On Music: My 10 Favorite Non-Star Wars Themes by John Williams

I have been a fan of composer/conductor John Williams since I first watched Star Wars in a crowded theater in October of 1977 at the Concord Mall in South Florida. I didn’t know it at the time – I was a 14-year-old at the time and rarely paid attention to the “Music by” credits in any movie – but I had already heard Williams’ music before – either in theatrical films such as Midway (1976) or on reruns of Lost in Space and Land of the Giants on TV.  So consciously or not, Williams’ music was part of the soundtrack of my life way before I was consciously aware of the composer’s existence.

Like many Star Wars fans – not all, but many – I thought (and still do!) that Williams’ Academy Award-winning score was one of the finest elements of George Lucas’s space fantasy. I asked for – and received – the original 2-LP original soundtrack album from Star Wars for my 15^th birthday, so for the past 43 years I’ve owned different variants of Williams’ score in various formats, including vinyl, eight-track tape, cassette tape, compact disc, and – more recently – digital.    

It goes without saying that Maestro Williams’ score for Star Wars (aka Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope) is my all-time favorite, and that by extension I also love his scores for the other eight Episodes of the Skywalker Saga.

However, Williams, who will celebrate his 89^th birthday on February 8, has composed 108 film scores, starting with Daddy-O in 1958 and on to the 2020s with scores for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. I have, of course, not heard them all, and I probably won’t either, but I have heard many of them, especially in films by his long-time collaborator and friend, Steven Spielberg.

Here, without further ado, are my 10 Favorite Non-Star Wars themes by the five-time Academy Award-winning composer, Maestro John Towner Williams, ranked in order of preference.

1. Superman: The Movie (1978)

2. Raiders of the Lost Ark (aka Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark) (1981)

3. Love Theme from Superman (1978)

4. Jaws: Out to Sea/Shark Cage Fugue (1975)

5. A.I. Artificial Intelligence: Where Dreams Are Born (2001)

6. Marion’s Theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

7. Midway Victory March from Midway (1976)

8. Prologue from JFK (1991)

9. Hymn to the Fallen from Saving Private Ryan (1998)

10. Theme from Schindler’s List (1993)

Well, there you have it – my 10 Favorite Non-Star Wars Themes by John Williams. I hope you take some time to listen to them and enjoy the music. Which ones do you like? And if you were making your own list, which non-Star Wars themes would you pick? Let me know in the Comments section below!