John Williams is currently writing the music for his fifth Indiana Jones film, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” which will be released this summer in eager theaters near you. Meanwhile, he just scored a new football theme, lasting about three and a half triumphant minutes, that aired Monday night on the ESPN broadcast for the Georgia-TCU game.
I’m not a musicologist, but I love what a good composer can do to intensify images on a screen. News of a theme celebrating the College Football Playoff National Championship, brought to you by the wildly prolific earworm wizard who gave us “Star Wars,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and, for the record, the music from a 1954 film financed by the Newfoundland tourism board — oh well. News, certainly. Is it worth listening to?
Indeed. The piece is called “Of Grit and Glory” and we will all hear it in countless high school and college football stadiums for decades to come. It’s good.
The theme’s simple 21-note introduction, designed to accompany a stunningly smooth video opening of the Georgia-TCU game, couldn’t help but recall elements from various Williams broadcasters’ past. I mean, You try writing 117 and counting different film scores spanning eight decades.
Williams has previously written football music, including the martial punch “Wide Receiver” for NBC Sunday Night Football. On first listen, in a very pleasant way, “Of Grit and Glory” sounds a bit like the patriotic and nostalgic response to that previous theme. Put them together, with variations, and voilà : the music for the feature-length football drama Williams never quite scored.
“Of Grit and Glory” was just thoughtful enough in its quieter passages to effectively highlight the memories of college football’s great giants, looking back in an effort to get us pumped up for the big game. The music is accompanied by the melodic rigor of all of Williams’ most humbling achievements.
This comes from a sincere place of populist mastery.
“Intercollegiate football,” the composer told Variety, “has been at the heart and soul of the life of our nation for so long that the opportunity to musically salute this great tradition was a particularly meaningful joy for me… (championship matches) always lift the collective spirit and, ultimately, competition brings us all closer to a place where the concept of winners and losers dissolves into mutual respect and admiration.
Of course, it was promotional work. The intention may not be so different from that of the Newfoundland Tourism Authority film Williams. marked 69 years ago. But some commercial artists transcend their era, and many of their own films, if they are film composers. Their work can become dangerously familiar to us over time. But for good reason.
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
Twitter @phillipstribune
