytonales dans la musique de films de John Williams: Étude des ressources expressives de la polytonalité"
in Polytonalités, ed. Philippe Malhaire (Paris: L'Harmattan), 179–200.
Emilio Audissino
“John Williams, the Boston Pops Orchestra, and Film Music in Concert”
in Cinéma, critique des images, ed. Claudio D'Alonzo, Ken Slock and Philippe Dubois (Udine: Campanotto, 2012), 230–35.
Peter Moormann
"Composing with Types and Flexible Modules: John Williams' Two-Note Ostinato for Jaws and its Use in Film-Music History"
Journal of Film Music 5, no. 1–2 (2012): 165–68.
Ben Winters
"Superman as Mythic Narrative: Music, Romanticism, and the 'Oneiric Climate'"
in The Music of Fantasy Cinema, ed. Janet K. Halfyard (Sheffield: Equinox Press, 2012), 111–31.
Tom Schneller
"Modal Interchange and Semantic Resonance in Themes by John Williams"
Journal of Film Music 6, no. 1 (2013): 49–74.
Emilio Audissino
“Archival Research and the Study of the Concert Presentations of Film Music: The Case of John Williams and the Boston Pops Orchestra”
Journal of Film Music 6, no. 2 (2013): 147–63.
Ron Rodman
“John Williams’s Music to Lost in Space: The Monumental, the Profound, and the Hyperbolic”
in Music in Science Fiction Television: Tuned to the Future, ed. K. J. Donnelly and Philip Hayward (New York: Routledge, 2013), 34–51.
Peter Rothbart
"Empire of the Sun"
in The Sinergy of Film and Music: Sight and Sound in Five Hollywood Films (Lanham: The Scarecrow Press, 2013), 51–77.
Irena Paulus
"Williams versus Wagner – Or an Attempt at Linking Musical Epics"
Emilio Audissino
"Golden Age 2.0: John Williams and the Revival of the Symphonic Film Score"
in Film in Concert: Film Scores and their Relation to Classical Concert Music, ed. Sebastian Stoppe (Glücksstadt: VWH Verlag, 2014), 63–107 and 109–23.
Tom Schneller
"Sweet Fulfillment: Allusion and Teleological Genesis in John Williams's Close Encounters of the Third Kind"
The Musical Quarterly 97, no. 1 (2014): 98–131.
Chloé Huvet
"La dissociation musique/images dans Jurassic Park : un élargissement des pratiques compositionnelles de l'âge d'or hollywoodien dans la partition de John Williams"
Les Cahiers de la Société québécoise de recherche en musique 15, no. 2 (2014): 23–39.
Chloé Huvet
"Musique et effets sonores dans Star Wars : Épisode II - L'attaque des clones. Une alliance conflictuelle"
Revue musicale OICRM 2 no. 2 (2015): 67–95.
Frank Lehman
"Scoring The President: Myth and Politics in John Williams's JFK and Nixon"
Journal of the Society for American Music 9, no. 4 (2015): 409–44.
Jeremy Orosz
“John Williams: Paraphraser or Plagiarist?”
Journal of Musicological Research 34, no. 4 (2015): 299–319.
Emilio Audissino
"Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. The Extraterrestrial: The Bonding Power of Music"
in Film/Music Analysis: A Film Studies Approach (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 191–221.
Jack Sullivan
"Spielberg–Williams: Symphonic Cinema"
in A Companion to Steven Spielberg, ed. Nigel Morris (Malden: Wiley Blackwell, 2017), 175–94.
Ben Winters
"Idolizing the Synchronized Score: Studying Indiana Jones Hypertexts"
in The Routledge Companion to Screen Music and Sound, ed. Miguel Mera, Ronald Sadoff and Ben Winters (New York: Routledge, 2017), 531–542.
Emilio Audissino
"John Williams and Contemporary Film Music"
Konstantinos Zacharopoulos
“Musical Syntax in John Williams’s Film Music Themes”
in Contemporary Film Music: Investigating Cinema Narratives and Composition, ed. Lindsay Coleman and Joakim Tillman (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 221–36 and 237–62.
Emilio Audissino
"The Multiform Identity of Jazz in Hollywood: An Assessment through the John Williams Case Study"
in Cinema Changes: Incorporations of Jazz in the Film Soundtrack, ed. Emile Wennekes and Emilio Audissino (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019), 85–98.
Daniel Thornton
"Star Wars Soundtracks: The Worship Music of John Williams"
The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 31, no. 1 (2019): 87–100.
Emilio Audissino
"'The Shark Is Not Working' – But the Music Is: Scoring a Hit with Jaws"
in The Jaws Book: New Perspectives on the Classic Summer Blockbuster, ed. I. Q. Hunter and Matthew Melia (New York: Bloomsbury, 2020), 65–78.
Frank Lehman
"John Williams's Action Music in the Twenty-First Century"
in Music in Action Film: Sounds Like Action!, ed. James Buhler and Mark Durrand (New York: Routledge, 2020), 116–48.
Grace Edgar
"Queers of Steel: Camp in John Williams's Superman (1978) and Jerry Goldsmith's Supergirl (1984)"
Journal of the Society for American Music 15, no. 3 (2021): 321–44.
Chloé Huvet
"La Collaboration de John Williams/Steven Spielberg au prisme d'E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) : Un conte de fées doux-amer"
in Compositeurs et réalisateurs en duo : Dix-sept études musico-filmiques, ed. Cécile Carayol and Jérôme Rossi (Vincennes: Presses universitaires de Vincennes, 2022), 69–92.
Conor Power
"Swashbucklers and Femme Fatales: Gender Coding in John Williams's Score to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)"
Cuadernos de Investigación Musical 15 (2022): 91–104.
Andrés Valverde Amador
"La música de John Williams en Cuentos asombrosos: Un análisis de la secuencia de apertura"
Seriarte 2 (2022): 74–94.
Emilio Audissino and Chloé Huvet
"Irony, Comic, and Humour: The Comedic Sides of John Williams"
in The Palgrave Handbook of Music in Comedy Cinema, ed. Emilio Audissino and Emile Wennekes (Cham: Palgrave MacMillan, 2023), 689–706.
Mark Richards
"John Williams' Star Wars Themes: Good vs. Evil Conflicts as a Structural Principal for Leitmotifs"
in Film Music Analysis: Studying the Score, ed. Frank Lehman (New York: Routledge, 2024).