Jaws (soundtrack)

John Williams had previously scored Steven Spielberg's debut feature, The Sugarland Express, and he would go on to collaborate with the director on almost all of his subsequent films. When Williams first demonstrated his idea to Spielberg, playing just the two notes on a piano, Spielberg was said to have laughed, thinking that it was a joke as he was expecting a more "melodic" tune. After hearing the notes played again and at different speeds, Spielberg agreed, saying that "sometimes the best ideas are the most simple ones" and that the composer "had found a signature for the entire score." with an ascending minor second in the low strings. The ostinato became a classic piece of suspense music, synonymous with approaching danger (see leading-tone). Williams described the theme as "grinding away at you, just as a shark would do, instinctual, relentless, unstoppable." Elaborating on the simplicity, Williams said that he felt that the motif should be "brainless... like the shark." Calling for rapid, percussive string playing, the score also contains echoes of Debussy's La mer, Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, and the opening of the 4th movement of Dvořák's New World Symphony. ==Recording==

Recording the soundtrack for Jaws started on March 3, 1975. the first two days were recorded at the Fox Scoring Stage in Los Angeles. The film's producer, Richard D. Zanuck secretly watched the recording from the sidelines. On March 5, recording moved to Stage 10 at Universal Studios because it was more appropriate for "stringless" (percussion, tuba, and brass, etc.) recording for the diegetic music played by the Amity marching band early in the film; this included tunes by Scott Joplin, Johann Strauss II and original compositions by Williams. Because the town band was meant to sound like amateur musicians, Spielberg himself played clarinet, slightly out of tune. The liner notes for the Intrada release explains that Williams wanted to develop some of the cues to "make a more cohesive listening experience, so... he expanded and rearranged the highlights of the Jaws score for album presentation." Those tracks were recorded on April 17–18, 1975 at The Burbank Studios in California. ==Reception==

Reviews Writing for Empire, Ian Freer called the short length of the original 1975 soundtrack album ("a paltry 35 minutes") as "one of the most heinous crimes in the history of motion picture soundtrack albums." Awards and accolades John Williams won the Academy Award for Best Original Score for Jaws at the 1976 Awards, having previously won an Oscar in 1972 for Fiddler on the Roof. The score won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score at the 33rd Golden Globe Awards. In 1976, this soundtrack also won the Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media at the 18th Annual Grammy Awards In 2005, the American Film Institute ranked Jaws sixth in its 100 Years of Film Scores, a list of the top 25 film scores in American cinema. Music scholar Joseph Cancellaro proposes that the two-note expression mimics the shark's heartbeat. According to Alexandre Tylski, like themes Bernard Herrmann wrote for Taxi Driver, North by Northwest, and particularly Mysterious Island, it suggests human respiration. He further argues that the score's strongest motif is actually "the split, the rupture"—when it dramatically cuts off, as after Chrissie's death. The leitmotif's adaptable tempo is an example of Mickey Mousing, whereby the music replicates the action on, and in this case off, screen. Although the soundtracks for the subsequent sequels were written by different composers, Alan Parker and Michael Small incorporated the main shark theme into both of their scores, with credit to Williams. I.Q. Hunter highlights Small's score for Jaws The Revenge as "effective variations on John Williams’ classic theme". The shark theme has become highly recognisable. As scholar Amanda Howell says, "the widely reproduced and widely recognised leitmotif ... ultimately achieved a life of its own beyond the haunted waters of the film -- and well past the classical score's aesthetic of audibility." It is also used in the opening of the comedy Airplane!, when it transpires that what appears to be a shark's fin is the tail fin of an airplane. The Spielberg-produced Back to the Future Part II uses the theme in a sequence set in the then-future 2015, when Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) comes across a cinema showing Jaws 19. The animated films Finding Nemo and Shark Tale both use the music, often as part of a comment, Matthew Lerberg argues, about restoring the negative representation of Great Whites created by Spielberg's film. Characters in Finding Nemo hum the theme for Bruce the shark, while Shark Tale opens with Williams' theme. ==Releases==

The original soundtrack for Jaws was released by MCA Records on LP in 1975, and as a CD in 1992, including roughly a half hour of music that Williams redid for the album. and Varèse Sarabande released a rerecording of the score performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, conducted by Joel McNeely. In 2015, Intrada Records released a special edition of the soundtrack, featuring recordings of the film versions of the cues, the remastered original 1975 soundtrack album, and also the diegetic music played by the Amity town band. Intrada transferred the original three-track split mono to 24-bit resolution. However, it became apparent that this element was never intended to be mixed into true stereo. Because the film music was recorded at Fox Studios rather than Universal, the recording format was closer to what would later become standard. whereas the McNeely release features a photograph of a shark. ==Track listings==

1975 MCA Records album 2000 Varèse Sarabande re-recording Conducted by Joel McNeely 2000 Decca Records album • = Previously unreleased** = Includes unreleased music† = Includes music not used in the film 2015 Intrada Records 2CD release Disc 1 Disc 2 2025 Back Lot Music digital release ==References==