The Fabelmans Main Theme

John Williams' theme for Steven Spielberg's autobiographical The Fabelmans is among the most nakedly personal music this legendary composer has written — which makes it unlike nearly everything else in his catalogue. Where Williams typically builds architecture (the five-note Jaws motif, the Williams fanfare of Star Wars), the Fabelmans theme is conversational, hesitant even, a gentle piano-led melody that shifts into strings with the warmth and impermanence of a childhood memory being examined. It does not announce itself. It simply begins, as memories do. The orchestration is chamber-scale rather than symphonic — strings and woodwinds that feel like voices in a small room, the piano a child's hand finding notes. Emotionally it occupies wonder and grief simultaneously: the wonder of cinematic discovery, the grief of the family that discovery cost. There is a quality of light about it — the same quality that cinema itself creates when a projector cuts through darkness. Culturally it represents late Williams at his most intimate and autobiographical, free from franchise obligations. For listeners who work in creative fields, who chose art over stability, or who carry complicated feelings about family, this theme will land with particular accuracy.