Jaws: Music From The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
John Williams's second collaboration with then-wunderkind director Steven Spielberg not only gave Hollywood one of its most indelible musical motifs--the rampaging shark's rhythmic, swelling two-note figure that's long since become a sonic archetype for terror--it won the composer his first scoring Oscar (he'd previously won for adaptingFiddler on the Roof) and arguably made him a film music superstar. Williams's oft-brooding score is one of the key elements of the film's gut-wrenching success, a shrewdly manipulative orchestral underpinning that evokes the idyll of a beach resort one bar, the horrors of being eaten alive the next. There are more motifs than melodies here, but as withBernard Herrmannthey evoke almost subliminal emotional responses, creating a masterfully menacing, brass-heavy concerto of surprising depth. Music for fly-fishing it isn't!--Jerry McCulley