John Williams's Film Music: Jaws, Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the Return of the Classical Hollywood Music Style

Acknowledgments

xv Ac­ knowl­ edg­ ments There are many peo­ ple who have ac­ com­ pa­ nied me through­ out the prep­ ar­ a­ tion of this book. My ap­ pre­ ci­ a­ tion goes to the Di­ par­ ti­ mento di ­ Storia delle Arti at the Uni­ ver­ sity of Pisa, Italy, where I com­ pleted the ­ three-year doc­ to­ ral pro­ gram in which I had the ­ chance to re­ fine and com­ plete the nec­ es­ sary re­ search work. Spe­ cial ­ thanks to Pier Marco De Santi, Cinzia Sicca, and San­ dra Lis­ chi. A tip of the hat also goes to Giu­ lia Car­ luc­ cio at the Uni­ ver­ sity of Turin, Italy, who was the super­ visor of my ­ master’s the­ sis (again, on John ­ Williams) and my very first cin­ ema ­ teacher. Part of this book is based on field­ work car­ ried out in Bos­ ton, Mas­ sa­ chu­ setts. On the one hand, it con­ sisted of my reg­ u­ lar pres­ ence at all the John ­ Williams con­ certs with the Bos­ ton Pops from 2007 to 2013. On the other hand, it con­ sisted of archi­ val re­ search at the Bos­ ton Sym­ phony Or­ ches­ tra ­ Archives and at the WGBH Ed­ u­ ca­ tional Foun­ da­ tion Media Li­ brary and ­ Archives. Many­ thanks for their ad­ vice and as­ sis­ tance go to Brid­ get P. Carr and Bar­ bara Per­ kel (BSO ­ Archives) and to Keith Luf, Nancy Dil­ lon, and Leah ­ Weisse (WGBH­ Archives). My warm­ est ­ thanks to my dear ­ friends at ­ Boston’s Sym­ phony Hall: Do­ reen M. Reis, Vin­ cenzo Pep­ pino Na­ tale, and Adam Cas­ tig­ li­ oni for their con­ stant friend­ ship and sup­ port, and to Ron Della ­ Chiesa for our de­ light­ ful con­ ver­ sa­ tions about the his­ tory of the Bos­ ton Sym­ phony Or­ ches­ tra and the Bos­ ton Pops. A spe­ cial ac­ knowl­ edg­ ment goes to my Bos­ ton­ ian ­ friend Vic­ tor­ Brogna, who lent a very help­ ful hand both with legal is­ sues and with the xvi • Acknowledgments proof­ read­ ing of the book man­ u­ script. This book orig­ i­ nates from my Ital­ ian PhD dis­ ser­ ta­ tion. Since I ­ wanted to ­ present Maes­ tro ­ Williams with a copy of said dis­ ser­ ta­ tion upon our meet­ ing in June 2012, my ­ seven-hundred-page work had to be trans­ lated from Ital­ ian into En­ glish. I must thank my ­ friend Ales­ san­ dra Voi for shar­ ing with me the bur­ den­ some work of trans­ la­ tion under a very tight sched­ ule, thus help­ ing me meet the dead­ line. My ­ friend John Nor­ ris de­ serves my warm­ est grat­ i­ tude and a cen­ tral niche of his own. He is a ­ thorough con­ nois­ seur of film music and John ­ Williams’s works, and was an in­ val­ u­ able as­ sist­ ant in my archi­ val re­ search in Bos­ ton. He was also my eyes and ears at those con­ certs that I was not able to at­ tend, and con­ se­ quently pro­ vided me with de­ tailed re­ ports and lots of ma­ te­ rial. More­ over, he did a re­ mark­ able job of lan­ guage re­ vi­ sion, hav­ ing been part of the trans­ la­ tion team that had ­ worked on the En­ glish ver­ sion of my dis­ ser­ ta­ tion. Gra­ zie, John! As for the form and ap­ pear­ ance of the book, I wish to ex­ press my ap­ pre­ ci­ a­ tion to the many peo­ ple who gave their con­ tri­ bu­ tions at the var­ i­ ous ­ stages of the pro­ cess. First of all, I’m grate­ ful to the Uni­ ver­ sity of Wis­ con­ sin Press for giv­ ing me the op­ por­ tu­ nity to bring this book to life. My sin­ cere grat­ i­ tude goes to Executive Ed­ i­ tor Ra­ phael Kad­ u­ shin, who has al­ ways be­ lieved in the ­ project’s po­ ten­ tial and has been en­ cour­ ag­ ing from our very first ­ e-mail con­ tact, to his as­ sist­ ant Mat­ thew Cosby, to my editor Sheila McMahon, and to all the other nice per­ sons I ­ worked with at UW...