When I first heard the soaring "Flying Theme" from the film "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial," it felt strangely familiar. There is a good reason. Composer John Williams has said he often draws inspiration from music he admires.
In the great tradition of classical composers, he pays homage to his favorites. For "E.T.," he found inspiration in Howard Hanson’s Second Symphony, the "Romantic.”
Hanson himself was influenced by the lush, emotional style of the Romantic era. Yet the piece that Williams loved was shaped by a very specific place. In 1928, Hanson visited what then was called the National High School Orchestra Camp at Interlochen.
He told the story in his recently published autobiography.
Late one night, after rehearsals, he walked to the Interlochen Bowl. The moonlight filtered through the tall pines and glimmered across the water of Green Lake. Surrounded by silence, he sat down at a piano and began to improvise.
A gentle, yearning melody emerged. That melody became the heart of the symphony’s first movement. When the young musicians of Interlochen heard it, they embraced it immediately. They called it “The Interlochen Theme,” Hanson later wrote that without that moonlit walk through the stately pines between the lakes, "The Theme" might never have existed.
I cannot help wondering. If Hanson had skipped that late-night stroll, if the moon had hidden behind clouds, if the stately pines had not whispered above the Bowl, would that music still have found its way into the world?
Would John Williams have found the same inspiration for the "Flying Theme" that carries Elliott and E.T. into the sky?
Great art does not appear out of thin air. For many, nature provides inspiration.
In the early years of the camp, young musicians were inspired by Hanson’s soaring melodies. Decades later, audiences around the world have been inspired when a boy on a bicycle flew across the moon.
