The Power of “Jaws” Is In John Williams’ Two-Note Musical Score
The Jaws theme is one of the most terrifying musical scores in cinema. The soundtrack, dominated by two notes played over and over again to signal the monster shark closing in on it’s victim, seems simple enough, but is ingenious nonetheless. The legendary composer John Williams is, of course, the movie maestro behind the score. Something clicked for Williams with Jaws. From then on, he turned out musical hit after hit with memorable soundtracks for Star Wars, Superman — The Movie, Indiana Jones, following in quick succession. But in 1974, the 42-year-old was yet to produce any of these, or any memorable score.
One year earlier, Williams composed the score for Steven Spielberg’s first feature film, The Sugarland Express. Both men were happy with their collaboration on the film, which kicked off their enduring partnership on 28 films to date (he’s been absent for only four of Spielberg’s films). When it came time to score Jaws, Spielberg suggested Williams compose a sweeping, more-romantic theme. Then he went away to film on location in Martha’s Vineyard, leaving the composer to his own devices.
Spielberg trusted him. After a difficult time on location trying to get the mechanical sharks to work, and battling the conditions of shooting on the open sea, all of which tripled the film’s production time and budget, he thought Williams would at least compose a score he liked. But when Spielberg finally sat down to hear Williams’ score, it wasn’t quite what he expected.
When Williams played the familiar two-note theme, which is variously identified as “E and F” or “F and F Sharp”, Spielberg thought it was a joke. “Ha, you’ve got it,” he laughed. Williams’ quickly assured Spielberg it was no joke. He explained that the most powerful thing is the simplest idea.
In Spielberg’s defense, he only heard the two notes on his piano, which lacked the power of a full orchestra.
Two Simple Notes, One Indomitable Threat
The two notes became synonymous with approaching danger. Williams described the repetition of the two notes as “grinding away at you, just as a shark would do, instinctual, relentless, unstoppable.” Any good composer understands the psychological power of music, which Williams certainly did. As such, he elected to write the theme in a high register and decided that a tuba should play it, rather than a more appropriate French horn. The combination, he said, made the sound “a little more threatening.”
Williams’s score needs no introduction, but it always deserves another listen-through.
The first thing you’ll notice is that while the two notes dominate the theme, there is a lot more to the arrangement. Williams saw similarities between pirates and Jaws, thus at points in the theme he incorporated “pirate music”, which he called “primal, but fun and entertaining.”
The few primal notes that open the theme derive from Ravel’s La Vaise. There are also shades of La Mer by Claude Debussy and Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring in the quick, percussive string playing.
Shark’s Heartbeat or Human Respiratory?
William’s theme is psychological and inspired a number of interpretations from music scholars. For Joseph Cancellaro, the two-note theme recalls the shark’s heart-beat, while Alexandre Tylski suggests the two-notes mimic the sound of human respiration, a suggestion that he compares to Bernard Hermann’s themes for Taxi Driver, North By Northwest, and especially Mysterious Island.
He further argues that “the split, the rupture” that dramatically cuts the score dead after the shark strikes, signals the demise of the victim, and, thus, the sudden end to their respiration. Spielberg, himself, later compared Williams’ score to Psycho (1960), a different Bernard Herrmann score. Herrmann, who is often considered the best composer in film and television history, is quite likely an influence since Williams was his student.
Spielberg concedes that without Williams’s score, Jaws would only be half as successful. The truth is both men were equally important in crafting the suspense in the film. Spielberg’s masterstroke–turning the camera into the shark’s POV–is enhanced considerably by Williams’s score. The two notes add an audible layer to the pacing. It’s as if the two men collaborated together in the construction of each attack scene.
