StreamingSoundtracks.com - Jaws

#	Track Listing	Length	Played
01	Main Title And First Victim John Williams	3:28	229
02	The Empty Raft John Williams	1:24	32
03	The Pier Incident John Williams	2:23	25
04	The Shark Cage Fugue John Williams	2:00	14
05	Shark Attack John Williams	1:18	23
06	Ben Gardner's Boat John Williams	3:31	29
07	Montage John Williams	1:31	11
08	Father And Son John Williams	3:43	25
09	Into The Estuary John Williams	2:50	28
10	Out To Sea John Williams	2:59	47
11	Man Against Beast John Williams	5:34	198
12	Quint's Tale John Williams	2:41	28
13	Brody Panics John Williams	1:10	9
14	Barrel Off Starboard John Williams	1:31	14
15	The Great Shark Chase John Williams	3:28	140
16	Three Barrels Under John Williams	2:05	16
17	Between Attacks John Williams	2:07	11
18	The Shark Approaches John Williams	2:41	50
19	Blown To Bits John Williams	3:04	70
20	End Titles John Williams	1:52	59

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Reviewers Rating

2 reviews done for this album.

Hot Lunch

By:	paradiseloop
Date:	25 Oct 2006
Rating:

Who would have imagined the mood that two simple notes, in a heartbeat rhythm, could create. To this day just hearing those two notes immediately conjures shark, adrenaline, and second thoughts about swimming. A truly great orchestral piece on its own.

4 of 5 found this review helpful

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Mastery and Savagery

By:	Andres
Date:	12 May 2010
Rating:

It is difficult to give an adequate introduction to John Williams' score for Jaws. Although few would disagree that it was the most powerful, complex, and effective score he had yet done, it was soon followed by so many great and popular scores that its real worth is sometimes obscured.

The famous theme for the shark is universally recognized and widely quoted, but it really does not communicate much about the music as a whole. Taken by itself the famous two-note motif is almost silly--so immediate is its impact that it is a sort of instant cliché. In less skilled hands the shark theme could easily have become something to laugh at even before the movie was over. Williams took the simple sequence of notes and used it masterfully, incorporating it sparingly with many variations and changes into a rich fabric of action and drama.

Two hallmarks of Williams’ style are his generosity with musical ideas, and the number of highly accessible and effective melodies found especially in his most popular scores. Jaws contains seven melodies apart from the shark theme, but much of the music does not revolve around melodies. Four of the melodies appear solely in individual tracks: "Montage", "Ben Gardner's Boat", "Father and Son", and the ‘Spanish Ladies’ shanty quote in “Between Attacks”. The other three melodies are themes in the seagoing and action scenes in the latter half of the movie: two more sea shanties and a primary action theme (the latter showcased in "The Shark Cage"). In Jaws the musical wealth appears in great part in the form of countless unique motifs and melodic fragments, many of which appear only once. Pick any track and you will find multiple instances of this unique material.

Williams' score is not only remarkable for the variety of ideas, but also for the way those ideas interrelate and the way they are structured. Perhaps surprisingly given his jazz background, Williams’ compositional style is very 'classical'. He uses classical forms perhaps more than any other film composer, from obvious examples like "The Shark Cage" in the form of a fugue, through the latter part of "Man Against Beast" which is in the form of a scherzo, to his overall tendency constantly to evolve and interrelate his musical material in each score.

One can begin to get a sense of the variety and structure of Williams' music by listening closely to a track of comparatively average complexity: "Into The Estuary". The famous shark motif in the bass appears here in six different guises: a slow tentative version which speeds up to a fast run, the 'normal' version which then shifts to a more urgent position in the harmony, a brief appearance in the horns, a loud jarring variation in the brass, an instance which rises and falls in volume 'passing by', and a rhythm-only reference. The "shark/ocean" melody that often accompanies the bass motif appears here with a partial harp substitution, then in a syncopated variant in the horns, then as a 'warning' motif in the horns, then as a tentative/suspense motif repeated on the harp, then with a partial statement in the brass. There are at least 17 further individual musical gestures in the track, all in unique forms, and about half of those only appear in this one track.

All that material is crammed into a small space: “Into the Estuary” is only two minutes and fifty seconds long. Highlights of the track include: the uncertain 'hinting' opening evocation of the shark which builds to a certainty; the eerie almost ill-feeling sections relating to the actual shark attack in the water; the sickly unsettled and sad section when Brody's child is pulled from the water; and the magnificent somber section at the end which evokes the threat and vastness of the sea.

Of course sophisticated and rich writing do not guarantee a film composer's success. The ability to evoke emotion with perfect focus is what really sets the great composers apart. Williams is known for his command of this sort of focus. In Jaws he demonstrates it over and over again: from the very uncomfortable, even savage music for some of the shark attacks; through the richly atmospheric music for the suspense scenes; or the playfulness, urgency, and violence of the seagoing scenes; to the beautiful peace of the final track.

It is not necessary to be conscious of all of what is happening when listening to the score, but all this sophistication is part of what empowers the score and gives it such richness that today, after listening to the score for more than 30 years, I still relish it.

13 of 13 found this review helpful

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