Forty years ago, John Williams was already hugely well-known to audiences in America and around the world. By 1984, he had already composed dozens of film scores, including Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Superman, Star Wars, E.T. and Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Williams was asked to compose a piece that would be used for the TV coverage and in concerts preceding the Olympics but also contained a fanfare that would be played live by herald trumpets at each of the medal ceremonies. He had to compete with Leo Arnaud's Bugler's Dream, which the broadcaster ABC had used as the theme music for their coverage of the previous four Olympics, so the pressure was on.
On 12 June 1984, John Williams conducted the famous Boston Pops Orchestra at Symphony Hall in Boston, for the world premiere. The music that the audience heard that night was unmistakably Williams: a theme tune fit for superhuman athletes.
"I'm not an avid sports fan, and I have never been to an Olympics," Williams told The New York Times. "But from watching the Olympics competition on television, I gained a feeling that I aspired to make the theme of Fanfare. A wonderful thing about the Olympics is that young athletes strain their guts to find and produce their best efforts. The human spirit stretching to prove itself is also typical of what musicians attempt to achieve in a symphonic effort. It is difficult to describe how I feel about these athletes and their performances without sounding pretentious, but their struggle ennobles all of us. I hope I express that in this piece."
The night before the opening ceremony, Michael Tilson Thomas conducted the LA Philharmonic in an all-American concert. It featured music by Copland and Berstein and the West Coast Premiere of John Williams' Olympic Fanfare and Theme.
Williams was then back on the podium for a live performance at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on 28 July, during the Games' opening ceremony (above).
Interestingly, although NBC took on Fanfare as their theme music for the 1988 Olympics, it didn't strike a chord with US TV audiences. That changed in 1996 when NBC merged the iconic opening of Arnaud's Bugler's Dream into Williams' Olympic Theme and Fanfare. That piece is now synonymous with the Olympics for millions of TV viewers. And it must have Williams' stamp of approval as he recorded it on Sony Classical for his Olympic CD Summon the Heroes and uses the setting in concert performances to this day.
They did album covers differently in the 80s.
You can hear the Olympic Fanfare and Theme live at the Royal Albert Hall on Wednesday 25 September 2024 as part of our American Classics concert. Click below for full details and to book tickets: