John Williams: His 10 Greatest Film Scores

6. Schindler's List (1993)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCHMCvjvT3U John Williams would win his 5th Oscar for his beautiful and tragic score for Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List. Although Williams' music is much more minimally used in the film, he still provides the film with a wonderfully crafted voice throughout. Spielberg approached the telling of the story with much fewer cinematic techniques than he was used to, one of them being Williams' music, however when Williams music is heard, it is not forgotten. Utilizing the talent of master violinist Itzhak Perlman, Williams creates a mood for Schindler's List that allows the stripped down approach of the film to work in his favor. Featuring Perlman's violin, a clarinet and varied piano, Williams' score is one of his most intimate of all his film scores, creating a feel that we are not watching a rousing cinematic epic but an accurate re-telling of one of history's worst chapters. One of the most memorable works Williams provides us is the arrangement of a classic Hebrew hymn he creates with the Li-Ron Choir, a youth choir who's voice is profoundly heard in a sequence involving a little girl in an artistically featured red dress in the black and white film. The girl roams the streets of the Polish ghettos while numerous slayings of Jews are going on around her. The music lends a heart rendering underscore to an innocence being tested amongst the horror. Williams would go on to say that Schindler's List was one of his career's crowning achievements, and deservedly so.
Contributor
Contributor

Kyle Hytonen is a film school grad, an independent film-maker, photographer and sleeper-inner.